With a wave goodbye, Shelby departed the Campside Ruins. She had taken a final quest to hunt down three Earth Spirits that was, oddly enough, attributed to Rifu. Can I see this now because I finished the event?

  Again, it’s not really clear how this advances the region... aren’t these students from some faraway college anyways? The quest was simple, and the students looked happy that they could work without Earth Spirits disrupting their studies, plus it completed Shelby's codex milestone.

  Shelby had noticed that the Earth Spirits never seemed to drop items, but she hadn't thought much of it because they were basically just magic and rocks. This must be a way for people without Excavation to get rock materials. Huh, well, good for them.

  AIDAN had something helpful to say, as always, "That bonus may help you to collect materials on your other characters without the need for a profession."

  "Oh, that's true! That might make it worth it to hunt down any spirits I see..." Shelby stared off into space, thinking, "speaking of professions, we did what we came here for. Ready to go back to being a rabbit? Or do we need to switch to the pika?"

  AIDAN burned intensely as he processed something, "You are currently at 66% Synchronization. Switching to this character reduced your levels to 58% from 78%, so I expect that you can safely switch to your Brushcourser character for the moment."

  Shelby cheered, "Coda, we're coming home!"

  AIDAN spoke again with a cautious tone, "Before you return to the character selection menu, may I make a request?"

  Shelby lifted him up to her level, cupping the warm glass orb in her palms, "No need to ask for permission, AIDAN. What's up?"

  "My files indicate that there is a particularly scenic viewing area on a beach a half mile from this location. Would you perhaps like to observe the sunrise with me?"

  Shelby laughed, "I didn't realize you could enjoy sunrises."

  AIDAN rumbled, "As I mentioned, it is enjoyable for me to experience your progression through the game."

  "I thought you meant like... doing quests..." Shelby tilted her head.

  "I enjoy that as well, but I would like to continue to see the world and explore."

  "Then we better get moving before we miss the sunrise!" Shelby said as she starting walking in the complete wrong direction.

  "I will mark your map so that we may locate the viewing area," AIDAN suggested diplomatically.

  Shelby stopped, turned, then marched on.

  Ten minutes later Shelby spilled out of a dense thicket of bushes onto a pebbly beach. The area was uncluttered, and a gentle breeze swept through it. It was maybe the most open area Shelby had been to so far. This place has so much undergrowth... The sun hadn't quite peeked over the hills to the east, so the sand and water were tinted a deep pink from the start of a morning glow. Shelby hiked down the coast a few hundred yards until she turned through a cluster of smooth boulders onto what must have been the viewing area.

  A natural sea arch extended from a sharply rising cliff, and the beach wound along the cliffside beneath it. It looked like they could walk right through the arch. So cool! Shelby jogged forward and followed the bend beneath the white and pink striped cliff face until she stood under the broad strip of stone and long grasses peeking out from above. Waves slapped against stone as the tide rolled swiftly over the thin beach, and they sprayed her with mist, which was surprisingly warm for ocean water. She knelt and put her hand in the surf and it was pleasant. She turned to splash AIDAN with a handful of it, then saw the landscape beyond the arch.

  The coast curved onward for miles, eventually turning further west and surrounding the bay. The tall, tangled canopy of Copperglade grew sparser and sparser as she looked up along the coast, until it turned into something more savanna-like, with thick, squat trees standing in lonely fields of tall yellow grass. Tall spires of white porcelain stone jutted from the water near the coast, topped with tall, healthy grass and tiny trees, which birds were circling around. But what really caught her eye was the mountain range behind it all. At first, she thought she was looking at another sea cliff, but after a moment taking in the sight, she realized they were distant peaks. They were shear and sharp looking, half a wall of stone and half a mountain range. Shelby had gone to see Devil's Tower during a rare impromptu trip with her mother, one of those months when she had suddenly wanted to see Shelby again, and Shelby remembered being stunned by the lone mountain. It rose straight out of the earth like a massive tree trunk, or an impossibly large Greek pillar. These mountains were the same. Too steep to be real, yet there they were. They weren't perfectly flat. Huge cracks and slabs twisted their way up the steep face, but it still read as one impossibly long wall. Shelby couldn't say how long they went on for, but it was miles and miles.

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  AIDAN touched down on her shoulder as she took in the view, "It is exactly what I was hoping for."

  Shelby bounced on her feet, "Do we get to go there?" She pointed towards the mountains enthusiastically.

  "We may go there, yes. That is the region north of Copperglade."

  As he spoke, the sun finally crested the hills and light crept over the beach and surf, washing over them and casting a long shadow of the arch over the gentle bay.

  A familiar voice piped up from nowhere, "That's a nice view. Taking a break?"

  Shelby startled, "Tara! Good golly, you scared me."

  AIDAN vibrated on her shoulder, "Who are you speaking to, Shelby?"

  Tara's voice filled Shelby's mind at the same time, "Sorry Shells, I just got home- oh your assistant is there. Hello assistant orb."

  Shelby looked over to AIDAN, but he didn't react, apparently waiting for her. She stuttered, "T-that's Tara, can't you hear her?"

  "I cannot hear anyone but you at the moment."

  Tara asserted herself, "Put him on the whisper channel."

  "Can you talk on the 'whisper channel', AIDAN?"

  AIDAN cycled colors from orange to red, speaking to her mind, directly, the same way Tara had been, "I have changed our communication channel to whisper. Is there someone nearby you wish to avoid speaking around?"

  "Helllooooo!" Tara sang, "Keeping my precious Shells safe?"

  AIDAN swiveled on Shelby's shoulder, sounding slightly alarmed, "Greetings. Who is this? How are you speaking in this private channel?"

  Shelby stepped in, speaking out loud towards the ocean, "That's my roommate, Tara."

  Tara laughed, "You can whisper too, Shells, just focus on sending your thoughts to us."

  "Like... this?" Shelby thought, and the sensation that she was communicating with AIDAN rang true.

  "Loud and clear!"

  "You are correctly using the channel."

  Tara and AIDAN spoke in unison.

  "My brain is getting crowded!" Shelby winced; it was genuinely making her dizzy to have two voices talking directly to her brain. She sat down and let the waves roll over her feet.

  "I am still puzzled as to how we are communicating," AIDAN complained.

  "I'm talking through Shelby's microphone monitor! I patched into the egg!" Tara enthused, not missing a chance to brag to AIDAN.

  "Ah... that is a fascinating approach. May I log this?"

  There was a moment of silence on Tara's end, then she responded sheepishly, "I don't think that would be a good idea, at least for now. It... would be best if Stormsys didn't know about this."

  Shelby frowned, "How come? Couldn't they talk to the other players like this?"

  "Yeah, maybe! I told a few people on Discord about it. I said it was 'just a theory'. Trying to keep a low profile, you know? Um..." Tara left the thought hanging, "Just to be safe. What are you two up to?"

  "We are viewing the sunrise," AIDAN replied.

  "So I see! Any luck chatting with the other players?" Tara asked hopefully.

  "Not yet, I'm still in the starting area." Shelby said.

  "You are? Hasn't it been like... 6 hours?" Tara sounded incredulous.

  Shelby layered on some sass, "You know I have no way of checking the time out there."

  "Oop, sorry Shells, I actually forgot about that, but... are you close to the end?"

  Shelby laughed nervously.

  "What? Tell me tell me!" Tara begged.

  "We have not started the regional questline yet." AIDAN said brightly.

  "Oh my god Shelby, what have you been doing?" Tara whined.

  "Exploring! Making friends! Fighting stuff! You know, adventurer things!"

  "Making friends? With who?"

  "Oh, I have so many friends now. I'm the most popular rabbit. Well I'm a capybara right now. Most popular rodent. I just made friends with a magic mouse."

  "Oh. The NPCs! I thought... well I guess that's good?" Tara sounded unsure, "It would be nice if you finished up though."

  "How come? Aren't we just waiting for them to fix whatever they messed up?" Shelby asked.

  "Yeah, right... About that." Tara spoke slowly, in that tone of voice that usually came along with a statement like 'about your cake that you were saving for your birthday... well, I was really hungry and...'

  Shelby felt her shoulders tense up, "What? What happened?"

  "I'm sure they're working on it, it's just that..." Tara paused again, this is torture, she took in a sharp breath, "Okay, band-aid ripping time. There's news that Stormsys fired the entire team for the game, so no one is, um, sure what is gonna happen… with... the people trapped in there?"

  Something ice cold and heavy dropped into Shelby's stomach, "Th- fired? What about me?"

  Tara put on her supportive friend voice, but it sounded so strange to Shelby. She wasn't hearing that she got a bad grade or having a bad day. She was literally trapped. She was missing school! Life! Tara comforted her, regardless, "It'll be okay! We can figure this out. I just thought that if we could talk to some of the other players then they might know more than the rest of us out here do. Maybe the game told them something that will help."

  Shelby leaned forward and rested her face on her open palms, grumbling, "What the hell Tara..."

  "I don't want to put too much on your shoulders, but... it still seems like you're the only person anyone has contacted so far. At least that I’ve heard. I told a few people about the microphone trick, but they haven't... talked..."

  What did that mean? "Like, they didn't respond?"

  "It was just a couple of people, could just be, I dunno... sleeping?"

  AIDAN spoke tentatively, "I was given some support by the game developers earlier that advised me to prevent my assigned player from becoming completely synchronized with the virtual world. Could that explain what has been reported to you?"

  Shelby could hear Tara chewing on something, "Huh... because of game sync? I guess that could be why. A dev said that? Shelby, is that true? You're not synced up?"

  "That's what they tell me." Shelby huffed.

  "Huh, I'll pass that on! Great call, assistant!" Tara said.

  "His name is AIDAN."

  "Right right, thank you AIDAN." Tara said with a slight edge of sarcasm.

  "You are welcome." AIDAN responded happily.

  Shelby massaged her forehead, "Really though, how bad is it?"

  "Pretty bad," Tara sighed, "the report is that they're running what’s left of the game on a skeleton crew. Supposedly over 300 people were laid off."

  "They're just gonna let me stay trapped in here, though?"

  "I'm sure they're doing something..." Tara said without much conviction.

  "UGH!" Shelby kicked her feet, splashing warm water all over herself and throwing globs of wet sand everywhere. The truth was that she had been enjoying herself, without a care in the world. She almost forgot it was a game sometimes. Just a moment ago she felt like she was there, watching the sun rise. Even now she could feet her feet in the water. Her weird rodent feet.

  Shelby brushed gloopy sand off her fur and stood up, glaring towards the mountains, "Maybe someone else has this all figured out..."

  "Maybe. No presh, but we should at least connect up with them. I know a few of them! They're nice people, Shells."

  Shelby nodded at that, "Yeah, we'll just find someone who knows what is going on and they'll fix it."

  "Mmhmm, let's check it out. Seems like you're really making the game your own, too..." Tara said lamely. There was the smallest consolation in the world. Enjoying prison? You've really made your cell into a home. But she wasn't wrong. Even knowing that her freedom was in the hands of a 'skeleton crew', Shelby still felt the itch to go complete the region upgrade she had been working on. She wanted to see! And, it wasn't like they had said "We're giving up on you, Shelby Baker!" They had just fired the team that had messed this up so badly. Maybe that was reasonable, and now a super fancy professional was working on it.

  Shelby took a deep breath, then tried to feel centered, here on a fake beach, looking around at the strange, pretty, but fake world. She nodded to herself and wiped away a rim of tears gathering around her eyes.

  "Do you want to see my pet bat?" Shelby asked tremulously.

  "Obviously!" Tara squealed.