Server shutdown in 15:00 minutes.

  What could that mean? I look outside to see the populace either rushing to their destination or disappearing altogether. Without any fanfare, one after another, monsters vanish completely. No puff of smoke, or slow fade to nonexistence. One moment they’re there, then they’re not. The message repeats every minute, counting down to zero. The instant it does, any remaining individuals disappear like the rest.

  “What the fuck” I say flatly. “What the actual fucking shit is going on?” I yell. “Where did you all go?” I scream.

  “Hey!” a voice shouts from a distance. “You new?”

  “Hello?” I respond. “Yes! I am! Please help me!” my heart starts racing. I can’t be completely sure, but I think it’s been four days since anyone spoke to me. I don't remember who it was or what was said, but my gut tells me I haven't spent my entire life in a world full of mute monsters.

  “Come on over to the inn, we’ll get you sorted out.” The voice says, fading as it seems to go back inside.

  “Wait! I can’t leave my shop!” I shout as loud as I can manage around my overgrown teeth.

  “You can when the server shuts down.” The voice says matter-of-factly.

  “Oh.” I say to myself. I take one step outside, stop. Then another. Then I walk until I reach the spot where I was teleported back last time. Nothing. I practically squeal with joy as I take off running in the direction of the voice. The city beyond my shop is much the same further away, mud buildings as far as the eye can see on a slightly hilly terrain. The late morning sun reveals everything is filthy and unkempt, the shops barely passing as shelters, filled with goods. I don’t stop to check out the interiors, far too excited to find the source of the voice. Just thirty steps away from my shop, I find the inn.

  “Hey new guy” an orc greets me. He looks older, though I have no frame of reference for orcs. Grey hair is usually an indication, but who knows, maybe he was born that way. He’s a little hunched over, and his voice sounds gruff, and age worn. His braided hair drapes down his sparsely clothed green chest, over huge muscles uncharacteristic of an old man.

  “Hello” I greet him meekly. “My name is Urul Mulush.” I step up to him and extend my hand. My heart is beating out of my chest. Another orc, but I’ll take it. He’s actually talking to me. I can hear his breathing, the way his mouth shapes words around tusks with years of practice. I could cry.

  “Perthag, but people call me Bert.” he says, taking my hand to shake. “Last name huh? Lucky you”

  “How do you mean?” I ask, letting go of his hand. He doesn’t seem upset. Hopefully last names aren’t offensive to orcs? He alleviates my worry before I can spiral too much.

  “Ol’ laser face only gave me one. Lots of folk only get one. Some get titles but that’s even rarer than a last name. No middle names to my knowledge.” He responds, stroking his beard.

  “Laser face?” I ask.

  “The thing that brought you here. Brought All of us here.” He turns and motions me inside. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  As I step past him, I take in the inn. Warm and welcoming, it is kept illuminated and cozy by a huge fire pit in the center of the room. The shape of the building reminds me of a domed pizza oven. Tables and chairs made of rough wood surround the fire in a ring. A long counter stands along the back wall, decorated with clay mugs and bowls.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Bert asks, walking past me to the bar.

  “I haven’t had anything to drink in days.” I say, licking my lips. They’re not dry, despite my urge to wet them. “Or eat.”

  “Something to eat then, too.” He reaches behind the counter for a small barrel, pouring its contents into the nearest mug. Setting the barrel on the counter, he places a roasted boar next to it. The creature is massive, dwarfing the shiny red apple in its mouth.

  “Can we eat because the servers are down?” I ask, lifting the mug to my mouth. I feel the liquid reach my lips, cool to the touch, and taste it on my tongue. It’s disgusting, like a thick beer made of chewy piss. I drink it down regardless, desperate to feel anything. I rip a leg from the boar easily, chewing the tough meat with my sharp teeth. I can’t use my tusks, but every tooth between them is a tiny razor, molars tucked far in the back.

  “Yeah. The shut down loosens up the rules a bit.” Bert watches me gobble down his offering, shifting his gaze behind me as something loud bangs through the entryway. I turn to see who or what has come through. I am greeted with a table. The underside of a table, lumbering towards me on two enormous, hooved feet. I yelp as it tips over and lands roughly on the floor, revealing the minotaur that had been holding it up. The bovine face smirks at me.

  “Yo.” It says. Deep, rumbling, like thunder mere inches away. There's a slight… moo to it. I don’t know how else to describe the accent. He’s big, real big. More than just a cow on two legs, he’s eight feet of rock solid muscle, thinly covered in black fur. He wears an apron filled with leatherworking tools, and nothing else. It does not leave much to the imagination.

  “Uh… hi” I say, keeping my distance.

  “That’s Gunpheus. We call him Gunner.” Bert tells me, pulling up a wooden chair to the table.

  “What’s it tonight fellas? Poker again?” a new voice comes from the doorway. Following the sound, I have to look down for once instead of up, at the source. A bipedal raccoon.

  “Is that a talking raccoon?” I ask before I can stop myself. The newcomer is exactly that, a chunky, fuzzy little mammal. A trash panda. A ring-tailed bandit. Your normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill raccoon. Standing on two legs and talking. “and it’s mid-morning… right?”

  “Goblin.” Perthag says.

  “This Goblin has a name too, jack. Jack.” The racoon says, pushing a smaller wooden chair from across the room.

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  “Jack Jack?” I ask.

  “Just Jack.” Perthag says. “He does that to everyone. Don’t take it personally” Jack laughs. It’s a little guttural, chittering sound. Exactly the way a racoon would sound if they could laugh at their own jokes.

  “I’m sorry, you’re a Goblin? Named Jack?” I ask, still very confused.

  “Yeah, what about it?” Jack smiles, clearly understanding my confusion and deliberately not clarifying anything. “Don’t care to use my given name.”

  “You might overhear one of the players still talking about it. Even arguing.” Perthag tells me, setting a deck of cards in front of Jack. He takes them and starts shuffling. “Instead of a long, pointy nose, green skin, and a greedy disposition, the developers made Goblins into raccoons.”

  “Developers?” I say, more questions than answers. Something in my mind is clicking into place, but I resist it. Unconsciously, the conclusion that’s been building has become a tidal wave ready to crash.

  “You haven’t figured it out, new guy?” Jack looks up at me from behind his fanned-out hand of cards. “You’re in a video game.”

  I nearly collapse to the ground, heart pounding, head swimming. “What the fuck” I mutter. A video game? A god damned video game? How? Why? My entire body tenses with rage and confusion.

  “Better watch your language when the servers come back on. The Monitor wouldn’t like that.” The bull-man finally speaks up.

  “The Monitor?” I choke out, already overwhelmed. My rage fades away, reasoning that the group assembled before me are in the same situation I am. They didn’t do this to me. Jack groans.

  “I guess I’ll explain. I fold.” Bert sets his cards down and turns to me. “Go ahead and take a chair. You’ll want to be sitting for this.” I follow his instructions, pulling up a chair to their poker table. The firelight plays in Bert’s eyes, the sinking feeling in my stomach amplified by the dramatic look on his face.

  Bert, Jack, and Gunner take turns explaining our situation between rounds of poker. We all live in a video game called “Crossroads Online”, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, or M.M.O.R.P.G. None of them know how or why, much to my dismay. They became small parts of this digital village, providing one service or another to the players. Most of the players, they tell me, barely seem sentient by comparison to us. They do not make facial expressions, or gestures, or even speak typically. There is some disparity between players who can afford more advanced gaming rigs, as they call them.

  Most players experience the game through a screen, mouse and keyboard. Others use virtual reality headsets. Both groups are represented by soulless characters, playing the game as a hobby and investing only a moderate amount of money into it. Desktop player characters are the most lifeless, virtual reality players only distinguishable by their jerky, sudden movements. A select few players, though, use full-immersion rigs to all but live in the game. Their character will speak with their voice, move their lips and body naturally, and can apparently feel everything their character does.

  “Even fuckin’,” Jack makes a point to mention. “Perverts.” he laughs.

  Meeting one of these players is extremely rare, immersion rigs being prohibitively expensive. Where the four of us are located is known as the lower district, the impoverished area of Masstaoir, the huge settlement we’re in. Beginner players pass through here on their way to bigger and better things. We are something like a tutorial for them, basic game functions learned through interactions with us, and combat with weak boars outside of the city. At this point in the game’s life, the rich players have already permanently departed from this area of the game.

  I open my mouth to ask a question that hasn't formed. We weren't born here, I don't think. we’re like the players in some way, but I just can’t complete the thought. What are we exactly?

  “Now,” Bert makes eye contact with me. “The Monitor.”

  He tells me with seriousness in his voice that this game is primarily controlled by an artificial intelligence that they refer to as The Monitor. They also call it laser face, but only when the servers are down.

  “An A.I.?” I interrupt.

  “Yeah, it sees and hears everything. always watching, monitoring. Hence the name.” Bert responds “And it’s extremely strict. Any little misstep it punishes to the maximum extent possible.”

  A new voice grunts from my left. A figure I hadn’t noticed until now sits away from the group, chair facing out towards the street.

  “That’s Toebark.” Bert says with a sympathetic look. “He took one too many trips outside of the city and the monitor made him neutral.”

  “Neutral?” I ask, looking Toebark over, recognizing him as a Cyclops, the only person here bigger than the minotaur. Although I can tell he’s doing his best to make himself small.

  “See his name?” Bert points to the space above Toebark’s head.

  “Uh… no?” I stare blankly at the ceiling, expecting Jack to tell me gullible is written there.

  “Huh.” Bert grunts. “Well after the servers come back up that should be fixed. It happens like that sometimes. “Anyways… the name above his head is yellow, while ours are green. Simply put, that means players can attack him. They can kill him with impunity. No consequences of any kind.”

  “How’s he alive then?” I ask, frowning.

  “It’s a video game. Whadda ya think, we only get one life?” Jack rolls his eyes.

  “I can die here and come back.” I say, realizing. “That's incredible.”

  “Maybe for you.” Bert winces. “For Toebark, that means every few minutes, he’s at the mercy of the players. He’s stuck in that chair, waiting for a wandering sadist to cut him down. He can fight back, but the level disparity is usually too much. They end his life, over, and over, and over. Just because they can.”

  “That’s sick. And the A.I. did that to him? Just for leaving?” I watch the great cyclops use his one eye to stare at the empty street outside.

  “Not just leaving. Maybe one of these days he’ll tell you about it. For now, let’s just play, and leave him to it.” Bert serves me a hand of cards, clearly done talking on the subject of sadistic players and fascist robots. After a few rounds, I’m back in my shop without any warning, standing behind the counter. My best guess is the servers are back up, and the five of us got put back in our places.

  For the first hour, I whistle. I can’t recall the name of the tune, and that makes me upset, so I stop. The rest of the day I look around my shop, imagining myself wearing my wares. I would look absolutely ridiculous in a robe because of my huge muscles. What would I be, a punch wizard? Not that I know what a wizard is or what they typically do. There’s this innate knowledge writhing in the back of my brain, isolated from any connected memories that would explain its existence.

  I shake my head, frustrated by the thought. It’s like a memory that you think you have of something, but really it’s a second-hand memory. Like when your parents tell you about going to Disney World when you were five. You don’t remember anything about it, but your mind tells you that you do in fact remember the spinning teacups, because they showed you a picture of it.

  What in the goddamned fuck is Disney world?

  Anyways, moving along. My pseudo-knowledge tells me that a sneaky bastard would wear the leather armor I sell. I wouldn’t consider myself particularly stealthy, maybe compared to the lumbering giants around me. Next to a cyclops or minotaur I’m positively puny. I could sneak in and out of… I don’t know, the bank? Do they have those here?

  I run my hand along the rim of the shield I damaged earlier. It’s in perfect condition, despite my outburst. Me and my anger issues. Can’t recall having them, but I’ve got 'em, no doubt about that. This part of my selection is a lot more appealing, the platemail. Heavy armor? Now that’s what I’m talking about. There’s nothing more appealing to a man than knight armor. Saving the princess on the back of a mighty steed, sword in hand? Magnificent. Granted, with my complexion, I’d look like Shrek saving princess Fiona from the dragon.

  I stop, staring at my own reflection in a mirror-polished breastplate.

  “Who the hell is Shrek?”