I'm sleeping peacefully for the first time since I can remember. I can feel that. The revitalizing effect. The energy. Actual sleep. Total stillness. Peace.

  The laughter of children awakens me.

  As I open my eyes, just a crack in bright light, I see a pattern of blue and white. An expanding pattern of octagons suspended by metal wire. It's the bottom of an umbrella, one meant only to block the sun, and it catches wind, flaps and trembles. Ocean waves batter away at a nearby shore, and long silver hair glints and blows across my face.

  In this way, I stare, at first at the umbrella, and then, as I sit up on my side and prop my head on my hand, at the ocean. Foamy water rolls up and stops twenty paces beyond my feet, down a gentle slope of clean white sand. Sparkling sands.

  Passersby stroll along the shore. Families. Couples. Solo joggers and people on bikes and other devices less familiar to me.

  The air is crisp, and though the sun’s rays are warm, the breeze that blows is cool and I’m not thirsty. I’m fine. For at least an hour, time spent blissfully buzzing all over, I sit here, contented.

  When I feel the urge to move again, it’s to look to my left at a line of similar umbrellas over similarly serene individuals. All sorts of individuals. Mostly humanoid, but many of a shade or color not found where I’m from.

  Planet Earth. It feels so distant now, from here. And yet I can see it. That is, I can see its star. I know which one it is. Of all the twinkling stars twinkling brightly beyond the pale blue sky, I know that mine, the Sun, is just right there. It’s small, and white – a mere dot in the sky. But it is mine. Or it was.

  This place is nothing like planet Earth. It isn’t a planet at all. I don’t know why, but I can tell. The physical differences are slight, if any. The environment here is like a retouched photo taken by a genius photographer. But even that is an exaggeration, as the idyllic take comes from something strictly abstract inside, a sensation felt on a solely visceral level. A vibe. A feeling. And the shape of it is apparent to me in much the same way. Whereas planet Earth is finite and round, this place is not. It goes on forever or could do so should one try to explore it. There are other reason I am sure, and I am sure; this isn’t planet Earth. But I can’t dwell on that now. I have things to do now.

  I can get up now. The realization comes on like the notice of a sudden adjustment, as sudden and abruptly as a click in silence. Others nearby are also standing. Others before us have already left. Footprints or other markings scar the sand. A slug woman slides while an individual resembling a wheel oddly squirms and then hops, each hop a squeak as if from a rubber toy.

  This isn’t the reality I know. I know that. I also know that whoever reaches out to me is out for their own gain.

  We’re all headed toward the same wooden ramp at a wall that rises above the beach. There are similar ramps both left and right along the shore. They climb up to a level one story up a wall of stone, an old wall. It’s worn smooth with erosion. Still, it’s clean and clear – no barnacles, no stains, no gunk, no grime. Beyond that wall is an endless line of tall buildings. Condos, maybe. Maybe hotels. Balconies everywhere, from top to bottom, many peopled.

  Atop the wall, there’s a courtyard between buildings where groups stand about, laughing and talking, and others move about here or there in front of shops and food stands. There’s a road beyond the courtyard, and what looks like a bus stop beside a flight of stairs and a covered bridge over the road. The bridge is beneath another road, this one a railroad. A train zips by at well over a hundred miles per hour. Above it, as glints in the sky, are airplanes and other flying machines.

  This place is bustling with activity in ways few are outside of the very largest of cities and theme parks. The closer to the road I get, the more honks I hear. Traffic moves quickly and slows in predictable patterns. The buildings beyond the road are tall, but not so tall as those along the beach. But beyond them, through open air between them, I catch glimpses of a great and towering skyline, clear against the pale blue sky, free from the light obscurity of smog in other places.

  I head that way, over that bridge above the road. I’m in a line, a slow but steadily moving line. We’re all headed the same way for the same reason, under the pull of the same draw. Though I don’t know what that is quite yet, I do recognize that I’m recognizable.

  As I’ve walked, ever since the beach, I’ve attracted more looks than others. These onlookers are very obviously familiar with my “Clement” appearance. Though, like me, they might be aware that there might be more than one “Clement” now.

  This suspicion feels like a lead I’ve drawn through the air. I’ll get back to it later.

  I think of my Menu and nothing happens. I reach back in my memories and there isn’t much there. I remember I was Clement Armassi/Ryan Cobb in Florida, and briefly someone else somewhere else. A glimpse of a curly-headed woman. A little girl with auburn hair. The woman has a gun. I love this woman and she shot me.

  That’s as far back as it goes. And that’s fine; I assume I’ll collect more of my memories from the airwaves as time goes by.

  But when, I don’t know. Even those memories I can recall seem to fade rather than expand the more I think of them. By the time I get to where I mean to go, which is a restaurant on the outermost edge of the inner city, I can’t imagine either the woman or the girl, and the word Florida holds little meaning. Oak trees and pastures. Palm trees. I don’t know what that means, but….

  A touch on my shoulder. A strong-handed grip.

  This is that reaching out I suspected.

  I turn and there’s a bearded man with lavender skin smiling at me. His beard is a black as night, and his eyes are creased along the edges with deep crow’s feet.

  “Asha,” he says, still smiling at me. So, that’s my identity outside of this game. “How the heck are ya?”

  I look him over, trying to place him. He’s wearing shorts, sandals, and an open button-up with a floral pattern. He isn’t obese, but he has a belly. And he brings with him a rich smell of heavy cologne, all smells foreign from those I might’ve smelled on Earth.

  “I’m fine,” I say, repeating the name, Asha, Asha, Asha, Asha in my mind.

  “I bet you don’t recognize me,” he says.

  I study his face. It’s round, wide, his eyes more than an eye-length apart. “I don’t,” I admit.

  His hand is still on my shoulder, and he’s a bit closer than I like; I can smell something sweet on his breath, something alcoholic in contrast to the cologne.

  “Hugo,” he says. “Just got here, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” I say. “I woke up on a beach.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says, distracted; he turned around and is currently peering at the tables under a wooden pavilion in front of the restaurant. A hand within the cluster rises and waves. Hugo lightens, smiles, and waves back. “This way,” he says.

  I’m taller than him. But not by much. He has me by the wrist and leads me under the covered pavilion that is in fact the front of the restaurant. Whereas most pavilions I’ve seen are extensions of, this one is a transitory space connecting the outside to within. There is no door at the end of the pavilion that makes the beginning of the restaurant. It’s all open space inside. Round wooden tables occupied by half a dozen individuals, humans and aliens, laughing and talking – eating and drinking – fill the space there. Beyond them is a single step up into the building proper, within which, at the center, is a bar, rows of tables and booths along either side.

  We walk between the round tables to a particular table where five people sit. They’re all humanoid, all roughly human-sized. But only three look human – a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair, a young blonde man sitting rather close to him, and a rather large woman with short brown hair. The other member present is a very dull shade of green. And I say member because they seem, despite their clothes, to be a ragtag team – maybe pirates, at least mercenaries.

  They look up at me, most smiling – one of the humans, the giant woman, still laughing from a recent joke. She’s masculine, and when we lock eyes, she looks me up and down, her smile fading into a look of disappointment, perhaps disapproval.

  I wonder why.

  “Look who’s back,” Hugo says, a hand as large as a catcher’s mitt clapping my back.

  “Hey!” the green person, a bald man with buggy eyes, says.

  “Back in the Bva,” the young blonde man says. “How very Asha of you.”

  “Take a seat,” Hugo says as the graying man scoots aside, and the woman removes her feet from the seat of what will be my chair.

  I look around the table as I sit. It’s a bit chilly under the shade of the pavilion and I shiver. But that can’t be right – the vibe, rather, is cold. The green man reaches over and massages my left shoulder as the woman downs her glass.

  The others are chatting, something I don’t quite catch as I’m focused on Hugo, the only person I feel like I actually might know from somewhere, though I can’t figure out from where – he’s at the bar.

  “Just get in?” the graying guy asks.

  “I guess,” I say. “Wherever this is.”

  “Ah, yeah. He’s fresh,” says the young blonde.

  “It takes a minute,” the green guy says. “And by minute, I mean a couple of days. But don’t worry; it’ll come back.”

  “What will?” I ask, although I’m sure I know. I just want to hear him say it.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Your memories. Not all of ‘em, and not all at once. But you’ll get enough to put together some pieces. Gradually. Over time.”

  Hugo’s back. He grabs an empty seat from a mostly empty table behind us without incident and sits on it backward across the table from me. A waitress with a tray of drinks followed him over. They’re all different drinks, and she sets them down as the group passes them around.

  Mine is a frothy white drink. I sip it and I like it, though I have no idea what it is. It certainly isn’t poisoned.

  The others are drinking on things both more colorful and sizzling popping fizz. Hugo’s is a brightly glowing blue color, and he just about downs it in a long gulp that sees his throat expanding like a frog’s.

  “We’re almost all the way back,” he says to the green guy. “All we need is J.J. and Hap and we’re good to go.”

  “I know. Crazy, right?” the green guy says.

  “Sno,” I say to him. “Snobin Klaugh.”

  This information I pick up does not come from memory. Though I don’t want them to know that I’m aware. Thus, the slight error.

  “Close,” he says, nodding, his cup almost to his lips. He takes a drink and, with the exhale, says, “Snobin Klaggin. Snobin Klaggin.”

  “And you’re… Aranni,” I say to the woman. It’s important that I got hers right.

  She raises a brow at me, nods once.

  “And you two are father/son,” I say, pointing at one and then the other.

  “Myrem,” says the older one.

  “Capkat,” says the kid, holding up his drink.

  “How do we know each other?” I ask.

  “We’re a ragtag group of misfits,” Hugo says.

  “The Grub Chubbs,” I say, a joke.

  “God no,” Hugo says, and then he laughs, looking first at Sno, and then Myrem. “Gleeful Seven,” he says. “Grub Chubbs is a singer out in the Far Cluster.”

  “Oh,” I say, briefly raising my brows before a sip.

  “We’re handymen,” Capkat says.

  “And women,” Aranni adds.

  “And one handywoman. Mostly did simp work,” Hugo says. “But we had our moments with player groups too.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” I admit with a smile. I’m wearing what feels like light armor, all black, some sort of tight, flexible leathery material. Something tells me, despite my low level, that at least one person at the table is trying to decide where they could slip a knife.

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re nothing now,” Hugo continues, downcast. “Here we are, in death’s cold embrace.”

  “Here we are,” Sno agrees, nodding. “And cheers to that.”

  “To the good life,” Hugo says.

  Everyone raises their glasses, and I join them for a clink and a drink.

  #

  We finish what was their lunch and head out as a group to a bar called, “The Devil’s Clam.” It’s a gentleman’s club, staffed with any given sort of exotic dancer, from human to humanlike, and anything beyond. The patrons are a similarly assorted ensemble, and the smokey room’s darkened environment lit red gives the impression that the dealings here are not the wholesome sort.

  There are half a dozen floors here, all but the bottom wrap-around balconies. We’re immediately escorted to the second floor, to a round table there, lit from its bottom side in blue.

  A dancer, human, arrives. She’s wearing a wig. It’s short, straight, black, ear-length everywhere except for the bangs.

  She’s joined shortly by a woman like a Hindu goddess, beautifully figured and with an elephant face. She’s… I think blue, but it’s hard to tell due to the lighting – could be gray – and a very short woman with cat ears is with her.

  Hugo and the others order drinks. When it’s my turn I ask for a beer and they have some both bottled and on tap.

  I order “something Earth-like,” and Myrem extrapolates for me. “Something light and bitter.”

  “So,” Hugo says to me. It’s been arranged that I sit beside him, though I insisted on an end, and was obliged. “What are your plans? What strikes you as the best thing to do now that you’re here?”

  “I don’t have a plan,” I lie.

  “Rather… what are your urges?”

  “My urges,” I repeat, faking puzzlement.

  “What… draws you?” he goes on.

  “Well,” I say, accepting my beer as it arrives. The others do the same with their drinks. “I guess I’m compelled to try to fit together whatever pieces of memories come as they surface.”

  “Have any… surfaced?”

  I shrug, look at the cat lady, who’s begun dancing on the table, her eyes locked on mine. “I remember what happened before I…”

  “Died,” Myrem says. He’s on the opposite end of the table. His hearing is astounding, or he’s good at reading lips. The music here is loud and thumping.

  “Died,” I agree. “Though no one killed me.”

  “Obviously,” Hugo says, looking around the table with a mile. Myrem is smiling at me, nodding.

  “Well, what ended you then?” Hugo pries.

  I shrug again, take another drink, set the drink down empty with a thud. “My world was broken. I finished it off.”

  Hugo’s brows raise and he nods, looking at Myrem, who’s shaking his head.

  “I’m sure it was a spectacular exit,” Hugo says.

  Arinna rolls her eyes, despite her preoccupation with the cat lady, whose attention has found its way to her.

  “What led you to such a destructive end?” Hugo asks.

  The human dancer brings me another drink, and I motion for her to set it down on the table, which she does. “I felt like the system itself had betrayed me. I had been living a life as a man, an ordinary man, for 38 years. Until one morning, a few weeks ago Earth-time, I awoke as someone altogether different.” I go on, explaining the Jesse situation, and everything that followed.

  “So, you were bumped,” Hugo says, nodding.

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “I’m confused,” Myrem says. “You were living as a simp in your Ava?”

  I don’t know what that means. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Hugo puts his arm around me. I don’t like it, but I let it slide. He seems to have noticed. He’s taken his arm back and he’s looking forward, at the dancer’s feet. They’re bare, cat-like in shape, but bigger, wider, than one would expect for her small size. “Well, it’s all a thing of the past,” he says.

  “What is?”

  “Forward and onward!”

  “Hear, hear!” the table says, sitting up, their drinks in the air.

  #

  We leave the club. It’s the afternoon, though the sky doesn’t look any different. We’re all a bit drunk now, even me. We’re headed to the armory. They want to show me how to pre-equip my “Bva.”

  There are shops, armories, banks, museums, libraries, universities, cartographies, legal offices, and infirmaries. There are training grounds, training advisors, bestiaries, treasure guilds, fight clubs, magic schools, and schools of various martial arts. There are time specialists, multidimensionality and probability advisors, gambling rackets, gang stoppers, guilds that specialize in the ending of trafficking and slave trading, and illegal black markets. Everything related to the game can be purchased or discovered here, through legitimate organizations and criminal enterprises. There are simp embedders, and even supposedly simp pluckers, though no one in the group knew where to find one.

  “They’re definitely out there, though,” Sno said. “They’re out there.”

  “What about bumpers?” I ask.

  “Bumpers?” he asks back.

  “Yeah. People that specialize in arranging bumps.”

  “Avatar bumps?”

  I nod once.

  He looks away. “I, uh… I don’t know,” he says.

  The armory is a large domed building, about the size of a cathedral, and packed. Here, one can buy weapons, armors, amulets and other gear prior to beginning their next “playthrough.” If they have vouchers, they can reclaim lost items. Everything one can think of is here. Here, in the hub. And although one could theoretically equip them here, and even use such items to inflict damage on others here in the hub, it’s frowned upon – as much so as my Bva. Capkat told me all about it. Explained all the eyes on me, even here.

  “What do you think?” Hugo asks me, holding out a long, curved sword. It was a blacked-out katana with a white blade, one that hummed when in motion. “Still into long blades?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “More of a beam-axe guy myself,” he said. “And muskets. But this thing’s nice.”

  “Everyone likes a decent musket,” Arinna said. The cat lady on her arm smiled, whispered something in her ear, and she laughed.

  Hugo sighs, shakes his head. “You were such a killer,” he says to me. “A goddamn surgeon.”

  I look at him a moment, blink, but can’t remember. Maybe he’s telling the truth. It wouldn’t surprise me. I feel powerful.

  “Saved my ass more times than one,” he says. He’s smiling, looking down at the blade. “This one’s on me,” he says.

  I look at him, smile.

  #

  Dinner at a place called K-Nives. Dinner and drinks. More drinks. Although I think it’s impossible that I could get completely trashed in this Clement Bva, I’m pretty close to it. And I’ve had my fair share of what are these shrimp-like sea creatures called a mok on a kabob. It’s a fruit kabob, more savory than sweet, but sweet enough to counter the natural tanginess of the mok.

  We’ve been discussing heading out. That’s their plan now, now that I’m here. We can finally leave, with or without the other two. “We can find them on the way,” Hugo says with a shrug. “Can’t be too far from the I-LeX.”

  “Of course,” I say, and I know it’s coming. They’re going to press for it soon. And the gentleman that’s been tailing us since lunch will either pop in to help them kill me, or help me kill them.

  “So, what happens if you’re killed here?” I ask.

  More than one of them let out an incredulous chuff. “Nobody kills anyone here,” Hugo says, shaking his head, sliding his long tongue slowly along the kabob in his hands, removing fruit as he does.

  “But if they did,” I say, leading.

  Between chewing, he says, “If they did, the deceased would wake up in some other hub.”

  “A specific one or random?”

  He looks uncomfortable. Arinna’s got her hand in her pocket. Sno’s looking at her, trying to catch her eye.

  “Specific,” he admits, though he looks pained to do it – he glanced at me, though I’m not sure whether to read me or to read whether I was reading him back.

  “I’ll have that weapon now,” I tell him.

  “The blade?” he asks.

  I nod up and down slowly, smiling. My mouth finds my straw, and I take a long drink, still nodding.

  “You’re drunk,” he laughs.

  I shrug. “Maybe a little.”

  “Come on. I’m not gonna give you a blade while you’re drunk. Especially while in Bva.”

  The others laugh, and some chatter about how potentially funny, but truly reckless, that would be goes on between the others.

  I laugh too. “That would be dumb,” I agree. “But I couldn’t equip it in Ava,” I say, which is true; I’m level 1 here – that much has been established through earlier conversation. Level 1 Avas can’t equip such powerful weapons. Bvas, on the other hand….

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Hugo says, “I think your Ava could handle it.” He looks at Sno, who shrugs and nods.

  “Can’t know what you never try,” I say.

  They look at me. They’re watching expectedly, straws in their mouths or drinks in hand.

  The cat lady, I realize, is one of them. And the man off in the distance is not. I’m at an impasse: I can go Ava and risk death and a lower tier hub; or I could stay Bva now and try my luck with them empty-handed. Something tells me my Clement might be strong enough to pull it off. But that stranger… I have no read on him.

  Seconds tick. Or whatever the metric is here in the hub. Momes, I think they said.

  I take one more long drink, roll my eyes, smile and set down my glass. I’ve never switched without a menu, but if what Sno told me about how to do it is true, it’s as easy as shouting out the command.

  “Go Ava,” I say, and I’m suddenly small and feeble, a Level 1 Jesse Lucas Johnson, this one in glasses.

  Immediately, the others transform. Hugo is a nasty beast of a man, with pincers, and long, dripping fangs.

  Sno is a hairy monster, with white fur and a bare, green face.

  Arinna stays the same, only grows larger.

  The cat dancer is a cat-person, a giant male.

  The two humans remain the same general size and shape, but they have weapons in-hand, a fencing sword and dagger each, and they look like cyborgs.

  My hands are up. I’m smiling. The stranger that’s been tailing me is gone. And I have over a minute before I can shift back.

  If they kill me, I’m gone. But, so what; I don’t need to be here anyway. I can start my mission wherever, and maybe I’d like to do it away from these thugs.

  I’ve died three times now. Three fucking times. It sucks, but it’s a part of the game. And I’m down to play, no matter the cost, because I now know, without a doubt, that there’s a way to get back to being the old me – there’s gotta be!

  I’m tackled from my right. All the air escapes me and I can’t see a thing under what I think might be the underarm of the stranger, the tail.

  There’s a lot of shooting, a lot of commotion, but I don’t know what’s going on. I just know that, should this person be smart enough, quick enough, and clever enough, I might just hit the 120 mome mark alive.

  So far, I think, it’s been thirty.

  There’s a heavy thud, something very hot near my head and then a splash of warm liquid.

  I fall and tumble. We’re outside, on a sidewalk just outside K-Nives, and everyone about scatters as more shots fly.

  The man who was carrying me is masked, and his coat is soaked on the right side in blue blood.

  He isn’t going to make it.

  I run.

  I’m about as limp and helpless as I was in gym class. Maybe more so, at only Level 1. About a half a block down, my side hurts. It’s only a stitch, but shit – it’s debilitating – and I clutch at my ribs before finally submitting to the pain, limping down an alley as brick chunks fly from the fa?ade of the nearest building.

  I’ve got ten seconds, and those cyborgs are fast.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

  I can hear them. They’re rounding the corner.

  Five seconds. Or momes.

  Three.

  Two.

  1,500!