“What the fuck!?” I screamed, trying to back away from the little menace, but still unable to move.

  I felt his little knife try to dig into my flesh as he jumped onto me. He seemed to cling to me like Velcro, as his tiny fingers tried to plunge his knife into me again and again.

  My legs were still stuck but my upper body became freed, and I grabbed him. I focused on keeping his chopping mouth away from my flesh as best I could.

  The heat of his breath wafted into my face as he hissed and bit at me, barely missing my neck, my chest, and my arms. It took everything I had to keep the little monster from doing real damage with those chompers and I was surprised just how feline-like the thing was.

  It was like when I tried to give Trisha’s cat, Pearl, a bath years ago. The thing had lost its mind just like this and had scratched me so deeply and so many times I had ended up in urgent care.

  The knife kept slashing and poking at me, but the thing was so dull it didn’t really break skin more than a few times. I was finally able to dislodge him from my body and I held the flailing creature at arm’s length, surprised at just how light it was.

  The goblin was small, sure, but it weighed almost nothing. It felt like it had hollow bones like a bird would. My fingers curled under the leather around its neck, I held it in one hand and tore the knife away from his grip.

  Jubjub began to howl in rage but it quickly turned to one of pain. There was something wrong with the arm that had been holding the knife. The little limb was hanging at a funny angle and Jubjub was cradling it while hissing at me between howls.

  His arm must have broken while I was tearing the knife free.

  I noticed a health bar above its head but it didn’t show me any numbers, just that it had gone down quite a bit. Apparently, goblins were extremely brittle creatures. I threw the knife to the ground, and it clanked into the far corner of the room.

  With the same hum of electricity and the same ‘whump’ sound as before, the goblin was gone. My hand closed into a fist as the leather vanished along with Jubjub. I lurched forward a little as the invisible hold on my legs also subsided.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled at the wall and ceiling in front of me. I wasn’t sure where else to point my rage but even still it felt ridiculous to yell at empty stone. “There wasn’t an easier way to show me how the damn bandages worked?”

  I noticed my health had gone down slightly and I looked down at the areas the goblin had stabbed and slashed at me. There didn’t appear to be any major damage which I was thankful for, but my health read: 94/100.

  I was honestly surprised it hadn’t gone down more with all the thrashing the little bastard had done. Regardless I felt a little bad about breaking its arm. It had seemed just as surprised as I was that it was there.

  I looked at the bandage in my neural display and tried to think about it the same way I did when I had learned to close the menus. Nothing happened.

  Dumbly I tried to move my hands in a way that it would intersect with the icon. I could only imagine how ridiculous I looked doing it.

  Finally, I tried to just focus on it again until there was the same tooltip that had expanded before showing me the description. I looked for another tooltip or something to interact with but found nothing.

  This was making me frustrated and I tried to just focus on the different things that had worked so far. I squinted to see if there was something else I was missing and suddenly the bandage was in my hand.

  The instant appearance made my body jerk a bit as I looked at the roll of fabric like an idiot.

  This was going to take practice, but I also didn’t want to keep getting poked by rabid little psycho goblins just to figure it out. While the gauze had made it to my hand I still had no idea how to actually open my inventory at all.

  I looked at the bandage in my hand still at a loss as to what I should do next. I was looking around for a wound to apply it to when a tooltip popped over the bandage. Taking a closer look showed me the icon had a little curved arrow and when I focused on that it said:

  Low Grade Gauze 2/10

  Use this item? Y/N

  Dismantle this item? Y/N

  Again, there was a crude drawing of the item it represented. I focused on the ‘Y’ next to ‘use item’ doing my best not to accidentally dismantle it.

  A small tooltip popped up with a crude drawing of a plain looking humanlike creature. It was making a motion as if it was unrolling the bandage around its thigh.

  Holding the bandage in my left hand I mimicked the same movements and it seemed to work. It reminded me of when I had played a few generic chore simulators on my PC or in VR. When I looked back at the bandage it now showed one less usage.

  I held the gauze, unsure how to return it to my inventory. The space in my HUD where the gauze had been was empty and when I focused on that I was given an option to store the item there. This was definitely going to take some real time to figure out.

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  My health had gone back up to 100 and I noticed that the bandage actually looked a little smaller in my quickbar. When I examined myself I saw that the injuries I had sustained were all completely gone outside of the little bit of blood that had gotten on my clothing and surrounding skin areas.

  No bruises, no cuts, no scratches – totally gone. A part of me felt this was understandable given my other wounds had been miraculously healed. I was still having a really hard time with the fact that this was even possible.

  Wonderful! We are so happy that that worked out!

  “How else could that have gone?” I asked but the system seemed to ignore me.

  Instead it displayed more text that seemed to be a little larger and more prominent than before. It felt like I was being told to shut up and read.

  But I guess I hadn’t really been reading the words. While there wasn’t an overt voice announcing everything there seemed to be a sense of narration.

  Now that we have that out of the way we can move on to the final part!

  This session has no time limit, but it does have a number of events that will start to happen should we feel things are moving too slowly or are moving in a direction that would otherwise be considered boring.

  We hope to see: Action! Survival! Mayhem! And if those things don’t happen, we may be forced to act.

  The end of the session will be obvious but that is the only hint we are going to give you for now. Throughout the map you will find rooms similar to this one that will allow you a MOSTLY safe space to rest and recover.

  These rooms will be lightly furnished and will even have crafting stations for you to make bigger and better things to survive with! These rooms are not always the same so be sure to check in on each one!

  (Note: one aspect of your implants is a waste management system that will allow players to go long distances without needing to relieve themselves. You will be able to do so in designated areas ONLY. Thank you for your cooperation!)

  And finally, we just want to say: Thank you! Thank you for participating in our games! We wouldn’t be here without you, and we know that the feeling is mutual!

  Now get out there and have an adventure!

  GOOD LUCK!

  The tooltip blinked away and wasn’t replaced by anything else. Its absence caused me to feel heavier somehow and the weight of what was happening began to press into me.

  This was all just so impossible to wrap my head around. The more I tried the more it became overwhelming and I would feel the pressure trying to push its way in.

  I knew that feeling well and I knew that I had to keep it at bay or I might not recover. Especially if I started thinking about the fact this… AI or whatever it was kept threatening to send me into the deep recesses of infinite space.

  “Pull it together James,” I said out loud. “Troy is out there somewhere going through the same thing you are, or worse. He needs you. You’re going to have to just stomp the panic down and just take this all one step at a time.”

  My little pep talk didn’t help as much as I had hoped.

  Under the storm of all that was coming at me at that moment, I also really needed a drink. Apparently the magic technological wand the aliens waved all over my body didn’t do anything for that.

  I was about to move to grab the book, but I realized that the goblin’s knife hadn’t vanished with him. Picking it up I saw that it was literally a butter knife that had been ground down and was chipped in places.

  The handle had been wrapped in the same dirty and stinky leather the goblin had wrapped around its tiny body. The knife didn’t even have a pointed tip, it was still the rounded shape of the actual butterknife it had originally been.

  I sat there staring at this thing that had so clearly been part of my world’s cutlery. Had it been scooped up and repurposed somehow?

  How long had I been unconscious that these things had been able to use our silverware to make weapons out of them? Was that even how it worked? A tooltip appeared as I was staring at the knife:

  Goblin Rat Sticker

  Common

  Crafting: Not Learned

  This basic butterknife has been turned into some sort of instrument of near destruction! Goblins are not the most industrious of critters but they sure are smelly!

  They have a tendency to steal anything that isn’t glued down and if they can’t eat it, break it, or catch it on fire they try to make weapons and armor out of it.

  They usually fail.

  This time the drawing was literally just a butterknife without the extra additions. Interesting. I decided I was going to keep it and tried to put it in my pocket but realized I didn’t have one.

  Before I could figure out some other way of transporting it when the item disappeared.

  “Damn,” I said. It must have finally teleported out and it had just been delayed.

  Goblin Rat Sticker added to inventory.

  Of course! The system had said something about an inventory menu but didn’t say how that would be opened or used in any way. I had figured out the hotbar to some degree but that wasn’t any help in navigating my inventory.

  The book was still on the pedestal and I went over to it. When I picked it up I was surprised that it was a lot heavier and more densely packed than it appeared, almost like it was made out of metal.

  The cover was old and worn but in an ‘old book’ kind of way that still felt solid. The front was ornate with pressed filigree swooping around an oval in the middle.

  The oval had a painted bust of what I was assuming was me. It was not a very flattering attempt at my features but I guessed that was what they were going for.

  My features were just a little off but not enough I didn’t recognize myself. There was no writing on the cover of the book at all. Before I could open it a description popped up:

  Book of Earthly Character

  This is YOUR book and no one else’s. You can show people the things inside it but only if you have it in your hands. It can be stored in your inventory but it cannot be USED while in your inventory.

  It must be opened and in one of your hands in order to be accessed.

  This book will log your progress, your statistics, your levels, basically anything you need to keep track of everything that will help you survive the games.

  If you leave the book someplace it will return to your inventory on its own. It will not go into someone else’s inventory and cannot be removed from your inventory by an outside force.

  “This AI thing is all over the place,” I said, surprised it wasn’t being snarky and weird.

  I noticed I was talking to myself a lot more than was typical since I had woken up. I’d always talked to myself out loud, but this was more than usual in an almost manic way.

  Whatever it took to make it through this.