When there is nothing at all, there is no time passing. And one Douglas Moore realized this truth only now because there was something besides the nothingness in the universe that was his.

That deep blue emptiness was seemingly punctuated by neon lines, stretching across infinity. Looking at them, Moore felt they were familiar somehow. He might have been watching them for some undeterminable time. Without anything happening, time had simply lost any meaning, he suddenly realized. He might have been there for five minutes, or it might have been five years. Or more.

In a way, that was nicer than becoming mad from sensory deprivation. Which, he remembered now, had been sort of the last thing he had been worried about before “now”.

But suddenly, there were things happening, which meant Time had dominion over this empty realm. The lines crisscrossed in strange directions, which he wasn’t entirely sure were quite entirely three-dimensional, but they delimitated squares across the abstract-feeling space in which he was located. And four of these squares didn’t simply show the same emptiness, a depth that seemed to stretch to an unfathomable infinity.

The squares showed rubble on some dirty floor in half-shadow instead.

Moore “moved”. Once he did so, he realized there was nothing to move… just a difference in his focused awareness. There was no body, no hands, no eyes to be felt or move. Phantom echoes of remembered limbs refused to move since there was seemingly nothing to move at all, not even an unresponsive hand.

Yet, one of the squares now dominated his view. The three others were there, to the side. In a strange way that Moore couldn’t fully articulate, they were as sharp as the one he was “watching”, without any of the abbreviated peripheral vision one would expect, but there was still a qualitative difference to his focus.

He was looking at one while seeing everything else, he decided. As if direction did not really matter, only attention.

The square he was watching was a low-lighted room, with weird shadows cast by a neon-blue light coming from the side of his view, not quite like the blue emptiness, but not entirely different. Just… brighter. It was all very confusing, like the view he had, which was oddly slanted as if his perspective was sideways.

There were forms on the ground, which he realized were… people. Three forms, fallen on the ground.

Intuition made him “turn” to the other squares. One showed the same darkened room… one had one form sprawled amidst rubble…

He realized with a start that each square showed the perspective of one of the persons in that same room.

The first square that had caught his attention was seemingly associated with a young blonde woman. Someone in her late teens or healthy early twenties, probably nice-looking if only slightly marred by a somewhat squarish jaw. He could deduce from her perspective that she had been looking at the rest of the figures after she fell on the ground. One of the other perspectives allowed him to see that woman and one other man from a different angle. All in all, there seemed to be four of them, two men and two women, one for each of the square views. They wore odd leather and heavy woolen and cloth attire. Something that looked more individually handmade rather than any modern fashion Moore was familiar with.

Except that the first woman had a handkerchief with a common sports brand logo. Which struck him as odd. From the brand, he expected running shoes, right. Maybe shirts and tracksuits. But neckcloth? Where did that one come from?

Who are these people?

Why did he see… not exactly from their eyes, which were shut apparently, but their perspective?

As he focused again on the first “window”, the view stretched, in a strange and non-Euclidean way, leaving a second square to the side. One that was filled with meaning. Simultaneously new, odd, and yet familiar.

Johanna Marcia Milton

Female human, 19 years, 2 months

No specialization (scavenger)

Level: 2 (2000 XP needed)

2 unallocated skills points

XP: 1011 + 0

STR: 14

AUT: 17

AGI: 15

PER: 14

DEX: 16

EMP: 15

Given that he lacked eyes and thus eyelids, Moore couldn’t blink in surprise. That was…

A character sheet? What the???

Concentrating on the other figures brought the same stretching of a character sheet as if bringing his focus on a given person simply called their individual character summaries.

The sheets were simple and basic. Not in any font he recognized, and it felt like it wasn’t entirely written, even if that didn’t make sense. But they were proper stats, separating body-oriented and non-physical attributes. Strength, Agility, Dexterity, on one side, Authority, Perception, and Empathy on the other. Although there didn’t seem to be handy tooltips explaining the exact meaning or use of those specific stats.

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He stopped himself with a mental shudder. Before… whatever happened, he’d been waiting to play an RPG. A new ARPG. Did this… character sheet come from that game? Was he stuck in the game? Planesrunners? Or worse, did the game make an impression on him without remembering actually playing it, and he was currently dying, his oxygen-deprived brain falling into strange hallucinations fed by his last memories as consciousness faded?

What was that tidbit of wisdom from a book? Trying to second guess yourself, and presuming that reality was fake was the surest way to succumb to madness. Always assume that reality was real, and act like it, risking to be taken as mad, rather than act as if it was all fake, and die because you didn’t take reality seriously. Because reality always took you seriously and didn’t care what you wanted to think.

Well, no risk of that. He seemed to be dead already if he remembered correctly. Or some similar state. So… a game-like post-death experience. Gamer heaven. With four persons to watch for.

Interesting. Certainly not what everyone promised you for an afterlife.

Who are you really, Miss Milton, unspecialized scavenger?

An exploration of the various elements of that bizarre user interface finally brought a list of skills.

There seemed to be a significant number of those. Quite a few seemed to be locked behind higher pre-requisites, leaving only a handful immediately available. One immediately attracted his attention.

Fire Handling

Requires: Authority 17

Effective: N × Authority + Level (adds mana)

Passive: Grant bodily immunity to heat, up to (300 + 10×Eff) °F

Active: Can summon an (Eff/10)-inch flame of the maximum tolerable temperature in either of one’s hands

Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds

A focus on the N multiplier for the effective formula brought up a separate list.

Specialization

Requires

Multiplier

Shaper

AUT 16/Lvl 1

2

Discreet

DEX 16/Lvl 1

0

That list was extremely short. Only two specializations, presumably because Johanna Milton only had two of her stats at 16 or above. And, well, one would be an obvious choice there. Picking the Shaper specialization would grant her a whopping +34 bonus to that specific skill from having an Authority of 17. A “Discreet” would be hobbled at a skill of 2 from her level and nothing else. The flame would require a magnifying glass to see.

After finding this, Moore found out that the user interface allowed him to start from the specialization instead, walking down skills. Sorted by multipliers, by requirements, and so on. From that exploration emerged a picture. Shaper-boosted skills seemed to run across the theme of some form of magic. And a weird one. Fire, Earth, Water, he understood. But Wood? Metal?

However, attempting to add another Authority-based magic skill to Milton’s list quickly ran into a snag, and looking at the stat itself for a different presentation of the character sheet told him why.

Authority: 17

1000 XP needed

Fire Handling

Effective skill 36 (mana)

Next skill: 2pt needed (1 available)

He confirmed quickly that all the other stats on Milton’s sheet required only a single point to pick a skill based on them, even when no skill was immediately useable. A quick selection into the mass of skills available gave him a different and immediately useable skill that felt like it matched the spellcasting theme. That particular stat seemed associated with nature and wood for some reason, but almost all of the actual skills required 16-plus in the stat, unlike this one.

Mana Sight

Requires: Mana 30/Level 2

Effective: 2 × Perception + Level (adds 30 mana)

Passive: Detect mana flows & pools of (33) size or greater

Triggered: Detect any mana-based skill of 30 skill or below.

After walking the entire specialization, he simply canceled the entire selection, unwilling to jump to conclusions, and started checking the rest of the people in the room. Their own “character sheets” behaved in the same way, save for the different values. For instance, the Tom Welter guy seemed to fit a sort of melee specialist with his base Strength score, while the Peter Donnall character had both high AGI and DEX, making Moore hesitate what was implied there. Stealthy rogue, fast scout? Laura Vogel was obvious, she had the highest Empathy, and the skill list he dug up based on that stat seemed to fit a healer-slash-priest archetype.

That was the problem. No wiki. No internet guides. It was like being back in the 20th century and trying to play one of the old Gold Box Games with zero spoilers and no Internet forums to ask questions. How the players of that era did it boggled him.

And there was also the problem of what exactly was going on. What was this place where Moore seemed to exist – he wasn’t quite going to say “be” – and why were there four windows into people. And who were they.

Assuming they are real… he quickly buried the thought again.

The obvious move was to use the user interface and go full-on role-playing game. Moore didn’t think people without a class or skills survived long in any form of a dangerous situation.

He also had no idea how long this setup phase could last. Was time even going at the same speed “here” and “there”? There were no answers, at least none obvious. The four people were just lying there, immobile on the ground in whatever position they’d been when he'd noticed that reality existed again.

Time to commit. Fighter, Rogue, Healer, Caster. Classics always worked.

There you go, Miss Milton. You’re going to be the spellcaster. Now, let’s hope this works out.

Johanna Marcia Milton

Female human, 19 years, 2 months

Shaper

Level: 2 (2000 XP needed)

0/66 mana (+14 per hour)

0 unallocated skills points

XP: 1011 + 0

STR: 14

AUT: 17

Fire Handling (36)

AGI: 15

PER: 14

Mana Sight (30)

DEX: 16

EMP: 15

At first, he’d validated just the Fire Handling, making sure he could add further changes. Then the specialization, which enabled adding Mana Sight for the second skill point. He was also now offered the ability to change the specialization to Discreet, albeit at a 1000XP cost. That would be stupid, considering the skills he’d just allocated, but the interface now allowed him that option.

His tests with Peter Donnall, who had around 2500 XP available but was only level 1 had shown him that increasing the level added one unallocated skill point. So, he had to choose whether to improve her stats now or wait 1000XP for a level and a new skill point in Dexterity. Or even more XP and a second Authority skill.

That will wait until I figure out how fast XP comes. One step at a time. They look like newbies still.

He checked all of his choices. They were all validated, and “his” team was now ready. He relaxed and, surprisingly, the sensation of time flickered. It seemed that putting all of his attention on the interfaces made time fly fast. Or crawl, depending on one’s perspective.

Wait, I probably don’t have neurons anymore, so no slow chemical neurotransmitters?

He hoped they would like the choices he’d made. It didn’t seem as if they could make those themselves, or that Donnall fellow would have raised his level already.