Brett and Matilda were sitting at a kitchen table that was sized for someone two feet shorter than him. Apparently, it wasn't exactly sized for his host either, judging from how it came up to the old woman's chest where she stood. As promised, he was sipping a glass of sweet tea. It wasn't nearly as chill as he'd like it to be, but overall it was a decent glass.

"Where am I?" Brett asked.

After she put the pitcher back, the old lady slid into the seat across from him. "Now, I know you probably have a lot of questions, but let's start with some introductions, shall we?"

He nodded. The caffeine and sugar in the tea were helping him jump-start his mind, and all those questions from before had bubbled back to the surface. Pushing all the questions down, he remembered his manners. With a greeting nod and a warm smile, he introduced himself. "I thank you for the tea ma'am. My name is Brett Cooper."

A grandmotherly smile appeared on the old lady's face. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Mr. Cooper. I'm Matilda, a bit of a guide of sorts, a greeter if you will."

"Like the kind at Walmart?" He blurted out, regretting it a second later.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but essentially yes." She answered with an honest smile. This made him blink. "That's a pretty good approximation from the other side."

 "So I do have a lot of questions. But where do you think we should begin?" He asked, deciding to just roll with it for now.

Work got him pretty good at getting information from people. It was always best to let them tell the story before asking questions. If he let them talk first, they'd either hang themselves or just tell him everything. 

"That's the best first question I've heard anyone ask in a very long time." She said with her ever-present warm smile. "I think explaining why you're glowing is probably the best place to start."

"About that. Is there any way I can stop glowing? My eyes are getting quite dry." Brett asked. He really wanted to hear her explanation, but it was starting to sting. 

"Yes, dearie, simply say status," She answered. Huh. He thought. That sounds insane. 

"Status."

Sure enough, a status window appeared in front of him. 

"So you'll see in the top right corner there should be a bell icon with a number next to it," Matilda told him. "Once you select it and read all your notifications, the light will stop." 

With a thought, Brett selected the notification bell. A message appeared in front of him, replacing the status window. 

System initialized. Menu access granted.

After he finished reading, the glow faded. 

"And how do you turn it off permanently?" he asked.

"Permanently?"

"Like, make it so notifications don't make me look like the rear end of a lightnin' bug?" He clarified.

"Ah. You can't do that." 

Brett blinked. 

"Come again?" he asked.

"That's just how notifications work. When someone gets a notification, they glow until they read it." Matilda explained, becoming slightly exasperated. Brett nodded, accepting that statement with no further questioning.

 "Say, how common are notifications?"

"Oh, they happen all the time. It really depends on how many friends you have and how active your chats are." Matilda said.

Chats. That can't be good. Brett thought. "So anytime I receive a message, I'll light up?"

Matilda nodded, and his heart sank. That was going to get really old really fast. "Yes, dear. Unless you block chat completely, which is kind of rude so you should only do that when you need to. As you won't receive any messages until you turn it back on."

He resisted the urge to argue. As much as he wanted to rant about this, he figured Matilda probably wouldn't want to hear it. "So, what else can you tell me about the status window or system?"

***

It turned out Matilda could tell him a lot of mostly useless stuff.

The status itself was rather basic, just like a table-top variant. Attributes, Notifications, Class, Skills, Chat, and slots for things he didn't need yet. He checked out his attributes first. 

These were supposed to depict how powerful each aspect of him was. He didn't feel any different after getting here, but that was to be expected. The numbers just reflected who he already was. The average stat was a 10. Brett was slightly insulted that his FOR, his mental fortitude, was so low, but that made sense with his disposition toward anger. The rest, he felt, were fairly accurate.

He and Matilda talked for quite a long time about what each stat did and how they affected his body. Things were intuitive. Three mental stats and three physical stats. They represented power, speed, and defense.

Eventually, Matilda started to get tired and graciously offered him her daughter's room for the night. "Really, it's a guest room now. It's just that my daughter doesn't come home very often anymore, but when she does, she stays here."

In the dim light of the stars shining from the window, he found his way to the bed, and after tugging off his boots, he fell asleep face down on top of the comforter.