The darkness around me brightened until I was standing on the sandy ground of a red sandstone canyon picked with what appeared to be mine shafts. It was like something out of an old Western. I also became aware that I was ravenously hungry. It felt like I hadn't eaten in days. I looked around and saw a group of six people sitting on the ground in their underwear, scraping the remains of a meal out of bowls. They were being watched over by two armored men with whips and clubs hanging from their belt. These must be the guards.

“Hey Jimmy,” the nearer of the two said, looking over at me. “Look who finally showed up. I told you the count was right.”

The other guard, Jimmy, pulled a hot bowl of what looked to be oatmeal out of a pouch on his belt. “Get over here and eat, you have thirty seconds,” he growled at me.

I rushed over and started spooning the food into my mouth faster than I had since boot camp. It tasted like fresh bread and honey, and I was so hungry I thought I would drown in the drool between each bite. I only finished half of it before Guard Jimmy knocked it out of my hand. It shattered on the ground before bursting into dust that scattered on the wind.

“Listen up.” Jimmy bellowed at all of us, “ from now on, if you don't work, you don't eat. Look around, you are in an oasis surrounded by desert and high level monsters. If you try to run,you'll die, and respawn right here where we will find you and punish you before we put you right back to work. Put these on, and Carl here will give you your assignments.”

He pulled bundles of cloth out of the pouch and passed them around. Turned out to be white cotton pants and a tunic with a rope belt, like off an old sugar plantation. I found once I had it on that there was a pouch on my hip hanging from the rope belt. I was distracted from the mysteriously appearing pouch by hearing Guard Carl deliberating the first work assignment.

“Let's have a look at you,” he said, peering at a short, bearded man. “Ooo, a dwarven warrior, how original, you would probably be great at mining and smithing, let's assign you tooooo the alchemy building.”

The dwarf just stood there in shock as the guard went through the rest of our small group. An elven archer was sent to the smithy. An Orcish squire was sent to the kitchen. A gnomish martial artist, a human rogue, and a goblin magician were all sent to the mines. By the time he got to me I knew what was coming.

“Oh my, a human novice,” he drawled out in his mocking tone. “were you hoping to pray your way out of prison? Well I hope our god likes the sound of hammers, because you're going to the mine.”

I almost chuckled at that last comment but the dwarf seemed to have turned his shock to outrage.

“Why are you even doing this?” He howled, red-faced.

“Well you see.” Said Guard Jimmy calmly, “In this world, when you get better at a skill like mining, you gain experience; experience leads to levels. Right now, you are all locked in a tutorial, that's why you can't access any of your interfaces. The tutorial ends automatically if you reach level eleven. So if any of you come close to hitting level eleven we have to drag you out to spawn and beat you to death, over and over, until you are back to level one. As much fun as some of us find that, it is still a lot of work, and we prefer to avoid it all together.”

The cold, professorial way he spoke about beating us to death chilled me to my marrow. It seemed to take the fire out of the dwarf as well.

He quietly asked, “but why are we doing any of it? It's not real, just ones and zeros. If the company wants some of whatever you're mining, can't they just go into the program and add more?”

“Oh that,” the guard said, chuckling as if he had not just talked about beating us to death. “It's all has to do with the A.I.s, they created these game worlds and for whatever reason the internal logic is very important to them. The code is too complicated for a human to understand and they refuse to allow something to be made from nothing. So this,” he gestured around him, “is where all that gold the company sells players comes from. A.I. won't even let NPCs do the work.”

“Enough of this shit,” Carl the Guard snapped. “You're all convicts, from now on all you need to know is that if you don't work, you don't eat. Now come along.”

His mention of food returned my mind to my empty belly and that is where is stayed while he waved over a couple of other guards for the rest and led those of us destined for the mines into one of the dark apertures. The root through the tunnels was long and winding, lit by a faint glow from some of the side passages and a glowing white stone the Guard pulled from his pouch. As he guided us he paused every so often to oggle the Rogue. She was a buxom woman with bright red hair and a spray of freckles across cheeks as pale at cream. It seems I was not the only one building my character with a mind towards how to get by in prison. Her strategy, as opposed to mine, looked to be at least a partial success.

At length we came to a side passages with more light than the others. Carl led us into it and we saw a single white haired elf chipping away at the base of a glowing golden crystal with a pickaxe. There were many such crystals around the gallery, they were the source of the light. The elf was dressed just like us save one addition, his right ankle was circled by a metallic cuff from which a long chain led to a ring set in the middle of the floor. Four more chains were also attached to the ring.

“ Hey old man,” Carl chimed in that mocking voice of his, “we finally found you some roommates. I'm sure you won't mind showing them the ropes, you're an expert at this by now.”

He proceeded to drag the chains over and secured the cuffs to our ankles. He saved the redhead for last, taking the opportunity to feel up her leg. Once he was done he pressed up against her, whispering in her ear and pressing something into her hand.

I spoke before I realized I had opened my mouth, “do you always have to chain women up so they don't run away?”

Quick as a snake he backhanded me across the face knocking me to the ground.

-13 Health

You have received 13 points of damage from player CARL BREWER

WARNING!! Your Health is critically low, seek healing immediately or risk death.

The edges of my vision pulsed red in time with a pulse I could no longer feel. A small bar at the top of my field of view which I had been ignoring shrank down to little more than a sliver of dull red.

Carl spat on me, “you all better hope you make quota tonight 'cause this little shit just cost you your grace period.” He stormed out of the gallery and back down the tunnel.

“You'd do well not to rile Mr. Brewer up,” said the gallery’s original occupant, speaking for the first time with a pepperidge farm New England accent. “He's a mean one, rumor is it's on account of his losing both arms and legs in the war. I think it’s because he lost something a little more personal, and even V.R. won't bring it back.” he trailed off with a laugh.

“You're wrong there old man,” the redhead said, “otherwise I don't think he would have been trying to get me to go to a private area with him. Let me help you up.” She leaned over, offering me her hand.

“What are you helping him for,” the gnome piped up, “he just cost us our grace period?”

The elf snorted a laugh, “there is no grace period, Brewer was just saying that to turn you against him. I didn't eat for two days when I got here because I couldn't figure out how the extraction crystals worked.”

“Besides,” the rogue said, “he was insulting, a turn with me is worth more than dinner roll.” She tossed me the roll as I got to my feet. “It does seem adequate payment for defending my honor, such as it is.”

As I tore into bun the elf said, “you might regret that, young lady. The food they normally give us doesn't hold off the hunger long. By this evening you might change your mind about what a little bread it worth.”

“I think I'll risk it. We are all stuck together, might as well look out for each other.” She made a rather impressive shrug and continued, “the rest of us got three bowls of food each, he showed up late and barely got to start one.”

“And I can't thank you enough for this, really,” I said, my health slowly climbing back up, “but maybe we should find out what we have to do now to insure we'll all have food later.”

“It's not all that hard,” the elf said, “These crystals draw the metal out of the ground, when they get big enough they start to glow and then we harvest them. Twice a day someone from Alchemy comes by with a cart and collects what we have. If we make quota we get fed, if not we have to wait for the next time. The trick of it is, the crystals don't just grow back on their own. You have to break up an existing crystal and use it to seed the new ones in the ore.”

“Why not just mine the ore,” said the goblin, “why all the crystal rigamarole?”

“Seems that's exactly the question. From what I hear, these crystals are a company secret. Most players have to dig up ore just like in the real world, and just like in the real world, eventually the ore runs out.” The white haired old man gestured like a born storyteller, “only the company has the crystals that allow them to harvest the same deposit over and over again.”

We each grabbed tools from where they laid against the wall and the old man soon had us up and running. It took a surprising amount of work to break one of the crystals free. I was almost dismayed when the one the gnome and I were first working on toppled over and then promptly disappeared. It was only when the gnome pulled it from his pouch that I understood that it went into his inventory.

I was equally surprised when we began the next crystal and I immediately had a message show up before me.

+1 to Strength

Learn By Doing- Everyone knows that hard work is the best exercise. Keep this up and you will be a muscle man in no time!

I swiped it away and in a few moments I had another one show up causing me to miss the swing with my hammer and almost took my partner's head off.

+1 to Mining, no XP awarded

Jack of All Trades- as a Human you can learn any skill, but not all skills are created equal. Mining is not one of your class skills so does not earn you experience, try practicing other skills to help you advance.

I got to know the others a bit while we worked. The gnome was named Jerome Tyler, but chose to rechristen himself Jager Tinwhistle because he hated the name Jerome but wanted to keep the nickname JT. The goblin said he wanted to keep his own name of Dylan Thomas but was blocked from taking it so he settled on Dillweed, for the irony he claimed. He was proud to tell you that before he was “snatched” he was Natick’s leading provider of “everything that will get you high, get you low, or get you weird.”

The elf, it turned out, was named Nathan Wheeler in the real world and was named Beldroth Mythrin in this world by dint of being the only one of us to find the “randomly generate” button that was apparently hanging in the air behind us when the name prompt came up. What he didn't realize was that button generated your entire character, which is how a black man who had never played an MMO or read a Fantasy novel and who managed to hold onto his heritage living in the whitest, most landward corner of Massachusetts, was now a Snow Elf Minstrel. I got the impression that if it were possible to die of shame, his class name might have killed him.

I told them about the man at the market who gave me the name I was using. When asked for my real name I just said that I used so many over the years that it didn’t matter. I think it might have been a problem, except the woman was just as reticent. When asked her name all she said was Allyse. No hint if the name was real or in game, first or last. With that revelation, all of her earlier comradery drained out of her.

We worked steadily throughout the day and swapped out, four on/one off with the one taking a break first seeding any empty spots. I had my mining skill advance twice more, along with my strength once more and my endurance once. As we worked my hunger slowly ratcheted higher. It made us all irritable, though I seemed to be dealing with it better. I don’t know if it was because of the bread or because I was used to it from living off the land for so long. By the time the cart rolled up none of us felt like talking except Beldroth, who I think would talk forever after so long alone.

“My Main Man Mark,” he said in greeting, “seems you have a new fish too. Is this turning into a two man job now?”

“No,” the big orc said, waving a hand at the same dwarf we arrived with, “this is Drune, he’s going to be taking over the fetch quest. Their putting me in the hothouse full time tomorrow so i guess this is goodbye old man.”

The two continued to chat while we emptied our inventories into the wheeled box they pushed. It made quite a pile and I was confident that we had made our quota. They wouldn’t be able to carry much more. The part of my brain that broke out of prison took note of the fact that the new person was being shunted into the role of currier, usually a coveted position in a prison. If this was the norm throughout it would mean that no one with the ability to move around would be able to do so long enough to make a plan or build any real relationships. It also meant that the people who usually worked as the prison mail service aren’t in position long enough to be trusted with anything important. It made a kind of horrible sense.

Drune and the orc left, pushing the heavy cart. We all got back to work and about an hour later the orcish squire from that morning was escorted in by a guard, confirming my theory. She strained beneath a yoke across her shoulders that held two cauldrons, one baring water, the other more of the steaming food from that morning. She set them down and pulled four bowls, four spoons, and four cups out of her inventory. Marking the number I saw that the elf had already pulled a matching set from his own inventory and was staring at the food wantonly. After handing out dishes the squire finally produced a pair of ladles and started to serve. We each of us got a large helping of porridge(?) and a cup of water. The first swallow hitting my stomach seemed to make everything alright again. That is, until the guard saw her put a lick of food off the ladle into her mouth.

“You were warned the last time,” the guard bellowed, “you don’t eat until your work is done!” Quick as that, he had took the iron shod club from his belt and, with a casual swing, stove in her head.