“Inside every man, woman and child is the power to make a difference. Quite literally, you have unawakened power within yourselves allowing you to do immeasurable feats. Like how your people show characters in movies and video games.” The rather talkative Scarecrow in front of me continued to deliver what appeared to be a very well rehearsed speech.

  “You know those posts you always see online that say, “you’re trapped in the last game/movie/book whatever, how screwed are you?” People always comment things like “Doom, well… guess I’m dead” or “I played Stardew Valley this morning so I’m fine” and someone naturally always mentions a less savoury romance sim. All those people are speaking complete crap - all of them are equally boned for different reasons that they haven’t even considered. When was the last time you saw Doom guy use the bathroom - or eat a sandwich? What happens in the dating sim world when you aren’t in a menu picking a narrated choice? And Stardew valley… ok actually I can’t really find many flaws with that one it seems like a nice peaceful way of life - but still seems to be missing the whole toilet thing. Plumbing really does appear to be a blind spot in your Realm’s media.” It was at this point

  I started to think maybe the well-rehearsed speech had begun to go slightly off book.

  “But in reality,” the Scarecrow continued, “if you get stuck in a game system, you’re basically going to be stuck in what your people call a Role-Playing Game or RPG, like you are - except it’s not a game, it’s more like an alternate reality. It turns out all our realities basically work like what you call video games, but yours just has the heads-up display, what you’d call a HUD or interface, turned off.”

  This was how it was explained to me that the world I’d lived in for my previous 23 years was not where I had woken up that morning. I hadn’t gotten trapped in a simulation; my world wasn’t a simulation. I was simply part of some all-powerful being’s Realm Swap initiative.

  A lot of information was being hurled at me via, what I was later informed to be, a mandatory dialogue my tutorial guide was required to give me. However, very little of this was going in at the moment as I had only been conscious for 15 minutes. I had walked out of the room that I apparently ‘spawned’ in, thinking I was going to the bathroom to wash my face. I instead was now being spoken to by a friendly looking talking scarecrow who looked like he’d been ripped out of a studio Ghibli movie. On top of that, I was in my pyjama bottoms which were covered in pictures of dinosaurs, my slippers and a black vest top.

  “Every few millennia the powers that be will grab a lot of the realities and shake them up. They take some of you from one Realm and swap them with another. Don’t worry it’s not permanent if you survive.” I stood there just letting this all wash over me, while the cliche assumption that I was dreaming worked its way through my brain. Since said brain hadn’t processed what was happening, I decided to just let it happen.

  “What normally happens is realities like ours with skill systems and gamified survival protocols - or GSP, get swapped with some random inhabitants of worlds like yours. It helps keep our society grounded. Although we’re not exactly sure if that’s the reason for it; it’s the best rationale we’ve got for the time being. Think of it a bit like military service for people in your world but you don’t know about it unless you’re chosen and people from our Realm can choose whether or not to sign up. Which usually annoys people from your types of Realm.”

  I began to open my mouth to say something, raising my hand.

  “Please leave all questions until the end of the initiation speech.” I slowly lowered my hand.

  “Now don’t worry about what happens to your Realm Swap Partner or RSP. If you die during your time here, they’ll be Realm Swapped back with you and transported to the nearest available area of reasonable safety, and they’ll be transferred 50% of your accumulated stats on top of their own. It’s a nice incentive for them to sign up for the program. Really helps get them ahead.”

  He continued to explain to me some elements of the world which I didn’t fully understand as I began to wonder what I’d eaten or drank the night before to elicit this hallucination, allergic reaction or lucid dream. I decided to continue to go with it. This was pretty interesting so far and real or not this was a fun distraction from my day-to-day life.

  “Furthermore, a benefit to yourself is when you return to your world you will be largely compensated in your world’s currency. You may wonder what happens to your life but don’t worry. Enough of your population has been transferred that various ‘Everything is Fine’ bots are distributed to ensure everyone is not alarmed by this.

  “As you don’t have HUDs in your world a psionic blast will have gone out informing every member of your race what has happened and should you die your immediate family and anyone who relies on you financially will be compensated. If you do not have a family to compensate based on your relationship scores with those around you, anyone designated as a lover, or lifelong friend, best friend or good friend will instead be compensated. Should you be in the circumstance that no one would miss you when you expire you will be kept alive in stasis long enough for you to select a charity of your reality to receive a donation of your net worth.

  ‘In the meantime, your Realm Shift Partner will be taking over in your stead for your life but will remain in their physical form they were born with in this Realm. They will be given support to integrate into your society which will be facilitated by the Everything is Fine Bots. This allows them to have the responsibility of elements such as looking after and paying for essentials, looking after other beings and not being able to boost stats to improve their lives other than general health and fitness.

  "We know this can be a lot to process and therefore you will be given an introductory period of 7 days to adjust to this reality and get acquainted with our systems. Most Realms tend to be paired up for exchanges with others who follow similar if not exactly the same units of time.

  As an incentive for you to embrace the spirit of the Realm Shift - the further you manage to integrate yourself into our reality and by extension improve your level, skills, quest completion - the more we will improve your society. As a general introductory benefit, we have already facilitated the reform of the social economic inequality of your society and eradicated homelessness and world hunger. This was accomplished in 12 minutes. As a result, there are no longer ‘billionaires’ in your world anymore. However, the Everything Is Fine Bots have already supported this transition to being only luxuriously-wealthy rather than wealthy-enough-to-wage-war-with-a-small-country-and-win-wealthy. In other instances, in the past, they aren’t usually happy about this. But we’ve since taken to drugging them to see a couple extra 0s in their bank accounts and they don’t often notice. Those that revolt against this (and it usually is the rich ones) will be forcibly swapped with a member of a lower class and will take on their role in working society without the benefit of monetary advantage.

  “For those of you who are selfish and don’t care for your fellow man - have no fear! You are also financially compensated as a direct result of your time here, your equipment, gold and stats transfer over to a monetary gain in your world. You also can keep a partial remnant of some skills. Those of you that progress far enough will even be offered the choice to make this transfer permanent. At which point your Realm Swap Partner will be given the same choice and will either be returned to this world also or will remain permanently in your world. This concludes the ‘logistics people normally ask’ portion of the tutorial.”

  The scarecrow let out a big sigh of relief. “Uuuugh! Now that I've completed this scripted section I can talk a bit more freely to answer any questions before we get into the basic system tutorial and understanding the HUD. So, what’s up kid, how are you holding up?”

  I fainted.

  “Yeah, that tracks” I heard as my consciousness faded into blackness.

  I woke up in a weirdly comfortable bed made of straw staring at a ramshackle wooden roof. I sat up and saw what was the equivalent of an RPG starting house like in those old school Nintendo games. There was a single room, my bed in a corner, some incredibly limited and unused decorative furniture; an empty bookshelf, a desk of drawers and a small side table next to the bed. On the table was a notepad on which was scrawled:

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  ‘Hey kid, when you’ve got your head around this enough to stay conscious, I’m outside. I’ll be notified when you wake up, so I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.’ The note was signed - Bale with the scarecrow written underneath it. I didn’t question how a scarecrow wrote such a note or how he managed to get me back to the bed, but it made about as much sense as everything else.

  Well, I thought to myself, three options; I’m insane, I’m dreaming, or this is really happening. Regardless of which I should probably just go along with whatever this is. I always hated a protagonist in a film or book who spent at least the first quarter of the story refusing to believe their circumstances. Who cares if I’m crazy? I’m 23, at least I got a couple of years outside of the education system before I had a full blown mental break. If it’s a dream it’ll be more fun if I get on with it and if it’s real, then… I remembered something about money? And skill bonuses… Plus there was something about being able to make this permanent… Maybe this world was an upgrade? I didn’t care what kind of Anime protagonist, Isekai, Sword Art Online level bullshit was going on - I may as well enjoy it.

  I got up, walked out of the room that would be considered a relatively spacious university dorm room and headed outside. I stepped out and felt my slippers pressing down onto fresh grass. I looked down and confirmed - yep that’s grass. A weirdly perfect shade of green grass, but definitely grass.

  The area around me was fairly small. There was the small shack behind me that I had just stepped out from. Other than that, there was grass in a rectangle the size of a small park. The perimeter was surrounded by a short basic wooden fence. This appeared mostly normal other than it was floating in some sort of purple void. The surroundings looked like a sort of space painting street spray paint artists did. There was nothing outside the void in any direction other than my grassy floating island. In the centre where I had previously been given my introduction was the scarecrow. We made eye contact, and he waved. He was a friendly looking guy and was still attached to the wooden stake that stuck him to the ground.

  He had no legs but that didn’t seem to matter to him as he began hopping using his stake, towards me. His large black eyes watched me unblinkingly as he approached. Despite his skin being made from a sack, he looked relatively approachable. I mean as far as sentient scarecrows went that is. He wore the top half of a grey suit with a grey tailcoat blazer, waistcoat and a maroon tie. On his head however was a farmer’s hat which detracted a bit from the whole vibe he was seemingly going for.

  “Hey kid,” he said in what sounded to me like a generic Brooklyn accent. This opened up a series of questions such as - is there a fantasy New York? Is he trying to make me feel at home and this is how he thinks most people from my world talk? Is it just a scarecrow thing and I’m apparently just a fantasy scarecrow racist?

  I was snapped out of my existential spiral of wondering if sentient scarecrows were a race and if even questioning that made me a fantasy racist with the words: “Boy, am I glad you’re awake, you only get 24 hours to adjust to this whole deal, and you don’t want to eat into your seven days of tutorial, or you could end up missing out on the important stuff. I had this one guy who was unconscious for three days, really screwed him over. He didn’t have any idea what type of skills to prioritise. Never even got out of the first ring… Poor guy.”

  “You’re Bale right?” I cut off the scarecrow before he could begin another story.

  “HE SPEAKS! I was beginning to think maybe you were a mute like this one girl. I got a few RSIs back…”

  “Didn’t you say they were every few millennia?”

  “Oh, so you managed to retain some of what I said. Very good, that'll save us some time. Yes, I did say that. It’s complicated. Time outside realm swaps isn’t really synced up properly. In our realm we take it pretty seriously since we get chosen for it a lot. So, for us it’s pretty much a constant stream every 10 years or so. About long enough to prepare the next generation of us to head out and learn more about different realities.”

  “So, when do we start the tutorial? And secondly, do you have any regular clothes?”

  “You’re taking this whole thing remarkably well, kid. You sure you don’t want to talk about it or anything? I’ve completed my mandated guide specific mental health awareness and support course.”

  I shrugged, replying: “I’m good. I figured any questions I had will be explained by the tutorial. I’d rather not go through any more long-winded exposition.”

  “Kid, you know you’re straight to the point and you don’t waste time on bullshit.” He paused, staring directly at me. “I love it, you’ll go far, kid. Very far.”

  “Ok one question, why do you sound and talk like that?”

  “Ah… well us guides have to learn your various languages, cultures and what have you, the powers that be think if we’re not having to allow the HUD to actively translate, we’ll have a better understanding of how to help you. But like I said before, our time isn’t precise, and I may have learnt from movies from your realm that were a bit earlier in your society’s development than when we engaged. Plus, I really liked old detective dramas, so I mostly learnt your language from film noir and some show called Columbo. So, until my manager caught me up to speed, I thought most of you ended most of your sentences with a drawn out see.”

  “Right. So, while you figured out the mannerisms…”

  “The accent stuck, yeah sorry, kid. Speaking of accents, why do you sound like that?”

  “I’m English - this is a southern English accent.”

  “Ooh wild, normally your world’s media all the protagonists in this kind of thing are American, occasionally the odd Australian.”

  Deciding to not get into how he knew what Americans and Australians were but somehow missed English accents I continued with my questions.

  “So are sentient scarecrows just a thing in this world?” I said looking at Bale, thinking I should address the elephant in the void. I then immediately panicked about whether that question was appropriate to ask the only person who could possibly help me.

  Bale looked down at himself. “No… Well sort of. There’s a bunch of creatures made by the system. I’m sure there are scarecrows somewhere like this, but I doubt there would be a colony or anything. I’m just like this because we take on ‘tutorial guide avatars’ when we are allocated as a guide. It’s so we can’t get too involved with our existing stats and abilities and keep it fair for you Shiftees.”

  “Is that what we’re called here? Shiftees?”

  “Yep. It’s quicker than Realm Shift Initiates and it sounds cute since you’re all stupid and run around like overgrown babies. But yeah, I’m not an actual scarecrow. I’m just a guy working a job and I remote into this scarecrow. I imagine whoever assigned me this avatar thought they were being funny, making me a scarecrow since I’m called Bale.”

  “Oh, like hay.”

  “Wow you really are a smart kid” the scarecrow said with an unamused, monotonous sarcastic tone.

  “Good to know they have sarcasm here. Now about my clothes.”

  “Some should be spawning in, " I put the request in while we were talking. You talk a lot, kid. You ask a lot of questions. The shack behind you should have a chest in it now to store your valuables. Until we get the HUD activated on day 1 of tutorial training it’ll work like a normal chest until inventory management gets activated.”

  “Inventories? So, this really is like a video game?”

  “What you call video games are a lot like aspects of our reality, yes. It’s common for Realms to create their own simulations of what they instinctually realise is missing in their own reality once technology allows them to. Before that you usually make do with board games, literature, movies, comic books and so on. A HUD, a way to maximise efficiency, levelling up skills and abilities in some form or another is something all sapient life seems to crave - especially when you don’t have it. It’s all there, you just haven’t got a realm with it turned on, so you yearn for it and those of you more tuned into that look for escape in those games either making them or playing them.”

  “Does that mean people who spend their lives playing games are actually more in tune with the universe?”

  “Oh gods no. They’re still giant nerds; they just tend to react better to this stuff than people who don’t. Their survival rate is about the same as everyone else though. Their generally poor physical traits even out their larger knowledge base.”

  “Well great. There goes one advantage I might have had.”

  “Nah kid, you have the greatest advantage of all.” He paused and stared at me intently. “You’ve got me helping you out!”

  “Great, a talking scarecrow based on a pun of his name who spent his prep time watching detective shows from the 80s almost exclusively set in New York is my secret weapon.”

  “Go get changed, wiseass. We start our tutorial training in 2 hours.” He paused and then added “Oh, one more thing. There should be a tutorial guide logbook and something for you to eat in the chest too. Eat, read and prepare yourself. Today is the first day of the rest of your, potentially very short, life.”

  “Potentially short?”

  “Shhhhh less talking, more preparation.” Bale began jumping towards me, herding me back into my shack, which to his credit, did now have a small wooden chest with a set of clothes, a leather bound guidebook and a cheeseburger wrapped in unbranded brown paper.