The ceiling stayed its white, emulsion coated self. The aging mattress stuck loose springs into my spine. I could feel Cris’s hand against my own.

“Teething problems?” I asked, gingerly.

“This is probably a beta test. Looks like the team messed up the rollout.”

“I guess some of the engineers are going to be sent to the fire realm.”

“You mean hell?”

It was one minute after the four hour deadline.

“I’ve always wondered about that. Hell for me would actually be the cold.”

“You can always put on more layers and build a bigger fire,” she argued. “You can’t strip down past your boxers and I doubt Hell has working AC. They’ve probably got the boxes but the controllers are damaged and only put out more heat.”

“That does sound pretty bad. And I can assure you I’m willing to strip down further than my boxers.”

“The heat might even help your little ‘roid… problem.”

“There’s no amount of heat that can help with that.”

“HUMANS, HEAR ME NOW!”

Cris and I both flinched. “Jesus H Christ!” My heart was thundering again.

“Why do they keep doing that? They could at least give us a warning!”

“We can confirm that the number of volunteers does not meet the requirements. We will be taking the remainder from your population at random.”

“Mrs Atkins?” I gasped. My luck would see the old woman taken which would leave Honey all alone.

“In the interests of your species’ concept of fair play, we will be choosing males and females between the ages of eighteen and forty. If you have already volunteered, we will be taking you soon. Prepare yourselves.”

“Thank the lord,” said Cris, echoing my own thoughts on the matter.

“At least our scarves will still get made.”

“That’s what I was talking about. I’m sure Honey could look after herself. She knows how to open the cupboard doors with her mouth.”

Before I could reply, I felt a chill wash over my entire body like I’d dived into a pool after sunbathing. My nerves started to physically tingle which I don’t mind telling you is far more uncomfortable than it sounds. It was as if a layer of Pop Rocks were fizzing just below my skin. I tried to look at Cris, but I was completely paralysed. The sensation spread deeper into my tissue and muscles. The shade on my bedroom ceiling began to fade into the all-encompassing whiteness and my already racing heart took off at a full sprint when I went fully blind. Nothing of my periphery was visible any more.

I was terrified and I don’t mind admitting it.

With a snapping sensation, the feeling fled my body entirely. I was still unable to see anything other than the bright nothingness, but the teeming, bug-in-the-skin feeling was mercifully gone. It was with some trepidation I realised that gravity was pulling me in a different way. I was standing, but nothing in the vicinity gave me a focal point to confirm it. It was like when I’d dive to the bottom of a pool and close my eyes. The buoyancy provided by my lungs gave a direction with its push to the surface. Even if I blew the air out in a gout of frenzied bubbles, my body could still sense up and down. This was similar. I raised a hand and took a step back in shock that I could move, and see, again. I turned in a full three-sixty, but other than my naked body… Holy shit! I was butt naked! I cupped my modesty automatically and glanced around frantically. Unless the observers were perfectly white from head to toe, including their eyes and mouths, I was alone.

I still kept myself covered.

“Adult Human Mark Craig, you were among the first to volunteer of your own free will.”

My head snapped around, but the voice was in my head as before.

“This is what you would deem a ‘loading screen’. The worlds await. Before you choose to participate and move to the first world, you may first take the time to become acquainted with the HUD, or heads up display, and configure it to your specifications. We have imbued you with some of our telepathic power to allow mind control over the display. You will use these thoughts to call it forth and also access the various tabs within. You can manually touch with your finger, but I would suggest using your telepathy to save time. When you have finished to your satisfaction, just think about being ready and we will move you on to the next phase of the trial.”

“Ho-lee-shit.”

This was too surreal. I began to question whether I had suffered a brain bleed or lay in a coma following a car crash or other accident. That was far more likely than a comet that wasn’t a comet. An alien species outside of reality. Meeting the girl of my dreams. And now a dazzling white room.

With a brilliant white light…

A tunnel?”

I looked around but there was no end point. No gate. No long lost relatives welcoming me to the afterlife.

“This isn’t Heaven, Human Mark Craig.”

What would the aliens know about it? They could be demons, lying to me to keep me away from eternal bliss.

“We assimilated the totality of your history. We know what you believe Heaven to be.”

Oh yeah, that. In amongst the insanity, I’d forgotten that little titbit.

“We suggest you use your time here wisely. It will be fatal to enter the game without a rudimentary knowledge of your HUD.”

I had two choices; play the fool, or play along. On the billion to one chance this was actually happening, I’d be an idiot for not familiarising myself with the display.

“Ok, you win.”

So I needed to think. Not too hard. I imagined summoning the panel and it blinked into existence. The dark outline followed my vision whichever way I turned. Anyone familiar with gaming could see the similarities between the display and any one of a thousand titles. A small minimap lay in the top right corner. I tried to make it bigger, and the box dutifully expanded diagonally. I was a tiny white dot with a black border. The map itself showed nothing, which wasn’t unexpected. I’ll admit I was hoping to see a helpful marker for Saint Peter’s position that I could head towards.

“Bollocks.”

I shrunk the local version and opened the world map. Once again, to the surprise of no one, I was in a patch of white set within a much larger patch of white. There was absolutely nothing in this world except for me. That thought hit me like a sledgehammer. Where was Cris? We’d been touching. I tried to see if she was still with me by holding my arms out and turning in a slow, careful circle. I found nothing. She wasn’t invisible; she was gone.

“Shit!” So much for our plan of staying together. I prayed I could somehow join her once the testing phase was out of the way.

I didn’t know if there was a time limit, so I got back to business. I pulled up the character tab, intrigued on what information it held on me. My avatar circled on a floating podium to the right of my vision. It was disconcerting seeing myself like that. I regularly had the same, distant, vacant expression, but I looked one step up from a houseplant. My dark brown hair was far better combed than its usual tousled look. I think they called it bed head. If that meant crawling out of my pit without doing anything to tidy it up, then yes, it was bed head. Recreated in digital format, my eyes freaked me the hell out. They were glassy and dead like the characters from The Polar Express. I expected Tom Hanks to jump out at any moment and demand my ticket or offer me hot chocolate with a subtle air of brooding menace. He and his ticket puncher remained in my imagination, so I gave up on admiring myself and looked at the information panel.

Name: Mark Craig

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Class: Not yet selected

Level: 1

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 6

Constitution: 8

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 3

Charisma: 6

Luck: 7

Skills: None

Abilities: None

Perks: None

Celestial Affinities: None

I had nothing to compare the stats against, but the low wisdom stung a little. My life choices weren’t perfect I’ll admit. At a value of 3 I was liable to fall for timeshare scams and send my bank details to Nigerian princes who needed to transfer money out of the country. Considering my general lifestyle, it wasn’t a surprise that my strength and constitution values were the highest. I could see no way of checking if there was a carry limit linked to the number 9 like there was in some RPGs. My dexterity was lower than I’d have guessed. I was nimble on my feet for one thing. I offset this knowledge with my inability to really master twitch muscle games and conceded they might have a fair point. I was somewhat satisfied with my intelligence. I was no Einstein, granted, but I could pick things up fairly quickly if I set my mind to it. Lastly came my charisma. I’d be working my arse off to make friends with a score of 6. On the plus side, I doubt I’d have random people physically assaulting me for no apparent reason in the street.

Fuck it. They were what they were. Gaming had taught me one thing; they would only go up as the worlds unfolded. As long as I didn’t die, anyway. Work, work, work. Grind, grind, grind. That was always the key.

I gave no more thought to the Not yet selected and None categories. They would no doubt unlock when the time was right.

Closing it out, my other me disappeared. Thank god! There was something altogether too creepy about my dead eyed stare that gave me the willies.

I selected the inventory tab and found it completely barren of goods. No helmet, no armour, no trousers, nothing. There were the typical weapon and ring slots alongside the common bodily garments. A set of ten boxes along the bottom gave me shortcuts to whatever skill or item I popped in them. My natural gamer came out and I salivated over the loot I would populate the page with.

My next choice was the quests tab. It had two separate sub-categories which were main quests and optional quests. I thrilled at the options. I was the side quest master. If a farmer on the way to town had busted a wheel, I was neck deep in the forest collecting wood to fashion a replacement. A crazy witch in the same forest needed ten herbs that left a purple residue on my hands and the feeling of a bad trip? You’d better believe I’m bagging those drugs. If the local militia required help killing a band of outlaws? Just call me Jesse James. Wait. He was one of them. I meant Wyatt Earp. It was my sworn duty to bring them sumbitches back in, dead or alive. If I’d had a spittoon, I’d have probably spat nowhere near it at that point, splashing my own bare feet with tobacco juice instead.

Unsurprisingly, the entire quest interface was empty. I wasn’t in the game yet.

Next up was the journal which was once again broken into two main categories. The first was world information including lore and characters, and the second was a bestiary. All were empty except for a bland description of myself under the character tab.

Mark Craig. A childless, single, unsuccessful business owner.

“Charming. If I wanted to be insulted I’d have stayed with Sophia.”

There were only two tabs left which consisted of pets and relationships. The pets menu was empty, and the relationships was just a long series of question marks covering both the names of the unknown factions and my status with them.

I returned to the main HUD and tried to configure it a bit more. With a thought, I cleared all tabs and borders except for health, mana, hotkeys, and the mini map. It was far less intrusive that way and I could summon the rest with a single direction.

“You’ve totally got this.”

I checked my current health and magic pools. Both were grey and flashing in warning.

“What the hell? Maybe you don’t got this.”

A gentle breeze would kill me. On top of that, if I had a spell, which I didn’t, it would be about as powerful as a wet fart. Less so in fact. A wet fart had the chance to cause nausea in one's enemies. With a barely existent mana pool I could probably summon up a pyrokinetic show revolving around a small candle flame burning from the tip of my finger. Provided the enemy was obliging and stood still long enough, I might be able to singe some hair or set their clothes on fire.

“Hey! What’s the deal?” I yelled at nothing and got no reply. I knew the bastards could hear me, they’d made the place I was standing in after all. Either they were snickering behind their tentacles, they didn’t give a shit, or it would be revealed in due course.

It was at that point I did something stupid, which isn’t technically out of character, but not when death is one single tick away. I bit my arm. And when I say bit, I gnawed on that meat like it was a hunk of mutton from a medieval feast table. My perfect, even, white teeth didn’t make a dent. As a side note, I was extremely proud of my smile. I worked damned hard at it. Anyway, I could feel the pliability of the skin and flesh, but I couldn’t pierce it. I couldn’t even feel the pressure I was exerting when I tried to pinch a smaller patch of forearm between my pearly whites.

It was at that point I did something even more stupid. I punched myself in the face. My knuckles connected. Nothing happened. No broken nose. No fat lip. So in all honesty, I was tempted to chalk that test up as a clever thing to do. I’d proved I was immune to damage in this place. I might be daring, but I would not be repeating the manoeuvre out in the real worlds. There would be plenty of enemies that would gladly take swipes at me.

Due to the lack of interaction with the interface, the HUD turned slightly opaque which gave me an unfettered view of the bright, unpopulated world.

I realised I had nothing else to do.

“I’d like to move forward with Cris now please.”

“Are you sure you want to leave the HUD acclimatisation level?”

“Yes. Put me back with Cris.”

The same sensation came over me and I rode it out like a trooper.

Snap!