"Holy wow, these visual effects, I’ve never seen anything like it." The usually colorblind Jess was amazed.

She sat up, surprised to find gravity settings similar that of the real world.

Resting her right hand towards the ground, she took the liberty of examining it a bit; feeling the softness of green grass accompanied with older, dried out, yellow straws. Yep, there was definitely at least one sucker for older games amongst the developers at the UN. She smiled for herself, enjoying the unusual game intro.

On the topic of intros, there was probably some kind of tutorial nearby. The games features would likely be introduced incrementally. Jess stood up. ‘Darn, these gravity settings really are hard core.’ She made a confirming ‘not bad’ smile before looking around.

She was standing on a field of grass, surrounding it was a distant pine forest. A few feet away from her spawning point was a thin path of cubical paving stones, glimmering faintly in the mornig sun.

‘Hint taken,’ Jessica thought as she started walking alongside the paved path, looking for indications of some kind of quest giver.

A cool sensation surprised her after ashort stroll; the calves of her pants had gotten wet somehow. A short investigation whilst continuing found the culprit. There were miniscule droplets of water on the grass. ‘That’s an odd mechanic, she noted, wondering if the phenomenon was original or inspired by reality.

Continuing the walk, now on the quartz path, she started ascending a hill. As she got close to the top of it, a shrine-like structure made it to her field of vision. The ‘shrine’ seemed to be made out of the same material as the road she walked on, marking the end of it. At the shrine there was a person doing mystical gestures. “Perfect, it's was about time get a proper tutorial.”

***

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

This game, Iterorgina, would never make it big.

The visuals were plain and unenhanced. The user interface was non-existent, as was the number of fucks seemingly given about modern world building trends; they had even set the gravity to IRL standard. An intended choice, KimZor presumed, as the developers could hardly have missed out on every game popularized since, like, before his grandma was even a newb.

The white quartz stones, making up this white, altar-like, pile of stones next to him, were similar to the ones making the pathing to his location. Each block of stone was a massive cubit long on each polished side. At the center of the altar, two steps up, was an elevated spherical piece of polished black granite. It sat firmly on a pedestal of the white rock.

KimZor ascended the steps, put his hand on the piece of granite and commanded: “Activate!”. He waited for an effect to take place, but nothing happened. “Start!”. He was met by nothing but silence.

Frustrated by the negligence of his command, he stared into the sphere. As he was about to shout another command he froze. Something was odd about his reflection in the sphere. His facial features, they didn’t look like his presets; they were awfully similar to those of ...his real face! What the fuck! Even if distorted through the convex stone, his facial features were easily spotted.

Looking down at his skinny arms and somewhat chubby body, his breath went heavy. This was definitely his own body. Fuck, this was inconvenient! He glimpsed towards all directions. Was someone there to spot him in his embarrasement? To his dismay, two hundred meters away or something, a human shape walked on the white road.

KimZor hurriedly grabbed the sphere, shouting more commands: “Set my appearance to presets!” “Take me to the character creation!” “Activate AI interface” “Centryxia, what the fuck is going on?”

*Silence*

“Stupid stone, fucking activate!”

Yet again nothing happened. With time running out, and an incoming feeling of embarrassment mcBBQ, he dejectedly uttered the command: “Log me out.”

Nothing happened.

"What the fuck," he hissed.

A chill struck him, freezing him to the spot. The previous irritation was replaced with fear. Inability to log out was unheard of, but that wasn’t crossing his mind at the moment; what made him close to freaking out was him being forcefully put in a state worse than being naked.

He was not being properly portrayed. This wasn't fair, and someone was gonna see him. He had to do something to avoid the embarrassment! What the fuck should he do? He couldn't meet people looking like this!

****

Having passed another hill, Jerry was finally getting close to the end of the road. In front of him was a shrine of sorts. A pair of people were next to it, talking.

He had liked the game this far; he always enjoyed breaks of casual strolling, it was a nice contrast to his intensive life. Practicing with his gaming team was always fun and fulfilling, but nevertheless, its non stop intensity took a toll on him. A break for some casual beta testing with his new HIimmersion was the perfect end to his birthday.

“Ok, so, we’re lost, in the middle of nowhere, and you don’t know how to get back to your village,” a young woman concluded.

It seemed like they had been talking for a while.

“Yeah, pretty much,… yeah,” an awkward NPC responded.

“What about this shrine then, any clues what it’s about?”, the girl continued.

“Ehm, I don’t know, I think so, maybe, yeah” the young NPC man answered hesitantly to the unexpected question.

Not that it mattered much to the game mechanics (the things Jerry usually spent his days bisecting minutely) but the looks of the two people in front of him appeared rather unadorned...ungamified almost.

“Then please tell me if there’s anything I should know about this shrine before leaving,” the girl continued.

The NPC brightened up as if realising something, and answered:

“Oh, this shrine is old and filled with wonder, rumors of its splendid beauty had me traveling for days for just a glimpse of what ancient magic it might contain.” Strangely, his voice seemed more confused than solemn.

“Nice, do you know how to put its ‘ancient magic’ to use,” the young woman followed up.

“No idea at all, I mean, such knowledge probably wouldn’t be granted to just any mortal happening to pass by, I happen to have inquired it myself.”

The woman ascended the steps to the pedestal, inspecting its sphere.

“Ehmm, the words ‘chip me’ are literally carved into the stone.”

“There’s a hammer and a chisel just behind the round rock,” Jerry said, joining in.

“Hi by the way, I’m Ben, or [VA]BenDover, if you will.

“BenDover? Pfft, I bet you are,” the NPC replied, hardly convinced.

“I’m Jessica, you can call me Jess,” the woman next to the sphere of granite said. “Aand, The NPC calls himself Kim”, she followed up, rolling her eyes.

'Finally,' Jerry thought. He had stumbled across both a tutorlike NPC, and a quest-ish shrine. 'Time to go all in powerlevling the shit out of this place from here on.' His original intentions of relaxation had already faded.

***

Jessica grabbed the tools on the altar and with a sharp sound, she put a score into the granite. The round block of granite spun 90 degrees, revealing a text, hidden beneath it.

The text cryptically read: ‘Since its creation, humanity’s safety has never been a given’. Next to it was a deeply carved abstract shape, similar to a foreign Chinese character, or an old viking rune perchance. Jerry couldn’t tell. Language was stuff for AIs to do anyways.

Below the carvings, a familiar text once more read ‘Chip me 口’.

"Crack!"Jessica put a dent in the new check-box.

The block moved, revealing the side that just a second ago was its bottom. On the smooth surface of the, previously spotless, granite was a glowing indention with more text. The surface resembled an old-school menu:

口Quit 口Skills

口Stats

口Items

口Magic

口Beginners Survival Kit (1g)

口Time Warp

Intrigued of something game-like finally happening, Jessica quickly made a chip at the [Stats] checkbox. The granite sphere once again turned 90 degrees to reveal:

口Back Jessica Total glory: 0 Agility 0 口+1 (10g) Strength 0 口+1 (10g) Endurance 0 口+1 (10g) Intelligence 0 口+1 (10g) Stamina 0 口+1 (10g) Wisdom 0 口+1 (10g)

The mind related stats were insulting, they couldn't be representing those of her own. She considered letting Ben try out his stats, but then decided against it; she wanted to experiment more with this menu in front of her.

Jess put a dent in the Intelligence [+1]Checkbox, no response came, so she decided to move onwards, hitting the ‘back’ checkbox.

The [Beginners Survival Kit] wasn't affordable either. She tried to chip the boxes next to the other categories, but was left with a monotone message:

Earn Glory to access Shop

'Glory' was weird name for a currency. Jess decided to just go with 'g' as of now, like in older games where gold was commonly used. She liked older games.

“Alright, guess it’s time to grind some ‘g’ then, unless you wanna have a go at your menu as well."

***

Jerry had a try at the granite menu. His session with the granite sphere was no different from Jessicas. he blankly stared into the shrine for a second, pondering the best way to get going. As his eyes shifted out of focus, a face, both familiar and foreign, got visible in the stone. He scrutinized his visible body parts. They weren't too many; the first person perspective was untogglable. He froze mid way his analysis. His appearance wasn't like any of this different game accounts, it was awfully similar to hir IRL one. Blushing for not noticing things faster, he whispered a couple of commands. This was the kinda glitch you wanted to deal with asap.

Nothing happened. 'Oh well, better get this over with.'

“This is a bit weird, but, is your appearance also glitching?”.

***

Jess raised an eyebrow, looking at him skeptically. After a split second, she took a look at one of her reflections. Awkwardness was now mutual. She quickly mumbled a couple of silent commands.

A stiff silence passed.

"The glitch is probably going to be fixed soon, we're playing a beta after all," Ben remarked.

Just standing there wouldn't lessen the awkwardness.

Jess suggested moving on to grind some gold or something.The suggestion was welcomely left uncontested.