“User locked?” I asked, confusion evident in my voice. Amy remained silent for a couple of seconds before jumping off my shoulder and onto the ground. I watched as she started pawing at the ground and groaned. “Don’t tell me you have to use the bathroom? I don’t want to watch that…”

  Amy didn’t even look up at me as she responded, “I don’t have those bodily functions like you do.”

  “Oh? So does that mean you don’t need to eat, either?”

  “Or sleep, breathe, or generally any of the physical things that you’d associate with having a body. Now hush for a second, so I can focus.”

  I shut up and watched as Amy continued pawing at the ground, soon realizing that she was drawing some sort of diagram for me. Despite her being a cat, I was surprised at how detailed it was.

  “That looks like something from back home,” I said, noting the drawing of a nude man in a circle and square with their limbs extended. I blinked as the image suddenly glowed and then floated upright as if it was some sort of hologram; the ground where it had originated from looking just as unbothered as it had been before Amy began.

  “You’re referring to the Vitruvian Man, I believe,” Amy said as she sat on her hind legs, pointing her left paw at the center of the image and causing it to expand slightly. I watched as the circle and squares expanded slightly, two other figures appearing to represent the man in different poses. I tilted my head slightly and noticed that if you looked at it a certain way, it looked as if it was three images overlapping.

  “Wasn’t that one just an image of two poses?” I asked, trying to remember what little I could from history class about this piece of art, though honestly the more I thought about it, the more confident I felt that I’d not seen it in school, but somewhere else… Where though?

  “A meme back in 2017, I believe, but is that really important right now?” Amy asked, eyebrows raised as she looked at me. I sheepishly shook my head. “Didn’t think so,” she said as she picked her paw back up and pointed once more. The first of the three images separated from the rest and I noticed it had changed; no longer was it that of a male, but a nude female. Despite the fact that it was naked, I didn’t feel embarrassed by the sight, which I thought was slightly odd.

  “Upon first being initialized into The System, a User must be created,” Amy said, and I watched as the female took on a more ghost-like appearance, the solid lines that highlighted her figure fading to be even more translucent than the menus I was starting to get used to having pop up in my face.

  “Back on Earth, you would likely refer to it as a ‘soul.’ It is what gets sent to the afterlife of the Server you originate from, or – in your case – it is what is used as the basis to reincarnate someone on another Server after all their Characters die.”

  “What’s the difference between a User and a Character?” I asked, feeling confident that Amy was leading me toward that question.

  “A Character,” Amy began, her paw hitting the second of the three figures and causing it to change slightly, resembling my body back on Earth, though also naked. At this, I did blush slightly, not because of being embarrassed about what I looked like, but because it was extremely accurate and the thought that Amy had figured out what I’d looked like naked back on Earth was not only embarrassing, but a questionable invasion of privacy.

  “A Character is a vessel that is inhabited by a User. It is the physical manifestation of the User on a given Server, and with few exceptions cannot function properly without a User inside of it.”

  “So a User is spiritual and the Character is physical?”

  “That is a very Earth perspective of it, yes,” Amy replied, causing me to frown. “That doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” Amy said, causing my frown to vanish. “It’s just not technically accurate.”

  “How so?” I asked, turning my attention back to the representation of a User.

  “A User can only exist in one instance,” Amy said. As she did, I noticed the third Character had changed to look very similar to the body I was now in. Similar to last time, I blushed, noticing that it appeared accurate, though I wasn’t yet familiar with the body to say definitively or not.

  “Okay…” I said, once I’d gotten over the embarrassment at seeing my old and new bodies floating there naked, glad no one else was here to see this. “I’m missing something, I think.”

  Amy made a sound that sounded like a blend between a hum and purr before nodding. “Okay, you know how in online games back on Earth you could make multiple characters that could all interact together in the same world?”

  “Uh, yeah?” I asked, thinking back to all the times I’d played the MMORPG Runescape growing up. “I’m pretty sure most games didn’t like you doing that, though.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “That’s irrelevant to this analogy,” Amy said dismissively. “The point is that you could do it; it’s the same here. Your User, Naomi Lynn Reyes controlled your Character back on Earth with the same name, and upon her death, your User was brought to ;Algion and allowed a chance to continue existing as Thorne.”

  I looked between the three images, slowly nodding my head as I started understanding what was being said, though just when I’d felt like I finally understood everything, I remembered something that Amy had said that caused me to pause.

  “You said that reincarnation only happens when all a User’s Characters die, all implying plural.”

  “Ah, you caught that, did you?” Amy asked, a hint of pride in her voice as if she was a teacher who had a student that figured out something on their own. “Yes, that’s correct. It is possible for a User to have multiple Characters, though.” Before I had a chance to ask a follow up question, I noticed all my other menus vanishing before a new one appeared.

  User Details: Naomi Lynn Reyes

  Name: Naomi Lynn Reyes

  Age: 22

  Gender: Female

  Core Stats

  Raw Intellect: 1; Item Intellect Mod: 0; Class Intellect Mod: 0; Intellect: 1

  Raw Processing Speed: 2; Item Processing Speed Mod: 0; Class Processing Speed Mod: 0; Processing Speed: 2

  “Behold, your User Sheet,” Amy said, interrupting my reading as she highlighted a new icon – one that looked like a folder – that had appeared in my vision next to the Character Sheet’s Person icon. “It’s rather limited, I’ll admit, but that’s mainly because it’s supposed to be hidden until a User undergoes Next Genesis Plus for the first time.”

  “Next Genesis what?” I asked, blinking as I looked down at the rest of the rather limited sheet, seeing a section labeled ‘Next Genesis Plus.’

  “There’s a lot to unpack there, and it won’t be relevant for you for a while, so for now we can ignore it.” Amy said.

  “Uh…” I just nodded my head, watching as the menu was closed on my behalf. “What was the point of showing me that, if you weren’t going to fully explain it?” I asked, slightly irritated.

  “It helped me understand everything when I saw that there was a distinction between User and Character sheets, so I thought the same would be true for you,” Amy said with a cat-shrug. I wanted to be annoyed at her, but she was right. It was a lot easier to understand the fact that they were different concepts now that I knew there were sheets for both.

  “Is there a reason the User Sheet icon is designed like a folder?” I asked, before shaking my head. “No, wait. Put a pin in that, otherwise we’ll go down a rabbit hole,” I said, watching as a pop-up appeared to inform me of my newly created note.

  Newly created note:

  Resume discussions about User Sheets - Why does it have a folder-like icon?

  “Oh? Was there a question there?” Amy asked, amusement to her voice. “I only heard a statement.” The glare I gave Amy didn’t make her flinch, but it did cause her to stop being so semantical with me. “Alright fine,” she said with a huff. “As you pointed out, a User is only able to be reincarnated upon all their Characters dying. What I suspect you are wanting to know is how can a User have more than one Character, is that correct?” A quick head nod from me and Amy continued.

  “Your Processing Speed allows you to control multiple Characters,” Amy said before adding. “It also helps offset any Users that have low Intellect.”

  “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean,” I asked with a huff. “The way you say it makes it sound like my Intellect is low or something…”

  “Oh no, most Users have a 0 for both Intellect and Processing Speed. Both of those are lower than mine, but that’s to be expected,” she said, a hint of smugness to her voice.

  “Whatever,” I said with a sigh. “So how high of a Processing Speed do I need to have to be able to control another Character?” I asked, curious of what that would even be like.

  “Generally speaking, the number of Characters you can control at the same time is your Processing Speed divided by two – rounded down – plus one.”

  I considered that for a second before asking, “So that means I could control a second Character with my current Processing Speed?”

  “Assuming you had the resources to generate a second Character, yes.” Amy said with a nod. A fourth image appeared; this was similar to the first two in that it was female. “Unlike the first Character provided to you, a User has to expend a significant amount of personal resources to acquire a second Character, and an even larger amount of resources for a third, and so on. Generally the only ones able to do so are beings that you’d typically refer to as gods back on Earth.”

  “Capital G or lowercase,” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “Lowercase,” Amy said, before quickly adding, “although there are beings above them that would qualify as uppercase G.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you a god?”

  “Ah…” Amy did that hum-purr thing again before shaking her head. As she did, the floating images vanished as well. “I am not,” she said as she turned and started off. I blinked, noticing that during our conversation that the sun had started to rise.

  “Guess I wasted my chance to fall back asleep with all these questions,” I muttered to myself as I started off after Amy.

  “You did, but I suspect you will come to appreciate the insight that you gained during this talk more than the extra sleep you might have gotten.”

  “Easy for you to say, you don’t even need sleep…”

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