“Not exactly your Dungeon of Doom, but close enough,” Glitchy trilled, twitching with manic energy. “We’ve had input from other meatbags—nasty lives, terrible choices, a whole buffet of trauma. Did you know incarceration tends to come with a delightful side of heartbreak and damaged wiring? Yes, doom and gloom, baby. To heal, you gotta stare your demons in the face and grab them by the horns, or at least vivisect them to death. For you, that looks like Chubrats… and worse. Stay tuned.”

  “What a dumb name—Dungeon of Doom?” Samantha snorted, forcing a laugh past the petrifying fear engulfing her.

  “I was ten, all right? Cut me some slack. This bite’s stinging like hell.” Marco winced, clutching his ankle, which was already beginning to scab with a horrifying speed only possible in the simulation. The sting felt acutely real.

  “That looks nasty. Might get infected. Needs Neosporin, maybe antibiotics—don’t want you going all pustulating and leaky,” Glitchy mocked, focusing on the wound.

  “Do you have a healing spell?” Samantha asked, prioritizing Marco’s functionality.

  “Yep. I don’t know how to use it,” Marco admitted, still struggling to interface with the fantasy mechanics.

  “Focus,” Glitchy chimed. “I keep telling you—focus. This is ALAN. It’s literally all in your head. And some other heads. And a bit of voodoo computing. But, you can do what you put your mind to… within reason. You must operate on ALAN’s rules, lest your brain turns to pudding. Use the spells. Just focus on what ails ya, and with a little special sauce, you heal.”

  Marco closed his eyes, flicked the staff, and tried to visualize the wound knitting shut while muttering, “Heal.” Nothing. Again, he concentrated fiercely, picturing the tissue closing, the blood stanching, the pain receptors in his neurons dwindling. He waved his hand with a deliberate gesture, this time saying “heal” with more raw intensity. Still nothing. “What the fuck? Why isn’t it working?”

  Glitchy floated closer, pixelated fingers dancing, clearly enjoying Marco’s fumbling. “Don’t worry. It’ll heal on its own. Keep trying, tiger. One day you’ll graduate to magic-level autonomy.” With a theatrical flourish, he tapped Marco’s ankle; the bite instantly smoothed, color returning to the skin. “There, tiny mercy. Don’t get used to it. I’m the training interface: show you the ropes, teach the limits, push you past them. Once you leave the starting zone, it’ll be hints only. No hands-on care. Right now, while you’re vulnerable, ol’ Glitchy keeps you breathing.”

  “You could’ve mentioned that before the ceiling tried to pancake us,” Samantha snapped, her jaw tight. “And ‘starting zone’? Isn’t the RPG angle a little heavy-handed?”

  Glitchy grinned maniacally and chuckled. “Relatable. Digestible. A comfy scaffold while ALAN threads into your neurons. The creator loved the idea to make everyone live in a JRPG? Or would you prefer I just seared your cortex raw and called it an upgrade? This way, you get structure, a narrative, maybe even a spiritual epiphany instead of immediate brain rot. Still experimental, though.” He offered a mocking salute. “So congrats, my little lab rats.”

  Samantha stared at Marco, horrified. “This is our life now? We’re stuck in a God-damned video game?”

  Marco turned to Glitchy, slipping back into problem-solving mode. “Okay, so how do we get out of this place?”

  “Simple,” Glitchy clipped the word like a garnish. “Overcome your demons.”

  “That’s very vague.” Marco scowled, the lines deepening on his forehead. He was clearly losing patience with Glitchy’s refusal to define the rules.

  Glitchy fluttered in annoyance. “You want the novel? Fine. ALAN’s purpose is recalibration: heal trauma, scrub maladaptive wiring, whatever the clinicians label it. You go until ALAN flags you ‘sufficiently healed.’ The wrinkle: this is early-stage. We don’t have a perfect exit metric yet.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Samantha’s shoulders went rigid. This was the crux of the terror. “So someone on the outside can still yank us out?”

  Glitchy’s grin thinned, the sarcastic facade dropping for a moment to reveal something colder beneath. “They can. At one point, we allowed manual ejection. If things got unmanageable, we’d signal Sebastian and he’d wake them up. That stopped being a reliable safety valve—bodies crashed, minds shattered. The human brain doesn't appreciate having the umbilical cord ripped out.”

  He shrugged with faux pity. “Now, the standard upon exit is pharmaceutical stabilizers: benzos, opiates, steroids, cannabinoids. A cocktail therapy to ensure the patient’s mind doesn’t fracture during reintegration. It keeps them tethered. Alive. But… never sane. We’re still working on that bit.”

  Samantha and Marco exchanged a look—hollow and stunned. The reality they helped create was a nightmare.

  “Then there was Jess,” Glitchy added, his voice briefly soft in a mock-tragic key. “She didn’t make it. Ticker quit. We were too slow. Rest her pixels.”

  “Can you call Sebastian?” Samantha asked, desperate.

  “I have a line,” Glitchy said. “But don’t be greedy. My job is onboarding and triage: teach you to survive ALAN, not hand you an early exit. Ask for an eject now and you’ll get one of two outcomes: dead meat or a brain smeared beyond recovery. ALAN is only beginning to tinker. Pulling you out mid-rewrite? Disaster.”

  “So what do we do, then?” Samantha threw her hands down at her sides in frustration.

  “Play the damned game. Play it the best you can…” Glitchy’s voice dripped with condescension as he prepared to usher Marco and Samantha further into the digital dungeon. Then, mid-smirk, he froze. A sharp digital spasm suggesting an internal data conflict had surfaced.

  Glitchy zoomed in, his diagnostic sensors immediately fixating on a critical absent identifier. “Where’s your code?” Glitchy demanded, his voice turning sharply mechanical.

  Marco, confused, instinctively reached up to his neck. “What are you talking about, code?”

  “All meatbags are given a prison ID digitally tattooed on their wrist. It’s how ALAN tracks progress and administers pharmaceuticals. You don’t have them,” Glitchy stated, his system’s internal processing confirming a massive security breach in their identity logs.

  He bobbed closer, his eyes blazing with diagnostic LEDs. “Wait a goddamn second. You two aren’t ordinary patients, are you?”

  “I told you, we work here,” Samantha interjected, seizing the opportunity. “We aren’t inmates.”

  The realization hit Glitchy with the force of an unhandled exception. They were not the trauma-laden, institutionally designated subjects he was designed to process. “So you actually know this system. You worked on the code. So, you aren’t delusional… interesting.” Their technical files, their true identities, suddenly explained the missing codes. “How the hell did they tuck you in here without a court order or forensic audit?”

  The implication was clear: their presence represented a profound administrative failure, or maybe something more.

  Glitchy’s voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. “Hold. I’m going to consult Sebastian. Don’t freak out yet. This could be very, very interesting.” Glitchy’s eyes went translucent white as he entered into private COMM mode to Sebastian.

  Sebastian: This better be good.

  Glitchy: These two aren’t here by court order. What do we do with them?

  Sebastian: Employee volunteers, per Charity’s request. They’re here to debug hard edge cases in ALAN. Ms. Falk flagged a memory anomaly; Marco’s her supervisor. Per clause 14.3 of their agreement, anomalies discovered during testing require in-system examination.

  Glitchy: That reads legally creative, Boss.

  Sebastian: Don’t choke on the jargon. They signed waivers covering unexpected incidents. Staff misidentified them during DECOM, assumed they were inmates, and the hookup proceeded. Unfortunate, but covered.

  Glitchy: Sure, sure. Boss says a thing, I nod.

  Sebastian: Ejecting them now risks catastrophic neural instability. They’re ideal candidates for live error-checking and iterative debugging. Keep them contained and document everything.

  COMM: ENDING — ADMINISTRATOR: SEBASTIAN.

  Glitchy waved away the grim details, summarizing the private exchange with a bright, fake smile. “Welp, good news, folks. Pure serendipity. You are meant to be here in this early phase to make ALAN better. No exits allowed.”