Tanner had spent over an hour explaining to the AI—sorry, explaining to Katie how an RPG worked, while the rest of us sat around in the tall grass. I don't know about the others, but I was trying not to throw up. It didn't even make sense that panic induced nausea existed in a virtual world, but then, fuck-little made sense today.

At least, we hadn't ended up brain-dead in our game-pods. Well, I hoped that we didn't. I mean, hell, right now a bunch of pimply teenagers might be pulling my comatose body from the machine, while some vestige of my consciousness imagined it lived on in a computer constructed reality. Ha-ha-ha! Wouldn't that be just fucking hilarious!

It seemed despite being in Fenoria, we were in our exact real-world bodies and none of our character creation survived the technical problems. But thankfully, we were no longer naked.

When we first appeared, I almost laughed at seeing those three dorky guys bare-ass in the field. Then, I realized I was just as exposed, and things got a whole lot less funny awfully fast. It was one thing seeing their pasty bodies and limp dicks, but I wasn't keen on having my every detail filed away in their spank-banks. 

Look. I know I'm no one's fantasy. My Instagram selfies are about build my self-confidence and showing myself being "body positive" and all that shit, not working guys up so they'll buy me stuff off my Amazon wish list. But I'd spent four years with these bozos. I'd caught each one of them, even Tanner, giving me the eye at some point, if not actually making a pass at me under the guise of being drunk. They were pigs. Sure, they were my friends—but my pig friends. So yeah, I had no doubt they'd masturbate over the memory of naked me.

Luckily, Katie could be reasoned with, and she provided us with clothes. If you could call the gray potato-sack things we were all wearing clothes.

Once we got our shame covered and our blood pressure lowered enough to think straight, Tanner suggest we call up our stats. When I did, I got this load of shit:

Everyone, seemed equally disappointed in this meaningless mess. 

Josh screamed, "My name is Josh. J-O-S-H. How hard is that?"

And before I could stop myself, I told Katie, "This is bullshit. I'm only 155 pounds. Fine, 160 on a bad day."

With our current status, we really didn't want to go off exploring. No weapons. No armor. No skills. We'd be killed by an irate house-cat. And there would be a hell of a lot worse than kitty-cats out there.

We'd spawned in a grassy expanse next to a dirt-track road. Old-growth forest stretch all around us. It looked filled with oaks and elms, and I'd bet money that once you got a few yards in, there would be no hint of sunlight. Off in the distance (in the west accord to my auto-mapper) the top of a ruined tower rose above the treeline. So, yeah, lots of places to go and get killed.

Scanning some of the documentation in the archive, I was able to sort out that the six attributes were mostly the usual role-playing fair under different names: Vigor=Strength, Intellect=Intelligence, Finesse=Dexterity, Presence=Charisma. Stamina was sort of like Constitution but mainly determined how much activity you could do before you had to rest. The real weird one was Harmony. The description was rather vague but it had something to do with how well you were in tune with nature. I guess, it was supposed to be like Wisdom. Maybe. They all maxed out at 20, but the average for each was 8. Anything less was detrimental, everything above was advantageous. And everything above 16 was super-human. Or perhaps "divine" would be the better term for this reality.

As for Life Force that easily translated to Hit Points and Mystic Energy was Magic Points. Life Balance was a little odd. It measured your current well-being. It dropped over time with activity, and when you didn't eat. If it got to zero, your Life Force started dropping.

"Okay, guys," Tanner said, coming back to us. "I think I've got it sorted out. Katie is doing some calibrating, and then she'll assign us classes. That will get us skills and bump up our sad stats."

"So, how will this work?" Aaron asked. "Is she sending us back to the creation screen."

"Er, no." Worried lines appeared on Tanner's forehead. "When I asked about that, she said she wasn't going to let us out of her sight."

I asked somewhat jokingly, "What? Is she's worried we might escape?"

Arron picking this up and said, "Wait! She is worried we might escape! Isn't she? Is she going to force us to stay here forever?"

Tanner put up his hands in a calming way. "I don't think she could. The pods are programmed to wake us when our time expires. But anyway, for our characters, she wants us to describe what we want, and she'll set it up for us."

Josh said, "Easy-peasy then. We just have to describe the characters we built, and we're off like nothing happened."

"Not quite. All of the species and classes has been erased, and she's inventing new ones." When a chorus of us asked what they were, Tanner said, "She wouldn't tell me. But this isn't a problem, we all know the characters we like to play. Just tell her. Like this ..."

He went on to describe someone casting spells and filled with arcane wisdom or some shit. I tuned out after a while. Aaron went next, going on about being quick and sure-sighted and being at home in the forest. Old Aaron didn't look like a granola-eating hippie, but I suppose it made sense. He did only enjoy outdoor sports like hiking and skiing.

Josh then jumped in describing his barbarian and went on a little too long about his well-oiled muscles. Ew! 

Aaron added to the description, calling up to heaven with a hand cupped around his mouth, "Don't forget to make him dumb as an ox and give him only a loin cloth to wear." Josh gave him an angry shove.

"Time out," I said. "I was going to be a warrior or a knight or whatever this newborn AI goes with."

"So," Josh said.

"So. The party won't be balanced. We'll have three fighters and magic-user."

"She's right," Tanner said. "One of you should be a thief or better yet, a healer."

Josh pointed to Aaron, "What about him? He could be the healer."

"But I'm not playing a tank. Both of you want to, but we don't need two tanks in the party."

Josh said, "Cool. Then she should be the healer. It makes more sense for a man to be a tank."

"Really? And where would we find one of those around here? I don't see any," I said loudly right in his face.

"Ouch," Aaron said.

Tanner suggested, "There's an easy solution. Rock-paper-scissors."

I quickly agreed to this, and Josh had little choice but go along with it. Good old stubborn Josh. He always picked rock because he thought it was the strongest. I threw out paper.

He howled, "Fuck you!" And stomped off.

Not wanting to lose this opportunity, I called out, "Okay Katie, load me up."

A new character sheet came up:

"Felinoid? What the hell is a Felinoid?" I asked.

"Um, Mack," Aaron said delicately. "You're a cat-girl."

"Oh, hell no!" I felt my scalp and sure enough two pert, fury ears sat on the top of my head. "Oh, fuck no! Not this."

Josh laughed so hard he fell on his butt. "Yeah. All right. You can be our warrior. Guess I dodged the bullet on that one."

Something moved behind me, and I turned to see it. Then, kept turning, spinning until I realized the thing I was trying to catch was my tail. My. Fucking. Tail.

This only made Josh laugh louder. Even Tanner and Aaron, who had been looking sympathetic, started to smirk.

At least I was properly dressed. The AI had given me starting armor that consisted of a black leather jerkin with iron coins sewn into it and skirt of leather strips, some reinforced with iron bands. I also had a narrow rapier in a sheath on my belt. I was thinking about skewering Josh with it, when a system announcement came up.

Out of the trees, three strange furry creatures emerged and came at us. They sort of looked like badgers but stood upright. Each was about six feet tall. And their black claws were longer than any of my fingers.

The laughter stopped. And my three companions coward behind me for protection.