Chapter 2

  Wow, what a headache. Lance was sure something had gone wrong because he was still lying in bed. He opened his eyes, and the room momentarily swam in and out of focus before his vision snapped into sharp detail. The ceiling appeared wooden to him, which made him doubt he was still looking at the facility. But everything was so real. He could feel every fold of the sheets under him, and the scent of oiled wood was rich in his nose. He was now sure he was in the system, but it was like he was in his own body. If this is true , he thrilled at the thought. If this is true, this was the dream. Millions of gamers hoped for a game they could live in.

  Lance had always held a small amount of sympathy for Cypher, the character in The Matrix who betrayed Neo and asked to be plugged back in. Now, he was plugged in. It was time to find out how deep the rabbit hole went.

  The headache he had woken up with was fading fast. He put his hand in front of his eyes and peered at it. It was perfect. He peered closer and could see individual hairs on his arm. If he was in the game, the visuals were stunning.

  A squeaky voice spoke from near his ear, "Hey, you awake?"

  Lance turned his head toward the sound, and a small creature came into view. The being had red skin, a Buddha-like potbelly, horns on its bald head, and a tail that could only be described as a devil's. It looked like something that might sit on someone's right shoulder in a cartoon.

  "Who... what are you?" Lance exclaimed.

  "I'm Cletus, your personal assistant in the world of Fantasy Mainline," It replied in a cheery tone. "I'm a system every paid player can access. My purpose is to answer questions about the system and, to some extent, guide you."

  "Okay, what is this place?" Lance asked.

  "This is your personal instance; warm, comfortable, safe, yours. You can return here any time you are not in combat. But no one else can come here."

  "So, how do I enter the game?"

  "Simple; if you step over here, I can show you."

  Lance's headache was gone. Shoot, he felt amazing. In the real world, Lance had terrible food and environmental allergies, and since he was not careful with his diet, he was always a little sick. ' Healthy ' was the word that came to mind.

  He climbed out of bed. Looking at himself, he was dressed as he had been at the Fantasy Mainline offices. When he stood a mirror appeared in front of him.

  "Your body was scanned at our offices and this should be an exact replica. We allow minor changes if you like." The creature said.

  Lance looked at himself. Brown hair and brown eyes. A compact five foot six but well muscled. "Looks good to me."

  Cletus looked him over, "May I suggest a general cleanup?"

  "You think I don't look right?"

  "Oh no, but you could look better."

  Lance grinned, "Why not."

  Cletus waved his scaly red hand and Lance blurred for a moment in the mirror. When he reappeared he looked the same but somehow better. A little better muscle definition. He leaned in for a closer look. His skin was perfect.

  "Everything okay?" The little devil asked?

  "Oh, yeah, that is wonderful."

  Smiling in a way that exposed fangs, Cletus flew away on two tiny bat wings that were too small to carry his rotund body. Lance followed it to the center of one of the walls. Four plaques appeared in the middle of the wall. The first had an embossed sword, the second a wand, the third a dagger, and the last a staff.

  "Okay, Lance, you start by choosing the archetype of your avatar. This is normal stuff: Fighter, Mage, Thief, Healer. These grant you class-appropriate abilities. But once you are in the game, you can shape yourself however you want. You grow your skills by doing the things you want to get better at. You will also gain new abilities as you level up."

  Lance had thought about this in advance and had decided he wanted to play a stealthy character. Stealth was fun, and he also thought it would be easier to "turn the other cheek" as a thief than a fighter. Now that he thought about it, a thief typically used backstab, and that didn't seem Christian either.

  He shrugged, reached out, and touched the dagger.

  "Okay, another choice," Cletus said. "Thieves have different specializations."

  "Gotcha," Lance said. "Hit me with the options."

  The four class choices disappeared, and in their place were three more symbols.

  "First, you got the super sneaky thief. This version gets extra skill levels in sneak. Next, you have the stabby thief; they do more damage using weapons. Lastly, you have my favorite. Normal sneak, normal damage, but you can set traps instead. Freeze 'em, cook 'em, shock 'em, smash 'em thief is what I like to call them."

  "Kind of a long name." Lance smiled at his assistant.

  Cletus threw his hands up, "Yeah, but I really like this one, and it needs a cool name. The trappy thief doesn't sound right. On the flip side, I missed the other half of the elements, so the name isn't as long as it could be."

  Lance liked the idea of being able to set traps, so he touched that one, which made Cletus very happy.

  The wall changed and depicted a three-by-three grid of plaques with religious-looking symbols.

  "Now you can choose your god," Cletus announced.

  "I'm not going to do that," Lance stated flatly.

  "There are choices for everyone here. This is the standard alignment grid. Lawful good is at the top left, and chaotic evil is at the bottom right. I can answer questions about any of them."

  "I'm not interested in having a god. I already have one. His name is..." Lance found himself unable to say "Jesus." He tried again. "He is called..." He attempted to say "Yahweh" but couldn't speak that name either. "Um, Cletus, are there names you can't use here?"

  "Yup, the names of any god or goddess from the earth world are forbidden, as well as swear words from thirty-seven languages."

  Lance pondered this. He appreciated that the game developers excluded swear words but wondered at the names of gods being censored as well. "So, why are gods' names not allowed?"

  "Not sure, just a thing here."

  This felt wrong in so many ways. For now, Lance filed it away.

  "Back to the gods. If you don't choose one, you are giving up on the skills they offer--most importantly, a basic self-heal spell."

  Lance shrugged.

  "Okay, back to classes," Cletus brightened up, "When you have reached Level 10, you will be shown the four plaques again, and you can pick your secondary path." He held up his hand to forestall Lance's next question. "You can modify your class with skills from a second class or deepen your initial one. For example, if a thief chooses mage, she becomes a trickster, which would add several illusion spells to the already formidable hiding and fighting skills of the thief, not to mention some basic elemental attacks."

  Lance knew this type of progression. The four starter classes would fan out into 16 richer and deeper classes. "Okay, another question. How does it work if I die?"

  "You mean when you die?" the little devil glanced at him with a twinkle in his eye. "For now, I'm going to give you the broad strokes. Later, when it matters, we can talk about the details. You can die four times."

  "Wait, what?" Lance exclaimed, "Then my body dies?"

  "No, no. Give me a minute to finish a thought already. You have four chances to complete the starter area. If you die a fourth time before completing it, you are reset to level 1 and sent to a random server to start over."

  "Okay, so the servers are not global?"

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  "No." Cletus answered, "This server we are on now is one of four for Northern California. If you are booted, they will move you in a stasis state to local server. The new starting area will also have different AI characters, but yours truly," The little devil slapped his chest, "will be the same."

  "Wow, that's a heavy penalty if you have friends and a lot of progress." Lance said, "Do I come back to where I died the first three times or what?"

  "That's details, but yah, back where you perished if you're part of a party, but to your most recent registered inn otherwise. We didn't want people to be jerks in the starter areas. The developers wanted death to have meaning."

  "Okay, so when do I start fighting stuff?"

  Cletus brightened and began to say something.

  "Oh, hang on." Lance broke in. "I almost forgot. Can I make a call?

  "Sure, think about calling someone on your contact list, and it'll happen."

  Lance initiated a video chat with Joe.

  Joe answered and looked relieved to see him. "You look well. How are things going so far?"

  "I'm calling you from my personal instance. Everything is super real, and I'm sure the game will be amazing. On the other hand, the system filters out the names of any gods from the normal world. Names like Jesus, Yahweh, Shiva, and Allah are blanked out. Hmm, I can use them on the phone."

  Joe's eyes widened. "I have been tracking the launch most of today, and there have been some rumblings about this, but there is something more important you need to know. Reports are surfacing of people coming out of the warehouses after only a few hours and being unable to walk. Lance, they are wheeling them out of the facility in wheelchairs."

  Lance frowned. He had heard of some beta testers claiming an inability to control their bodies when they left the game. "But the testers were in for weeks and only had minor issues at worst. What changed?"

  "Some people who were part of the beta and are still in the system are reporting much more detail. People are guessing this is causing greater disabilities for people exiting now as opposed to the test. Some are saying people should eject as soon as possible to save themselves. Others say you may be able to stay as long as three days, maybe even a week, before the changes will be irreversible."

  "So, an epic waste of money or a lifetime commitment. It sounds like a problem either way. What about the religious restrictions?"

  "Yes," Pastor Joe replied, "Lots of talk about that. A legal group is preparing to file an injunction. The argument they are making is that this isn't a game but a place where people live. There is a ton of precedent forbidding landlords from denying their tenants the right to practice religion. The right of prisoners to be accommodated in the way they wish to worship is already established law in the U.S., and many inmates are entering the system.

  "I'm hoping you're ready to eject right now," Joe continued, his face worried.

  "Not today. I'm not even into the real game yet, and I don't have much drawing me out. My parents are dead, Julie is dead, my life has descended into depression, and this change of scenery has done a lot for me already. I am excited!"

  Joe looked hurt.

  Lance quickly added, "Of course, I will miss you and my other friends. But this could be a new life, a new chance to be happy and make a difference."

  After finishing the call, Lance asked Cletus about getting into the game again.

  "A couple more things to cover before we drop you in." Cletus said, "First, let's review your starting skill and abilities as a thief. First, you can dual-wield and will start with two daggers. Second, you have the sneak ability, which will make you nearly silent and harder to perceive. When you have a background like a forest, you will be somewhat invisible, but in full daylight against a white wall, you will still be seen at lower levels."

  "Makes sense. How do I activate sneak?"

  Cletus glanced around furtively, shrunk down, and began walking on the balls of his feet. He looked like Michael Jackson doing a moonwalk since he wasn't moving. "Skills and abilities are intention-based, so when you want to be sneaky, just think about sneaking, and you will activate the ability. Moving faster than a normal walk or attacking anything will break the ability at lower levels. Like any ability, you must practice and use sneak to get better at it. Also, don't be dumb about sneaking. You still should hide behind things, okay?"

  "Sure. So a healer could learn to sneak?" Lance asked.

  "Yup, no class limits on abilities. If you wanted to be able to fight using a shield, you could, but you would stink at it."

  "So, is that it?"

  "Nope, every class starts with one skill. For the two arcane classes, that means a spell. Fighters have a bash ability or something similar, depending on their specialization. For you, it's Set Trap since you chose the awesomest option."

  "Hmm," Lance said, "those sound like abilities more than something like a spell."

  "Setting a trap without tools or materials isn't just an ability. There's an ability called Lay Trap anyone can learn using suitable materials, but your new skill is unique.

  "To start, move to where you want to place the trap and touch a surface, then think about what you want. You can choose any of the eight elements, and the best part is you can set the trigger to be just about anything you can imagine."

  Lance thought about this. "Okay, that is more than a normal ability. Anything I can imagine? How about when the moon is full, and snow is on the ground, and someone walks over it?"

  "Yup"

  "When the 15th person crosses over the location after one of the first three people to have crossed it has died?"

  Cletus thought about it for a minute. " It depends. If the people were dying within 100 yards of the trap, then yes. Traps are not omniscient."

  "Impressive", Lance responded. He considered for a moment, "I always think of the elements being fire, water, earth, and air. What are they here?"

  "You nailed the first four, but we also have light, dark, order, and chaos. Since you are so anti-god, borderline atheist, I will mention that the elements are unrelated to the pantheon."

  "Sounds like you have answered that question before?" Lance queried.

  "Sort of. The Cletus AI controls all of the Cletai."

  "Cletai?" Lance broke in. "Is that the plural for Cletus?"

  "Yup. Cletus is the Character Learning Education and Training Universal System, one huge artificial intelligence to learn and process, but individual memories exist for every Cletus. So, my core system is processing data from thousands of players and their interactions with the world, but my personal copy isn't seeing any of that. But if enough players experience the same thing, I will have that info and can tell you. I also have all of the rules memorized." He materialized a massive tome, tapped it for emphasis, and then it imploded out of existence. "But the game itself, I'm slightly less clueless than you are. I can tell you to avoid the northwest corner of the market in the town nearest to your starting location. Someone knocked a pickle vendor's stand over. It's a total mess."

  Lance chuckled, "So can other players see you, or can I see their Cletai?"

  "Nope, I only appear to you. If you party up with others, I can combine to be one avatar with the knowledge of all of the players' Cletai, but under normal circumstances, it's you and me, buddy."

  "Okay, I'm ready to go. Oh, one last thing. Do you have any other forms you can take?"

  Cletus glanced at Lance, "Umm..."