Chapter 2: Thank you for your feedback

Ghostly words appeared out of pure, silent darkness.

[Title earned! Alpha 01. Congratulations. You are the very first player to experience initialization. +2 luck.]

“Initial welcome, player. I am the introductory subsystem.”

Blake blinked in the dark. Then he squinted as white light replaced everything, blinding him just as easily before it softened and became grey, and green, and brown. He was standing on a road, or maybe a highway, in a grey jumpsuit with nothing but flat plain on the horizon.

“What…” he blinked and turned in a circle, until he found a middle age woman who looked like a DMV employee sitting at a desk in the middle of the road. “What the hell is this place?”

“Initial apology,” the woman smiled without her eyes. “Biological translation is difficult, and this is my first attempt. You might call it a loading zone. Or purgatory. Technically, it is a fraction of space too small to be affected by time.”

Blake tried not to think too terribly much about how or why or literally

what the fuck

.

“It’s…a little creepy,” he said with a friendly tone, trying to control his heart rate. “Off putting? A bit terrifying, if I’m being honest.”

“Explanation requested.”

“Well, you see, I was just…somewhere else. Now I’m here, and it’s too big and endless, and I feel like I’m about to get hit by a truck. Why a road? And the desk in the middle of nowhere…creepy. If you can make it look like anything, maybe let the, uh, player? Pick their surroundings. A nice wilderness sort of thing. Maybe a comfortable office. A babbling brook! And that

text

. The text in the nothingness was dreadful. I’d use something easier on the eye, but again why not just let us pick from a nice list or something.”

At some point it occurred to Blake he was rambling, and he stopped. The woman stared and said nothing, and Blake glanced at the sunless sky and continued doing his best not to consider the insanity of the moment.

“Your voice, too, if that’s doable. Hell, even your appearance! I’d like a nice, hot, British woman, myself. Oh! Can you do specific people?”

The woman frowned.

“Processing.”

The world vanished in an instant. Blake just barely stopped himself from screaming in panic, as he felt like he’d leapt, or maybe fell, or…

Then he was sitting at a desk with a beautiful woman in nothing but a pin stripe suit. He stared at her cleavage, and her outfit transformed until every scrap of skin was covered except her face.

“Thank you for your feedback, but it’s important you pay attention.”

[Title earned! Alpha tester. Your feedback was considered useful. It is more likely to be incorporated into the system in the future.]

Blake smiled, fighting the terror that was beginning to tell him this wasn’t a dream or a hallucination, but his new reality.

“I’m pleased to hear it, thank you.”

“You have been selected as a player in experiment 01 of the Human Existence Purpose Finding Game. It has been designed using human knowledge to test certain of our hypotheses, and assist in the transformation of the universe. Do you have any questions?”

Blake stared, forcing his mind to work instead of emit the same high pitched screaming sound.

“I, uh. Yeah. I have a lot of questions. Like where…well. Maybe who…that is…” He swallowed and did his best to focus. “So the last thing I remember I was sitting under a fridge thinking I was getting blown up by a nuclear bomb. Did that happen? Am I dead?”

“It was not a bomb. Please define your understanding of ‘dead’.”

Blake licked dry lips with a dry tongue. “As in, no longer living. Strewn about my friend’s basement in pieces. My molecules scattered to the wind. Did you kill us all?”

“No,” the sexy British hologram or robot or alien smiled. “You are not dead. You are incorporated as a player into a game-like experiment. Your test will determine further iteration programming. Thank you in advance.”

“Sure,” Blake drummed his fingers on his legs. “Sure, sure, glad to help.”

“Are you ready to select your player options and proceed to the tutorial?” the sexy hallucination asked.

“Well,” Blake cleared his throat. “I can’t really pick my ‘player options’ until I know the purpose of the game. Can I?”

“Please define your understanding of ‘purpose’.”

“Uh. You said it’s a game, right? So, what’s the point. I mean, what’s the goal? How do I win?”

The British woman stared without blinking for several, long seconds.

“Game purpose as yet unspecified. Feedback requested.”

Blake found himself uncharacteristically speechless. He wasn’t sure what was more terrifying—being sucked into some kind of robotic simulation world, or discovering one’s abductor didn’t actually know what it was doing. “Well,” Blake hoped his chuckle wasn’t as inauthentic as it felt. “What happens if we

lose

the game?”

“Biological termination,” the woman said rotely. “Death.”

“Oh,” Blake said as if that wasn’t terrifying. “Well, that’s a bit…extreme. Maybe you could just, I don’t know, let us try again?”

“Experiment requires mortal peril. Request denied.”

“Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want to leave out the mortal peril. Well. If failure is death, I guess, umm…”

Wait

, Blake thought,

is this Robotic God asking me to define the meaning of life right now? No pressure, Blake. Think. Think!

“Well, maybe the purpose could be: to make life as good as we can, for ourselves, and for our loved ones,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat.

“Processing.” The British woman frowned. “Suggestion rejected. Game parameters will align to universal biological imperatives.”

Universal biological

…what?

“Sorry, but, what does that mean, exactly? I’ve always been the type who likes to know the rules.”

“Genetic survival,” the British woman smiled politely. “Genetic procreation. Elimination or assimilation of competition. Please note: system time line will be enhanced. Biological imperatives will be enforced. Introduction for player 01 concluding.”

The walls of the office shook and wavered with weakening color, the floors and ceiling fading to black. “No, wait,” Blake swallowed at nothing and tried to stand. “There’s more to life than just…that’s not…those are bad rules, if we could just talk a little more, I’m sure we could just…”

System initiation ending

, intoned a voice from all directions.

You will now enter player selection, followed by tutorial mode. Good luck, player 01. Thank you for your feedback. We are rooting for you.

“Wait,” Blake felt like he was falling. “Wait!”

The lovely British woman vanished along with everything else, and the whole world seemed to pull or squeeze Blake inside an invisible tunnel. He didn’t even hear himself scream.