Chapter 6: Orientation

  The briefing was held in what looked like it had once been a guild hall or maybe a merchant's warehouse, back when this place was supposed to be an actual medieval village instead of a military forward operating base with delusions of historical accuracy. Someone had dragged in about forty of those integrated desk-chair combinations that every school in America seemed to buy in bulk from the same supplier of educational torture devices. You know the ones: molded plastic seat attached to a writing surface that was always six inches too high or four inches too low, designed by someone who had apparently never met an actual human being with proportional limbs. The only difference being these were made out of wood.

  I wedged myself into one near the middle of the room, my knees hitting the underside of the desk. The guy next to me, built like he bench-pressed small cars for fun, looked like he was trying to fold himself into a piece of origami.

  "This is fucking ridiculous," he muttered, shifting his weight and making the whole contraption creak ominously.

  "What, you didn't sign up for medieval warfare in elementary school furniture?" I kept my voice low, but he caught the edge of humor in it.

  He snorted. "I signed up to shoot people from helicopters. This is some bullshit." But he was grinning when he said it. He stuck out a hand, which required some creative maneuvering around the desk. "Marcus Webb. Marine Corps, rotary wing."

  "Adam Smith." I shook his hand, grateful that at least handshakes were universal. "Army."

  "Yeah? What unit?"

  And there it was. The question I'd been dreading since I woke up in this place.

  "It's, uh, kind of a special program," I said, which was technically true in the sense that accidentally stealing a Specialist's spot through a clerical error was definitely special. I had a moment of inspiration. "Wounded warriors. Seeing if The Forge can, you know. Give us something back."

  Marcus's expression shifted, something like respect mixing with curiosity. "No shit? That's actually pretty cool. I mean, if this works the way they say it does." He gestured at the room, the compound beyond. "Lot of guys would give anything for a second chance."

  "Yeah." I left it at that, relieved when he didn't push for details about my unit or deployment history or any of the thousand other things I had no idea how to answer.

  The room was filling up now. I counted maybe thirty-five, forty people, all in the same basic canvas pants and cotton shirts I was wearing. The mix was obvious even without uniforms: Marines sat with a particular kind of aggressive posture, Army guys had a different energy, and the handful of Navy and Air Force personnel looked vaguely confused about why they were here at all.

  "Bet the Air Force guys are pissed," the soldier on my other side said. He was compact and wiry dark hair and a mustache, with the kind of casual competence that suggested he could probably kill me six different ways before I finished blinking. "No planes here."

  "Maybe they'll get dragons," I offered.

  He looked at me like I was insane, then cracked a smile. "I'm Rodriguez. Army, 75th Ranger Regiment."

  "Smith. Army, special program."

  "Special program?" Heis eyebrows went up.

  "Wounded warriors," Marcus supplied.

  Rodriguez studied me for a moment, and I had the uncomfortable feeling he was cataloging every detail, every inconsistency. Rangers were special operations. They noticed things.

  "Huh," he said finally. "Well, welcome to the circus, Smith."

  Before I could respond, the door at the front of the room opened and a man walked in carrying a tablet and wearing an expression of determined enthusiasm that immediately made me think of youth pastors and motivational speakers.

  He couldn't have been more than twenty-eight, maybe thirty at the outside. Sandy hair cut in a regulation fade, clean-shaven, with the kind of face that probably got him carded at bars. He wore the same canvas and cotton as the rest of us, but he carried himself with the careful authority of someone who knew he looked too young for his job and was compensating with posture.

  "Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Captain Jeremy Vance, and I'll be conducting your orientation briefing." His voice was clear, projected to fill the room without shouting. "I know you all have questions. I know this is, uh, not exactly what any of us expected when we signed up. But I'm going to do my best to give you the information you need to survive and succeed in The Forge."

  He tapped something on his tablet and a screen materialized behind him, floating in midair with no visible projector. Just hanging there, defying physics, because apparently that was the kind of place this was now. Strange how some modern things were allowed yet we sat in elementary school desks made of wood.

  "First things first," Vance said. "I know you're all wondering why you got exactly zero information before you arrived. Why the secrecy, why the information blackout, why your families and commanding officers couldn't tell you anything about what to expect."

  He paused, and his enthusiasm dimmed slightly, replaced by something more serious.

  "The answer is ARIA. The Autonomous Regulatory Intelligence Architecture that manages The Forge. She mandated a complete information blackout during the neural attuning and initiation period. For equity."

  "Equity?" someone called out from the back.

  "Equity," Vance confirmed. "ARIA determined that if some nations had more information than others, if some competitors entered with detailed briefings while others came in blind, it would create an unfair advantage. So she locked it all down. Every nation, every competitor, same level of information going in. Which was basically none."

  He smiled slightly. "Your families and COs could see your basic health status. They knew you were alive and stable. But no communication in or out until the attuning process was complete and you'd all had time to acclimate. ARIA's rules, not ours."

  "So the AI is in charge," Marcus said. It wasn't quite a question.

  "The AI is in charge," Vance agreed. "And you're going to hear a lot about ARIA over the coming weeks and months. She manages everything here. The world mechanics, the rules of engagement, the balance between nations. She's autonomous, which means no one, not even the UN, can override her decisions. She's fair, but she's also absolute."

  The screen behind him shifted, showing what looked like a medieval town square. Our compound, I realized, but from above.

  "Which brings me to the world mechanics," Vance continued, his enthusiasm returning. "You've probably noticed by now that this place has a certain, uh, aesthetic. Medieval technology level, enforced by ARIA. Swords, spears, bows, shields. That's what we're working with."

  "What about guns?" someone asked.

  "Banned. Any attempt to build firearms results in catastrophic failure. The components just fall apart. Same with crossbows, actually."

  I felt my eyebrows rise. "Crossbows?"

  "Crossbows," Vance confirmed. "ARIA classified them as dishonorable weapons. Similar to how the Catholic Church banned them back in, uh, I want to say the 12th century? Too easy to kill a knight, disrupted the social order, all that. ARIA apparently agrees."

  The absurdity of it hit me like a wave. An autonomous AI managing virtual warfare had decided to enforce medieval Catholic doctrine about weapon ethics. We were living in a world where someone, or something, had looked at the Lateran Council of 1139 and thought, "Yeah, that's a solid framework for international conflict resolution."

  I must have made a sound, because Rodriguez glanced at me.

  "Something funny, Smith?"

  "Just appreciating the historical accuracy," I said. "Really commits to the bit."

  Vance had moved on. "Longbows are allowed, for those of you with the training and strength to use them effectively. We've got a few archers working on that now. But most of you will be focusing on melee combat. Spears, primarily, with swords and axes as secondaries."

  The screen shifted again, showing what looked like a training yard.

  "Now, I know what you're thinking. This sounds like a game. Fantasy warfare, medieval weapons, respawn mechanics." His expression went serious, the enthusiasm draining out of his voice. "It's not a game. I need you to understand that. Death here is real. It hurts. And it has consequences."

  The room had gone quiet.

  "When you die in The Forge, you enter a twelve-hour healing period. Your body returns, but it's sore, limited. ARIA restricts your functionality as a consequence for failure. You'll need to work through something like physical therapy to regain full capabilities. It's not permanent, but it's not pleasant either."

  He let that sink in.

  "This is warfare. Virtual, yes, but visceral. Personal. You will feel pain. You will experience trauma. The AI blunts some of it during the healing period, puts you in something like a sleep state, but you'll remember. And it will affect you."

  Marcus shifted beside me, the desk-chair creaking. The levity in the room had evaporated quickly.

  "So take this seriously," Vance said. "Train hard. Learn the weapons. Work together. Because when the conflicts start, when nations begin settling their disputes in here, people are going to die. And you want to make damn sure it's not you."

  He tapped the tablet again, and the screen brightened, showing what looked like a training schedule.

  "On a more positive note, you will quickly notice that physical training here produces better results than in the real world. Faster strength gains, better endurance, quicker skill acquisition. Gains that do not seem to go away. That's ARIA's doing. She's optimized the neural feedback and muscle stimulation to accelerate development. We don't fully understand the mechanism yet, but the results are clear. So we're encouraging everyone to take advantage of it. Train hard, and you'll see dividends fast."

  "How fast?" Rodriguez asked.

  "Faster than anything you've experienced before," Vance said. "We've got guys who've gained noticeable strength in a week. Skill progression is similar. You put in the work, ARIA amplifies the results."

  He smiled slightly. "It's one of the few things everyone agrees on. ARIA might be strict about the rules, but she wants us to push ourselves. She wants this to work."

  The screen shifted again, this time showing what looked like a bestiary. Creatures I recognized, deer and wolves and bears, mixed with things that definitely didn't exist in the real world.

  "Now, about the wildlife," Vance said. "You've probably heard stories already. The troll that took five guys to bring down, the goblins in the forest, other creatures. It's all true. ARIA populated this world with both natural animals and fantasy creatures. We think it's part of the acclimation period, giving us something to fight before the real conflicts begin. Learn the weapons, learn to work together, learn to survive."

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  "Are they dangerous?" some genius asked.

  "Very," Vance said flatly. "The troll killed two soldiers before we brought it down. The goblins are smaller but they hunt in packs. We've lost people to wildlife encounters. So stay alert, stay armed, and don't go into the forest alone."

  I thought about the walls around the compound, the damage I'd seen. Suddenly it made more sense.

  "We're still mapping the creatures and their behaviors," Vance continued. "Still learning what's out there. ARIA hasn't given us a bestiary or a field guide. We're discovering it as we go, which is, uh, pretty typical for how this whole operation has been running."

  He said it with a wry smile, and I got the sense that Captain Jeremy Vance had some opinions about the military's approach to The Forge that he was diplomatically not sharing.

  "Speaking of discovering things as we go," he said, "let's talk about unit structure. You've probably noticed that we've got all branches here. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, even a few civilians. That's because ARIA randomized the placement of inductees across various cities and bases throughout the world. She didn't keep units together, didn't preserve command structures. She mixed everyone up."

  "Why?" Marcus asked.

  "Equity again," Vance said. "She didn't want any nation to have an advantage based on unit cohesion or pre-existing command relationships. So she scrambled everyone. We're building new units here, new command structures, new teams. It's, uh, been an adjustment."

  That was probably an understatement. I could see it in the room, the way Marines sat with Marines and Army with Army, the tribal instincts that didn't disappear just because an AI decided to shuffle the deck.

  "We're working on it," Vance said. "Building teams, establishing chains of command, figuring out how to integrate different branches and different specialties into effective combat units. It's a work in progress."

  The screen behind him went dark.

  "Now, I know you all want to know about communication with the outside world. When you can talk to your families, your friends, your COs. The answer is soon. ARIA is opening up limited communication channels once everyone completes their initial acclimation period. You'll be able to send messages, receive updates, let people know you're okay. But it's still restricted. No detailed tactical information, no sharing of world mechanics that might give one nation an advantage over another. ARIA monitors everything."

  "Big Brother is watching," someone muttered.

  "Big Sister, technically," Vance said with a slight smile. "And yes. She is. Get used to it."

  He set the tablet down on the desk at the front of the room.

  "Okay, last thing, and this is important. Bodily functions."

  The room went very still.

  "You don't have them here," Vance said, his face carefully neutral. "No need to eat, technically, though the food is incredible and we encourage you to enjoy it. No need to, uh, use the facilities. ARIA determined that those functions were unnecessary for our purpose here, so she just, eliminated them from the simulation."

  The silence stretched out.

  "So, no bathrooms," Vance continued, clearly uncomfortable but pushing through. "No, uh, related concerns. Your physical body in the pod is handled by the medical team. Here, you just, don't need to worry about it."

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. The absurdity of it, a military briefing about how we didn't need to shit in virtual reality, delivered by a captain who looked like he was about to die of embarrassment, was too much.

  Rodriguez caught my eye and I could see she was struggling too.

  "Any questions about that?" Vance asked, clearly hoping the answer was no.

  Silence.

  "Great. Moving on."

  He picked up the tablet again, his relief palpable.

  "That covers the basics. You'll get more detailed briefings on combat training, unit assignments, and mission parameters as we move forward. For now, get settled, get to know your fellow soldiers, and start training. We're all figuring this out together."

  He looked around the room, his expression serious again.

  "I know this isn't what any of you expected. I know it's strange and disorienting and probably more than a little scary. But this is real. This matters. The Forge is how we're settling conflicts now, how we're preventing real wars with real casualties in the real world. So take it seriously. Train hard. Watch each other's backs."

  He nodded once, sharp and military.

  "Dismissed. Mess hall is serving dinner in thirty minutes. I recommend you don't miss it."

  The room erupted into motion, soldiers standing and stretching and extracting themselves from the desk-chair combinations with varying degrees of success. Marcus stood up and his desk flipped forward with a crash that made half the room turn and look.

  "Fucking hate these things," he muttered.

  I managed to extract myself with slightly more grace, though my knees protested the angle they'd been stuck in for the last hour.

  "That was, informative," Rodriguez said, falling into step beside me as we headed for the door.

  "That's one word for it," I agreed.

  "No bathrooms," Marcus said from my other side. "That's the part that's going to mess with my head. Like, I know I don't need to go, but my brain keeps thinking I should need to go, you know?"

  "The human condition," I said. "Existential anxiety about bodily functions we don't actually have."

  Rodriguez snorted. "You're weird, Smith."

  "I've been told."

  We filed out of the building into the late afternoon sun. The compound was busy now, soldiers moving between buildings, the sound of weapons training echoing from the yard. It felt more real than it had this morning, more solid. Like the briefing had somehow made it official.

  This was my life now. At least for however long I could maintain the lie.

  "So, wounded warriors program," Rodriguez said as we walked toward the mess hall. "What's your story? If you don't mind me asking."

  I minded. I minded a lot. But I'd opened this door, and now I had to walk through it.

  "Multiple sclerosis," I said, which was true. "Autoimmune condition. Been dealing with it since I was a teenager, but it got bad enough in the last few years that I couldn't serve anymore. Couldn't really do much of anything."

  "Shit," Marcus said. "That's rough, man. I'm surprised they even let you in the Army with that."

  "Yeah...me too I guess." I replied with a flash of stress. "But then this came along." I gestured at the compound, at my body that worked, at the impossible reality we were living in. "Second chance, like you said."

  "How many others are in the program?" Rodriguez asked.

  "I don't know," I said honestly. "They didn't tell me much. Just that they were trying it, seeing if it worked."

  She nodded slowly, and I couldn't tell if she believed me or if she was just filing away inconsistencies to examine later.

  The mess hall was another repurposed building, this one actually looking like it might have been a tavern or inn in its previous conceptual life. Long wooden tables, benches, a serving area at one end where the smell of food was already making my mouth water.

  And behind the serving counter, three people with blank, pleasant expressions ladling stew into bowls.

  I'd seen that look before. In hospitals, sometimes, on the faces of nurses who'd been working too many double shifts. A kind of pleasant absence, like someone had turned down the volume on their personality.

  But this was different. These people weren't tired. They were, empty. Not in a disturbing way, just in a way that made them fade into the background, made you not quite notice them even as they handed you food.

  "Thanks," I said to the woman who gave me a bowl of stew and a chunk of bread.

  She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You're welcome."

  Her voice was pleasant. Neutral. Forgettable.

  I moved down the line, got a cup of water from another blank-faced server, and followed Marcus and Rodriguez to a table near the middle of the room.

  The stew was incredible. Rich and savory, with chunks of meat that tasted like beef but better, vegetables that actually had flavor, bread that was still warm and crusty on the outside and soft inside. Nothing like hospital food. Nothing like anything I'd eaten in years.

  "Holy shit," Marcus said around a mouthful. "This is amazing."

  "That seems like horseshit," I said, gesturing at the servers with my spoon. "ARIA being this generous with the food quality."

  Marcus stopped mid-chew. Rodriguez looked up from her bowl, eyebrows raised.

  "Horseshit?" Marcus said slowly.

  "Yeah, you know. Too good to be true."

  "Smith," Rodriguez said, and there was amusement creeping into her voice. "That's not what horseshit means."

  "What?"

  Marcus set down his spoon, a grin spreading across his face. "Oh man. Okay. We need to have a talk."

  "About what?"

  "About shit," Rodriguez said. "Apparently you missed that day in basic."

  I felt heat creeping up my neck. "I know what shit means."

  "Do you though?" Marcus leaned forward, clearly enjoying this. "Because there are rules, Smith. Important distinctions. You can't just throw shit around willy-nilly."

  "I hate you both already."

  "Bullshit," Rodriguez said, pointing at me with her spoon. "That's when something's not true. A lie. Like if I said Marcus here was a good pilot."

  "Hey."

  "Horseshit," she continued, "is nonsense. Ridiculous. Like the idea that we'd get dragons instead of having to walk everywhere."

  "Okay, so I should have said bullshit," I admitted.

  "We're not done," Marcus said. "Dogshit is poor quality. Like the archery equipment we were using this morning."

  "Batshit is insane," Rodriguez added. "Which is what you'd have to be to volunteer for this program."

  "Apeshit is wild, out of control," Marcus said. "What the goblins go when they find a weakness."

  "Dipshit is stupid," Rodriguez said, grinning at me. "Someone who doesn't know the types of shit."

  "Chickenshit is cowardly," Marcus continued. "Running from a fight."

  "Shitfaced is drunk," Rodriguez said. "Which we can't get here because ARIA apparently doesn't believe in alcohol."

  "No shit means 'obviously,'" Marcus said. "Like, no shit you're not actually military."

  I froze. "What?"

  "Relax," Rodriguez said. "We figured you were some kind of specialist. Wounded warrior program my ass. You don't talk like us. But we really don't give a shit, not that there is shit here to give."

  "Eat shit means fuck off," Marcus said, still grinning. "Which is what you're probably thinking right now."

  "And that's the shit," Rodriguez finished, "means that's awesome. Like this food. This food is the shit, Smith. Not horseshit."

  I stared at them both, feeling my face burning, but they were smiling. Not mocking, just, amused. Including me in the joke rather than making me the butt of it.

  "So to review," Marcus said, "ARIA being generous with food quality would be bullshit, because it seems too good to be true. Not horseshit."

  "Got it," I said. "Thanks for the lesson, assholes."

  "That's the spirit," Rodriguez said, returning to her stew. "You'll fit in fine."

  "ARIA takes care of us," Marcus added, his tone more serious now. "That's what everyone keeps saying. She's strict about the rules, won't let us build anything useful, but the food is incredible and the training works and she keeps us safe from the worst of the creatures."

  "Like a really controlling girlfriend," I offered.

  "Like a really controlling AI managing virtual warfare," Rodriguez corrected.

  "Same thing," Marcus said.

  More soldiers were filing in now, filling the tables, the noise level rising. I watched the servers move through the crowd, refilling bowls and cups, their expressions never changing, their movements efficient and forgettable.

  Something about them bothered me, but I couldn't quite articulate what.

  "You okay, Smith?" Rodriguez asked.

  "Yeah. Just, taking it all in."

  "It's a lot," she agreed. "I've been here three days and I'm still not used to it."

  "Three days?" I looked at her. "How long have people been arriving?"

  "Couple weeks, I think. They're bringing people in waves as the attuning process completes. You're in one of the later groups."

  Which meant I'd missed even more than I thought. Missed the initial chaos, the first encounters with creatures, the early days of figuring out how this place worked.

  I was behind. Playing catch-up. Trying to fake knowledge I didn't have while hiding ignorance that would get me kicked out if anyone discovered it.

  "You look stressed," Marcus observed.

  "Just thinking about training," I lied. "Lot to learn."

  "We'll figure it out," he said with the easy confidence of someone who'd never failed at anything physical in his life. "That's what we do, right? Adapt and overcome."

  "Semper Fi," Rodriguez said dryly. "Even though you're a Marine and that's not actually your motto."

  "It's a good motto," Marcus protested. "Better than 'This We'll Defend.'"

  "Army's motto is fine, thank you."

  "It's defensive. Passive. We're Marines. We attack."

  "You're a helicopter pilot. You provide transport."

  "Aggressive transport."

  I listened to them bicker, feeling the weight of the day settling over me. The wonder of having a body that worked, the anxiety of maintaining a lie, the sheer overwhelming strangeness of being in a virtual world managed by an AI that banned crossbows and eliminated bathroom breaks.

  This was my life now.

  For however long I could make it last.

  I took another bite of stew and tried not to think about what would happen when someone finally checked the records and realized that Specialist Adam Smith was supposed to be someone else entirely. Regardless of all those issues, this food was a vast improvement over hospital fair. Worth it.