Within moments his vision lightened again, and Pete found himself surrounded by a hazy white fog. He could smell the scent of honeysuckle, one of his favorite aromas, and Vivaldi was playing soothingly in the background. He looked around, seeing nothing but the cool refreshing fog, and then a soft and friendly feminine voice spoke:

“Welcome to character generation. I am Fabella, and I will guide you through the process. Here, you will establish the parameters for your player character and game world. The choices you make now will determine your default beginning statistics. You will initially be allotted five points to allocate as you see fit. As a silver account member, you will receive an additional three points to assign in any manner you wish, and as a further bonus for participating in the pre-game evaluation, you will receive two extra points to apportion however you desire. Please choose carefully at all prompts, as the parameters may not be changed once you enter the game world.

“Do you wish to continue at this time?”

Pete felt an odd sense of inevitability as he stammered an affirmative.

“Here is your current avatar.”

Pete found himself staring at a much younger copy of himself that formed soundlessly out of the eddying mist, wearing nothing but a white loin cloth.

“Jeez, I am outta shape,” he muttered, regarding his simulacrum with a critical eye.

The white fog began to fade slowly from one color to another, blue to green to yellow to red. Gradually, the pulsing fog transitioned to a pastel blue shade and remained there.

“Please specify your desired race,” Fabella’s calm disembodied voice directed.

He was ready for this. Pete knew exactly what he wanted. He had studied everything in the manual, and had looked up even more information in the online forums. He grinned as his anticipation began to build. “Wood Elf,” he said happily. He watched as his avatar grew slightly leaner, his face became narrower, and his ears elongated out to pointed tips.

“Do you wish to alter body composition?” Fabella asked.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Pete figured he might not be in shape in the real world, but he damned sure would be in his fantasy one.

A series of sliders popped up in front of his avatar. Each one corresponded to different physical attributes, like height, weight, and musculature, and there was an accept button over to one side. He couldn’t do anything with the face, since the game system used his own face on the avatar, with minor adjustments to make it look elvish. Pete reached out and touched one of the sliders, and found that he could grasp and move them to adjust the physical aspects of the avatar. After experimenting with the settings for what seemed like hours, Pete finally circled his avatar several times in satisfaction.

“You are one handsome devil!” he chuckled. Before him now stood what he considered to be his ideal self. The elf was tall, with limbs covered in sinewy muscle. He had light violet-colored eyes, and long black hair that contrasted sharply with his pale skin. Pete hit the accept button.

“Assign your class,” the voice prompted.

“Ranger.” Pete had always favored the ranger classes in role-playing games, with their ability to track and to befriend animals. He was hoping to get a bear as a companion later in the game. Each character class had numerous subclasses, and even those had multiple variants. According to the literature, you could become anything you wanted in Otherverse. After all, that was the whole appeal, wasn’t it? Pete’s avatar was now covered in a lightweight leather outfit, dyed in subtle shades of brown and green. There was a simple recurve bow across his back, along with a quiver of arrows. A long dirk hung in a sheath from his belt.

“Would you like to allocate your extra attribute points now?” Fabella queried.

“Yes.” Pete worried his lip between his teeth, fearful of making poor choices that could haunt him for the entire game.

A parchment scroll appeared, and crackled faintly as it unrolled in front of Pete. It revealed a list of his character’s traits, and there were up and down arrows next to each attribute displayed.

Name: ????

Race: Wood elf

Life Points: 19

Class: Ranger

Armor: 5 points (leather, +1 Dexterity bonus)

Strength: 3

Dexterity: 4 (+1 racial bonus) +1% to hit with a bow and any roll requiring dexterity, +1 to armor

Intelligence: 3

Wisdom: 3

Constitution: 2 (-1 racial penalty) -1 to hit points per level

Charisma: 2 (3 with Wood Elves)

Mana: 30

Racial Affinities:

+5% chance to hit with a bow.

+1% chance to score a critical strike with a bow

+5% to Herbalism skill

+5% to chance of finding rare or greater herbs.

10 points remaining to allocate.

Pete had read about the Wood Elf race in some depth, and he already knew about the racial bonuses and penalties. Wood elves weren’t as hardy as other races, and they were inherently xenophobic, reflected by the penalties to constitution and charisma. Since he’d received five more stat points than most starting players, he could make up for that. First off, he added two points to his constitution score. Each new level would gain him ten additional life points, but at first level he would start with ten points per constitution point. On top of that, with his constitution at four, the racial penalty for hit points went away. Next, he increased his dexterity by another three points. Each point of dexterity gave him another point of armor and increased his chance to hit with a bow, both of which were excellent benefits to survival. He added two points to strength, figuring he would need it to carry all that “phat lewt!” Pete chuckled to himself at that thought. He added another two points to his charisma score. Many people would consider that a waste of valuable points, but he’d read that higher charisma increased the likelihood of getting unique quests, as well as more favorable reactions from shopkeepers and other non-player characters in the game. The last two points he split between intelligence and wisdom, just to help balance the character. The increased intelligence would help with his tracking and observation skills, while the increased wisdom would help with his mana pool and mana regeneration. He didn't need much mana at first, but he would at higher levels when he could produce specialty arrows. He stared at his character sheet for a moment before hitting accept.

Name: ???

Race: Wood Elf

Life Points: 41

Class: Ranger

Armor: 8 points (4 points leather + 4 points dexterity bonus)

Strength: 5 +2 to melee damage, +10% to any roll requiring strength

Dexterity: 7 (+1 racial bonus) +4% to hit with a bow and any roll requiring dexterity

+4 to armor

Intelligence: 4 +5% to observation skills

Wisdom: 4

Constitution: 4 (-1 racial penalty) +1 to life points

Charisma: 4 (5 with Wood Elves)

Mana: 40

Racial Affinities:

+5% chance to hit with a bow.

+1% chance to gain a critical strike with a bow

+5% to Herbalism skill

+5% to chance of finding rare or greater herbs

0 points remaining to allocate

“Now it is time to give your adventurer a name,” Fabella intoned dramatically.

“Niko!”, Pete declared with a smile. From the time that he’d first started gaming, all of his characters had been named Niko.

“Welcome to Otherverse, Niko!” Fabella exclaimed. ”You will begin in the human village of Hampton, kingdom of Wellsport, in the realm of Tutum Domus. May your name be bathed in glory!” And with that, everything once again faded to black.

Pete stood in the formless dark, waiting for the village to take shape around him, yet the darkness never faded. He felt a subtle change in the air as it gradually grew colder, and he could smell a musty odor. The floor under his feet became hard and unyielding, and his feet were bare against the cold surface. Why wasn’t he wearing his boots? He squatted down in the darkness and felt blindly around his feet. He decided that the floor seemed to be made of tightly fitted stone tiles. He could also feel a thick layer of dust or fine dirt covering the stone. As he stood, he abruptly realized that he should wearing armor. Aside from being bereft of boots, instead of the leather armor he should have on, he wore only a rough spun cloth tunic and trousers. What the hell was going on here? All rangers are supposed to start out with a suit of leather armor! He felt over his shoulder and found neither bow nor quiver, nor was his dirk hanging on the rough piece of rope that he wore in place of a proper belt! He began to examine himself by feel in the still unrelieved darkness. He felt his face and arms, and instead of the lean smooth features and wiry limbs of an elf, he felt the stubbly jaw and ropy musculature of a human. Running a hand over his head in consternation, he realized with a shock that he didn’t even have hair.

“Are fucking kidding me?” he spit out, ”Character sheet!”

The familiar parchment scroll appeared, the only thing visible in the darkness, and it rolled open to display a character sheet with the name “Niko” at the top. The rest of the page was covered in question marks.

“Well, at least the name’s right,” Pete growled. “Time to get hold of customer service and straighten some shit out. Exit game!” He waited for the game world to fade and the immersion chair to open… and waited… and waited.

“Exit game!”

Nothing.

“Exit the Goddamn game!” Pete was shouting, as panic began to build in his chest. His breathing grew labored, coming in ragged gasps. Was he trapped in here? How would anyone know he was in trouble? Why weren’t the emergency protocols taking effect? He could feel his heart pounding in his ears as the panic grew. He screamed out, ”Exit game NOW!”

He felt a wave of dizziness as he was momentarily surrounded by swirling blue light, and then he became aware that he was sitting in his immersion chair. He punched the power icon on the touchpad, and he gulped in several deep breaths of relief as the probes retracted and the chair clamshelled open.

He sat still, breathing heavily for a few minutes and calming his panic, before his temper finally boiled over.

“Jerry!” he barked.

“How may I be of assistance, Mr, Briggs?” The relentlessly happy tone of the AI served only to worsen Pete’s temper.

“Get Otherverse Corp. helpline on audio link right now!” he ordered through gritted teeth.

“I will do so immediately! I sense severe anxiety, would you like to listen to relaxing music while you wait? I have a wide variety of selections from which to choose,” Jerry offered with enthusiasm.

“Jerry, take that music and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine!” Pete snapped.

“I am sorry, but I don’t understand that request, sir. Can you please rephrase?”

“Never mind, just make the call.”

“In progress, sir.”

Pete glanced at the chair timer on the control panel and noted that he had been in-game for slightly under three hours. It had certainly seemed far longer than that. There were rumors in the forums that Otherverse Corp. had come up with some sort of clever time dilation algorithm that made eight hours seem like twenty, which was the standard Otherverse day. Pete paced back and forth across the room for about ten minutes before he was finally greeted by a cheerful voice.

“It’s another great day in Otherverse! This is Otherverse customer support and my name is Shaun, how may I help you?” chirped the irritatingly enthusiastic voice.

“Lord above, how can everyone always be so damned happy?” Pete thought. “Yes Shaun, I need some help with my character. A lot of help, actually.” Pete stopped pacing and ran a hand over his balding head, ”...and I'd really appreciate anything you can do.”

“Certainly sir! Just let me retrieve your account number and we’ll fix this together!” Shaun said brightly. He sounded like he was practicing to be a game show emcee.

Pete resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. After allowing Shaun to access his account number, he was asked to wait for a moment while Shaun “pulled up his details”.

“First off, please let me offer my congratulations on being a silver account holder, Mr. Briggs! That account will net you an invitation to participate in any beta testing that we do, and give you unlimited access to select forums full of game hints, restricted knowledge, and extended histories! And that is just the tip of the iceberg!”

“That’s all great and wonderful, Shaun, but first I need an actual working character.”

“Ah yes, sorry. Let’s see... Peter Briggs, silver account. Character name Niko, level one Wood Elf Ranger in the starting city of Hampton. According to this, your first log in was today?”

“Correct, except that my character in the game wasn’t a Wood Elf like he was supposed to be, and he damn sure wasn’t in Hampton. Plus, it wouldn’t let me get out of the game when I gave the exit command.“ Pete began to pace again.

“Hmmm… well, the avatar I see in front of me is certainly a Wood Elf, and definitely a ranger, and the record shows that you logged out right next to the life stone there in Hampton. As for not being able to log out, I can assure you that is quite impossible, Mr. Briggs. One of the top overriding protocols in Otherverse is that a participant is able to log out at any time, anywhere in the ‘verse as long as they are not actively engaged in combat. Were you in combat?” Shaun asked.

“No, Shaun, I wasn’t in combat. I was standing somewhere in the dark.”

“Hmm… are you quite sure? It was daytime in Hampton when you logged out.”

Pete ground his teeth. “Shaun, I am pretty certain I can tell the difference between lightless dark and a life stone in a sunny city!” he said, in a tone of exaggerated patience.

Shaun’s perpetual cheer was slowly waning into perplexity. “Hmm… and you are sure you weren’t a Wood Elf?”

Pete’s composure snapped. “I had no fucking hair, Shaun! Wood Elves have hair. Long flowing locks of hair! Just about everybody in the fucking game has hair except my character!” he exploded.

“Just one moment, please.” Pete heard what seemed to be the tapping of keys. Really? Surely they didn’t still use physical keyboards?

“Hmm… well, I can’t seem to find anything amiss, Mr. Briggs. Your avatar is properly registered in the system, and diagnostics on your immersion unit report absolutely no malfunctions. I would suggest that you try reloading back into the game. Most likely, it was a temporary glitch resulting from first time initiation, which should self correct upon your reentry. I will forward a work order to our AIM department to investigate this incident further. To compensate for your inconvenience, I’m posting two gold coins to your character’s account,” Shaun said in a pacifying tone.

Pete leaned his head against the wall. “You are nothing short of amazing, Shaun.”

“Thank you, Mr. Briggs. If you could, I would appreciate it if you’d stay on the link for a short survey. It will only take —”

“Jerry, disconnect,” Pete commanded, with his forehead still against the wall. Shaun was cut off in mid-sentence. Sighing, he bumped his head gently against the wall a few times, then turned and looked back at the immersion chair contemplatively for several long moments. He’d been waiting for this for so long… .

“Ah, what the hell, why not?” Pete clambered back into the chair, powered it on, and tapped the touchpad. The lid whirred down over him, and his world faded once more to black— and stayed there.