"No, sir. No- No, I'm not sure why your-" I hit the mute button as the man cut me off for the hundredth time, "god damned-", then unmuted, "printer is offline."

  Crackling barks filled my cheap headset.

  "I'm breaking up? Sorry, it’s likely just the internet. I'll take a look from my side and call the onsite tech. You go ahead and grab some coffee and a bagel and we'll have you back to work in no time." He screamed at me again, and I replied, "Yes, sir. I understand it’s no longer breakfast. My apologies. Have a great Monday, sir," before hanging up.

  “Ass,” I muttered under my breath.

  I began clicking through the screens that would resolve yet another pathetic problem, a daily grind of IT experience that recently leveled me up to Senior IT, manager of nothing and no-one, which I preferred to be honest. My headset was already ringing in my ears with the repeating monotone bell decrying my next ‘you ruined my whole day’. I ignored it, letting it automatically transfer to reception.

  Draping my headset around my neck, I swiveled my stained office chair around and kicked the back of the chair behind me.

  “You on a call?” I asked Derrick, one of the other twenty-something year olds that worked in our small IT call center. He left his headset on but turned about, sandy brown hair falling out of his white ballcap, covering his eyes.

  He grinned and said, “Meh, muted. Waiting for them to figure out where their router is. Could be here all day.” He rapidly tugged the front of his Cannibal Corpse t-shirt to cool down his chest.

  The room was sweltering with nearly twenty workspaces and three servers running in a ten-by-thirty space. The heat didn’t bother me, or being cramped in. After eight long years in the Navy, I had grown to appreciate having everything at arms reach.

  At six-foot five, my arms could do some pretty good reaching, but my back was twisted like a question mark from hunching over all the time aboard ships and helicopters. Before, I had to keep a clean shaved face, so now I was growing out my beard. It was more red than I had expected, brighter than my own dark brown hair. It had finally started growing in thick enough to not look like a German Joe Dirt, framing my round cheeks and green eyes well. I still had a lot of muscle on me from years of PT, but my gut was starting to hang over my belt while sitting all day. I hated running, and gym people were frustrating at best. So, I traded all that out for gaming, beer, and the rest and relaxation I felt I was due.

  I asked Derrick, “You raiding tonight?” I was pretty excited, it was my night to get the mount, if it dropped—a ridiculous skeletal scarab that made an obnoxious amount of noise when moving about. A real head-turner in our favorite MMO. The drop rate sucked, so I doubted I would be riding it tonight, but I didn’t have anything else to look forward to.

  Derrick said, “Nah, man. I can’t believe we switched the first night to Mondays. I literally scheduled all my night classes around a Tuesday and Friday raid cycle. Tualimore fucked me, man. No shows get no credit, so no loot when I do show up.”

  He looked genuinely pissed, and I felt for the guy. Tualimore, the Guild Master, and not his real name, had said he couldn’t help it, too many other people wanted to move to Mondays. And so, we did.

  “Sorry, bro. We could find a new guild, back on Tuesdays and Fridays, maybe Saturdays? It's all the same to me, man.” And it really was. Every day was basically the same for me, except Saturday and Sunday, which was just an extension of my Monday through Friday night schedule. Play games, watch shows, hang out. Sometimes, I might venture out to join some friends at the bar or a show, but money was tight, and entertainment was cheap online. All in all, I really enjoyed my life, even if it seemed kind of slow.

  Besides, I had spent years going fast. Really fast—scary fast.

  Sailors traveled the world. Drank, fought, and swore. Marched and worked out. We sowed, ironed, and shined, just to fight fires, fight bad guys. Pirates, cartels, human-traffickers… For the last near-decade, I had dealt with it all. I was working hard, playing hard, and getting tattoos for all the stories along the way. That’s what a good sailor did, and I was great at it. The only reason I got out was a change in how the Navy operated. They wanted professional employees, and us “old guys”, ripe at the age of twenty-nine, had too much “old navy” left in us to succeed. The peace and war cycle, some of the lifers called it.

  So I got out, started working on a degree, and got into IT help desk, of all things. No more getting shot at, flying in sketchy aircraft, or sleeping on metal floors. Now, I spent my days rotating between pissed off white-collar jerks and godlike raid bosses, tanking bullshit and refilling my soul with beer potions. I was pretty good at the job, but every week my faith in humanity drifted further into oblivion.

  The day carried on as usual, all of us scrambling to get out of the door as soon as our last call was resolved. I was already standing, shoving papers in drawers and straightening my desk so I could hang up and leave. I was the last one out, but at a decent time. I realized I couldn’t just rush home for the raid, not yet. If I did, it was going to be nearly twenty-four hours without food, not feasible.

  I checked my wallet, making sure I had my card. Slightly reassured, I strolled to the store nearest the stop for the bus that would take me a mile down the road to my apartments. Forty-five minutes later, I had just missed the bus. Groceries in hand, shirt half-untucked, I truly felt like a loser as I watched it drive into the sunset.

  “Oh, fuck me.” I sighed as I slid onto the bench. It reeked of piss—incontinent homeless, or some shithead kids—fuck whoever did this to the rest of us. I realized I was in a terrible mood. Untangling my wrists from the bags, I stood up to stretch. It was probably another twenty minutes until the next bus, and likely the last. I didn’t think I was screwed enough to have already missed them all, though.

  As I doubled over, sucking in my belly as I attempted to touch my toes, a rustle in a nearby bush sent me back up too quickly. Blood rushed to my head, making me woozy.

  Through the little black dots swimming around my vision, I watched the gnarliest, scraggliest son of a bitch—quite literally—limp over to my side. The dog was the mutt of mutts, a hybrid of hybrids. Raised in the gutters and destined to die in an alley. His brown and grey fur was like a bristle pad, rough and coarse, filthy with fleas, but a tail that wagged like a metronome. One ear was flopped over, the other perked up straight.

  “Good boy,” I said cautiously as he approached.

  He whimpered at me, breaking my heart.

  “Jeez, you’re a mess.”

  There was no way I was taking this ball of dirt home, but I couldn’t leave him hanging. I reached into my groceries and pulled out a bagel. I only bought them because the comment I made earlier was burning me up as I pushed my dumb shopping cart around the store.

  “I don’t think bread’s good for dogs, but I don’t think starving is, either. Sorry buddy, the meat’s for me.” The few slices of deli ham I had purchased were for my lunches. I had a heart, but I also had a stomach.

  I cautiously reached out with a bit of the bagel, nervous that the thing might aggressively snap at the food and grab my fingers. The little mud prince stole it with grace, gently reaching out with his forward teeth, never touching my skin.

  “Huh, aren’t you something. You must have been someone’s pet. Are you lost buddy?”

  I wanted to scratch his head, but the matted lump on his neck looked dubious at best, with brown sediment of who-knows-what holding it all together. This guy needed a bath. A dish soap and hose bath.

  “Man, I wish I could take you on the bus, but they aren’t going to let that happen. And I doubt you’re going to walk a mile with me on your own will. I guess it’s good luck, little friend. Not much I can do here, for you or myself. Besides, it's raid night, I can’t be dealing with all of this.”

  I realized my voice had been growing in volume as a garbage truck clanged down the road towards us. The next few seconds seemed to take an eternity. The dog, excited by the truck hitting a pothole with a heroic thud, tried to bolt across the road—right into the path of the fifteen-ton filth bucket. I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed the dog’s tail with everything I had, hoping to keep the little shit from turning into half-breed stew.

  The alley dog was stronger than he looked. I was pulled off balance, and when I stepped out to ground myself, I rolled my ankle on the god-damned curb. Honestly, I’m not sure if I even felt the pain. Everything went black and I sensed an incredible pressure on my neck. I thought my eyes were going to blow out of my sockets from the force, and I’m pretty sure I started to choke.

  The last thing I heard, distinctly, were two men singing La Bamba out of the windows—oblivious. I’m pretty sure I died right there in that street, grocery bags fluttering in the wind on the bench of the bus stop.

  Flashing scenes of pink and yellow seemed to melt into each other, each eye registering its own nightmare version of the 1990’s 3D glasses, with hard contrasting lines where shadows would normally blend soft greys together. Incredible chest pains followed by floods of scary thoughts, continuously capped down by screaming sirens. Bolts of lightning flashed throughout my body, stars swirled, and balloons filled and popped all around me. After the last round of defibrillation, rectangular lights flashed overhead, what I could only assume was the emergency room’s hallway.

  I had a chance.

  I remember thinking about how it was raid night, my night for the scarab mount, and feeling hassled that I was going to be stuck in the hospital. It's wild where the mind goes to escape dealing with death.

  At some point, a gang of nurses, doctors, police, and firefighters stood talking. I could only make out snippets of what they said, and it was not making me feel optimistic. My eyes kept losing focus, malfunctioning, but my ears picked up parts of the conversations.

  “No, no, no,” I heard a midwestern accent say, “Doc, listen, he did die. Like, four or five times. I’ve never seen anything like it. There can’t be a drop of blood left in him, ‘cept for what the guys’ve been pumpin' into him.”

  Another voice, southern, said, “His neck was flat—like, turtle hit by a semi-flat. Damned bus driver what found ‘em done been traumatized.”

  “...face like a dang plumb…”

  “...no family came.”

  The voices were getting shorter, quieter. Like I was steadily moving further away. I was dying, and there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Yet, panic didn’t come. I was just so tired. It didn’t feel like giving up—I just needed to rest. I let it all fade away, it was someone else’s problem now. What I assumed was death came quietly.

  I regained some semblance of consciousness a time later. My first thought was of the incredible itch on my forehead, enough to rouse me, driving me crazy. My second thought, nearly simultaneous, was of surprise that I wasn’t in more pain. I tried to scratch my face, but it seemed like they had me strapped to the bed. Perhaps I was convulsing in my sleep?

  I must be on some ridiculous meds.

  My tongue could feel tubes, but only the pressure, the rest was numb. As I began to register my surroundings, I heard beeps, ventilators pumping, monitors ticking, liquids flowing. I tried to turn my head to see how many different things I was hooked up to, but it wouldn’t move.

  Is my fucking head strapped in? What the actual fuck?

  The memory of the dog jumping in front of the garbage truck rolled in like fog, slow and opaque. “Oh, no. Abso-fucking-lutely no,” I tried to choke out. My ears registered the unintelligible slop that fell out of my mouth. I tried to scream, but the tubes filling my lungs with oxygen did not respond.

  Muscles failed to act as I attempted to roll to my side. I couldn’t feel my feet, my hands, anything. It dawned on me. I was trapped in my own body. The monitors around me began to go wild, the beeps turning to alarms. I heard a stampede coming down the hallway, but I passed out before I ever saw a soul.

  I awoke, again, but this time I was propped up with a pillow. My hospital bed was bent up at fourty-five degrees, and I didn’t know why or when it was changed. My thoughts started to spiral into panic, but I was stopped by a knock at the door. Information, the fix, a surgery, something. The person who came through that door had to know.

  I couldn’t answer the knock, so I patiently waited.

  A doctor entered, followed by a nurse in a slightly unprofessional outfit, like she might have gotten it from a party store instead of… wherever nurses bought their clothes. The scrubs were extremely tight, a deep V-neck exposing an exciting amount of cleavage. She smiled, black hair in large curls bouncing as she walked to the window and dropped the blinds. She rolled them closed, then slid a chair against the door. When she sat, an instinct kicked in, a primal urge between fight and flight.

  I jumped up.

  Well, I tried to jump up. I thought about jumping up as hard as my neurons would pulse, but nothing happened. I think I might have drooled on myself for the effort.

  The man smiled, blinking slowly, drawing my attention to his eyes.

  Each had two pupils, situated next to one another, exchanging which was in the center. I wasn’t certain, but it felt like one was examining me as you or I would, normal sight. But the other pupils… They cut through me. I could feel them, pushing through my skin. It was as if I was being x-rayed, but it was tuned in some fucked up way that ensured I knew it was tearing apart my cells.

  I felt exposed. No, I knew I was exposed—that primal instinct that flared when you were out in the open when you knew predators were about.

  “What the fuck are you?!” I shouted. It came out, “Wuferfu-aa-oo” as the tubes pinched my uvula into my sinuses.

  He tried placating me as the monitors began to elevate from happy-yellow to angry-yellow, a shushing motion that pushed my blood pressure into the red and my oxygen plummeting as I squeezed all thirty-five remaining muscles I had control over.

  “Dear me, Mr. Ainsley, please calm down. I promise I am here to help, perhaps your last chance. It's not looking good, oh no, it truly isn’t.” The asshole sounded like a mix between a therapist and The Price is Right. “But fret not, friend, as we’ve got just the thing. Are you ready to show us what Humanity is made of?”

  He asked with a genuine smile and tone, and I almost tried to answer before remembering it would be in vain. Instead, a moment of awkward intensity passed as we locked eyes, staring deep into each other’s souls. Then that son of a bitch whipped out a printed document, a few pages with a whole mess of 0.1 font that only a microscope could possibly read. At the bottom, my name was to the left of a hard horizontal line.

  He shoved a pen into my just-about-dead hand and wiggled the paper against it. I was almost impressed, the signature looked fairly similar to my own, but if I could strangle him, I would have.

  He handed the paper to the nurse as she rose from the seat, moving the chair back to its rightful place and raising the blinds, letting in the sunlight. It was blinding, painful, and I couldn’t turn my head away.

  The man turned back to me and said, “Well, then, much to do. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

  The nurse stepped up to my IV. From my angled position, I could see everything. She pulled out a tiny needle from her cleavage, wiping the sharp end on her scrubs and squirting a bit of a rainbow-hued, oily substance into the air. If looks could kill… nothing would have happened. My face was about as useless as the rest of my body. I was paralyzed beyond the point of helping myself in any way.

  And here I was, about to be injected with what I could only assume was diesel fuel from a used needle. I had survived having my neck completely flattened by a damned garbage truck, and I was likely about to die to some sadistic couple wearing contacts.

  “Well, let’s fucking do it,” I mumbled into my tubes. It took about two seconds for the fluid to reach my body, sending me into what I can only describe as the scariest acid trip any human has ever taken.

  This is my story.

  “...TIONAL SUPPRESSION COMPLETE :: User Control Granted”

  I awoke for what must have been the hundredth time in the same hospital bed that I had been in since arriving at the ER. The monitors were finally stable, but I could tell I was still completely paralyzed. I tried to sort through everything that had happened, but my attempts at creeping into the memories seemed to stun-locked me. It was like there was a wall in my brain, preventing me from reliving the event, from thinking about my new situation.

  “DNA SCAN COMPLETE :: Server A.P.I. Controllers Refactoring”

  A voice, like one of those female SciFi robots on TV, compressed and with heavy reverb, spoke over the PA System. Or the… speakers? I didn’t see any speakers. From the monitors, perhaps.

  “MEMORY SYNC COMPLETE :: Server Version Control and Branching Strategy Online and Scheduled.”

  It was a quiet, calming voice, but it was driving up my anxiety. The words didn’t make sense. Well, they did, but it wasn’t how people spoke. It was like I was listening to the logs from the servers at the office.

  Great, I died and went to hell. I wasn’t even surprised that it was just more IT work. If anything, it made sense. The voice seemed to be overlaid atop the rest of the sounds in the room, calling out line after line of completed procedures. I wanted to laugh, or maybe to cry. I was losing my mind.

  “CHEMISTRY CACHING COMPLETE :: Server is now bootstrapped and initiated. Press any key to continue…”

  I heard a mechanical keyboard snap what must have been the enter key. But the sound gave me reference, and I realized the voice before had been in my head. I guessed I was here for the ride—stuck. My nightmares could get wild, and sometimes the only way out was through. I was either in one now, dead and in hell, or bat-shit crazy.

  Just out of my sight, the person operating the keyboard spoke aloud, shocking my nerves. The voice was wet, slobbery and sloppy. “Alright, the server is ready and the client is installed. I can’t believe he’s the first.” My chair began to slowly rotate, a mechanical whir barely reaching my ears. As she came into view, I noted her to be the black-haired nurse from before.

  The multi-pupiled doctor responded, “I can’t believe he’s the last. Let’s get this over with and get home. We’ve been out here in the middle-of-nowhere Milky Way for years. No wonder these monkeys thought they were alone in the Universe.”

  The nurse giggled and asked, “Have you listened to their religions?”

  “Don’t get me started,” he said, moving an arm over what must be his stomach, “Monotheists… I've had enough indigestion already.” I wondered what that could mean, but clearly it wasn’t my turn for questions.

  The nurse moved off to the side as a giant spotlight clanked on, highlighting both the doctor and me. She looked at him, holding up three fingers and whispered, “Live in three. Two. One.” She pointed to the doctor.

  In his game-show voice, the doctor looked to a space behind me and said, “Pretty amazing stuff, huh folks? When I first saw that video, I was blown. A. Way! Now, this four part system, as you just saw, has been tested and vetted through all three-hundred stages of the Intergalactic Food and Drug Administration, and now, we get to see it in action. That’s right folks, the first successful Human Harness, may I introduce to you Mr. Zachary Ainsley!”

  In my sterile hospital room, there were no cameras, no crowd, but the light seemed to intensify on me as an unbearably loud applause began to thunder through the room. The heat from the spotlight was burning my eyes, and the lady’s voice in my head kept saying odd things, like systems rebooting and uploads completing. I was struggling to take it all in, to make any sense of it.

  “Thank you, thank you! That’s right! The Server,” the doctor called out as the ‘audience’ died down, “is made on actual hydrogen nebula cloud technology. Never fear data loss or outages when billion-cubed-mile clouds of cosmic dust safeguard your… Well, your ‘YOU’! This cloud backup of the essential componentry that composes your mind and body is the foundation of our MediDrone and SpawnTech intellectual properties!” He was still announcing all of this like a damned infomercial. I just knew I was drooling again.

  “The Client, once successfully installed into the center of sentience of any species, acts as the central intelligence platform and user experience for all Harness users. Loaded with copious artificial intelligence assistants, neural heads-up-displays, and transceivers of every form to get all that data back to the server, the state of your existence will always be captured and ready to get right back to at any time!” He paused and spread his hands in arch overhead. I just knew they were overlaying some kind of graphic when he said, “Harness immortality!”

  The nurse wheeled over a cart with a tray, microscope, and camera all mounted to it, and a green light turned on, which I assume indicated a switch of camera feeds. Were they filming a commercial?

  The damn voice in my head was starting to speak faster and faster, rattling off system file paths then going, “Dot dot dot. Success!” over and over, often multiple instances talking at the same time. Behind the voice, I could just barely make out the doctor’s words.

  “These incredible nanobots carry a complex payload of signal cells and biological reconstruction materials. That’s fancy talk for, ‘rebuilds your body!’” The fake applause roared again, complete with whistles and hollering.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He continued, “And if the MediDrone swarm can’t reach you in time, worry not friends. With your complete backup on the Server, the SpawnTech Technology will get right to work, piecing you back together atom by atom. With a quick flash of the ol’ firmware, you’ll be a living, breathing being yet again.”

  He reached down and grabbed a small stack of flashcards from a shelf under the cart and began speed reading a long list of side-effects and legal jargon. Between the system updates ringing in my head and his quick-speech, I couldn’t make out a thing.

  “CLIENT FIRMWARE FLASH COMPLETE :: Error 19.8.8. Success!”

  That last line caught my attention.

  Error? What did it say? One, nine, eight, eight. Then ‘success’? What does that even mean?

  “And now ladies, gentlemen, slimes, reptiles, and viewers across the universe. We believe we have here the first human to have successfully donned,” he paused for dramatic effect, then with as much flair as he could muster, announced, “The Harness!”

  “Ancient technology that has been replicated and safeguarded by The Xiamiti Corporation, The Harness is not only civilization's last hope to beat back the darkness that creeps from the corners of the universe, it's also the only all-in-one multitool of perfect health and immortality. That’s right, folks! You, too, could live forever. And now, with the addition of the Human Harness, we hope to expand our offerings to our fleshy friends who’ve been left out for the last millenia.

  “Joining us here today is a one Mr. Zachary B. Ainsley, give it up for him, will ya?” The fake crowd roared, confetti raining from somewhere above, covering my limp body in the hospital bed. The walls fell down, like one of those stupid prank shows from MTV. I wasn’t at the hospital anymore, I was somewhere… else. Through a distant bay window, I could just barely make out a blue and green ball floating alone in a black field covered in white dots.

  Sleek steel walls and polished surfaces stretched out, tubes reaching out through the floor to canisters the size of tennis ball packs, neatly arrayed around the outskirts. I couldn’t see most of the room, propped up and frozen in my bed. There was nothing I could do. The doctor stood in front of me, smiling.

  “With the Client and Server synchronized, we may begin our first live demonstration of the regeneration abilities these amazing MediDrones carry. Mr. Ainsley was a regular ol’ Intergalactic Citizen, minding his business, even helping out the lesser intelligence of his community. No different than you or I, he was capable. But misfortune struck. He was left paralyzed, broken in the street. But now, with the Harness and MediDrone technology, brought to you by the Xiamiti Corporation, we shall give him life anew. Let us begin!”

  At first, nothing happened. The nurse clicked away on her mechanical keyboard, echoing through the large chamber. The pipes that lead through the floor began to buzz and I heard a metal clinking sound in the canisters, like they were feeding lead beads into them. The clinks accelerated, growing louder, then quieter, then abruptly silent. My eyes sluggishly rolled left to right, trying to understand what was about to come next.

  One by one, the canisters popped open and a black miasma swarmed out of them. They cleared the thirty-foot distance to my bed in a blink. If I could move, there was no chance I would have been fast enough to get out of the way. The swarm of black sand covered my entire face, moving into my tear ducts, under my eyelids, back into my head. They filled my ears, my mouth. My vision flickered, my hearing turned into static like a changing radio. I could feel them vibrating the inner structures of my head.

  The little bastards entered my body through every hole, cut, and orifice they could find. I could feel the pressure building inside of me, but there was no pain, or any sensation except the thrumming of their passage—yet.

  “When the Harnessed user is injured, the MediDrone canisters carried on their person, in a nearby vehicle, or on the backs of their servants, will expel the little healers, rebuilding the very structure of the damaged cells and creating new ones where lost. The cute buggers will even put fresh food in your belly—how ‘bout that?!”

  The System Voice in my head was going wild again, listing out all the organs it was turning off, repairing, and rebooting. I was being used like a live tech demo. Then, something horrible happened. In any other situation, this would have been the only thing I would have wanted, but not when I had what seemed to be a trillion little bugs stuffing my entire body to capacity. They repaired my spine, my nerves, my sense of feeling. And all at once, I felt everything.

  I immediately started gagging, the tubes stuffed into my lungs registering against my gag reflex. I felt fire throughout my entire body, millions of tiny needles stabbing me from the inside. I felt my consciousness slipping as shock set in.

  The doctor leaned in and whispered, as if to not be heard on camera, “Stay with us, Mr. Ainsley. You are the last of the Earth Humans we are allowed to test.” Back to the unseen cameras, the man said, "Experiment eight million, eight thousand, one hundred and thirty five! That’s right, folks, Mr. Ainsley is the last of the Earthlings we will be checking. According to International Restoration Research Law, we may only test up to one one-thousandth of a population! You’re a real lucky guy, Zach.”

  The doctor continued to announce the procedure, but it was all I could do to hang on, to block out the voice rattling off ‘Success’ and ‘Complete’ in my head, to not scratch this fucking itch on my forehead.

  As I lay there, face full of alien technology, cameras rolling on my de-paralyzed body, all I could think about was how happy I was going to be when this was over and I could finally strangle the bastard. I could see the drones begin to leave my body, the black cloud dividing and retreating back to their original canisters. I could flex my muscles, but I was exhausted. I could feel, but pain shuddered up and down my body. I was whole again, but sleep overcame me.

  “COMMENCING HIBERNATION SEQUENCE :: …”

  “... THE FUCKING MENU, CHAMP! You gotta GET. UP!”

  I awoke in total darkness, a man’s voice screaming orders at me. Not like the drill instructors from boot camp, but like my high school football coach during a close game. I was still in my hospital bed, angled up at fourty-five degrees, soft pillow to support my lumbar.

  “Zach, buddy, I’m pleading with you. WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR MENU!”

  I flexed my hands, my fingers tight but moving. My toes wiggled freely, and I was able to move my head from side to side. I siddled over the edge of the bed and carefully stood up in the pitch black. I had no idea where I was, and looking around revealed no additional clues.

  “Alright! You’re up. Good start, but-”

  A deafening roar shook the room. It was like a lion and a helicopter, amplified through a tuba, a landslide straight into my ears. I doubled over and covered them, worried I would go deaf.

  Equally timed thuds boomed across the room, rows of massive industrial lights going from black hole to sun in an instant. I stood up, no longer covering my ears, jaw hanging loose as I saw the sterile rectangular room stretch for half a mile. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a soft grey with what looked like hovering square tiles showing a perfect grid.

  From that grid, foliage began to sprout up. A holographic jungle, complete with vines and thickets, hardened into existence. I could hear running water, like a river beyond the walls, unreachable. The ground remained the same tiled grey, but on it, grass and detritus formed. The transformed chamber was roughly three-hundred feet wide, about a football field. The canopy of the trees stretched to the ceiling, and ambient wildlife sounds began to fill the room.

  At the far end, I could see movement, a giant shadow pouncing through the jungle, zig-zagging toward me. The trees swayed as it passed, closing half the distance in just a few seconds. Orange and black flashes streaked behind the trees as it encircled me. I froze.

  The unseen man continued to shout at me. “You’ve GOT to get that menu open, kid! You’ve got ten points to drain, and if you don’t pick something quick, that big old bitch will be on you in no-”

  I started scrambling to find a computer, a tablet, anything with a menu. “What fucking menu?!” I was yelling over top of him, but it was too late.

  Fire erupted across my torso. I looked down to see blood pouring out of me by the bucket. Four horrendous claws slowly retracted through my chest and belly, and I watched my intestines begin to drain onto the ground. I noticed the blood seemed to hover over the tile, pooling on the grid through my vignetted vision. Then the world went black.

  “RESPAWN PROTOCOL COMPLETE :: User Control Granted”

  I blinked and started to lose my balance. I was standing in some kind of vertical, padded cradle mounted to the wall. Roughly fifty feet in front of me was the bed I had just been laying in. It was surreal, sitting clean and white in the green and brown jungle. To my right, the back wall of the chamber wasn’t far off. A snarl made me snap my head to the left.

  “MENU! Don’t let that thing learn your Spawner is a human pellet feeder. You better get your HUD online and get your skills locked in. Let’s go! Double time!”

  The twelve-foot tiger looked up from pawing at my corpse and immediately crouched low, a predator's stance that would normally give it cover. Here, it stuck out like an orange-striped boulder in the road. A boulder that was ready to jump and slice me to pieces. Its six-foot long tail jerked about in anticipation.

  “How? How?!” I yelled to the voice I realized was in my head. “What fucking menu?”

  “Just… think about a menu! Do it fast!”

  The tiger pounced, sailing through the air.

  It finally clicked for me, I realized what I had to do.

  A giant menu flashed over my vision, everything coming to an instant stop. The background was a plain dark-grey overlay, transparent enough to see the tiger’s eighteen-inch fangs dripping drool a few feet from my face. It was frozen mid-air, suspended like I had hit the pause button. I realized I, too, was frozen. I could pan my vision like moving my eyes, but only slightly, and there was a slow dragging effect like a camera was slowly transitioning against a parallax.

  “You did it! Kind of. Do NOT close this menu. If you do, it's going to be a hell of a time getting you off that Spawner without sliding down the beast's throat. When you’re in your menu, time stops. Only here in the simulation though. You won’t get off that easy in the real world.”

  “Who are… what the fuck are you?” I asked, though the sound wasn’t made.

  The man’s voice—I decided to call it Coach—responded, “Did you not read the contract? It’s all in there, man.”

  “Contract?” I asked, “That piece of paper tha-”

  “Listen, now ain’t the time,” Coach said with a frustrated laugh. “We gotta get you through this tutorial. You’re the first human to make it this far, and your extended cousins throughout the universe are going nuts. Pretty impressive, but that won’t mean shit if you fail to get through this part in under ten respawns.”

  “Ten what?”

  Coach responded with his own questions, “Respawns? You don’t know what a respawn is?”

  “Like… in video games?”

  “Exactly,” Coach said. “The score is zero and two, but the other team needs to get ten to win and you only need one.”

  “Two?” I asked.

  “Right… First one really wasn’t your fault. Something malfunctioned while loading you in and your body melted. Your MediDrones tried to piece you back together, but once they were all spent, they decided to just respawn and drag you back to the hospital bed. More dramatic way to wake up, I S’pose.”

  I looked beyond the menu again. The other team was a fucking twelve-foot tiger with freakishly large teeth. I was scared, mostly naked, and dealing with what I hoped was a schizophrenic breakdown. How was I going to ‘win’? Win what?

  I finally asked, “Why ten?”

  “‘Cause this shit ain’t cheap, kid,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I dumbly stared at the menu, not taking anything in. All of this was fucked, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  “Alright, let’s get to it. While you're not on a timer in here, it's not helping to just space out. Your Harness currently has ten points that you can allot to yourself, building out additional core memories as if you had known how to do it all along. Some of these skills are pretty mundane, like survival skills and the like, while others are downright miraculous, allowing you to do things no human has ever accomplished.”

  My mind reeled with the non-sense I was hearing. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just went along with it. If this was a dream, I didn’t seem to be waking up.

  “The only way out is through.” I said to myself.

  “Uh, yeah, sure. That’s the spirit,” Coach said. I realized he could hear my thoughts, at least while the menu was open.

  I asked, “How do I get more points?”

  “Not now, Zachy boy. We can cover all of that later. First, we need to get you through this. Look for the Skills tab and move into the sub-menu. I won’t know what we’re working with until you reveal it. The Harness is translating all this stuff—the words, the icons—even the layout’s gonna be based on stuff you already know. It reads from your memory sync. The Server knows you better than you know yourself, and usually does a damn good job piecing together something user friendly.”

  I moved to the Skills tab and asked, “Are you not speaking English?”

  “Oh, no, I am. But these menus and everything around you aren’t. Earth is one of the furthest planets from the Bio-Ring. It’s honestly pretty wild that you all survived out here, what with The Chaotic and all. Again, we’re focused on the wrong things. Look, when you drop this menu, we need to have a plan in place or your ass is tiger kibble.”

  The screen loaded and I nearly laughed.

  The Skills menu was, in fact, very similar to something I was ‘experienced’ with. In front of me stretched a massive 3D network of nodes connected by lines. Large, randomly scattered areas of the network were colored in with a pleasing green, while other areas were marked with a distasteful red, but most of the network was greyed out.

  I had played hundreds of hours of Path of Exile, a game notorious for having a sprawling, hard to understand Skill Tree. In the game, a 2D web spread across a map, lines connecting nodes representing the path to acquire deeper, better skills. Here in the menu attached to my eyes, it was similar, but the seemingly infinite ‘tree’ included every activity a person, or maybe any species, could partake in. There was no way I was ever going to find anything useful without digging for hours, maybe days..

  “Deep breath, champ,” Coach reassured. “It looks like a lot, but you’ll find it's really well organized. Well, as much as billions of things can be organized in a 3D space. If you humans could deal with higher dimensions, this problem gets sorted pretty easily, but let’s not focus on what you’re lacking. Let’s get to what you are good at—versatility!”

  As he talked, the menu started to filter down. I assumed Coach was able to work the menus, at least to some degree.

  “When it comes to combat, you’ve got three main options: Melee, Miracles, and Ranged. I suggest you go with Rang-”

  As the three root paths showed themselves, I ‘clicked’ on the Melee option to get more information. Across my vision, a notification bar popped up that said, “Melee Harness Path”, and a quick video played that showed various species of creatures using weapons of all shapes and sizes. The montage was so fast, I could barely keep up.

  “SELECTION SYNC COMPLETE :: Melee path now unlocked”

  The voice I was now calling System confirmed what I had just done.

  “God, damn it,” I muttered.

  “What the fuck, man?!” Coach sounded pissed, which kind of took me by surprise. “I was gonna say, ‘I recommend Ranged’ because Miracles usually benefit the most from additional modules, and Melee tends to be dangerous until you are synced to higher levels. None of which you probably understand, because you didn’t give me-”

  “Okay,” I interrupted. “I get it, this isn’t that special. I was trying to read the tooltip. What the fuck is going on?”

  “‘What the fuck is going on’ is that you are about to have to fight a giant tiger mono e mono. You threw the game, rookie!” I swore I could hear a clipboard being thrown at the ground in the background, but maybe my own mind added that in.

  Some huffing and a sigh, and Coach began talking again. “Listen. That wasn’t me. That’s not who I am. You deserve better than that. Let’s get our heads in the game. We got nine skill points to put in. Let me think.” Coach went silent and I figured out how to ‘hover’, or what I considered to be hovering, rather than clicking.

  Two skills stood out. If I had to classify them, I would put them under the Tank category. Barrier was the first node on the left most melee path. If I spent six more points, I could pick up twenty percent more constitution and grab Retreat.

  “Coach, what’s Constitution? Health, right?”

  It took a moment to respond, but the voice in my head seemed to realize I was referring to him as Coach. “Oh, yeah, right. Yes, Constitution is health, ability to take a hit, resistance to various forms of damage, and of course, required for a lot of the skills that will help you get through tough combat.”

  I asked, “How does that work?”

  “Magnets, ions. Hell, I don’t know, kid. I’m tuned for tactics and tutorials. Now, what you’re looking at there might do fine. You gotta make some space. Going in face-first won’t work—flanking or getting under her will be important. Get behind cover, but remember—she can reach around a tree.”

  I hovered over Retreat before clicking. When I did, I saw a red ‘“-6” scroll below a number I now knew represented my current skill points. I had no fucking clue what was going on, but I wasn’t about to stop trying to get myself out of this.

  A new voice cut in—bright, polished, the kind of voice that belonged on late-night game shows where everyone pretends to care about a toaster oven. It didn’t describe what I was seeing so much as sell it, like it was unveiling a brand-new sedan on stage.

  “Ding-ding-ding! Congratulations. You’ve just unlocked your very first Ability Node!”

  The menu shuddered, then blossomed outward. A lattice of glowing lines and particle effects stretched in every direction, billions of tiny constellations fading off into the horizon. A congratulatory flashbang, great. I really hoped that wouldn’t happen every time I chose a skill.

  “Barrier unlocked! Keep your enemies at bay with a ten-by-six-by-one wall of whatever you’re standing on. Stone, steel, hardwood, or questionable hospital tile—your enemies will hate it, and your face will thank you!

  “Retreat unlocked! Escape from danger - Fast! Sends the user backwards exactly thirty-feet, phase-shifting you out of harm's way. Caution, this skill does not take environmental factors into account.”

  That last part sounded worrying, but I would have to figure that out later. I had three points left and a semblance of a plan forming. I looked at another melee path further to the right, hovering over a few of the skills. Hatchets, daggers, sword and shield, and several other weapons I couldn’t begin to describe or pronounce all looked like pretty lousy skills.

  One stood out as providing the actual weapon, which might help if I only had a split second. The skill was going to cost my last three points, but the path beyond looked promising.

  Panicking, with no better ideas, I spent my final skill points.

  “Samurai: Like all great warrior cultures, the fierce Samurai of Japan eventually became lazy poets, but not before setting the standard on how to kick some serious ass. Your skills with the…”

  A secondary menu popped up over the skill tree, showing a series of swords, spears, and throwing devices. I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I looked at the tiger through the transparent background, and boldly selected the massive two-handed katana. It was the only weapon that looked like I would have any chance of using correctly while keeping a bit of distance.

  “... the ōdachi have been honed over years in the Xiamiti Dojo. Now, it is time to test your mettle in true combat.”

  With my skills spent, I moved into the Inventory tab. There it was, the large two-handed katana. I hovered it, and it listed some simple stats.

  “Uh, Coach. What’s all this mean?”

  “It means you’re going to have to kill that tiger with a katana. Kid, I can’t lie to ya, it’s not looking great. We’re gonna need a hail-mary.” I could feel Coach’s anxiety bleeding through to my own emotions.

  “Yeah, I get it. Look, how do I use these? The sword, the skills?”

  “Just grab the sword. Like you would with your hand, but in the menu. The Client’s inventory module will signal the Server, which will phase-shift the weapon to you.”

  So that’s what I did. I could only explain it as pretending to grab. My arms stayed frozen in time beneath the background of the menu, but then I saw it. The ōdachi more-or-less popped into existence in my grip, my fingers instantly changing positions. The inventory slot was now greyed out like the others. There was a lot of information to take in around the screen, but now didn’t feel like the time.

  “What about the skills?”

  “Skills are little more… free-form. When you drop the menu, you can raise that Barrier just by willing it. Like, imagine it happening. Maybe move your hand or something so your mind really gets ‘into the mood’. You’ve got to quickly learn how to ‘know’ you can do things. And I mean it as I said it. You’ve got to ‘know’ you can do it, and then just do it.

  “Now, that little bit of added Constitution is great, but it’s not going to stop those claws from ripping you apart again. Alright, champ. Show us what you got.”

  I took a deep breath, or whatever the hell it was while in the menu, maybe just the thought of a deep breath. All of this was ridiculous, and I was as annoyed as I was scared, which is to say a shit ton of both.

  I gathered my thoughts, went through the steps in order, and prepared to drop the menu. I knew that the moment I did, I would need to make a few things happen almost all at once. Failure to do so was going to put me into a bad situation—the tiger would be standing directly in front of the spawner.

  The menu screen sucked down to the bottom right like some Windows 98 screen animation. I quickly pulled up at the ground in front of me as if I were some kind of earth bender and shouted, “Barrier!” The ground didn’t shake, there was no noise. A wall the size of a fence panel made of the same polished steel below my feet was just… there.

  The tiger’s jaw was slammed shut as it crashed against the panel. Claws sliding against metal rang out in discord against the beast's whelp of frustration. The sounds made me flinch, and the weight of the sword nearly dragged me to my ass. The massive tiger peered over the wall, and I realized I was completely fucked. It easily moved atop and over the shield, slowly moving its fangs toward me.

  I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I imagined myself teleporting backwards. Retreat activated. My body was immediately compressed, extreme temperatures reached as the whole of my mass was stuffed into the space between the steel molecules of the floor. The world went black before I experienced anything, the katana skipping across the floor like broken physics in a game.

  The tiger chased the sword, its tail flicking in agitation as my new body dumped out of the respawn bed. I immediately darted forward, tangential to the tiger in a flank in hopes to drag it away from the respawner. If it killed me again, or whatever the fuck was happening, I could hopefully get back to the sword and try to figure something else out.

  I darted into the jungle, praying that it wasn’t full of bugs or animals, or whatever the fuck they put in this thing. I wasn’t even sure if it was real, but when my foot snagged a root and I slammed my face into a tree, I knew immediately that all bets were off. I scampered deeper into the trees and began to scream, at first trying to taunt the tiger, but the stress bottled up inside was exploding out. I was running through a jungle, screaming like a banshee, butt-naked except for my hospital gown.

  The tiger was chasing and catching up fast, black and orange stripes flashing between the trees and vines. I ran to the base of a large tree, climbing under the roots, hopeful to tangle the tiger. The grey tile floor beneath my knees was surreal as the earthy smell of moist soil and roots, wet and rough to the touch, bent my reality like a half-finished level.

  The tiger slammed into the tree, the roots holding it upright even though they faded out of vision through the hovering tile grid. A great paw raked through the undergrowth, clearing out the lesser roots and opening a larger hole for the tiger to claw at me. Kicking at the extended razors proved just how real they were, curved scimitars that scarred the grid as they were dragged back.

  I scurried out from under the roots and tried to run, making it almost a hundred feet before the tiger was upon me. The pain was immense but short lived, unbearable for a single registry in the mind before everything went black. I didn’t even know how it killed me this time.

  I was spit out of the respawner yet again, something like six or seven respawns left. Fuck that, I wasn’t going to die over and over to some shit head cat. I always hated cats, and now it made sense.

  “RESPAWN PROTOCOL COMPLETE :: User Control Granted

  “Error 8675 :: Corrupted Respawn :: Running Asynchronous Repair Protocols :: Systems affected: Unknown”

  Well that was fucking ominous. The voices in my head seemed to just go off at their own will, based on things I couldn’t control. I didn’t know what asshole built the user experience to have the system logs constantly read out loud, but I hoped to find a setting or something to shut it up.

  I bolted towards my sword with everything I had. I didn’t see it, but I knew the general area it had been. The tiger sensed me, but was currently snacking on my latest corpse. I quickly found the massive curved blade and picked it up. I wanted to do some practice swings to get a feel for it, see how hard this was going to be.

  The thing sliced through the air five times in under a second, like it had a mind of its own that moved my arms with it. I had no clue how I did it, and was more than a little surprised. I probably wasn’t kill-a-giant-tiger proficient, but maybe if I timed things right…

  “Coach, is there any kind of cooldown on those skills?”

  “Oh yeah, each one has its own timer. The Client has to burn energy it's storing within your body to do its thing. It takes time to get it back up, but respawning resets everything. You should be good to give it your best shot. Just, don’t die near the respawner.”

  “Got it,” I said as I watched the tiger stand and approach me.

  There was a trio of trees behind me, so I moved to the center of them. Trying to minimize down time, I quickly pulled up a barrier between two trees facing the tiger’s path. I wanted it to climb over the barrier, and I would try to slice its guts. It was an all or nothing move, but it was the only thing I could think to do.

  The vines hanging onto the trees began to pull towards the tiger as it stepped on others entangled in the network. I heard its deep gurgle as it sucked in breath, likely ready to pounce. But instead of jumping, an orange and black mountain slowly rose over the wall, eyes staring straight at my huddled form. I smiled nervously, and proceeded to piss on the tile and dirt floor.

  “ASYNCHRONOUS REPAIR PROTOCOL COMPLETE :: Object Resolved”

  The fucking System voice was going to be the last thing I heard as this tiger slurped me up again.

  But it wasn’t. Here in the holo-jungle, barking rang out. A growl, another single bark, and the lion roared, turning its head back. I had no clue what was happening, but neither did the tiger.

  “What the fuck?” Coach didn’t know either.

  I quickly leapt to my feet and drove the blade straight up into the belly of the beast. Again, the sword took over, and I carved a Z through its guts. I really, really wish I hadn’t. Gore rained down, the dying carcass slowly falling down around me. I squirmed my way through the wet mess and slid across the tile in bile and blood, dirt clinging to me like a demon child at Hell’s beach.

  As I propped myself up against some roots, that mangy-ass mutt from the bus stop came and sat by my side.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said with a note of triumph.

  He licked the slime from my face.

  I gagged.