The Logic of the Pit

[uoy tonnac evael tuohtiw reporp noitanalpxe]

The words hovered upside down in the  periphery of my vision, inverted like reflections on stagnant water.

You cannot leave without proper explanation.

"Hey!" I shouted, staggering upright. The dirt beneath my boots was grey and calcified, smelling faintly of sulfur. "Who’s running this server? Show yourself!"

A sharp, electric shock lanced through my nervous system, dropping me to both knees. The dirt scraped against my palms.

[System Penalty: Defiance of Protocol.]  

[Trial 001: The Weighing of Worth.]

[Failure Condition: Character Deletion.]

Character deletion. In a game, it means a lost save file and an afternoon of wasted progress. Here, as the agonizing hum in my nervous system deepened, I knew with instinct what it meant: non-existence,....simply death....

I looked up. Spread across the barren plateau under a bruised, violet sky were hundreds of other people. Some were weeping into their hands; others were frantically swiping at invisible interface windows that would not open.

Beside me, someone was screaming. A young guy in a business suit had his hands wrapped around his head, his vocal cords tearing as dark, geometric static crawled up his neck and consumed his eyes.

He didn't vanish into motes of light. He unraveled. Pixel by pixel, sinew by sinew, until there was nothing left on the gravel but a faint greasy smear.

[Remaining Candidates: 999]

A cold dread flooded my chest, washing away every childhood fantasy I had ever harbored. There would be no cheat skills handed out by a benevolent goddess. There would be no effortless triumph.

In The World of Arlan, you were either the predator, or you were fertilizer for the next patch.

[uoy nac evael]

You can leave.

The inverted glyphs flashed once, cruel and mocking, as the gates of the first trial groaned open in the distance.