I wasn’t sure what it was I was being congratulated on, but those were the words that popped into my view moments after appearing in the middle of a desert.

Putting aside where these bizarre screens were coming from, I had trouble processing what the display before me was trying to convey.

Jackpot?
Come to think of it, I was at the casino just a moment ago, wasn’t it? I wasn’t one to normally gamble, but I was dragged along by my parents and given a Benjamin to waste. I wasn’t going to turn away free money, so I found a good machine and…

I somehow ended up here… Is this supposed to be a vacation? Is that a joke? The sun was scorching hot, and all I could see for miles was sparse vegetation, and dry earth.
Worst of all, I was naked.

“Shit,” I grumbled, trying to find some kind of shelter. One might think I was lucky no one was around, but I would have rather been embarrassed than be out in the hot desert alone. Without any shoes, the ground below was irritating.

Liquidated your personal assets, was what the display say.
In other words, in addition to this rip off “vacation”, my belongings were taken and sold away.

There was just one last bit of the display I hadn’t quite gotten yet.
“What Pay Store?”

As soon as I uttered those words, a new screen appeared before me. Contrary to the alert messages of the previous screen, this new screen was more like a catalog. It had a scrollable grid of items, with a section to the side labeled Featured Items, and at the bottom some items labeled Suggested For You.

Among the suggestions was a “Complete Desert Attire Set (350p)”, but in the Featured category was “Fully Adaptive Clothing (700,000p 500,000p On Sale!)”.
This store… It definitely knew about my predicament and was targeting items I was likely to splurge on. There was a clear price-difference between the two products—an over 1000% difference!

However, even if I had no intention of being left here naked, I wanted to verify what exactly these units were, and the reason for the price difference.

I reached out my hand, and tapped the “Fully Adaptive Clothing” item as I would a touch screen. Understanding my intent, the display changed, bringing up a page about the Adaptive Clothing.

I see. It made sense why there was such a huge price difference. This wasn’t just a full set of clothes, but one that changed shape to meet the need.

Well, that’s assuming this isn’t all a stress-induced hallucination, of course.

I groaned, irritated by the heat of the sun and dirt below my feet. I wanted to stop and think logically, but my situation already implied I was out of my mind.

Price? Do I have enough money? What’s this currency anyways? Does it really matter…? Fuck it, I’ll buy it and worry later. I can’t think like this…

And so, without the leisure to think my situation through, I tapped on the “Buy” button. A verification screen popped up, asking to confirm my purchase, but I had already made up my mind.

An instant later, light and shadow seemed to gather around me, materializing and pulsating as new matter was birthed around me. Just moments later, I was covered from head to toe in thick, comfortable robes that blocked out the harsh sun’s rays, while also protected me from the hot air without trapping my own body heat with me. At the same time, simple footwear materialized around my feet to protect them from the burning sands.

It was a simple garb mirroring the “Complete Desert Attire Set” I saw earlier, that did the job of protecting me from the elements well enough.

“It really works…” I muttered, touching myself all over, as if to confirm the unbearable heat was now gone. “Is this some kind of shape-shifting nanobot cloth? Or some kind of alien living clothes?”

Despite being the one to go through with the purchase, I was completely baffled. No no, this also kinda makes sense. After all, if I’ve gone completely crazy, it’s not so weird for me to trick myself into feeling alright. Heck, the scorching heat earlier might have been the dream, and this now was what’s real…

…

…

“Hah…” I gave out a loud sigh.

I didn’t know what to think, really.
But… perhaps it’d be a good idea to take this weird “Pay Store” seriously. That message did say this was a vacation to another world, so what if it was true? What if I got Narnia’d?

An absurd thought, but it was better than thinking I suddenly had a schizophrenic episode.

I spent the next hour exploring the Pay Store, trying to make sense of this strange phenomena. As one might expect, it seemed to imitate a commerce website, selling strange products in exchange for a currency.

It didn’t take long before I found out how to check how much money I have. On a “History” tab, I was shown how much “money” I have have, and what I’ve spent those points on so far.

The only entries so far were:

• Jump to Another World (1,000,000,000p Free!)
• Fully Adaptive Clothing (700,000p 500,000p)

And my current money was: 5,501,500p

In other words, I started off with about six million “p”. What is that, points? Probably… But then, that extra 1,500p looks very unnaturally tact on. Does it mean something? Although I thought to just dismiss it, I recalled a certain part of the notification earlier: My liquidated assets. In other words, all of my belongings, my clothes and possibly other possessions ultimately amount to a little over a thousand points…
Given a full set of robes and a turban with appropriate footwear was around 300 points, I kind of doubt the casual clothes (with much less material) was worth five times as much. If that amount included my computer back home and the rest of my clothes…

I had no way to be certain, especially given I wasn’t sure what kind of value a “p” had. It’s also possible that rather than being based on some abstract monetary value, it may instead represent a raw energy to produce the items in question.

Ugh…
Forget about it. I’m thirsty.

I looked into the catalog, and found a section on drink.
There was a wide array of beverages, from water and soda, all the way to fine wines and elixirs. Most of the cheaper drinks like water and coke were all just 1p, although some were two or three points. In fact, I noticed that it looked like a point was completely indivisible; all the items in the catalog sold for whole numbers.

Well, seeing as there was no difference between a cup of water and a similar sized can of soda, I went ahead and purchased the soda. Right in front of me, just like before, blobs of light and dark materialized in front of me as they morphed together and manifested a simple and familiar red can. I snatched the can from the air and immediately opened it, before downing the contents to replenish my lost fluids.
Ah… Nice and cool, I thought.

The flavor of the drink was subtly different, but I didn’t pay much attention to that, and gulped about half of the can before stopping and letting out a satisfied sigh.
Perfect… If I can make about three of these a day and maybe one of these cheap meals for 3p to 5p, then I’ll have enough food for… a couple thousand years?

At least my food situation is solved.
Now I needed to find my way out of this desert. Living out here… wasn’t the worst idea, but I didn’t find it pleasant. I could probably find something to make a home in the catalog, but I felt it was better to keep my points in reserve and find civilization.

“Anything here that can get me somewhere safe?” I asked aloud while taking sips of my coke every now and then. Navigating the catalog was fairly easy, with items tagged with functions and categories I could search through at will. Although I used my hands to drag and scroll through much of the menu, I could issue commands by thought, such as “Search Water” or in this case, “Search Map”.

There were a number of maps. Countless maps, actually. The majority of them were normal static maps drawn onto a variety of surfaces. I was somewhat curious of maps like “Map of Antioch; Outdated (1p)” and “Map of Atlantis; Outdated (1p)” and confused by bizarre diagrams like “Maps of Anthony’s Body (4p)”—why was there a collection of x-rays of my insides here?

But those were only the static maps drawn onto a surface of some kind.
For only a few hundred points, there were devices that scanned the surroundings, those that filled themselves in over time, and maps that could even draw out the “mindscape” of another person.

Reaching into the thousands of points, there were even more mysterious maps, many of them having harder to grasp names that sounded like trademarks or marketed products. Among these was the most suggested map:

It was extremely convenient, to the point of being absurdly useful. And yet, it didn’t appear to be the most expensive map. No, that award went to the Omnimap (96,000,000,000p), whose price was so far outside my budget I didn’t even bother looking at the description.

After only a few moments of consideration, I parted with 10,500 points, and felt my mind ache for a moment. It was as though someone or something was doing construction inside my brain. After just a few seconds of annoying buzzing, it was all gone.

“Now, let’s see… I guess I just have to think about the Map, and… there it is.” Right on cue, the strange transparent screen manifested in front of my eyes. Just like all the previous windows, this one was translucent, as if both there and not there. The information displayed was fairly easy to understand—there was a wide area of the desert displayed, with various plants and animals marked. The map also displayed blacked-out areas which weren’t recorded.

In fact, it seemed the map had accurately drawn out everything in my environment that I could see, for as far as I could see. Evidence of this was that the furthest point on the map was about 3 miles away, which if I remember right, was the furthest a person could reasonably hope to see on a Earth’s rounded surface. I guess this “other world” was about the same size as Earth then?

Well, I didn’t know whether or not I was actually in another world.
Concluding that, I began to trek straight north. I figured if there was any kind of nearby civilization, I would eventually come across some kind of road, and follow that to a city.

Ah… well, I don’t know what kind of world this is yet, do I?
It’ll be dangerous if the people of this world are hostile, so how about I buy a weapon?

I wasn’t sure how strong of a weapon it was, but I decided it was better than nothing.
Just in case, I marked the weapon with my Map and started on my long, perilous journey.