Almost as soon as the doctor vanished, people were out of their seats and checking where he had been. There was no sign of anything. Possibly there could have been something on the ground that people had stepped on or kicked as they rushed towards the spot but if that was the case there was no evidence now. Mark and Dan held back and spoke quietly amidst the loud hubbub.

“What do you think now? Reality or VR?” Mark asked his friend.

“If this is reality then they have a very good trick as it appears to be immediately checkable.”

Mark had an idea and investigated the ceiling in other parts of the room but there was nothing to see. Eventually everyone had explored the room as much as they could and not reached any conclusion. They were left alone for the rest of the evening.

>>>

Mark was woken by a loud screech. As he opened his eyes and sat up, he could see a large peacock strutting around in the middle of the room. It screeched again. One of the more athletic men who was near it went to grab the peacock and was pecked viciously for his trouble. The peacock spread out its feathers in a display of aggression and a feather dropped. Just then a small tow truck about the size of the peacock appeared. Attached to the bed was a device that shot a lasso of rope over the head of the peacock. As the tow truck moved away, the noose of rope tightened around the bird and it was dragged behind the truck and through the door, which immediately slammed shut. Some of the men went to follow but there was nothing outside the barracks. The only evidence of the whole event was the feather lying on the floor.

It was hard to get back to sleep after that and it felt like he had just managed it when the call came for them to wake.

After dressing Mark made his way, along with everyone else, to the food hall. Instead of the food being left for the group to serve themselves, there were plates with metal covers sat on the tables. Mark made his way to where he habitually sat and lifted the cover on the plate.

“What the actual…!” he exclaimed.

Sitting in front of him was exactly the breakfast he would have got himself if he had been selecting it himself. What was more everyone had that same thing. By which I don’t mean they had the same meal but their own ideal selections in the quantities they would normally select.

There was no-one other than the group to ask and nobody had any idea about what was going on. It just felt like the whole place had grown a whole lot weirder. However, nothing else different happened that day. The food was back to normal. The exercises and other testing all seemed to be consistent and none of their group disappeared.

Every day after that was different. Sometimes they were woken during the night, but it was never the same thing. It might be Mickey Mouse running through the barracks screaming “The eyes, the eyes!” on one occasion and the next night a full Oompah band playing on the roof of the ladies’ barracks.

>>>

One day all their outer clothing had been swapped for translucent clothing and all the instructors and medics were dressed similarly. None of those said a thing and the only thing that happened when mentioning the clothes to the doctors was that they would open a file and make a note about what you said.

>>>

Another time, whilst they were exercising, they noted that their lead instructor was getting hairier. Then his head and body shape started to change, and his clothes started to rip from his body. His instructions carried on as normal. Eventually he had metamorphosed into a full Silverback Gorilla. As the exercise session finished, he shouted, “Come on you apes, do you want to live forever?” and bounded around the corner of a building. Mark decided to follow him but by the time he had got to the building the instructor had totally vanished. Mark did notice one of the instructors collect up all of the main instructors clothing. Dan later told him that he found animal hairs lying on the floor.

>>>

In the middle of the night Mark was woken by a skull singing “I just want my body!” and a backing group of ghosts joined in with the harmonies. He mumbled “Give it a rest guys.” Turned over and went back to sleep.

>>>

As they were running laps round the track a 3D version of a cartoon alien putting fuel into his flying saucer over at the fuel tanks. By the time anyone could get over there the alien had got into the ship and zoomed off with just a jet of warm air as evidence of their passage.

>>>

Doing press ups a whole bunch of grey squirrels started copying them. Every time one of their group gave up and couldn’t do another press up a squirrel would do one more then run away. Eventually they were down to one squirrel and one of their group and the humans were cheering on the human and the squirrels were on the roof cheering on the squirrel. They kept going onwards until the last human gave up. At which point the final squirrel stood up, saluted, and then ran away with the rest of the squirrels quickly disappearing after him.

>>>

Sat in the refectory and the room starts to get hotter. The heat increases and it starts to get uncomfortable, somebody tries the door, and it is solidly locked and as it is made of metal impossible to break open. The heat continues to increase until people are taking off their clothes and starting to claim they can’t breathe. Then as though someone has flicked a switch the temperature starts to drop, down past what is a comfortable and on to where hypothermia is a possibility. Mark shouts out that everyone should huddle together to help preserve warmth and everyone follows his suggestion. Just when they think that the cold will kill them the temperature starts to rise again. When it reaches a normal temperature, it stops changing. Somebody tries the door, and it opens normally.

>>>

One day they returned to the barracks to find that the whole building was its mirror image. Any writing that was visible was now mirrored. All the bunks and chests were the other side of the room.

By the next time they visited the room everything was back in the normal place.

>>>

One of the instructors was walking across the exercise yard when a large crack appeared in the concrete at the centre of the yard. The whole yard shivered at the same time. Large green tentacles appeared from within the crack and one of them managed to grab the ankle of the instructor. Immediately they were dragged towards the crack fighting and screaming. Unfortunately, their hands could get no purchase on the flat ground and the tentacle dragged them into the crack before anyone else could react. There was a loud sound of disgust and a second sound that could have been retching and then the instructor was thrown from the crack and landed in the sand of the assault course. The instructor stood up and brushed themselves down and casually walked towards the crack which disappeared before the instructor could reach it. The instructor refused to answer any questions about what was down the crack and what had happened, but he did adopt a swagger for the rest of the day.

>>>

Mark was dreaming about lying in the shade of a tree on a tropical island. He could hear waves crashing quietly somewhere nearby. The air was warm and there was the smell of the beach in the air. He could hear birds and monkeys, but he kept his eyes closed as he was drowsy. He turned over and his head was no longer resting on the pillow. Water entered his nose and mouth and he sat up spluttering and coughing.

The whole barracks was flooded with water up to about the base of the pillows. The chests at the base of the beds were covered and everyone was waking up. The water was slightly warm, and Mark realised that it was still rising. “Someone check the door.” He shouted. “Locked” someone shouted back.

What was surprising was the lack of panic. Everyone was evaluating possibilities. The barracks had windows, but they were up high. Experimentation soon discovered that there was nothing available that would break them. The beds were moveable but the chests weren’t and so they put the beds on their ends to create a base that was currently out of the water. Somebody asked who could happily tread water and who couldn’t and the ones who were less comfortable were hoisted onto the beds first. However soon the water had risen sufficiently for everyone to be needing to clamber on to the beds.

The barracks ceiling was maybe 3m. Everyone could get their head to the ceiling. The water continued rising until there was a gap of less than 5cm between water and ceiling. It stayed like that for a while as the air got harder to breathe and then with no warning the water started to drop. Shortly there was only a small residue, and the temperature of the room was quickly drying that. Obviously, the bedclothes and whatever the men had been wearing were still wet but that was all.

An instructor came it very shortly afterwards and told them to get ready for breakfast. By the time they returned to the barracks all the wet stuff had gone and there was no evidence that anything had happened.

>>>

Along with the weird things that happened at odd points over the various days, there were also lectures every evening. These were always displays on a screen with voice narration. The subjects of the lectures were all about survival in the wilderness, although there was one lecture on how to pan for gold and recognise Iron Pyrites.

One of the most critical of the survival tips as far as Mark was concerned was how to find water and make sure it was drinkable. They were issued with bottles that came with filters designed to eliminate everything down to microbe level in the water. They were also issued with purification tablets but were told that in any survival situation using them when another solution was available was counterproductive.

After each lecture, the equipment that had been demonstrated was added to the bags they were carrying during exercises. At first the additional weight was nominal but as more equipment was added the weight became harder and harder to manage, despite their increased fitness. Mark kept an internal list of what equipment was essential and put any equipment he thought was unneeded in his chest. He noticed that not everyone did this but wasn’t going to tell others what to do.

>>>

After a particularly tough and challenging day, the group of around twenty that were left entered the lecture room to see Dr Adham waiting for them. They sat and waited for him to speak.

“Congratulations, you have all finished the first phase of New World. Tomorrow is the start of phase two. I guess that a little bit of explanation is needed.

You will have heard astrophysicists talk about dark matter and dark energy. This is their non-explanation as to why the universe has more energy than it should have according to their calculations. It’s not an explanation because saying something exists but you can’t prove it is a silly argument. However, we at SnowStorm know something that they do not. We were lucky to build our main base above a large cave. Basically, a bubble formed in the rocks millions of years ago. As we were the first to build here, we were also the first to conduct a structural survey and find the cave. We then wanted to get to it as sometimes it can be very useful and profitable to be able to store stuff underground. Imagine our surprise when we found not just a cave but a portal. A slit cut between two dimensions that led to an identical cave on another world. We didn’t know what that world was like until we had carved our way to the surface. Eventually we managed that and found a place in some ways very different and in some ways almost the same as our own.

Tomorrow you will join a group of other players and start to explore this world. Complex electronics do not work on the planet, we haven’t determined why yet. As such you will have a very bulky valve radio and a mission to explore the area around you before finally making your way back to our base. Your score will be based on what valuable items you bring back to the base with you. The best group score will have that value changed into US dollars and shared amongst the group as a bonus for winning this version of the game. We will also be wanting feedback as to where and how New World worked as far as realism and believability are concerned.

Have a good night’s sleep because tomorrow is a whole new world.”

With that the Dr vanished and the Disney song started playing.

Mark turned to Dan and said, “I guess we learn what all this has been leading up to tomorrow.”

“Somehow I think it’s going to completely different than you are expecting.” Dan said prophetically.