I stepped out of the doorway into a completely different world. Some part of me was still expecting a degree of logical consistency and I hesitated when I saw a wooded area instead of the meadow I’d left. The air was warmer too, probably 70 degrees or so, which was a nice treat because at this point I was only wearing blue jeans. I didn’t have long to consider it because there were more important things distracting me. There were people in the copse of trees. I slid my messenger bag around for easier access to my knife as they walked up to me.

“Hello, come forward and clear the door so the next person can get through please.”

I shrugged and did as he asked, trying to get a handle on what was going on. The guy who’d spoken was tall and skinny, wearing a single piece coverall like a North Korean dictator, although I’d never seen a picture of the Jonger in one that was paisley. The chick next to him was in a yellow sundress and was wearing a cheesy straw hat that looked like it had been woven from grass. Before I had a chance to respond to the first guy, she had cut in and taken over the conversation.

“You’ve got items too. Do you have any leftover XP tokens? We need to buy clothes.”

“Uh, hello back. Ya’ll have clothes.” I gestured at my bare chest, “I’m obviously a little short too.”

There was a flash of green over my shoulder and I missed their response as I turned around and saw the other side of that lone doorway open up and a guy came out. I like to think of myself as a big guy, I’m under 6 ft but about 225 with not much of it fat, but the guy coming out of the door was huge. He had at least 6 inches and 100 pounds on me, and since he was buck naked you could tell he was built like a brick shithouse. He stepped out and just stood there in the doorway for a moment. The guy in the coveralls shook his head.

“If people keep blocking the door it’s going to take forever for everybody to get here.”

That part made sense to me so I tried to be helpful.

“Hey, Tiny.”

When the big guy looked over at me I waved in a come here gesture. He walked this way kind of stiff legged like he didn’t have a whole lot of flexibility.

“Who you calling Tiny?”

“Without the pants on it just seemed to fit, little guy.”

The blond girl stepped between us, careful to keep eye contact and not see anything too revealing.

“You can go over there where those people peeling bark off that tree. Someone will show you how to weave a sort of loin cloth thing for now.” She turned to me and pointed in the opposite direction, “You can go over there and help gather rocks, and quit being an asshole.”

She was right, I was being a dick so I shrugged and took a step back. Opening up the space de-escalated but I didn’t apologize. At this point I just didn’t have the energy for civility. The big dude ran his thumb off his nose in a dismissive gesture, but he turned and walked away. I took a couple steps myself, but I was busy watching the door.

It opened up and a woman came out. She was mid-20s, a little thick around the middle, with a truly amazing rack, and was a natural brunette. I could tell because she came out stark naked. It was only after I’d stared for a little bit that I realized she was holding a compound bow and was giving me the evil eye. I muttered sorry even though it probably wasn’t loud enough to hear and broke eye contact. After looking around for a bit, I wandered over to a pudgy guy wearing gym shorts and a pair of sandals kneeling down using a stick to dig a hole in the ground.

“Hey there.”

He looked up at me and straightened out, putting his hand on his back like he was a couple decades older than he looked.

“Jeans and a bag, huh? You must have kicked ass in the intro level.” He stuck out his hand and we shook. “I’m Tim.”

“Jack. You got shorts and sandals, must have done pretty good yourself.”

“Got a t-shirt too but I gave it to one of the girls who didn’t buy clothes. I’m pretty sure if we can kill some more animals we can buy more stuff by going back in the doors. I’m trying to sharpen this stick to go hunting in the woods, wanna team up?”

I sat down on the ground and dug into my bag. First out was the jaw knife that I tossed to him. He grimaced when he saw it but said thanks and start working over the end of his stick. I pulled out my boots and tried to clean my bare feet as best as I could by hand before putting them on. Tim looked surprised when I pulled out the boots, but after I was laced up and pulled out my knife his jaw dropped.

“What the hell? How many items did you craft before you came through?”

“Only three.”

“Shit. I had five. You must not have died hardly at all to get the XP for that.”

“I’m gonna cut myself a spear too, and maybe a club to go with it. There was a chick with a bow, you see anybody else with any gear that might help on a hunting trip?”

He followed me as I walked deeper into the woods looking for an appropriate tree.

“Not that anyone was willing to share. Ken, he was the guy in the coveralls, you probably met him. Ken was trying to get everybody together and pool resources but that asian girl Li convinced us to wait until everyone is here. The naked people are trying to weave some clothes and they’ve got everybody else gathering rocks and sticks. , And then there are a couple people like, well, us, doing our own thing.”

“What the hell are they gathering rocks and sticks for?”

“Amass resources for XP. This is a video game right? Since the only thing we can really gather right now is sticks and rocks, we’re piling them up.”

“Who gets credit for the pile, and how do you know you get points for that?”

“No clue, and we don’t. There’s a reason I’m over here doing this.”

“Fair enough.”

Once I had a rabbit stick and a spear cut we wandered further from the door. It wasn’t quite a forest, there was too much open space filled with knee high grass, but it wasn’t just prairie either. There were a ton of small trees that looked kind of like but weren’t exactly spruce along with occasional giants that I was pretty sure were elm. We’d been wandering for about an hour when Tim sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree.

“This is pointless. I haven’t seen so much as a squirrel so far.”

“Got to have patience, Tim. You think hunter gatherers just dipped out into the woods for an hour and spent the rest of their time playing solitaire?”

“I think hunter gatherers were up against nature on Earth. We’re stuck in video game hell. How do we know there are animals at all to hunt?”

Before I could answer him the chime of a bell rang out. It was so loud I dropped my stuff and clapped my hands to my ears, hunching over from the pain. When I opened my eyes a giant text box was floating in front of me.

Welcome to the Tutorial 50 humans have successfully passed through the gate. Monster spawns will increase in difficulty over time, death causes a loss of all unspent XP. You have 30 days to create your village and attain levels before the rest of the game unlocks. Good luck.