Chapter 1: 1

I dream of a black cat playing with a ball of red wool. He chases it, swipes it with his claws and bites it. He runs after the ball across the hardwood floor, pushes it and tucks it under the couch. He bends down and stretches out his paw trying to catch it.

I open my eyes with a start. The fluorescent light dazzles me. I grab the armrests of the chair and squint my eyelids. A man with pale complexion and horn-rimmed glasses is standing in front of me, staring at the electronic tablet in his hands. He looks up and speaks to me.

“Easy, breathe. It's normal to feel like this,” he says in a kind voice, answering the question I haven't asked him yet. Do I know him? His face almost rings a bell, but I can't place him now. I feel I should know him.

His name comes to my mind without realizing it.

“Are you Gabriel?” I ask him. He smiles and writes something down on the tablet.

“Yes, I'm Gabriel,” he replays. “I'm going to be your supervisor in the Game. Do you know what I mean?”

I look at my hands. I open and close them. I notice that they have that degree of unreality characteristic of virtual worlds. I bring my hands to my face and feel my features. I have a beard, and an angular nose. They look familiar.

“Are we inside the Game?” I ask.

“Yes, but we are in the waiting room, outside the players' area. This is where you'll come every time you're killed, and where you'll spend time until you can rejoin. Here we'll also take the opportunity to supervise the performance of your duties on the contract.”

The Game. That means that right now my physical body must be floating in a connection capsule somewhere, with a multitude of tubes connected throughout my body to satisfy my biological needs. What I see, touch, and feel in this room is not real, but only simulated sensations that a computer transmits to my brain.

“Let's check the status of your motor functions,” Gabriel says. “Can you get up from the chair and walk to the circle, please?”

A ring of yellow light appears in front of me. It is translucent, and flickers slightly. It floats a few centimeters above the ground. As Gabriel asked me, I get up from the chair and walk to stand inside.

“Very good.” Gabriel jots something down on the tablet. “Now I want you to deploy your holo-bracelet console.”

I try to understand what he says, but I find it difficult to articulate my thoughts. He raises his eyebrows and points to my arm. On my wrist I have a metal bracelet, with no inscription. I touch it and a holographic screen unfolds. In the center of the image my body is depicted, with three colored bars. The word ‘life’ is written on the red bar, ‘magic’ on the blue one and ‘energy’ on the green one. The bars are at the maximum. At the top of the image, I read the main description of my character.

 

Name: Isaac; Type: NPC; Level: 20; Race: Human; Profession: Blacksmith; Destination: Windfield.

 

My name is Isaac, and for some reason, I'm in the Game.

“I’m an NPC? What’s an NPC?” I ask him.

“NPC stands for Non-Player Character,” Gabriel explains. “Your task is to interact with the PCs, Player Characters, within the Game. As you can see, you have been assigned as a blacksmith in Windfield. Within your contract, you have been given two missions to deliver to the players when they ask for them.”

My name is Isaac, I'm in the Game, and I work as a blacksmith in Windfield. I give missions to players and buy and sell weapons and armor.

In the right corner of the screen an exclamation mark flashes. I press it and a notification appears:

 

You have two new missions assigned. Mission 1: collect firewood. Mission 2: recover the medallion.

 

“Isaac, please click on the mission icons and read the instructions. You will have to memorize the dialogues that you will have to follow with the characters. Remember that according to the contract you must always remain in your role. Do you have any question?”

The image of the black cat playing with the ball of red wool still doesn't get out of my head.

“What is the cat's name?” I say. “I do not remember his name.”

“What cat?” Gabriel looks up from the tablet for a moment.

“When I woke up, I was dreaming of a black cat.”

He puts the tablet in his pocket. He takes off his glasses and wipes them with the bottom of his white coat. Sighs.

“It's normal for you to find yourself somewhat disoriented,” Gabriel says. “Note that part of the login process has blocked some of your recent memories. This will help you get into your character better.”

“I think the cat's name is Colonel,” I say.

He smiles at me. He puts on his glasses and takes out the tablet again.

“Very good,” Gabriel says. “I'm glad your cat has a name.”

My name is Isaac and I'm in the Game, but in the real world I live in a house with a hardwood floor and a black cat named Colonel.

I click on the icon for the first mission, and several paragraphs of text are displayed. My task is to offer the players a mission in which they must bring me ten logs of firewood from the forest so that I can use them in the forge. It doesn't seem difficult at all. I take a few minutes to read the dialogues and memorize them without problems.

The second mission is more complex. Players will have to eliminate the bandits entrenched in a forest camp, and they will bring me the silver crescent-shaped medallion the bandits stole from me. This quest can only be done at night.

“That's it,” I say. I memorize dialogues effortlessly. I feel that once I have read them, I can repeat them without problem. I don't need to spend more time remembering them. It comes naturally to me. After all, they're just ordered letters.

“If you're ready, now we're going to access the player area,” Gabriel says. “I'm going to open a teleportation portal to the forge in Windfield.”

Gabriel does something with his tablet. Meanwhile I think of Colonel, and I worry. Now that I am gone, who will take care of him?

A black circle appears in the middle of the room with an electrical hum, surrounded by a halo of yellow light.

“To enter the player area, we just have to cross it,” Gabriel says. “Go ahead, I'll follow you.”

I walk to the circle. I close my eyes and cross it.

The first thing I notice is a smell of embers. I open my eyes. Next to me there is a forge fed by wooden logs, which give off a trickle of smoke. I am in front of a house. It is made of rustic stone and the roof is thatched. It has a window and a wooden door. Above the frame there is a symbol of an anvil carved on a plaque. The house is surrounded by a red fence.

“This will be your workplace.” Gabriel is behind me, and the circle through which I entered the Game has disappeared. “Now I am going to give you the basic instructions that you must follow as an NPC. After that you will continue by yourself. We will start by learning how the forge works.”

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“Welcome, adventurer. I am Isaac, the smith of Windfield. How can I help you? Very well, I'm glad you asked. I need wood for the forge fire. If you could bring me ten logs gathered in the forest east of the village, I would pay you with a gold coin. I hope you can bring them soon, or I will have no choice but to close my business. Thank you very much!”

The same sentence, over and over again, with my apron and my hammer. I practically speak to myself. The players do not deign to try to pretend that it is a real conversation between two people. They let me drop the string and hit the accept button that appears on their holo-bracelets. They think I'm just another NPC, like any of the others in town. A lifeless automaton. Some do not even wait for him to finish to accept the mission, and others bring the logs directly, without being asked.

And when I'm not speaking, I must hit the molten piece of metal with the hammer. I pretend I'm forging something, but try as I might, I never finish it. Nothing ever changes. I hit it repeatedly, and the piece of metal remains the same shape. At night in bed when I close my eyes I can hear the metallic blow echoing inside my head, like the clock in a nightmare.

I've been in the Game for five days, and since they don't change my destination soon, I think I'm going to go crazy.

What I would give to be able to be in my house, with my cat Colonel. We would play in the living room; he would tie the ball of yarn to a stick and drag it across the hardwood floor. Colonel would chase him until he was tired. Then he would pick him up and he would fall asleep purring.

I have tried looking for other NPCs like me. In the evenings, when the temple bell strikes ten, I have free time. I usually take the opportunity to take a walk through Windfield. I tried to talk to the girl who sells herbs, but she ignored me. The same with the guards, with the boy who wants to go fishing, or the girl who is looking for her grandmother. I begin to think that I am the only NPC that is controlled by a real person, that the others are nothing more than automatons that respond to the dialogues, with no option to get out of them.

I feel so lonely.

Another player is coming. He's the scrawny dwarf with the matching red boots with his mustache. This is the fifth time you've brought me the logs today. Above his head I see his name, his name is Marcel. What kind of player goes by the name ‘Marcel’? Not that it sounds very heroic, precisely. Although, all is said, collecting logs in the forest is not at all daring. Maybe the mission they have given me is a mission for the ‘Marcels’ of the world, who prefer to spend their dead hours in the Game collecting logs in the forest instead of completing real missions in dungeons infested with spiders and trolls. Anyway.

The dwarf with green eyes and a red mustache, hands me the logs.

“Thank you very much for the logs, adventurer.  You have saved the forge. I will be eternally grateful. Here's your gold coin”, I say in a monotonous voice. The experience gained indicator appears above his head.

He stands there, staring at his holo-bracelet. He must be checking his inventory. I believe that the players do not do my mission for the money, but for the reward in experience points, because if not, I do not understand. After all, a gold coin is no big deal, not in-Game or in the real world. I think that with the current change that banks give with a currency of the Game it would hardly give you for a candy in the real world. But there they are, the idiots, hooked on experience points, spending hours collecting firewood. Like it's something fun.

The dwarf is still standing in front of me. There is a group of players behind. They are waiting impatiently for me to leave so they can give me their logs or request the mission again.

“Thank you very much, adventurer,” I say emphatically to the dwarf, gesturing with my head for him to move away. He looks up from his holo-bracelet and looks at me in surprise.

Gabriel told me that I could not go off script or interact with the players beyond my script. No one should know that I am not an NPC like the others. But wow, it's not like anyone's going to find out.

“Stand back, you're in the middle,” says a level 93 paladin warrior named Lance, a greatsword on his back that juts out over his shoulder. He gives the dwarf a shove that knocks him to the ground, and the life bar above his head drops a third.

“Idiot,” says the dwarf from the ground with a high-pitched tone that doesn't match his red-haired mustache. From the way his voice sounds, I estimate that in the real world this Marcel must be twelve or thirteen years old at most. That would also explain the features of his face, since if I removed his mustache, I would say that his features are quite childish, very effeminate for what is expected of a dwarf. I guess it makes sense, since each avatar inherits the physiognomy of the person who controls it.

The paladin turns to the dwarf with surprise on his face. He unsheathes his greatsword and with a sweep he splits the dwarf in two at the waist. Blood shoots out, splashes on my face, and I can't help screaming in fright. It's the first time I've seen someone die since I've been an in-game NPC. I try to reassure myself: the Game is not real. The player controlling the dwarf is alive and calm, floating at home in the connecting capsule. In addition, the control system will have filtered the pain, so the fact that he died should not be much more than an annoyance to him.

The corpse of the dwarf remains on the ground, the torso on one side and the legs on the other, in the middle of a pool of blood. Their skin turns ash gray. The paladin ignores the corpse and advances until he is in front of me.

“Welcome, adventurer. How can I help you?” I say to the paladin in a shaky voice as I wipe my face with a cloth. He hands me a silver medallion in the shape of a half moon.

“Thank you so much for taking down the bandits and recovering my family heirloom,” I repeat the script text for my second mission in a somewhat over-acted tone, speaking a little faster than I should. “My grandmother will finally be able to rest in peace, now that I have her medallion again.” I give him a hundred gold coins and the experience gained indicator appears.

The funny thing is that I don't know who my late grandmother is, nor how they ‘steal’ the medallion from me, over and over again. The reality is that it disappears from my inventory within hours of delivery, and the mission is available again.

Without saying anything, the paladin starts selling me items from his inventory. I give him ten gold coins for a rusty bandit sword; fifty gold coins for a dented helmet; and a hundred coins for some leather bracelets from the captain of the bandits. When he finishes, he turns without saying a word and leaves.

He disappears from my sight as I see a player in the queue approaching the corpse of the dwarf, which is already becoming translucent by the moment. He is a level 38 barbarian with a somewhat large helmet. He crouches down and searches the corpse. He takes the bag of coins and the red boots. The barbarian is looting the dwarf's remains before the eyes of the rest of the players, who don't give it the slightest thought, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

I feel sorry for the dwarf. He wasn't doing anything wrong, and he was quite efficient at fetching logs.

“A hundred coins, not bad,” says the barbarian aloud as he takes the bag and puts it away. He comes closer to me.

“Welcome, adventurer. How can I help you?” He sells me the dwarf's red boots without saying a word. I exchange them for a gold coin. You must be mean to take the poor boy's boots for a measly gold coin.

He leaves without saying goodbye, while the dwarf's body finishes disappearing. I go back to picking up my hammer and hitting the damn piece of metal repeatedly.

 

 

 

After five minutes I see the dwarf reappear, barefoot. He starts to walk around the forge. He's looking for the red boots and his money.

I look from one side to the other. There is no one else, just him and me. I put the hammer in my apron pocket.

“Boy,” I whisper to him, “it's useless. The money has been taken, and the boots have been sold to me. If you have a gold coin, I could resell it to you.”

The dwarf turns and gapes at me, surprised to hear me speak outside of my role as an NPC. It says nothing. He walks a few meters away and takes out a scroll. He holds it with one hand and begins to read it aloud, while holding out the other hand palm up. An orange bar appears above his head, slowly beginning to grow, while a red light forms floating a few inches above his hand.

I think he's preparing to cast a spell on me.

“Hey, kid. What are you doing? I am not to blame. I don't know if you remember, but it was the guy in the white armor who split you in two. In fact, I tried to warn you that you were all in the middle.”

The bar increases. He's already halfway there, and the sphere of red light on his palm is already about ten centimeters in diameter.

“Hey, you wouldn't dare attack me, would you? The guards will be all over you, and you'll be dead and without permission to enter the village for the rest of the day.”

The orange bar is already at three quarters.

“Look, if you want, take the boots, I'll give them to you for free. But don't tell anyone, I'm risking my job. Deal?”

The spell bar reaches the end. The scroll disintegrates and the dwarf extends his hand forward. The last thing I see is a red fireball increasing in size as it approaches my face.

Shit.

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