Zanthras was not a patient woman. Patience bred complacency. Complacency bred laziness. Laziness led to death. Death leads to more death. It was something Zanthras was done seeing. That’s why she was here, in bum fuck nowhere, on a dead planet with no one to drag her down with their own inefficiency. Even better, she found enough resources to boot up a sophisticated Android to smoothing things along for the rest of her life.

To say she was disappointed with 413X was an understatement.

Zanthras had never come across a more mentally disabled machine in her life. This wasn’t the standard faults of a machine that was going into disrepair or experiencing software corruption. Those could have been fixed. No, the malfunction that plagued 413X was much more insidious. Ignorance and curiosity.

He was just so full of pointless questions! Who was she? Was she a Lizardman? Where were they? Were they on a planet or a spaceship? Ridiculous! It was like she was dealing with a newborn hatchling than a dilapidated machine with who knows how many years of experience.

But she could have worked with that. Grit her teeth and push through those inane questions. Correct its ignorance and turn 413X into a useful tool for her survival. She made it this far already. How hard could one little robot be?

And then she found out he was a scientist of all things. Yes, she had spent weeks of time and resources on a noncombatant android instead of something useful. Zanthras was living in what could be best described as a dump and at worst a shithole. Literally, nothing that could be useful for a scientist. All she had to work with was a tougher body to take the hits.

While his pseudo creator was experiencing a debatably reasonable mental breakdown, Alex was examining the room he was in. Instead of investigating and taking a more proactive approach to the situation, Alex was doing what any experienced gamer did. He looked at the pretty looking polygons.

The VR had delivered as advertised. The graphics were incredibly lifelike. Sure, he had already been seeing them with character creation and the cinematic intro. Honestly, Alex had just chalked that up to the selective presentation. Travelers Games wouldn’t have been the first to use higher quality previews than the actual game. But this may have been the first time the trailer had undersold the quality.

Weirdly enough, the visuals clashed with his other senses. His sense of touch was rather dull like his entire body was slightly numb. Alex was confused by this, and then he remembered what race he was. Androids, or maybe just Alex’s current model, were machines. Some senses wouldn’t be needed as much. In addition to being built for a specific purpose, Androids probably were harder to kill in general so many of the organic features weren’t brought to a living person's level.

Speaking of his race the android race, the version Alex was anyway, looked more like a cyborg than a full-on robot. A human form with pistons and gears clearly visible mostly near the joints, with the overall correct shape for a bipedal humanoid. No extra bits and pieces as far as he could see.

The only thing that really stood out was his feet. He didn’t have toes. It was a weird sensation when he wiggled his flexible shoe like a foot without a doubt. Overall, if Alex wore the right clothing and left his more skin as areas exposed, he’d be indistinguishable from a person. One that wasn’t reptilian like the mechanic in front of him, as the lack of scaled skin would indicate. Or such features were isolated to his head. Alex hadn’t found a mirror to check yet.

It was an appearance that clashed against the Lizardman that was with him. Or is it Lizardwoman? Is it like human were its gender-neutral? Would sound weird if he said huwoman. Honestly, he probably should have been more focused on why she had repaired him, other than getting lost in thought about her culture. It was hard to consider these facts when there was a literal alien in front of him.

Her appearance was enough to call Alex’s attention. Unlike his Echo avatar, there was actually more details. Overall, Lizardmen looked like someone decided to put a reptilian template on a human form. Scales replaced skin, claws instead of fingernails, lizard eyes, and spikes where hair should be. Some parts were missing, like a nose or ears. Instead, there were just holes in those areas. Still enough of a bump on the face to look like a nose though. She was both amazing and slightly disturbing to look at.

It was a shame the magic of alien biology clashed with her boobs. Wearing a mechanics overall, it failed to hide her hourglass figure. And this fact sort of ruined Alex’s emersion. She was clearly a blue scaled reptilian extraterrestrial. What part of evolution demanded mammalian features? Did they give live birth? Did they produce milk? Can lizards produce milk?

When he asked, she looked more confused than offended but still. It was a rather rude thing to ask a total stranger. Especially if it was your first question after you just met.

Pushing past this, she said she wanted to go over some basic diagnostic tests. Make sure nothing was broken or loose. Then came a retune of stretches and awkward body movements. Nothing impossible, but it took a minute for Alex to get in the rhythm of things. His new body was rather different from the one he was used to without a doubt.

As the procedure went on, Alex couldn’t help but chuckle at the situation. Basically, he was getting to play a tutorial that was seamlessly intergraded into the game. In fact, he was testing the control and getting used to the movement. From his eyes at least. From the Lizardman’s point of view, this was just a diagnostic test.

“Alright. Now, pull up your personal sheet.”

To say didn’t understand nor knew how to follow her request was an understatement. Thankfully, this was the moment that Death Galaxy reminded him it was a game.

ID: 413X

Class: Nano-Biologist

Level: 0

Skills: None

Attributes: None

Unfortunately for Alex, his character sheet was rather empty. It lacked any other than his Avatar’s name and class. Everything else had nothing going for it. Alex had to say it was rather weird-looking. No game he’s ever played lacked this much substance for his character. Then again, no game tried to be this immersive.

“Well, 413X? Are you a construction model or combat version? The latter would be ideal, but I could work the former. God’s know you have enough material to work with here.”

Right, the Lizardman was still here. Having yet no reason to distrust her, Alex released the findings on his sheet.

“I don’t really understand it, but I’m a Nano-Biologist. My level’s zero and I don’t have any skills or abilities.”

There was an audible clang as the lizardman had dropped a wrench she had been holding.

“No. No, you can’t be serious. You can’t be that useless. You can’t have taken weeks of my life just to turn out to be a god damn scientist.”

The lizard woman then began to have a small moment of despair. Alex didn’t see what the problem was. Sure, his class was a bit weird, but it wasn’t like he was useless. She had another body on hand that probably didn’t need to eat. If it weren’t too complicated, he would double their level of production and overall ability in most things. Alex could help her fight if need be, at worst being a meat shield.

Not knowing how to comfort a bipedal reptilian, Alex went around and did his damn best to admire the graphics. As luck would have it, Zanthras wasn’t the only one getting an unfortunate revelation. Alex's alarm went off. A familiar window appeared in front of his eyes.

The awkward mood soured entirely for Alex. He had been having fun running away into the digital world. And now it was time to head back into that hell. Without any fanfare, he logged out of the game.

While Alex was dealing with his personal issues, Zanthras had bigger problems. The poor revelation of the Android’s usefulness was only worsened by the fact the machine stopped moving. She only noticed because it fell to the floor without breaking its fall. She jumped, surprised by the noise and stared in muted horror as the android she spent weeks repairing seemingly drop dead.

Zanthras thought the day just couldn’t get any worse. And then it did.