When I woke, my head was blazing with pain. My eyes were closed, but my brain seemed to be pulsing. I reached up to feel a small tender scar behind my left ear. “Jesus,” I said, bringing the palms of my hands to my eyes, trying to rub the pain away. I wasn’t sure what happened; I just remembered touching the orb, hearing a voice, and then… nothing.

  “Craig, are you there? What happened?” Nothing in response, and the strain of speaking caused my head to spike with pain. The words come out like a croak from my dry throat, my mouth filled with a bitter metallic taste. “Craig, you still there, buddy?” still nothing.

  I tried to stand up, but my whole body ached. I finally took my hands away from my eyes and opened them. “Aagh!” I closed them suddenly as intense pain flooded my head again. “Okay, calm down, Andrew, calm down.”

  I wasn’t in immediate danger; I assume if I had been, I’d already be dead… and I wasn’t, I think.

  “Deep breaths, stay calm. Okay, let’s try that again,” I said to myself. This time, I slowly opened one eye. The pain still came but not as intense; it was getting more bearable.

  “Okay, okay,” I repeated to myself as if it were some chant that would fix whatever I had gotten myself into.

  I took a slow, deep breath and slowly opened both eyes to see words hovering in front of them. The electronic glow of the letters caused my eyes to water, and I squinted slightly before raising both palms to rub them again. When I opened them, the words were still there.

  Welcome to the Tutorial Crawler- Andrew Dawes. Do you wish to proceed with initiation? Yes/No

  “What the…” I trailed off as I tried to figure out what I was seeing.

  The interface was intangible, not fixed to a panel but hovering in the air before me. As I gazed at the floating text, I shifted my head side to side, and the words tagged along, mimicking my movements. It reminded me of the VR headsets I’d tried at a Houston mall, where the virtual world swayed with the motion of my head.

  “Wha… What is happening?” I muttered as I lifted my left hand and swiped at the floating words. My fingers passed through the words harmlessly and they immediately reformed. I spun around, looking for anything or anyone else in the room, trying to figure out exactly what the hell was happening, but I didn’t see signs of another person. Aside from the interface, the room was empty. It was dimly lit with what seemed to be fluorescent lights, but I couldn’t see any fixtures. The room was approximately 30 ft X 30 ft., and aside from the lone stainless steel metal table in the center, I couldn’t see any other distinguishable features. Empty grey walls surrounded me on all four sides, and that interface just hung in the air in bright white letters in front of me.

  “It’s okay. Just select yes, and we can get started.” A female voice said.

  I jumped, assuming someone was in the room with me, but I had seen no one, and I had looked over the whole room several times by now. I spun around a few more times as a tinge of panic began to set in, “This is it, 3 years of surviving post-apocalyptic Earth and now I’m finally losing my mind,” I said, wringing my hair in frustration.

  “Calm down, I’m not in the room with you. Just select yes, and we can get started,” The voice said again.

  “What is going on here?! Who is talking?!” I yell, “Where am I? What did you do with Craig?” I was panicking now. I get off the table and start inspecting the walls and corners of the bare, grey room for any sign of a door or even a panel I could kick in to try and escape.

  “I’m not with you, and we can’t really get into this here, but you need to select yes,” The voice said. “The Initiators purposefully don’t share information with the participants early to try and limit the number of successful entries. All you need to know right now is that I am here to help you; it’s a long story, but I am the AI assigned to be your guide. Select yes, and I can tell you more as you proceed.”

  “What is going on?! Who are the Initiators? A.I. like the kind that makes weird cartoons, or the kind that kills everyone in that Terminator movie?” I yell at apparently no one.

  “I know you are confused, and none of this makes sense,” the voice said with a sigh. I’ll share what I can, as I am sure you have many questions. My name is Tiff… well, that is what you can call me anyway. I am the A.I. that has been assigned to assist you in the reaping trial of this seeded world,” Tiff said.

  I looked up as the words continued audibly in my head, trying to figure out if the voice was coming from a hidden speaker or something.

  “You are one of the first participants drafted upon activation of the seeds. If you accept, you will be allowed to take part in the game to claim the rights of reaping. If no participants enter the game, the Universal Council will be forced to forfeit rights to the government or entity that initiated the seeding. In this case, the Lacertines were the initiators. Believe me, it is NOT in your planet’s best interest for them to control the reaping,” Tiff said.

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  My head spun as I listened to this disembodied voice fill my thoughts. What was happening? I thought, “I have to get back to the settlement and tell everyone about the orbs.”

  “You can’t get back to the settlement; even if you could, it would not help. Once the reaping has been initiated, a countdown starts. It will not stop until the game is complete and the victor has been assigned reaping rights,” Tiff said.

  “You can read my mind?!” I said as I looked around frantically.

  “Well, yes, kind of…” Tiff said, “As I stated earlier, I was assigned to you, so I have a direct neural connection. How else could I help if we could not communicate directly?”

  “Okay, okay.” I stammered as I tried to take this all in.

  “Tiff… was it?” I asked.

  “Yes, you can call me Tiff.”

  “Hi Tiff, I’m Andrew Dawes.”

  “Andrew Timothy Dawes, Age 30, race Human. Former engineer, current member of Settlement South Town Texas, United States of America,” Tiff said.

  “Jesus, do you know my social security number too?!” I exclaimed.

  “435-62,” Tiff started.

  “Okay, stop, I get it. You know everything about me,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “I have an extensive database. As a guide AI, I must provide you with the information necessary to be successful in your crawl,” Tiff said.

  “Crawl?” I asked.

  “Crawl is the most common colloquial term used to describe the events leading up to the reaping. While this is definitely a life-or-death situation for you, many galactic citizens see this as a game. For them, it’s a way to bring fame and fortune to themselves, their families, and their home worlds. Citizens of galaxies across the universe can join the crawl to win the right of reaping,” Tiff said.

  “Wait…where exactly am I?” I asked, starting to settle down a bit.

  “The event takes place in a procedurally generated dimension,” Tiff began. “The Dimension is ever-changing, and two crawls are never the same. You cannot escape the crawl and must progress to survive. The generated dimension is vast, and time works differently here. Since you cannot escape and you are here against your will, it is commonly referred to as a dungeon, although this particular dungeon is approximately one-quarter the size of the Galaxy as you know it.”

  I was in disbelief over the events unfolding before me. Just moments ago, I was in a broken world where survival was already a challenge. Life wasn’t simple, yet I had found meaning and community. Then, without warning, I was thrust into an utterly alien environment, informed that I was caught in a cosmic dungeon created by extraterrestrials coveting our planet’s resources. Let me repeat that for those in the back, I was caught in a cosmic dungeon created by extraterrestrials coveting our planets resources! Everything was moving too fast; however, if the AI’s revelations were accurate, then the lives of billions, potentially including my family, would be in jeopardy. I couldn’t refuse to participate if there was even the slightest possibility that I could make a difference.

  I wasn’t exactly a man of action in my life until now. I led an everyday, nondescript life before the drop. After the drop, I dodged one messed-up situation after another until I found a place to lie low and survive. I realized in this instant that I wanted to do more than survive. If there was a chance for me to do something remarkable, then why not do it? After all, I had lived my life based on the expectations of others to this point. I always did what I thought I needed to do to make others proud. For once in my life, I had an opportunity to do something remarkable; I had to at least try.

  Participants have 30 seconds to finalize selections. A loud robotic voice said over an invisible P.A. system.

  “Shit! Okay, okay…I can’t just stand by and watch as Earth gets reaped, whatever that means; I have people I love down there.” I said, “I have no idea what I’m doing here, and I am gonna have to trust that you aren’t just toying with me before you decide to violently murder me,” I muttered as I focused on the word “yes” and heard a digital “Ding.”

  As I mentally clicked yes, a woman materialized directly in front of me, startling me and causing me to put my hands to my face and scream like the most innocent of tiny little girls.

  “What the..” I shouted as I stumbled back and fell over the table, landing on my ass with a thud.

  I quickly pulled myself up off the ground and only now noticed that I was completely stark naked. “AAAGH!” I screamed as I cupped my hands over my crotch and huddled closer to the ground.

  “Why am I naked?! Can I get some damn clothes?”

  The woman smiled, obviously unaffected by my lack of clothes. She had blonde, shoulder-length hair, light, piercing blue eyes, a small frame only a little over 5 ft tall, and she was… beautiful. She wore a skintight dark blue body suit with an electronic glow around the seams. It was like a space-aged suit you would see in some sci-fi movie.

  She seemed very confident, and if current circumstances unnerved her in the slightest, she didn’t show it. In contrast, I was naked, crouching on the ground like a caveman. Still, even in my current state, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly beautiful the woman was. My brain sometimes does this thing where I fade out of reality and play out scenarios. The scenarios are usually related to what is currently happening, and reality seemingly never plays out the way it does in my head.

  Currently, I was naked on the ground, in a strange place, apparently entering a dungeon where I would probably be killed by aliens, or monsters, or some weird combination of both dreamed up by a super AI that built this all just to make sure that some interplanetary government could legally take a planet and kill its inhabitants. In my mind, though, I saw this woman in the regular world before the drop, in some jeans that had just the right number of tears in them, just tight enough: a Taking Back Sunday T-shirt and black Converse low tops. We were at a bar, and I finally got the nerve to buy her a drink. She laughed at my jokes; she thought I was charming, and I felt like a king. Damn, it felt good to embrace these mental escapes.

  When I looked up, the woman’s clothes had changed to the exact image I had in my head. The only difference was the description above her head.

  Tiff, level 50 A.I. Guardian

  Class - ???

  Race - ???

  “What the..” I stammered.

  “I assumed you would be more comfortable with this appearance,” the woman said.

  “Tiff?” I said, confused.

  ‘Hello, Andrew. Nice to meet you in person. Now, let’s get started,” she said with a smile.