Gerry woke and pushed himself off the dusty ground. He couldn’t remember where he was, or how he got there. He knew he was dirty, sweaty and that he needed more clothes.

Looking around he heard a voice call out from the woods “Hey Typhon! Get yourself over here.

And another called back, “What, why?”

“New recruits coming though.”

“OK. Just give me a moment.”

Were they talking about him? While Gerry could not remember his recent experiences he felt that being noticed by others was generally a bad thing. Gerry looked over at Typhon almost a football field away and he took off running away from Typhon and his band.

As he runs, he passes by another man sleeping in the grass in the same state of undress that he is. He briefly thinks of waking the other man and warning him, but thinks better of it as he runs past.

“Hey you, stop where you are!” yelled the voice which Gerry could now see belonged to a giant of a man with a great red beard. “We have a runner!”

“Let him go,” yelled Typhon then louder for Gerry’s benefit. “He’ll come back once he’s hungry and cold. Only he’ll be behind in training, which means he’s more likely to get himself killed.”

“Nah, I’ll get him,” yelled the man with the red beard and started jogging after Gerry.

Gerry sped up running among the pines; stopping as he approached open glades to make sure all was clear; crawling on all fours as the woods grew dense. The pace he set himself was deadly; his heart seemed bursting within his ribs and finally when he arrived at a small stream he slowed to a walk.

He received a notification that popped up directly in front of his vision:

[Running Skill Increased by 2 to Level 2]

Oh. Gerry realised. This is some sort of game. And I don’t have any items or any skills. I must have died and respawned. Or this is my first time playing the game. You would think I would be able to remember these things, but maybe that’s part of the game too.

Gerry bent over to take a drink from the stream, using his hands to bring the water to his mouth. He felt refreshed and started talking to himself as was his way when alone.

“Ok. First things First Gerry. Find someplace safe.”

Gerry looked around for anything of use and saw his footprints in the ground. Again the notification came up in front of his vision.

[Perception Skill increased by 1 to Level 1]

He waived his hand at it, but there was nothing there to touch. Gerry looked over at his footprints again. If they were visible to him in this game then the red bearded man would be able to track him down, unless he was able to hide his tracks. The stream would work well for that. Gerry ran down the stream until he saw a tall cedar tree next to the river with heavy foliage. He jumped up and grabbed a branch from the tree and worked his way up high branches without leaving a trace on the ground. Mounted on a thick branch, he broke off a few smaller branches and tucked them around him to thicken his cover.

Gerry had settled into the tree just as he saw the red bearded man pass him by on the river below. He was a big man, but did not appear to be breathing hard after a fairly long run. The big man kept going down the river until he disappeared and a few minutes later came back heading the opposite direction below the tree where his prey sat, swearing under his breath as he passed .

Gerry stayed as still as he could in the tree until the bearded man passed.

Why did he run? Being noticed was never a good thing, but by running he had only singled himself out for attention. They seemed to want him for something, something important enough to let one of the group run after him, but not important enough that the leader seemed concerned about his loss.

Should he have attacked the bigger man when he passed below the tree? If this was a game, surely he could get some skills from beating a stronger enemy.

It was boring sitting in the tree, but fear kept Gerry there. Gerry would not have called it fear, to him it was just wanting to be sure that Red Beard was not coming back. Fear is a funny thing though, sometimes it comes out in it’s most primordial form, as true emotion, but for most socialized individuals is comes out as something more subsumed in the rationality, is the excuse that one makes to avoid facing what one is afraid. For anyone socialized they do not merely run away from what they are afraid of, but they have a reason they have sold to themselves as to why they are running away that allows them to ignore the fear they feel.

Gerry decided that he would slowly count to 600 and give himself ten minutes of silence before he would start trying to plan out what he was going to do. That way he could be sure as he could be, without waiting in the tree all day, that Red Beard would not be coming back. And to Gerry waiting around rather then running farther away

Gerry counted in his head emptying his thoughts of everything but the numbers, when he reached zero, he found that he was completely calm.

And a new notification popped up in his vision.

[Wilderness Skills increased by 1 to Level 1] [Evasion Skill increased by 2 to Level 2] [Patience increases by 1 to Level 1]

That’s funny, thought Gerry. Patience seemed like a funny skill to have get a notification for. If this was some sort of game he was trapped in, he had never seen a skill like that one before. There was an ⓘ to the skills and it glowed with a faint blue outline. Gerry focused his concentration on it and after a moment a pop up window came up in his vision.

[Patience is the ability to wait for something to happen. Lower levels of this skill make time more bearable, while higher levels of this skill can make monotonous tasks pass in a moment.]

OK, thought Gerry. So there appear to be the standard video game skills like running and perception. But there can also be something like patience. It seems though the skills are like any other video game in that they will help me get better at a task the more points I have in each skill. Even one point in perception brought my attention to the information circle when I was looking for more information. More points would probably be even better.