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  The dresses, columns, and Romanesque designs were familiar. I slowly raised my eyes upward and found, at the tallest point of the temple, a statue of a woman looking outward. Even fuzzy vision couldn’t disguise that faraway look.

  Oh no. Wyl had escorted me right to a personal fan’s temple.

  “Selena, huh?” I muttered out loud while surveying the area.

  This seemed typical of the Voice. Marble, ocean, distracted pondering of the ocean. Too bad she seemed to hate me. And since I was racking up about a billion negative reputation points with this Voice, I decided to earn a few more.

  “I can see up your dress.” Giving the statue above my best old man leer paid off with two pop-up boxes.

  + 4 [Divine Attention]

  Progress: 26%

  “Heh.” There was proof that my own skills would increase while under the guise of William Carver. I would need to wait until I was me to check out what exactly Divine Attention did. Not that my goal was stat points; more just yanking her chain.

  None of the priestesses paid me any attention, despite my stellar commentary. I shuffled over to the edge and looked off into the distance. Even fuzzy, there was a definite beauty to this scene, especially up high. A wind breezing through brought that fish smell of the ocean, which was unusual to a land-dweller like me.

  “Nice view. I bet the sunsets are something,” I commented to the statue, even though it was unlikely Selena was paying that much attention to me.

  Slowly I eased to the ground, much to the relief of my knees.

  “Wish my eyesight wasn’t so terrible.”

  A growl of my tummy and the dipping bar to one side of my view explained other things currently lacking. I tilted my head back and spoke to the statue again.

  “You know why I’m here? I doubt your ladies invited me for a picnic.”

  “Certainly not, Will. From what I remember, your cooking was terrible.” That was a deceptively sweet voice full of artificial cuteness.

  “You’ll have to come around. I’ve grown to love the view.” In reality, moving again would hurt more.

  “It’s a view I’ve enjoyed myself many times.” The woman with a fake syrupy voice came nearby and sat down. She was plump, short, and far too chesty.

  I gave her a sidelong glance and registered the system boxes providing me information. She was a High Priestess of Selena. Carver’s information included everything from age and food preferences to less public items. Such as a birthmark location and most common saying while being… compromised. It had been awhile since I’d compromised anyone on the level William Carver’s information suggested. Goodness.

  She was certainly younger. Score one for Old Man Carver, I guessed. I slowly scanned through the information and tried to gloss over the lewder details. Turned out they hadn’t been together in that fashion since the woman took on her role as High Priestess years ago.

  Oh. That was why I was here.

  “Have you given more thought to giving Selena your oath?” Her name, Peach, sort of went with her general complexion.

  “No.” I wasn’t even lying in the slightest amount. I, Grant Legate, had given no thought to Selena getting my oath or anything else. I’d moved past that one during the trial room. Unsurprisingly, the declaration gained me more progress points.

  “Still the same old bull-headed man.”

  I grunted, either from pain or in response.

  “Hip okay?” She kept glancing sidelong at me. My simulated eyesight wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t see her head turn. Subtlety was not in her skill listing.

  “Fine.”

  “Shoulders?”

  Would Carver flinch at her tone? No, he found it endearing. Joy. I shook my head.

  “Good as ever.” I licked at a dry lip and pondered how to handle all this.

  “That’s your way of saying it hurts every time the wind blows, right, you old goat?” The curve-laden woman gave a laugh.

  Hah. This woman clearly knew Carver despite a grumpy exterior. Nor did she hesitate to point out his age. Hopefully I wouldn’t screw up and betray Carver’s recent passing.

  “Ah well. You never admit anything anyway.”

  “Nope.” I managed to avoid nodding in confirmation. According to the information popping around me, this conversation was common. Weekly, if I were to gauge. Wyl always had a guard take over the Guide duties below on the beach. Overall, it was interesting NPC behavior.

  “The Voice sent me a dream last night.” Her sweet voice managed to twist at the end. A slight gurgle that must mean unhappiness.

  “And?”

  “Selena showed me you walking through a door into the beyond.”

  “Was it white?” My eyes narrowed in thought.

  “Pure, like fresh snow.” She nodded but had no hint of joy on her face. Her sweet tone of voice betrayed no additional information.

  “Mh.” So Selena, the Voice who had never said a word, sent a picture of me in the trial room to her follower? My mind was splitting across this conversation and following my earlier train of thought. Wait a minute. How had this not occurred to me before? How exactly did an NPC die before their time and get taken over by a player?

  “I’m worried about you, William.” Her voice cracked a little.

  “Don’t be. I’m as healthy as an ox.”

  “Hah!” She laughed and broke the sweetened voice completely before coughing and getting back into the act. “You might fall over without that cane.”

  Suddenly I wanted to get away from the High Priestess and back to my bench. Carver’s Journal would be read in a new light. One where he wasn’t a computer-generated creature but a real player. One who had somehow been in this game years before public release. I sucked in my breath. Was he a beta player? Was Carver a Trillium employee? No wonder the Voices cared about his memory so much. Everything about this setup made so much more sense. A Trillium employee would be a VIP on this side of the ARC. The player who owned William Carver had died. What a crazy game.

  “Are you all right, William?”

  “My hips are okay.”

  The woman sighed.

  “William. I’ve been watching. The last few weeks you’ve been distant, almost like you weren’t even there. Now, today, I saw a bit of spring in your step, but something’s wrong. I can tell.”

  I gave a faint smile with both eyes glued on the distance. If I were able to leap into this role and gain all my points, perhaps Carver’s cover would have been better.

  There was a squabble of noise coming near the cliff. I sighed.

  Sure enough, flopping out of the air with a small bird was the [Messenger’s Pet]. They came in with a roll of feathers and decaying chirps. My tiny dragon buddy had managed to tuck one wing in as the tangled mess spun a few more times. It shook me out of the confused thought spiral I had descended into.

  “Is that…?”

  “A small dragon. Yes.” Question answered and points lost. Go team me.

  “No. It’s a Messenger’s Pet. Isn’t it?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said nothing. Carver’s messages from beyond had rather firmly advised me not to answer questions without an exchange.

  “Oh, William.” For some reason, the woman next to me became extremely sad and hugged this old man’s head.

  I was amazed by the detail of my situation. Her skin felt like real skin, her fingers felt warm. William Carver was extremely frail, and the motion hurt.

  Finally, with no further words, she walked away and left me alone. There I sat in confusion, staring at the small dragon tearing into his prey’s remains. Two women had found my buddy’s presence strange. Why did that make me sad?

  “What did you do, huh?”

  The dragon crunched on a bone and provided no response.

  “Fine. Back to work then.” My cane wobbled around without finding solid purchase.

  Eventually, I managed to get the pseudo leg under me and wandered off down the hill. Back to my bench and back to my—his—jo
urnal. Wait. I was not William Carver. William Carver was dead. The thought shook me.

  Tonight, when Carver went to bed and I could log out without risk, I would look up Trillium’s site. Maybe there would be something useful, like a salute to a deceased employee, assuming William Carver wasn’t played by some random no-name from across the globe. I wanted to see the real-world face of the man whose body I occupied.

  Happy place, I had to stay in my happy place. I had to not think about people William had left behind or how bad my acting skills were. I couldn’t dwell on the fact that this body had belonged to flesh and blood, not a digital cutout. People might be watching me right now and commenting on a clearly lacking performance.

  Oh goodness. I was a failure. I was screwing it all up again. Happy place, countdown, focus on walking. Set a simple task—get to the bottom of the hill and relieve the guard, read a book. Follow the simple on-screen prompts telling me how to be someone else.

  Oh goodness.

  My steps were interspersed with clenched eyes and waves of aching. I took pauses to rest while the tiny [Messenger’s Pet] got into fights with anything that moved. All manner of creatures were subjected to his rage: stray [Coo-Coo Rill]s, birds of strange origins, even flowers waving in a breeze. No fire was used in the harming of animals, however. I guessed he preferred his meat raw.

  Little Savage.

  I tried to bonk him with the cane in passing, which nearly sent me tumbling. He gave me a halfhearted hiss before tearing into the latest floral victim.

  Once on the bench, I started reading.

  Six game days passed with this basic routine. Sit on a bench, give new players mindless tasks. Two players were sent on follow-up quests regarding Mylia. Neither one came back.

  If William Carver was a real person, then the whole quest system he got was something granted by the computer. The system must be extremely neat to pull this off. I shuffled William back to his home for the night and logged out. Once there, I gave researching Trillium employee information a go. Turned out being a private eye was not one of my skills, not even using the ARC or Hal Pal’s interactive responses.

  I gave up quickly and took a nap before hopping back into the ARC to live as Carver. My brain was getting all messed up from living this way, but it also felt like a really, really long vacation. In a dead man’s virtual body.

  Right, I had to keep shifting my focus to positive items. I’d managed to build up my progress bar to over fifty percent. That was good. Carver had five journals covering decades in-game, which was also good. It let me narrow the search down to employees who had worked with Trillium for years. Plus the stories were funny.

  There was a theme to the autobiography. He wrote about his friends Michelle and Yates—well, friends was too strong a term; they seemed more like office members. None of them moved around as much as William had. William had gone everywhere in the game. Michelle went from one crafting skill to another to another and rarely left the same city.

  Yates, if the stories were believed, had traveled to other planes and written entire books on it. He played this game and scrawled out all of his findings on digital ink. Were they like Carver’s? There wasn’t anything that outright said “I’m a player;” maybe the game had censored things.

  And everywhere Carver went, the [Messenger’s Pet] was sure to follow. He hung out randomly in the Atrium of my ARC. He wandered near William Carver while being logged in. By the end of day two of real time, I expected to wake up to the tiny dragon’s presence inside my real-world room. He seemed trapped in the digital landscape though. Turns out dragons pooped excessively large amounts.

  My most recent adventure was dealing with another new player.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” The woman wore starter clothes—a thin shirt and pants—that all new players were given. Her wide hips pulled the pants tightly around her legs. I glossed over her username as I had every other new player to come my way.

  “You wanted a training hall. This is the right way.” This latest charge had demanded I walk her to the destination instead of handing over a map.

  “Are you sure?”

  The bench was starting to sicken me anyway. One week down, three to go. Too many of these new players had shown up recently. They were about half and half in terms of attitude versus confusion.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re senile. I’ll bet you’re programmed by the same people who made my coffee machine.” Even her footsteps sounded angry as we made our way down the street.

  “What’s a coffee machine?” I feigned ignorance.

  “Stupid computer.”

  We were only a few vague city blocks away from the hall. We still had to pass stands, stores, and one or two rows of housing, but I could see the roof of the training hall from here. I, Grant Legate, had never been inside, but Carver’s map had tons of information.

  “Over there.” I sat on a bench and pointed out the destination. Moving around as William had good days and bad. Today was somewhere between. Bench time was delightful.

  “That doesn’t look like a training center.”

  “What did you expect?”

  Queen of the Hate-Filled Frump didn’t like my question. She was all hips and anger.

  “I don’t know. People, rules, a guide, something.”

  “Try walking inside. See if Madam Hall is there.” Madam Hall was one of the people who managed the training building. She was also half a brick, from the dossier on William’s maps

  “You’re a rude machine.”

  “Get what you give,” I calmly responded.

  “Jerk.”

  Bets were on this woman earning Madam Hall’s anger. Especially since she didn’t like being called Madam or Hall; she preferred Peg. According to my notes, the woman would assign extra duties to anyone who addressed her the wrong way.

  Hopefully by the end of today, this player would understand being rude wouldn’t get her far. Or maybe it would. There seemed to be options and paths for every type of person. I sat and read the latest journal to pass more time, putting the future of Continue’s newest player out of my mind.

  I can’t believe those idiots each got their own assignment. In order to sign off on the project, we had to provide them an incentive. Part of me would have been perfectly comfortable keeping these adventures to myself. Yet there are too many things, too much for me to handle on my own.

  Eventually I’ll have to slow down. The medics have once again reminded me how little time is left. At least like this, here, I can make every second count. I stayed on that boat for three weeks talking to sailors about myths and legends, trying to plot out my next exploration. Some of these quests would require an army, which I don’t have. Eventually, there will be other Travelers. Eventually. Someone will have to show them the ropes and make them understand how real this world is.

  Well. Was that why William Carver played as a new player guide? His passages seemed to indicate a medical issue. It wasn’t enough to stop him…

  Oh.

  William had a real-world problem and a time limit. He was playing Continue to explore the world and enjoy the four-to-one compression. That made a lot more sense once I realized a player had written these journals. That’s why he was a guide to new players! He was showing them the ropes. I turned over the journal and nearly giggled in happiness. This was great. That might be why my progress had stalled out over the last day or two. Something in my actions was lacking compared to Carver’s expectations.

  “Mmmh. What do you think, Little Savage?” I asked the tiny dragon.

  He was dragging a stick along the ground while growling around the edge of it. I couldn’t decide if the small creature was more like a cat or dog. No, clearly cats and dogs were like dragons. That was it. He didn’t respond to Little Savage. Honestly, the [Messenger’s Pet] didn’t respond to any name I attempted to attach. Food though, the creature responded to food at any point.

  I closed the book and asked m
yself, what would Carver do?

  The problem was me. I wasn’t following through on anything. After four volumes of the man’s thoughts, I could tell when tasked with something, he went full bore. Me? I hadn’t tried to find a heroic battle. I hadn’t put serious work into figuring out Mylia. I was nearly flippant when assigning people their quests. Painfully, I stood. It required summoning all the bull-headed determination that could be applied to a deceased William Carver. Once stable, I walked toward the training building.

  The inside was misleading. The building itself was half-covered and led out to a yard that had been beaten by the passage of hundreds of players. Rain, sweat, and blood had matted into the dirt to make it harder than the cobblestone walkways. All the best stuff hid under cover. Peg Hall was across the yard, near one of the training dummies. She argued, loudly, with the new player about something.

  I looked around with my fuzzy eyesight. Information boxes popped up with vague information. A set of beaten straw dummies sat under the covered area I wandered into. There was a bar dropped across saw-like holders that went up a tall wall. Weapon racks held equally damaged belongings.

  “Huh.” I wandered the edge of the room, ignoring the screaming match.

  Peg seemed a step away from getting physical. The wide-hipped ball of anger was oblivious.

  “Huh.” This latest rack had four types of swords. According to Old Man Carver’s skill, swords were his favored weapon. He had preferred over-the-top two-handers in many of his stories.

  I picked one up while Peg resumed screaming orders. I’d chosen Peg for this newest player because their personalities would clash. Carver’s map had alternate options. One of the males at the other training grounds was an almost supermodel in appearance. His notes also indicated a tendency to sleep with anything moving. That seemed like a bad combination.

  Goodness, this sword was heavy. This was strange. It wasn’t the weight dragging at one side and how disproportionate the weapon looked compared to Old Man Carver’s hands. No, all Old Man Carver’s aches and pains seemed to diminish in a wave of energy. Putting my second hand over the hilt only made the difference stand out more. Carver was extremely comfortable holding a blade.