He went north to Phantom Isle as a hired goon again. He brought his raft and the treasure chests to the shore of the misty, chilly land. The place was a ruin in the style people were coming to associate with the vanished lizardfolk civilization that had a thinly-described history in the Isles.

A notice popped up as the group reached a crumbling temple entrance. "Island North-3 East-1 will reset in one hour."

"Good timing," said Harold, the swordsman leading the party. "We can raid it, then hit it again after the reset."

"It's not actually called Phantom Isle?" said Stan.

"The game doesn't recognize names except where someone's installed a 'Stability Gem' to stop the place from resetting. And why would we do that, when it's a recurring dungeon full of loot?"

The catch, Stan saw, was that it was uninhabited. There couldn't be any permanent settlements here so long as the island wasn't stabilized. He hefted his empty pack, glanced back at his raft on the beach, and said, "All set."

As the hireling, Stan's job was to shut up and follow the "heroes" into the winding tunnels. The torch in his right hand threw eerie shadows ahead of the group.

A pair of statues broke free from the wall and lashed out with axes. The party's swordsman held them back long enough for the rogue to dart under his arm and commence stabbing, to little effect. The third guy was an archer who couldn't get a clear shot.

"Blunt weapon guy, go!" the archer shouted.

Stan joined the fighter in front to whack the statues with his wooden club. His blows drove them back without doing much damage. Still, the fight progressed into a bigger room where the other guys could score some hits. A minute of violence later and Stan had a couple of mostly-minor wounds, and the party had some statue chunks for treasure.

"Well, it's junk," said the archer. "All yours."

Stan tossed aside his cracked, ruined club and scooped up the golem pieces. The heroes looted the area for coins and other trinkets worth more. A swarm of rats came at them while they were doing that. For Stan that just meant some clumps of rat fur. Further along they ran into a lizardman tribe that made up the temple's real opposition. This time the team had Stan hang back and fight defensively to draw the enemies' attacks. Stan picked up a second major wound, which put him in danger of death and (more importantly) losing his stuff. He wasn't important enough for the others to spend a healing potion on, considering their own wounds.

He followed along, helping out in the fights by throwing whatever junk came to hand, and scouring each room for traps. At last they reached a deep triangular chamber where a huge toad lay dead. Next to the body sat a gunslinger all in white, looking up from a book.

"Hey, that was our kill!" the swordsman said, with a Spanish accent. "How'd you beat us in here?"

The man in white tipped his sombrero. "Been here a day or two, I suppose. Wanted a different place to relax."

"What kind of gamer would park in a dungeon boss room and camp out all day?" The other heroes grumbled about not getting to raid the dungeon twice because this inconsiderate person had already killed the boss just like they were going to do. Except that he hadn't killed the other monsters, or had hung out in the final room while they reset. That was weird.

Their host only smiled.

Stan dropped his gaming pad onto his bed as though something would reach out of it and bite him. "You're one of them, aren't you?"

"Si, senor. You can call me Oroblanco. My house became one of the first uploading clinics."

The adventurers stood there with weapons in hand because they hadn't pressed any buttons to put the things away. The man in white looked much more natural as he stood, stretched, and stuffed the book into his pocket. He said, "Shall I get out of your way?"

Stan said, "You're just relaxing all day?"

"I perform business services as well."

The party's swordsman sent a private message to the group, including Stan. "I say we kill this bastard and take his stuff."

The archer sent, "He lives here. He can probably kill us all. Just let him do his thing."

The party's thief chimed in with "Yeah, he's powerful. I scanned him a bit. What do you think, Stan?"

Oroblanco just watched them with amusement as they seemingly stood there quietly.

Stan tried scanning the man too and got only basic info calling him a gunner with no faction. He tried tapping the picture of the man's hat, but couldn't get details. He sent, "I'm not a voting member here, so you're at two to one on sparing him. For what it's worth, I agree."

The swordsman said aloud, "Fine. How do we kill the boss anyway?"

The slain toad vanished, then reappeared whole and towering over them. It would've been intimidating if Stan hadn't been using a third-person camera. He said, "It's the reset!"

The uploader whipped out one revolver, put a bullet through the frog's body, and re-holstered before anybody could react.

"That's our kill!" said the archer. The adventurers went to work on the beast with their weapons. It leaped at the unarmed Stan so that he barely escaped being killed, then used its sticky tongue to yank the bow out of the archer's hands. Stan whipped out a lead candlestick from his junk collection to give the monster a few good whacks, but mostly served as a distraction.

After a few rounds of brawling up and down the temple's final room, the frog slumped over and died, oozing green stuff. A victory fanfare played.

The archer glared at Oroblanco, who'd stood aside and dodged the whole time after scoring the first hit. "Why'd you have to hit it at all?"

Stan sent to the party, "I figure he was bored and wanted to get credit for contributing."

"Yeah, well, we're claiming the loot on the way out. We're doing the dungeon from the inside out this time."

Everyone turned away from the uploader, but Stan spoke to him and his character turned back. "You use guns. Got any use for a couple of lead candlesticks?"

"Actually yes. I can melt them down."

Stan handed over the loot, such as it was, and got paid probably twice the silver that NPC shopkeepers would've given him. On the way out of the dungeon he even got another set.

#

Since they'd done all but the boss twice by the time they got back outside, the heroes were loaded down with moderate-value treasure. That left Stan with plenty of garbage to haul away on his raft.

Instead of selling it right away, he logged out of the game and checked the wiki. For items like the animated statue chunks, there were specific obscure magical uses including the crafting of more golems like the ones he'd fought. What interested Stan more than the item details was the wiki's section about what uploaders really were. There was an ongoing debate about whether having your brain scooped out and digitized really counted as survival or just fancy suicide, but that hardly mattered for too-poor people like, well, nearly everybody.

There were definitely minds of some kind living full-time in the game world -- and slowly. For the sake of energy efficiency, they ran at a variable time rate just like software. Their average was around 1/4 to 1/3, constantly fudged in various ways. They were trying to "perform business" in the real world from inside the game while also enjoying fantasy paradise. For someone like that, any time spent on fiddly game details was magnified. The same people who had the most ability to play Thousand Tales obsessively, also probably felt a time crunch as the real world raced past their slow-time minds.

Where there was a problem, there was money to be made.

Stan searched for info on known uploaders and instead found the broader category that included the game's "native" AIs. Digital aliens, with their own needs and desires. In particular, they were dangerously ignorant of the outside world. What could he sell to someone who had no material needs, besides the junk items that uploaders wanted? He'd have to think about it.

In the meantime he went back to his farm work. For a few days he focused on the tedious real-world tasks of life in the Community, from maintaining the irrigation system to cooking for half the dorm. He didn't mind either, much. They were creative work that helped people. What rankled him about it was he wasn't being rewarded other than with the rare "thank you" and a blip in his social credit score. Yay; more obedience points and he might get permission to take a few days off. He didn't need vacation time during this limbo between high school and his vague plan for trade school.

The next time he logged into Thousand Tales, the title screen had changed from the generic grey logo that had shocked early reviewers, to an island theme showing his raft and a logo made of scraps. He smiled at the acknowledgment.

That night he tracked down a shopping list of people. First up was Oroblanco, who had a house on one of the few stabilized islands in the Endless Isles. Stan docked at the foot of the imaginary little castle and went to the front door to tell the man, "I've got tortoise shells."

"And?" said the gunner, standing in the doorway.

"And they're usable for making Oracle Bone rounds for your guns. I've got bones too." Stan summoned a shell from his inventory to his hands.

"That's how they're made?" That type of ammo had a good-luck effect inspired by some Chinese player.

Stan nodded. "You could craft your own, or take these to the crafter for a better price."

"Hmm. I might as well try making my own bullets. There's not much point in sitting on a pile of silver if I can't do something fun with it."

One sale already!