“We traveled across the ocean in search of a new beginning. What we found was something entirely different.”

- Rita van Asch, January 1, 1777

I didn’t click the link at first.

You wouldn’t have blamed me if I’d ignored it.

The email looked spammy: every word was misspelled, the sender’s name sounded Eastern European, and it ended with an exhortation to “klik hear!”

I had left the office just after midnight, after an exhausting 48-hour sprint cleaning up code that my jerk-of-a-co-worker Russ dumped on my lap so he could take a four-day weekend. The perils of being the only female programmer at a startup, I guess.

And a pushover.

Well, I’d show him, I thought.

I’d do such an amazing job that it would force my boss, who was so used to Russ’s crap code, to marvel at my elegant functions. Or, more likely, he’d compliment Russ for taking time to rejuvenate himself so he could come back to work refreshed and ready to kick butt. Or he’d pat Russ on the back for giving someone like me the chance to do some “important” work. Maybe both.

Anyway, I was flipping through my work email on the cab ride home when I saw it. “Epic quests 4 u!” the subject said. Probably one of those MMORPG ripoffs, I thought, but I opened it anyway, only so I could relegate the sender to the spam bin forever. With that accomplished, I drifted off as the cab sped down the FDR.

Three weeks later, it showed up again.

Unsurprisingly, Russ had taken all the credit for my hard work and then announced that he’d accepted a new job at our biggest rival in Silicon Valley. I worked through his goodbye party, documenting all of Russ’s code from the three pages of handwritten chicken scratch he had given me so we wouldn’t be flying blind once Russ the Great departed.

“Epic Questers wanted!” this one said. Well, at least their spelling improved this time. I opened it and read on.

“Adventurous individuals needed. Complete Quests for treasure and glory. Click here!”

In college, when no one was looking, I became obsessed with Warriors of Olympus, an online role-playing game where you fought for your chosen Greek god or goddess, completing quests, killing legendary monsters, collecting loot, that sort of thing. I fought for love. That is, the goddess of love, Aphrodite. It was exhausting. Not just because of the late nights I spent holed up in my room building my standing in the Aphrodite Guild, but also because I had to take great pains to make sure I never, ever, ever said anything about this nerdy passion to my friends, who wouldn’t be caught in the same state with such a game.

I read the email over again for some clue as to why this mysterious game was worthy of my (virtual) blood, sweat, and tears, and my real time, money, and sanity, but no such clue was forthcoming. Off to the Mines of Moria with you then, foul email.

It was another three months before the final email arrived.

We were now in perpetual crunch mode, working around the clock, seven days a week, to ship a game months behind schedule that was lacking 60% of the features we promised in our Kickstarter campaign. But no worries, because all of our backers had gotten their t-shirts and posters and other crap that we had wasted 20% of our funds on. Money that could have been used to pay me, as I was now doing both my job and Russ’s job. Or to buy snacks for the office. Really, I would have settled for supermarket-brand bottled water.

I had fallen asleep at my desk, the keys of my mechanical keyboard pressed into my face, when the ping of a new email roused me from my coma. It was 3:43 on a Sunday morning.

“This is your final chance, Jen.”

Great, now they know my name.

“This is not a game. The Quests are real. The rewards are real. The glory is real. Do you have what it takes?”

These jerks were relentless. They must only follow-up with the people who opened the earlier emails. Clever bastards. Well, now they finally had my attention.

I clicked the link.

My screens went dark. So did the ones to my left, the ones to my right, and all the ones in the row in front of me. If anyone else had been in the office, they would be losing their minds right now. Of course it was the girl who clicked on the ransomware email, they would say. Of course it was the girl who willingly pushed millions of lines of code into an encrypted lockbox that would cost the rest of the company’s cash to retrieve because she was so tired one night and got distracted by an email. An email of all things! I stared at my screens, waiting in the pitch black room for something to happen. Anything. But the gentle whirring of the computer fans had gone silent, leaving me utterly alone.

It was then that the Quests appeared.

The blinking cursor materialized first on my screen. Then rows of random characters whizzed by, as they moved up the black screen and out of sight. Finally, a set of letters formed. It looked like the beginning of one of those old school text-adventure games, before actual computer graphics, where everything had to be made out of ASCII characters.

It said:

“Welcome to the Quest Board, new Quester!

There are three rules.

1. Wait three days between Quests.

2. Finish what you start.

3. Always Quest alone.

May the light of adventure guide you.

Happy Questing,

The Council”

I blinked, and the message was gone, and in its place was a prompt.

“Enter your handle:”

I paused to think of something appropriate. In my Warriors of Olympus days, I was JadePhoenix42. I rose quickly through the ranks and pretty soon was running the whole shebang. Then one day, a new player came along and turned the whole guild against me, got me kicked me out, and tried to get me banned from the game for good measure. After that, I retired the handle and stopped gaming altogether. But that was seven years ago, and maybe it was time to bring back the phoenix.

I hit enter and then a list with ten numbered entries formed. I read the first one:

“1. Wanted: a MetroCard receipt from the West 4th St station. Not your own. Leave on the top step. Reward: One wood”

Then the next:

“2. Pls give me some red leaves from Prospect Park. Reward: Eight wood”

Then the next:

“3. A Polaroid shot of the Raging Bull statue. Tape it on the construction wall at 1571 Second Avenue at exactly 5:32 PM tomorrow. Reward: One iron”

Then finally:

“4. Hi! Could you be a dear, and fetch me a handful of blueberries, a tillandsia, an orange popsicle, and three pounds of 80/20 ground beef from Chelsea Market? Leave in the windowsill of 194 West 9th Street. Thanks! Reward: One wood”

I moved the cursor down until I reached the bottom of the list, where further instructions awaited.

“Select your Quest, or press A for the next page, B to submit your own, C for Q-mail or Esc to quit.”

That MetroCard receipt Quest seemed easy, so I went to hit 1, but before I could, it blinked out of existence and everything moved up one slot. The old number two seemed stupid and the new number two too precise, so I quickly hit 3 and pressed enter, as I wanted to go to the Market anyway to get some vegan sushi. The Quest list faded, except for my selection, and a new message appeared:

“Remember your Quest. Skylarose101 is counting on you, JadePhoenix42!”

With that exhortation, the Quest Board dissolved and I was left alone again in the dark. But only for a moment. In another blink, all the screens were back on and my stupid company wasn’t going to kill me after all. I put a reminder in my phone for tomorrow’s trip-sorry, Quest!-to Chelsea Market, grabbed my bag, and headed home, a new skip in my step, ready to grind my way to the top of whatever this crazy thing was. I was JadePhoenix42, reborn again.

Next: Jen takes her first steps into the Questing world.

Artwork of Jen by Danusko Campos: