I’ve killed enough time with a controller in my hand I recognized the video game language, but the context floored me. Introduction Complete. Loading. I’d been to the virtual reality arcade at the mall, hell I’d even used the Army’s EST 2050 for training. There was a huge difference between real life and a video game, and there was no way in hell this was a game. Even as I had the thought the word loading flashed twice and then faded away. A text box flashed into place, taking up all of my vision.

Congratulations For successfully completing the introductory sequence in 1 life, killing 1 mob, crafting 3 items, discovering 0 hidden treasures, and learning 0 new spells, you receive 264,327 XP.

As soon as I’d read the last line the text box disappeared and suddenly I saw myself floating in the air in front of me. It was like a reverse out of body experience as I held still and watched my body rise up and turn to face me. Frankly, I looked like shit. My skin was chapped and red with the cold. I was filthy, and the bloody hide kilt and makeshift bandage didn’t exactly pop. A line of text scrolled over my head.

Introduction Complete- Level Up to Level 1. You have 10 points to spend.

“Points to spend?”

As soon as I spoke the words the image responded, opening up a menu next to my floating body. Apparently this was voice activated which was kind of cool. I’d seen these kind of character creation screens before in pretty much every video game. There were three tabs, stats, skills, and spells. The last one was grayed out, but I tried it anyway.

“Spells.”

A buzzer sounded in my ear and I shrugged. It had been worth a try. I tried skills next and a list came up. Not, there were three things under it kind of list, but literally thousands of lines. There was a wall of blurred text running as far as I could see in both directions. As soon as I focused on one trying to read it, it jumped out of the group and expanded until it was legible. Yodeling for a point. Not going to happen. I picked another at random. Stock car racing was going for two points. Better but still not useful. There were just too many to look through. I gave up and called out for stats.

This was more like it, way less options so I could read them all. Health, health regen were both pretty obvious. I had a hundred and a .001 in each. I was guessing that was base health and healing human slow. I’d played enough video games that brawn(6), intelligence(5), and reflexes(8) made sense too. I’d always had quick hands but I was kind of disappointed that my time in the gym hadn’t done any more for me than that. Since I was a college dropout I accepted the intel score as valid. Mana and mana regen were both on the list and sitting at 0. I thought of that and the grayed out spells tab but decided to focus on the short term game plan for now. I had a shit ton of damage to one arm already so I put one point into health regen. It rolled up to .101. I decided each point was worth a tenth of a point maybe. I dropped one into intelligence and it jumped to 6. It wasn’t what I expected so I dropped one into reflexes. Now the number showed 8.5. Okay, in that case I had no clue how this worked. I shrugged and dumped the rest of my points into health regen. The numbers cranked over until the chart looked like this.

Health 100 Health Regen .801 Brawn 6 Intelligence 6 Reflexes 8.5 Mana 0 Mana Regen 0

As soon as the last of the points were in, my body turned around and flowed back towards me until once again I could feel the dull ache in my arm and smell my own BO. That whole disembodied thing had been kind of nice.

Another text box popped up telling me Level 1 had been mandatory but I could upgrade to level 2 for 100,000 XP. It also let me know how many I had left, apparently the first level had caught 50,000. I picked no because I wanted to get more of an idea of how everything worked before I spent the rest of my points. It followed up to ask if I wanted to exchange my unspent points for tokens or to purchase items. I had no clue what tokens were for, but items sounded interesting so I called for that. The giant wall of text I’d been confronted with on skills came back and I shook my head.

“Damn, wish I could filter.”

As soon as I said it a white box with a little magnifying glass next to it popped up in front of the wall and I smiled. Apparently it was voice activated and smart. My smile faded as I considered that thought and I started to yell.

“Log off, exit, shut down, escape.”

I tried every combination I could think of to escape back to reality. Eventually I gave up and focused back on the search bar. It was time to upgrade from the hide kilt. Clothes changed the layout of the text wall but it was still more than I could count. I tried the word pants and it still left thousands of entries. Apparently specificity was the key. I asked for button fly blue jeans with a 30 inch waist and it dropped down to a manageable number and I started reading the entries. Levi’s had slightly better durability stats than Wrangler’s but apparently didn’t give the same bonus to ass. That was just weird. I picked a pair of jeans that looked a lot like my favorite pair from home and they materialized in my hands. I didn’t consciously open my hands to take them, I was just suddenly holding them and it weirded me out. I didn’t waste any time putting them on though, dropping my kilt and pulling on the jeans.

I felt immediately better about my prospects once I had them on. There’s something about having your johnson in the breeze that just oozes insecurity. Satisfied with my purchase I asked for boots. I felt like I’d gotten the hang of this a little so I made the request specific.

“Lace up boots, size 10.”

There were still at least a couple hundred lines on the wall so I shrugged and asked, “Rank by stats.”

The words flowed past each other and lined back up. That was pretty cool. I focused on the top pair of boots and my jaw almost dropped when I saw the stats. 7 league boots allowing minor teleportation for a cool 30,000,000 XP. That was, I couldn’t even imagine what that was. My jeans had cost 900 XP, and I did a little math in my head trying to get an idea of what an XP point was worth.

“Uh, show lace up boots, size 10, cost between 1,000 and 10,000 XP, rank by stats.”

This time there was only a dozen or so entries and I took the time to read through them, eventually choosing a pair with slight bonuses to traction and durability. When the boots showed up in my hands, I didn’t bother to put them on yet, focusing on my shopping.

“Show me an AR platform Bushmaster chambered in .308 with a picatinny rail and some decent optics.”

Only two options came up, both were over a million XP. I tried for a single shot top break 12 gauge just to get an idea on prices and it was almost as bad. Apparently firearms were available, but not anytime soon. I settled for a Ka-Bar in a nylon sheath that set me back another 5,000 points. .My hands were getting full and as I piled my stuff on the floor it struck me this whole game thing gave me some options. I asked for a magic inventory. The lines of text disappeared and I guessed that meant no such item existed. I tried the phrase bottomless backpack and inventory ring and struck out there too, but got lucky with bag of holding. I ranked them by stats again and ended up choosing what looked like a leather messenger bag. It held two dozen slots and reduced weight and displacement by a factor of chi squared whatever the hell that meant.

After I got the bag I played with it for a minute. It was my first taste of a magic item, I couldn’t help it. I dropped the wolf pelt inside and it disappeared into the dark, but when I stuck my hand in the bag a list popped up in my vision. As soon as I focused on the word hide I could feel it in my hand and pulled it back out. That was kind of cool. I put the rest of my stuff in the bag just because I could. Pulled it out and put it back in again. So much better than a rucksack it wasn’t even funny. After a while even a magic toy gets old, and I refocused on my shopping. I still had over a hundred thousand XP left if I’d been keeping track right. Part of me wanted to grab camping gear or maybe a ranged weapon of some kind but I decided to think outside the box and go for something unusual that would give me an advantage.

“Show me magic items that I can afford.”

Way too many choices came up, and I randomly picked a couple to look at as I tried to come up with something more specific. It wasn’t very gamer of me, but the easiest way to dominate a video game was to follow a walk-through so I refined my filter.

“Magic items I can afford that will give me information, sort by amount of information.”

The top ranked item was a Book of Knowledge that had all the stat points listed as question marks and it was 150,000 XP. I bought it anyway. As soon as I made the choice the text box winked out and I was left with nothing but disappointment. Nothing materialized in my hands this time, and I spent a couple seconds casting around the blank green room looking for it. I tried calling out but apparently the voice activated system didn’t give a rat’s ass about my problems. Then I had a thought and slid my hand into my bag of holding. Sure enough a big leather bound book showed up in my hands, thick enough I had trouble gripping it across the spine. I hefted it a couple of times, wondering how long it would take me to read this thing and what my chances were it had a good index in the back. I opened the book to check it out and screamed like a little girl.

The book basically exploded in my hands. There was energy and a flash of light. It didn’t hurt but the book flew apart into a million tiny pieces. Each one of the pieces just swung around in the air randomly like moths, until one flew closer and I realized it was a tiny book, beating its cover like wings to stay in the air. If that wasn’t a bad enough trip, they didn’t stay flying in random swirls but started to circle, went up and out and then back towards me. They all flew in my face, and I tried to flinch back and swat them away but they were too fast. The first one flew directly into my eye and the rest funneled after. It didn’t hurt, it felt like my eye was sucking them up and I can’t even describe the sensation that produced. At least it was fast, because thirty seconds later I was standing there shuddering, blinking my eyes and embracing buyer’s remorse. It felt like I could just almost see one of those book moth’s in the corner of my eye. I turned my head and tried to focus on my peripheral version and it swirled up into my vision with a white background with a familiar blue globe above a search bar.

“Magic fucking wikipedia in my.head? You’ve got to be shitting me.”

As soon as I looked away the screen dropped back into just the edge of my peripheral vision again and I shuddered. I obviously didn’t understand enough about this world to be making decisions.

“All right, that’s it. I’m done shopping. Play the cut sequence or whatever the hell is next. Let’s go.”

A text box popped up asking if I wanted to trade in my remaining XP for tokens before I exited and I chose yes because, why the hell not? With that the world dissolved to green again and I got the same Loading screen as before.