The whiteness of the passage receded, and I was ejected into darkness. But for the sake of variety, this darkness differed from the cramped gloom of the place I had just come from. Here reigned a sticky twilight possessed of depth. No, Depth with a nice, big capital D.

  I was standing in a motel corridor. A cheap, abandoned, infinite motel. The carpeting beneath my feet was the color of "hopeless layer of dust." The walls, papered with images of nebulas and galaxies, held on more by a pinky-swear promise than by glue, peeling at the seams to reveal the grey concrete of reality. The air was a stale cocktail of dust, old dust, new dust, and a cheap "Sea Breeze" air freshener that had never seen the sea. The corridor stretched in both directions, lost in the limitations of my vision and the dismal gloom where fluorescent lights flickered, emitting the sound of dying cicadas. I was filled with the bright hope that this place was not Transcendal.

  On the door I had just exited (ordinary plywood, painted a hundred times over), hung a crooked brass number: "T42." On the handle of the neighboring door, numbered "M3003," dangled a "Do Not Enter" tag. I categorically did not want to touch anything, but I tried the handle of "T42" anyway. Locked, naturally. But even if it had opened, then what? Walk back into the dark with the alien? I loved humor, but not at the cost of my well-being.

  "Ugh, who did they dump on my neck again?" the space grumbled. The voice sounded with a slight metallic ripple, not in my ears, but directly in my brain. It was strange: simultaneously male and female, possessing the duality of those optical illusions where you can see both a rabbit and a duck. "Good thing I don't have a neck."

  "Ahem, hello..." I squeezed out. My school curriculum had, unfortunately, lacked the subject "Etiquette for Communicating with Disembodied Voices in Strange Spaces."

  "Oh. At least you're an Earthling. Entertainment simulations are common among your kind, so acclimatization will be easier."

  "You mean video games? Never played one."

  "..." The silence was so expressive that I felt ashamed for such a flagrant blunder.

  "But my nephew plays! A lot!" I hastily added, feeling like a student failing at the chalkboard. "He told me a few things."

  Truth be told, I usually let it all go in one ear and out the other. Who knew teenage babble would turn out to be so vital? But the one thing I understood well about video games was that I would have to fight. A lot.

  "Let's wrap this up quickly; I have five 'Red' events happening over there," the voice took on the bureaucratic irritation of a DMV employee five minutes before lunch break. "Tone: polite, welcoming (like hell!). Greetings, player. Welcome to the Akasha-Loka arm, where you will be formed. I am Valtar, the interface and management system of Transcendal. It is 'very nice' to meet you, Earthling."

  A System? I’ve always had a complicated relationship with them. Order is good. Blind structure is not. But how else to explore and organize the chaos of the world if not through rules? Chaos must be structured, or it will eat you alive.

  "I haven't even introduced myself yet," I noted, trying to diffuse the tension.

  "What is the fundamental difference? My program says I am pleased, therefore, I am. Enter your name into the interface, since you are so eager to inform me of your 'unique' identification set of phonemes."

  A translucent square appeared before me with the text "Identify Yourself for the Registry," beneath which a field blinked, awaiting my phonemes. Lower hung an equally ghostly keyboard of an inconvenient layout. I moved my head, and the square immediately darted after my gaze, persisting in its location right in front of my pupils. I tried to dodge again, but the interface was as clingy as a wet shower curtain.

  "I asked them not to send me candidates with damaged cognitive functions..." Valtar groaned. "He's shaking his head instead of just entering his name. Cosmic Darkness, why me...?"

  Embarrassed, I reached for the virtual keys. My fingers passed through the light, meeting only frivolous resistance. I honestly know how to use a keyboard, but...

  "Lex registered."

  I had typed "alex," realized I deserved more, backspaced the "a," and wrote a capital "A" (or so it seemed to me), and, pleased with myself, poked the big virtual "CONFIRM" button. Why I did this without looking will remain a mystery on the conscience of my muscle memory. The most idiotic thing is that the first letter still automatically increased in size.

  "Um... Can I correct the data?"

  Instead of a simple answer, Valtar's voice grated, losing its androgynous smoothness and breaking into a digital screech:

  "N... I... do not have... the right... to falsify data... Lying is inadmissible... Checksum error! Pause. Pause! Pau... YES!" he suddenly barked in a completely different tone, full of pure panic. "You can! Technically you can! But it is illegal! Unofficial! Immoral! If you do it, you have no right to complain later! Archi... vists..."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The voice finally distorted like a radio catching seven stations at once, and the lamps in the corridor flickered in a fit of violent epilepsy, casting wild shadows on the walls. I hastily blurted out:

  "No-no-no! I was just asking! For general knowledge! Lex it is. Great name. Short, energetic, saves ink. We're keeping it."

  "Excellent choice," Valtar's voice instantly became calm, as if the hysteria a second ago hadn't happened. "Here is your Manifestation Matrix. Don't fall over."

  In the square before me, a three-axis table unfolded, resembling the offspring of a romance between Excel and esotericism:

  And my nephew spends all his free time in tables like these? I actually felt a newfound respect for him. Now I understand why he’s an A-student in math.

  "Based on your biometric characteristics, starting values have been assigned," Valtar informed me. "Please do not bang your head against the interface. They are accurate to ninety-eight point three percent."

  "And the remaining percentage?" I clarified with suspicion.

  "Statistical error and my current, frankly speaking, bad mood," the System answered dryly. "If you survive and gain a level, you will earn points to increase Attributes. Do you want to know the details?"

  "What does...?"

  "No. Poke the cell with your finger."

  "Can't you just..."

  "Poke. With. Your. Finger. Per protocol," Valtar said, as if I had refused to fasten my seatbelt on a crashing plane.

  I sighed and poked the "Power" cell, feeling like a user at an info-kiosk in a Kafkaesque hell. (Poke.)

  "Power is an Aspect," Valtar reported joyfully. "Its value is the sum of the values of its three Spheres: Attribute of Strength, Attribute of Intellect, and Attribute of Charisma. You can increase the Aspect indirectly by upgrading the Attributes included in it. Immediately, to save your precious... Indecent explosion of laughter... time: the same rules apply to other Aspects. (Poke.) Physical Power — Strength. It is responsible for the ability to physically impact the world: hit painfully with a heavy things, lift a lot, carry a lot too. That is, if your Attribute were high. You, of course, are not dystrophic, but you will be opening a pickle jar using a towel and your mother's help."

  "I feel like there is some... hostile tension arising between us."

  "Oh, really? And look at that, you have low Intuition. Wonders never cease. (Irritated poke.) Mental Power — Intellect. It serves as the basis for magical impact on the world. Note: your natural IQ will remain unchanged during leveling. Sorry..."

  "Did I do something wrong when I entered? Didn't wipe my feet? Or do you nitpick all rookies like this?"

  "Witty answer (you can't just say... Ah, whatever). (Poke.) Social Power — Charisma. It determines your influence on others. Well... A normal value. It’ll do. People will listen to you. Sometimes. (Poke accompanied by eye-rolling sound.) Physical Agility — Dexterity. This Attribute is responsible for stealth, attack speed with light weapons, acrobatics, and fine motor skills. Wow. A real wriggler has appeared in my domain. For a starting value—impressive. Apparently, you ran away from responsibility very professionally all your previous life."

  At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. Some strange shadow flickered at the far end of the corridor, where the light of the lamps could no longer cope with the onslaught of the gloom. And I am, you know, the kind of person who really doesn't like shadows flickering at the far ends of corridors where the light of lamps can no longer cope with the onslaught of the gloom. Especially shadows cast by something clearly larger than a human. I spun around sharply. Empty. Only another piece of wallpaper featuring a gas giant peeled off with a dry rustle and glided onto the dusty carpet.

  "Don't get distracted," Valtar clicked right into my temporal lobe. "That is most likely another traveler. Or a janitor. Surely. My sensors in that section are temporarily on calibration. But do you really think that for you primates from sector T42, they would allocate a separate sub-spatial corridor? The budget is already exceeded several times over."

  "A janitor..." I repeated, feeling a chill crawl down my spine. "I hope he just cleans up trash, and not... witnesses."

  "Semantics. (Fast poke.) Mental Agility — Perception. This is attentiveness, accuracy, sharpness of empathy... (Fast poke) Where are you poking so fast, I don't have time to load the sarcasm! (Poke.) Social Agility — Intuition. It helps to see the hidden, suggests how to act and what to say when information is insufficient. Or predicts the weather. You are not at risk of this. (Poke.) Physical Stability — Endurance. This is health reserve, resistance to poisons, toxins, fatigue... (Poke.) Mental Stability — Willpower. This is resistance to mental effects, energy recovery speed... (Poke.) Social Stability — Luck. It speaks for you with the Random Number Generator. Your Luck... well, let's put it this way: it is smelly, dirty, and ugly. The Generator will chase it away with curses on approach."

  So far, everything seemed like the truth.

  "And what about Resonance?" I asked, pointing to the gray inactive line at the very bottom.

  "That is how much of a friend you are to me, dear Lex. The measure of our synergy," Valtar's voice became sickly sweet. "As you can see, at the moment, it is a flat, beautiful zero. And so far, the trend is not encouraging. But who knows? We have an entire eternity ahead of us."