Everything ceased. As soon as it had begun, the chaotic madness Cire had been enduring was over.

Disassociated. Detached. Something was wrong.

He tried to move his head to look up at his friends. He couldn’t. Nothing in his field of vision moved, the world had frozen.

Congratulations! You have completed the free tutorial. Now your adventure will truly begin. You have…

Cire wasn’t falling, but as his stomach spun it conjured the sensation. Everything lurched, suddenly he was sitting on a rather plush chair across a regal carved desk from an austere looking gentlemen. Fog concealed everything outside of their immediate area. Flickering in an unseen wind, an oil lamp cast dancing shadows.

The man crooked an eyebrow, cleared his throat, and spoke in a route tone. “...successfully acclimated to the Elysium server. Full access to your memories and to the interface have been granted.” He set the scroll in his hands down and with a bored dismissive gesture continued.

“Please review those details on your own later. I didn’t expect to be handling you again so soon. You completed everything faster than expected. I was betting you were going to die again to finish the tutorial or hit the 30 day mark. Found a bonding stone, most unexpected.”

Cire attempted to focus on the man, trying to maintain attention as gaps in his memory were assaulted by details. Cire could remember everything. He was dead. Well… his body was dead. He had uploaded his consciousness into the Nextlife system.

Humanity had passed the threshold of being able to interact fully with an immersive VR environment. We had even reached the point where we could transfer the conscious mind into virtual hardware. However, we had not found a way to accomplish this feat while keeping the body alive.

Cire had been lucky that he had gotten in on the release of Elysium. It was a world based roughly on a tabletop game he had always loved, Adventurer. He had always preferred tabletop mechanics over MMORPG’s. A thump on the desk snapped Cire’s reverie, lost in his concerns he’d been ignoring his host.

“Sorry. It is a lot to take in. I bet it’s pretty annoying to go through that with everybody. Ummm… say, what is your name? I am Cire.”

“Good assumption. You didn’t figure that out. Some of you do, some of you don’t, doesn’t matter. I am Charon, Shepard of Souls.” Spreading out his hands in a welcoming gesture, the sleeves of his tweed jacket riding up.

“I find that UC’s, uploaded consciousnesses that is, tend to come around better when I am direct. So, sit down, shut up, and let me explain a few things. If you go floundering around in your new memories it will take too long.

“You already gave me one headache when you spent all of your character creation points the way you did. Do you have an idea how hard it was to find a neutral starting location for you? I hope you enjoyed the mountain top, you deserved that.”

Cire felt a wave of dysphoria wash over him. This was a lot to accept. Now it was clear why his memory had been so fuzzy. It had been occluded so that he could get used to living in a virtual environment. So the world would be real, not a game.

He came back to himself.

Cire was now a purely virtual being. His friends were also virtual beings. They came from this world, but he wasn’t any different than them. When it came down to it, they were even more real to him now. That had been the entire point of the tutorial program. Now he had friends, community, and a home.

Nextlife constructed Elysium using what they had learned during the uploading process. It was not simply modeled after previous VR simulations. They were now able to create computer consciousnesses based on the UC pattern. In other words, Durg and Selene were virtual constructs. Living virtual constructs.

A loud sigh and another thump stopped Cire’s drifting. “Sorry. Wait, Charon, as in the boatman? The god?”

Charon, in all his prim stature uttered a low grumble. “The ferry is a metaphor. I don’t actually… humph. Pay attention. You should remember this, but in case it takes a bit, you are not immortal. Each time you die you lose 1 constitution point permanently. If you die with under 10 constitution there is a chance you won’t resurrect at all. If you don’t resurrect, you can never come back to Elysium. Plenty of circumstances can impact this, you already found one of them. Understand?”

Cire did understand. He needed to avoid that at all costs. The last thing Cire wanted to do was give up his new self or community.

“Yes, I understand. Thank you for explaining. My sincere apologies for upsetting you.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Like I said, shut up. We are almost done and you are only one of many. Do not treat this world as a plaything. We are in control here. I direct players and UC’s resurrection, I will give you a fair chance each time.”

Charon stood from the desk, picked up his rather long cane and gestured.