Before

  The confusion and hurt on my father’s face crushed my insides.

  “They’re what?”

  I expined to him again that the specialists were going to be coming in the next day, to have another look at Mom’s condition. They were going to make sure she had the best care avaible, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the money anymore.

  Secretly, I hoped he’d start going back into work. I’d already exhausted my boss’s patience with my moping around and feeling sorry for myself, but Dad had a good job at GM, designing their new line of cars and trucks. They had given him plenty of time away from work to handle getting Mom comfortable, then even more time to be by her side every day, and get his head back in order. But by now, even he was stretching the goodwill of the company. I knew he loved the work, and they really enjoyed him. He had friends there. Work and friends would both help him get through this… just like the money from my new career as a whatever-the-hell-I’d-be-doing.

  “We need you here, Chris,” he said. “I don’t understand. Where will you be going?”

  I’d been instructed to tell him as little as possible.

  “It’s a research facility… up in northern Aska.” This wasn’t, strictly speaking, a lie. The government agency that did this other world situation had a facility up in Aska. He and Mom could really find it and visit it, if they moved heaven and hell to get in contact with me. And, in the event of a serious emergency, the agency would transport me out there.

  “And they won’t have internet there?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. They said there’s a chance I would be cut off from the world, so I’m letting you know. From what I understand, I’ll be setting up equipment way, way out. Like in por bear country. So, sleeping in tents and growing a beard.” I’d grow a beard the day pigs started doing calculus and quantum physics. It wasn’t that I hated the idea of doing it, just that my genetics wouldn’t allow it.

  The joke slid right off his haggard face and concerns. “And… and… why?”

  I sighed and shrugged. “Obviously for the money.” I didn’t want to tread on his pride. He was supposed to be the provider, but Mom’s treatments had already crushed us financially. “Sarah needed money. You guys could use some. It’s the least I can do.”

  Hell, I’d lived in their basement trying to make an extra buck off streaming.

  “That’s…” My father’s gaze turned inward. “That’s kind of you, buddy, but it’s not necessary. You don’t have to do this just for us.”

  I owed them more than I could say. Life, birthday parties, soccer practices, camping trips, and then all the consoles and video games I’d asked for over the years.

  “I’m not,” I said, “believe me. I’m doing it for me. One, I get plenty of money even after throwing a bunch at you and Sarah. Two, I get to go on an adventure. I’ll see the aurora, I’ll get to see the sun rotating around in a circle in the sky, or the sun won’t even come up… I can’t remember which one happens now.” I ughed. “Also, I want Sarah to realize that she needs to talk to you guys. And I hope you get to see your grandkids.”

  His expression grew very complicated there, but only for a moment. The implication of what I’d said sank in. “Grand…kids? Did you say grandkids?”

  I nodded. “She’s pregnant. Again.”

  “Oh…” he muttered. “That’s great. That’s amazing!” The words didn’t have all the punch and emotion they should’ve, but that was alright. As long as he was talking about Sarah in a positive way, that was good.

  He clearly had a lot more to say, but he wouldn’t say it in front of me.

  “Look,” I said. “Apparently this is the kind of environment people don’t handle well, so I have to put a lot of books onto my e-reader, a whole bunch of songs onto my computer, and a whole bunch of movies onto my computer, and get ready to just be alone for a couple months. Then I’ll be back on some R&R time, okay?” These were almost all lies. I had been specifically told that all electronics would die on contact with the other world.

  He nodded.

  “I’ve got to get ready.”

  “Sure, buddy.” He blinked several times and rose. “Sure. Sure.”

  “I already told Mom.” I let the words hang in the air, along with the other implication. She needed him. Me leaving them money, and me leaving them, were going to push Dad back away from the abyss he’d been staring into, and back into her arms.

  I made for the stairs. I really did have a lot to pack.

  “Hey,” he said. When I turned, he had broken into a wide smile, and this time it looked like the reality of the situation had finally penetrated. He looked joyful for the first time in ages. “You’re amazing.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I’m proud of you. Now go get all your YouTubes downloaded and movies pirated and MP3s on your disks.”

  I ughed, and headed through the kitchen, into the basement.

  Now

  Allie towered over me a moment. She had blonde hair with threads of gray, but also threads of blue, green, and purple. She was wearing a typical pantsuit in gray material with tiny white pinstripes. The whole thing was skewing towards purple, with the magic in the air.

  “Mr. Fletcher,” she said. “I’m pleased you could make it. However, you shouldn’t immediately jump into Rus’s inappropriate antics just because he fails to take anything seriously.”

  “Rus is pretty familiar with people here,” I said. “Sorry about that. It was infectious…” I trailed off, feeling pretty me. Also embarrassed. I had a sinking feeling this imperious woman could end my stay here after a single day if she wanted to and there’d be nothing I could do about it. Goodbye huge pay increase, goodbye helping out my sister and my parents.

  “That won’t be a problem,” she said, and cracked a wide smile. Apparently my contrition was convincing. “Rus is enjoying the same benefits all us old people are.” She gestured to her hair. “I have all the color back in my hair. And would you look at this?” She pulled up the curtain of hair on one side, revealing a pointy ear. “I’m an elf!”

  “Whoa,” I breathed.

  “And you,” she chuckled. “It looks like some of the projections were right. Let’s get you a mirror and your first pill.”

  The mirror showed that my face was turning colors. It looked a bit like I was a stained gss window and each of the smaller window panes was a different color. Most were orange, but a few were yellow, red, or brown. In a few pces dots had emerged, and I was once again reminded of a Monarch butterfly.

  “Um… could I ask why this is happening?” Actually, I needed a lot more than that, but I was going to start there.

  Allie let out another rueful ugh, and took a gss container full of pills out of her desk. She retrieved one, followed by a tumbler filled with water for me to wash it down. In the meantime, I had a look down into the colr of my shirt.

  Yep, I had gone Monarch… or rather stained gss, all the way down inside. And that wasn’t all. The shirt I’d worn in here had been one of a few dress shirts I owned, a blue colr button down with short sleeves. The buttons had changed into those old school toggle things: thick rope, wide button in the shape of an egg if you managed to squish it down and pull out the long end. The shirt itself had blossomed with color, too. In one pce the color had leeched out and left it a gray white, while the extra color apparently migrated up my trunk and turned the soft blue into a purplish color.

  Nothing was untouched. The boxer shorts I’d packed were a riot of colors now. The material of all my socks had shifted slightly. Some were scratchier than before, while one of the pairs turned to a silky substance, possibly silk but no way to know.

  All the lettering on all the tags on every single piece of clothing I’d owned were now indecipherable. None of them were the same letters. It was like all the letters turned into tiny worms that wriggled around on the tags, and eventually froze back in pce. It was so weird I couldn’t help ugh over it.

  “Yes, so, you will need to use this pill once a day. In an emergency you can ration them out to once per week, but if you are too far from your supply, you will need to return to base within a week of taking them.”

  I blinked at her. “What happens after a week?”

  Allie smiled kindly at me. “I am here as part of your employment, and as such I am obliged to tell you this: you not taking your pills will not allow you to cim hazard pay. This is a minor annoyance that, left untreated, will advance internally. We studied it initially, and found there were alterations to brain function. I don’t want to scare you. We developed the pills to counteract these sorts of effects, the pills work, end of story.”

  Nodding numbly, I let the reality sink in.

  “Since you are here as an employee, currently drawing a sary, it is incumbent upon me to get you to a pce where you can perform the tasks and duties of an employee as soon as possible.”

  “Css selection,” I said.

  “Did your guide brief you?”

  “Yes and no. I had an encounter with one of the corrupted gods, a goddess of the meadows.”

  She nodded solemnly, but I caught the slight widening of her eyes and the way her hand automatically drifted up to her chest, over her heart. “I had read that report, and I will say I’m quite pleased you weren’t seriously or irreparably hurt. You are here, meaning neither your guide nor Rus saw a need to send you to the infirmary.”

  I nodded.

  “Of course if you feel that you are in need of medical care, I’ll take you there straight away.”

  I considered telling her about the rose shape that now lived under the palm of my right hand, but decided against it. Instead I took my pill, washed it down with water that tasted slightly of sugar, and nodded to her.

  “She decided it would be best to go through character generation,” I told her. “I picked my name, spent my attribute points, and got a bunch of tokens.”

  She continued nodding, and rolled her hand over, a sign for me to continue.

  “It seems the Tokens are spent to accomplish tasks without trying to rely on skills and attributes.” More nodding. “I have a few questions, naturally.”

  “Of course.”

  I then learned that she didn’t know who set up the system, or if it was in pce when she arrived. She did confirm that skills helped offset the need for Tokens, and that my css would supply the skills.

  “Then let’s get you a css,” she said, and pulled up an honest-to-goodness Pyer’s Handbook(TM). It looked enough like the Pyer’s Handbook I’d seen growing up that I squealed in delight and ughed. The production quality, graphics on the cover, and font choices were high enough quality to bring out the old tabletop rolepyer in me.

  “Dick chose well,” she muttered, smiling. “You’ll need chapter three, which is css selection.”

  I flipped the hardcover book open, skipping chapter one, which was What Is A Rolepying Game? and simir introductory material. Still, the illustrations on the book’s interior showed me this wasn’t just an employee handbook, but somebody’s bor of love. Somebody’s jokey bor of love.

  “Did Rus make this?” I asked, and skipped over chapter two, which covered the chargen I’d already gone through with Regina. Chapter three had a full page illustration of an adventuring party: a bard, a cleric, a fighter, a Ranger, and a wizard. All of them, however, had Nakamamon creatures with them. The Ranger had a bear-sized porcupine made of wood, bark and twigs, while the bard had a glowing pink bird with four wings and long, flowing tail feathers. It was absolutely enchanting and I couldn’t help but gasp in shock.

  “There are more guys like Rus here than I’d care to imagine,” she said with a sigh. “And it looks like there’s one more.”

  “I guess…” I said, flipping through the next few pages.

  The base description of what csses were and what they did wasn’t necessary. I had that stuff memorized from when I was a kid. After that, it went in alphabetical order: bard, followed by cleric. I didn’t need to go further.

  “I’ll be one of these.”

  Allie stared down at the picture of the Healer holding a glowing hand against the torn leg of a fellow adventurer. She frowned a bit, then schooled her expression well.

  “You haven’t even read the description.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. I wanted to do what Mustache Face had done. I wanted to save people, and wounded creatures, and maybe even uncorrupt the corrupted gods like the Goddess of the Meadows. No way was I going to be a huge musclebound Guardsman like Bke. Why they would choose to be guards in a pce without violence made no sense to me.

  On the other hand, there was a very real problem here, with the gods of this world bleeding and dying, and I was going to be a part of that solution. I was already thinking beyond the job.

  “You want to be a Healer then,” she said, with the unasked ‘is that your final answer’ hanging in the air.

  “Yep.”

  She nodded, resigned. “It’s not like we don’t need more Healers,” she muttered. She wasn’t going to try talking me out of it. “You’ll have to say ‘css selection’ and then follow the prompts you find there. If you have a choice to make, consult with me first.”

  I said the words, and once more the rge blue window appeared, full of blocky white text.

  CHOOSE YOUR CLASS: was followed immediately by a triangle pointing at BARD. Below that was CLERIC, then FIGHTER, RANGER, ROGUE, SORCERER, and WIZARD.

  I moved the triangle down so it was pointed at CLERIC and mentally pressed my assent. ARE YOU SURE? Y/N the prompt asked, and I once again confirmed my pick.

  A white light shone down from above, somehow cutting through both the rightside up and the upside down sections of the castle. Pulses of pure white rained down around me, and the whole pce filled with an antiseptic smell I associated with my mother’s hospital room. The whole room grew brighter and brighter white, while energy swirled around me faster and faster, whipping my hair and clothes around, and throwing things off Allie’s desk.

  When it subsided, she was smiling ruefully. “I always forget to have them do that in the main hall. Would you kindly help me pick up some of this stuff?”

  I chuckled and went to help her retrieve her books, papers, and paperweights.

  This is Christopher finally getting his job.