Saoirse delicately plucked the snail off the table and flung it back out into the garden. Dekka and I both stared after it.

  “I think you should have killed it,” I told her as she sat back down. She raised her eyebrows at me. “That isn’t the first snail to take an interest in me,” I explained to her. “I don’t know what they are up to but Dekka seems to think they are a threat.” Dekka was sitting there calmly enough but her hackles were all raised , giving her a bristly appearance.

  “Have snails, is it just snails? Had an unusual interest in you.”

  “Just snails. That I have noticed.” I thought about that. If, say, earthwormsms were really interested in me, would I know?

  “Have they always found you so fascinating?”

  “No,” I thought back. “Now that you asked, I have only noticed them since my last reset.”

  “You mean the last time you died? Sorry if that is an awkward way to put it. I just want to be precise as I am going to make sure this is passed on.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I sighed. “It feels a bit like cheating to call it "death." I just end up floating in blackness with words in front of me." Though for all I know that is what death is like.

  “Hmm. Is there anything else that changed after this last reset?”

  “It’s weird. But I feel a bit different.” I wasn’t sure how to articulate it though. She waited as I did some self examination. “Well even this. Before, every life I went though I never really stopped to think. It was like I had this… pressure.. To keep going. To play the game. That it was somehow important to just… go. I had told myself that I was playing to get out of the game. But that makes no sense.”

  “When I woke up this time on the stones I didn’t feel in a hurry. When I spent time at Wendle’s cottage — he is the first NPC I meet and a really nice guy — I felt that if I wasn’t trying to meet up with Rose I could have just stayed and hung out. But the first time I didn’t even ask him questions. Like how weird is that? You wake up alone in the middle of an endless plain, nearly get eaten by six-eyed wolves and when you actually meet a person you don’t ask what the fuck is going on?” I looked at her hoping I was explaining myself well.

  She was nodding in understanding. “That does seem counterintuitive.”

  “And not only did I not ask questions, I didn’t think about my life much. Shouldn’t I have been really upset? Like who was paying my rent? Watering my plants? Would I lose my spot at university if I didn’t get back? And my boyfriend — I only briefly thought of him. But now.. Now .. Well it’s complicated. I can think of him more easily now, but I still don’t miss him. I remember being desperately in love with him. But now all I have is the memory of love, not the feeling itself.” I was starting to feel panicked again.

  “Hey, it’s OK.” Saoirse rested a hand on my knee. The pressure felt grounding. “So, things are different this round. Sounds like you are more yourself this time?”

  When she put it that way, it sounded like an improvement. Maybe focusing on how I felt more true to myself now was better than focusing on how I had felt so strange in retrospect. “Yeah, I feel more like me. Or I feel more like I think I should feel. Like I hated the game before but felt I had to play. Now I hate the game but could choose to not play it.”

  “Well, on that note, we have a plan.”

  “We?”

  “Rose and Aeven, mostly the latter, have a theory. First things first: What do you know of this actual game?”

  “Infinity Tale? Other than it sucks?” I smiled at her but she stayed serious. “I know it is supposed to be a game where you never run out of content. That there are endless storylines. But I have never left this one.”

  “Do you know about the continents?”

  “No.”

  “The game world is infinite in size. Each ‘continent’ has a series of interrelated storylines. This continent is called Onginnand. It is a sort of fantasy version of highly fictionalised medieval Europe. And it is one of the first storylines people can choose. Once you have done one of the started continents then it really branches out.”

  “Huh,” I said more because I didn’t have anything to add. Dekka dropped off the chair, bored, and went to lie in the sun in the garden. Possibly on guard for more snails.

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  “This continent is a bit different from the others.” Saoirse looked thoughtful for a moment, like she was choosing her words carefully. “You know a couple where the wife had an extreme reaction to an event in game?”

  “Oh you mean Pala-“

  “No! Don’t say their names. We think the game is looking for names of people who are pursuing… action… against FunCore. But yes, them. It seems that this continent and its stories are where the bulk of those actions are stemming from.” She let that sink in.

  “There is something weird about this section of the game. We aren’t sure how it connects to you. But it is too much of a coincidence.”

  I nodded. “There is a section of this land that I don’t think other players can see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So when you met up with Rose and I, I had just left an area that to me looked like a clear road but to Rose it was blocked. Oh and I had a horse and she wouldn’t go through that spot either.”

  “You had a mount?”

  “Yeah, I was so excited to not have to walk everywhere. Fast travel doesn’t work for me.” That last bit seemed to surprise her but she stuck with the horse information.

  “There aren’t mounts in the game.”

  “There aren’t dogs either.” I pointed out.

  She gazed out to where my dog was snoozing in a patch of grass in the afternoon sun. “True.” She contemplated this for a bit. “The horse you had. Was it a regular horse or a game horse?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many eyes did it have?”

  “Oh.” That was funny. Shamoly had had six eyes and I hadn’t even clocked it. The strange extra eyeballs had ceased being something that stood out. “Six.”

  “So not like your Dekka. How did you get the horse?”

  I grinned. “Robin Hood gave her to me.”

  Saiorse looked at me flatly. “No seriously she did. There was a Robin Hood storyline where she went by Robbie and was a woman. Though she was still into Maid Marion. And they were oddly communist.”

  She was shaking her head. “That makes no sense. Robin Hood does. But no one else has reported a Robin Hood storyline here. And we made a point of mapping out all the storylines, I will explain why in a bit. And communist makes no sense as that doesn’t fit with the medieval theme.”

  I just shrugged. It might not make sense but it happened. “We robbed the rich and redistributed the wealth back to the people who had generated it.”

  She tilted her head looking at me to see if I was somehow joking. When it was clear I meant what I said she asked, “Did you fight people?”

  “Yep. We fought royal guards. There was a big fight and then they absconded with Mary - Maid Marion. Here,” I pulled the letter from my inventory, “I said I wouldn’t read it. But this is a letter Robbie asked me to give Mary.”

  Saoirse took the letter from me. She opened it. I hadn’t made any promises about other people not reading it. Though I would feel better if she didn’t. Saoirse started to skim it and then a faint blush rose to her cheeks and she closed it. “That is clearly a personal message. But it was addressed to a Mary and signed by a Robbie.”

  “Why would I make this up?” I asked putting the letter back in my inventory.

  “To be fair, I don’t know you. Though I can’t see why you would make this up. It just doesn’t fit with how this game works. The game is incredibly cohesive to its themes.” She looked out at Dekka. “Though all of that seems to go out the window when it comes to you, You are one big anomaly in this game.”

  “The game calls me System Error when I text with others.”

  “Right,” she said as if we had been getting off track. “I need to log out soon but I want to tell you the plan. Though I will be back. Aeven has their suspicions that the game developer and his inner circle at FunCore are trying to find you. We don’t know why, or what they plan to do. But Aeven believes it is likely in your best interest not to be found, from what little they have gleaned.”

  “Since they can’t seem to see you in the system our thoughts are to get you off this continent. We are going to help you play the game through to the end of the main storyline here in Onginnand. With nearly an infinite number of other stories it will be much harder for them to find you. And Aeven hopes that once you leave this area that you won’t reset if you are killed.”

  “That would be amazing.” I said, enthusiastically.

  “And that brings me to, well, me. Your friends are off doing sidequests, like I mentioned. Aeven said they are working on something that will help them but I am not sure how. In the meantime I, and perhaps others — Rose and I are working on finding people already in game that we can trust — are going to help you essentially speed-run the main storyline.”

  I liked this person well enough but I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to play with my friends. I would even take Ayerelia right now. “I am curious. What happens if people have finished a part?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like the Letter to the Prince quest. We already helped him fight back the weta invasion. Do the weta keep invading every time someone does this storyline?”

  “No. Interestingly this game keeps the stories a little fluid. You will still have to meet the Prince, but he might be fighting something else. Or he could even be at home in the capital.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Oh shoot. I have the timer blinking in my HUD. I am going to log off. But you can stay here. Don’t leave Bistmore, I will be back as soon as I can. And don’t message your friends anything that could hint at where you are or what you are doing.” She thought a moment. “Actually don’t message your friends unless they message you first. That way you can’t give away that someone is pretending they are with you.”

  I didn’t like that but I nodded. It made sense.

  “Ok, I know this was a lot to take in. I am so sorry to dump this on you and leave.”

  “I am just happy to know more than I did before.”

  She opened her mouth but I don’t know what she was going to say. The game logged her out and she just froze a moment with her mouth open and her eyes in a weird half blink. Like when you pause a movie and the actor’s face looks all wonky in that moment. And then she was gone and I was alone in a strange kitchen.

  I had wanted answers. Somehow I had thought answers would make me feel better. They fucking didn’t.