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The nondisclosure form was the size of a small book, but the line I remember most was "Epsilon Entertainment, nor its parent company, Axim Software Distribution, are responsible in any way for deaths, neurological damage, seizures, sensory or motor loss resulting from this beta test of Outrealm." That may seem fairly terrifying on paper but I promise you, look on any neural unit you can buy and you'll find the same language. Maybe 5% of the population goes into an anaphylactic shock when they slip the unit on for the first time, but usually it's based on a genetic marker, so your parents can warn you that you'll be playing shitty video games for the rest of your life.

My name is Tom Fielding, I'm a QA tester at Epsilon, and I've punched in on the brain scrambler plenty of times.

But nothing like this, Outrealm is huge, which is why I have to sign another hold-harmless. Outrealm is the ninth installment of Epsilon's The Ancients' Tale saga, their flagship fantasy storyline set in the far-reaching landscape of Farrandia. The Ancients' Tale games are widely renowned for pushing the boundaries of both storytelling and open-ended innovation in each new release.

The neural units were the first big step on the path to truly transcendent gaming, which The Ancients' Tale saga couldn't really claim credit for, that was a lot of other developers. What The Ancients' Tale eventually did with the neural units though is what made them the true visionaries of the field. Unlike other companies that maximized throughput to focus on graphical detail and designs (the old way of making games), Epsilon did something different.

The genius of the Outrealm, and to some extent, its predecessor, Stormfell, is a process known as "collaborative processing," which is the basis of at least 40 patents, and two or three best-selling books on the industry. The game interacts with the user's subconscious to build a believable reality -- rather than rendering individual nuanced blades of grass and twigs, the game handles the larger details, and allows the user's mind to do the heavy lifting. In this way, developing a game becomes less of a series of building expansive vistas, and more of a series of visual cues and impressions.

Similarly, many of the NPC's have each been 'seeded' by a "collaborative matrix," a sort of abstraction of the thoughts and behaviors lent by mindswipes of Epsilon employees and friends. I have an NPC 'doppelganger' out there somewhere in Farrandia, though it's almost impossible for me to know who it is, given they don't look physically like me, and would only have some similar patterns of speech and interactions. The result is a startlingly seamless gameplay between solo and multiplayer modes within Outrealm.

Being the sort of gameplayer I am, I've spent countless hours trying to figure out where it all breaks down, but it's astoundingly difficult. It's not like you're on a movie set where the mountains are matte paintings. Crouching in a field reveals grasshoppers and ants milling about, strawberries picked have a bright sweet acidity, and whiskey burns with a lucid heat and renders your world spinning and your judgment muddled with a fascinating accuracy.

It's about 11pm at night on a Friday, people with real lives have clocked out and are mingling at a bar somewhere, and I'm wearily logging the results of a Outrealm game session. I'm using a mage to cast an energy-absorption spell and then an incendiary spell on a summoned monster, essentially turning them into powerful bombs. The real fun hits when a rival mage tries to cast a containment spell between your two spells, which sets off a spiraling chain reaction that looks not too dissimilar from a hydrogen bomb, and well... the game crashes.

My immediate boss, Amy, happens to come in while I'm keying these notes into the QA tracker log. She looks about as beat and stressed as I do, most of the team is pulling long hours.

"Hey there, Tom, I guess I don't have to tell you, but we're five weeks out from release, and we really need someone to clock some hours in with the Vhxali and we thought you would be a good choice."

I'm fairly burnt out at this point, so I bargain with her. "Can I start at it tomorrow?" Crunch cycle in game development is hell, 60, 70, 80-hour work weeks are not uncommon. I'm thankfully hourly still, but my mind is too out of sorts to process how much money I've made or anything I would spend it on other than some kind of imaginary means of instantaneous transport to my bed.

I watch her worn face go through a mental checklist of about five or six tasks, then return to answer. "Sure, you've done good work. Go ahead and get out of here, and come in tomorrow."

I try to thank her without seeming too enthusiastic, and save and shut down my work for the night. I weave past the QA pods, past developers desks with their tricked out lighted and comic book posters. A stand-up figure of a Hammerfell valkyrie in a low-cut chain mail one-piece is swinging an obsidian sword, guarding the front entrance. I open the double doors and take my first breath of the cool of the welcome night air that promises of my approaching rest.

The next morning I fit into my neural unit, connect to the Outrealm Beta, and look over the character creation panel. Vhxali are the ferret-like race of the game, meant to be thieves, assassins, and light combat fighters. I look at a female, and I'm frankly a little embarrassed, the cup size on her breasts is at least one size larger than it should be given how svelte the rest of the model is. Game developers seem to still be aiming for a target market of 14-year old boys even after all these years. I choose her anyways. I figure if I'm going to have to play as a talking weasel, I might as well ride the train all the way to Weirdsville station. I don't change too many of the defaults that I can remember, other than changing the character's fur pattern from a banded grey to a more fittingly sneaky charcoal black. The auto-generated name is Vayla, I skip through this as this seems good enough, thinking at the time if I really wind up caring about the character, I can just change it later.

"Jesus Christ, this is strange," I babble, hugging a fuzzy tail that feels for all the world like a real appendage.

Have you ever wanted to spinkick an ogre riding a basilisk? Vhxali are the species for you. Their speed and agility is at a pace that exceeds normal human reaction, and the game rewards a player who learns to attack with parkour-like tumbles and wall jumps. The flipside is they're one of the weaker races in the game. I had a good laugh trying to pick up the Waraxe of Branth, something I've seen even female elves do. I got it an inch or two off the floor and almost into a golf swing before I lost my grip and it clattered to the ground like a block of lead. They're also one of the smaller races, barely five foot tall I'd guess. The change in perspective definitely threw me off the first couple of times I fought a wight or a faceless ghoul and met them eye to collar.

I was about a week in, so far I'd found only a few mistakes, it was going fairly smooth. I was playing with the mechanics of the Eye of Naxu, a pendant that can hold things in a levitating bind. I had incurred the wrath of a colossus, one of the game's giant-like savages, and as he spun around to bludgeon me with his club, I pulled him aloft using the talisman and lifted him up over a box canyon. Then, I conveniently turn off the greenfire magic of the Eye, and watch as the hulking foe tumbles end over end helplessly.

Satisfied, I go to admire my handiwork and maybe determine if I can loot the corpse. I follow to the precipice and stare over. Odd. The colossus is caught in some kind of burbling, glitching mass of something at the bottom of the chasm. I observe that there's enough rocky outcroppings for me to make my way to bottom, so I hop down from rock to ledge spryly till I can get a good view a few feet from the base. The lump of whatever is even more perplexing from this vantage point, it looks almost Katamari-like, a reticulating green colossus-canyon-thing. I slide the remainder of the way down to touch it -- and immediately regret it. The giant had fallen on a horned dragon which was meandering the bottom of the chasm, this in turn had fallen *into* the rock surfaces lining the bottom which caused some kind of integrity collision... The dragon is very much alive, and angrily latches onto me, and pulls me into the seething maelstrom of broken game artifacts. I figure I'll just die and respawn. I'm very wrong.

A ferocity of half-folded polygons cycle in and out of my field of vision. Thirty session screens flare up, the world courses with broken cascades of pixel. Little globules of variegated light and texture pool at my feet. I smell the distinct smell of corrosion but I'm not sure if it's in the game or real.

Black. I respawn in the center of Lothgren Market, where I'd last saved. I double over in a blaze of pain and wretch, like I'd drank an abundance of poorly chosen alchemy components. A few shopgoers flee at the sight of this, a fruit vendor yells at me then doubles back apologizing when he sees the condition I am in. There is a deafening ringing in my ears. I want to disconnect and take a breather, but all I can feel when I concentrate is a numb disjointedness.

"Oh god," I wince.

Eventually, I start to feel okay again, and not knowing what else to do, I continue to play the game as I would have. I am fiercely stabbing at a pack of skull-cats in neat little acrobat dives when I am approached by a paladin who deals a deathblow to the leader, crushing it in the back of the head with his mace. The other three, reading that the tide of battle has turned against them, scamper off to lick their wounds.

"Nice work," I say in the Vhxali's tomboyish voice that seems at least an octave too high for my normal speaking tone. I sheathe the curved hand blades I was using to dispatch the creatures. "How do you do, Sir...," I falter, scanning to see his character name or really any player info for that matter, but none appears.

"Lyonis is the character name, but I'm actually here to talk with you, Tom. I'm Doug DeWitt, lead programmer, collaborative interactions design department."

"You had a bad accident, the haptic sensors overloaded, they were forced a lot more than they were ever designed for. There's actually all sorts of safety interlocks to prevent that amount of feedback. The bug you found was a nasty one, we've done a lot to solve for it thanks to you. But you... well, your body I mean... is in bad shape."

"What does this mean?" I ask, startled and confused. My ears lay flat.

"We don't know exactly, we hope to get you stabilized and then we'll see. I just wanted you to know we've got you monitored by a medical team and are doing everything we can. I have to get back to work, Tom, but I'll let you know once I know more."

I loot the skull-cats in a daze but I'm not really in the headspace to play anymore at this point, so I make my way to the nearest pub and commiserate over an ale or two or five. Doug finds me there a few days later, idly fumbling with a lute between bites of lunch, trying to see if stoats can learn the guitar. I set aside the lute, and stare up at him expectantly. His face tells me something is wrong almost immediately.

"Tom, I don't know how to tell you this but we're not going to be able to get you back. Your body passed away, your condition just kept deteriorating... the extent of damage you experienced was too much for it."

I feel sick and empty inside at this news. I try to rationalize instead. "Why am I still in this game then?"

"We don't entirely understand, maybe we will someday, but you aren't a human consciousness anymore. By all accounts, the game thinks and acts like you're an NPC."

"So, what am I then?" I huffed, growing nauseous, "Trapped in this lousy body? I'm female, Doug -- and I'm not even human anymore!"

Doug looks wan and at a loss. "Tom, I don't know what to say, I wish I did. We could try and move you to a different character, but whatever it is that makes up you that's in there is so innate we're afraid we'd lose it."

I start to really lose my shit, but it's more out of blank fear than a bristling rage this time. "What am I supposed to be, a prop?" I concede. "A puppet that thinks it's alive?"

Doug's face is ashen with resignation. "Tom... you're still here, that's all I, or anyone, know."

I try to say something else but can't find the words. He puts a hand on my shoulder, quietly, profoundly, and walks away, logging off. I never see him again.

I'm generally a dissociative mess the next few days, sleeping in the wild, nights spent huddled in a fetal position, my fur matted and covered in dirt. I can remember attacking a bandit who shot an arrow at me while I was prone, and mauling him to pieces in a senseless fury with my claws. I can remember picking up a trout in midstream and devouring it with my razor-sharp maw of teeth. I can remember sitting alone in a windswept field, bees milling from bergamot to milkweed, the breeze brushing along my cheek, and the totality of dismay in knowing it and I are a fabrication.

At some point though, my senses come back to me enough that I want a warm bath and a good bed, and something approaching real human conversation and companionship. I stumble back into the nearest village and pay for a room at the inn, immune to the glances of the wary townsfolk.

I open the door to the bathroom my coin has bought me, a wash basin, a thick bar of soap, and a few buckets of steaming water that a maid had brought up for me. For someone used to wraparound shower stalls and modern sanitation, it's pretty humbling, little more than half of a waxed barrel. I fill the basin with the bathwater, then peel off the braids of black leather and bronze plates of my rogue-like apparel and set them down in a crumpled heap. Now I look down at the undergarments that cover my remaining modesty in this body, a sort of cloth two-piece. I had held back any latent male voyeurism towards gawking at this form in the nude for so long, but at this point my filth overrides any of these concerns. I pull off the cloth of my top, then my loin cloth, and let them flump to the floor. I step into the basin, and manage to sit down on my rump, my shoulder propped above the surface on one side, my haunches peeking out from the other just above the knees. I let the hot water soak in.

I splash some water on my face, and my attention is drawn to my Vhlaxi tits just above the surface of the water. I feel a twinge of perviness, and squeeze them together to admire my cleavage. This makes me weirdly nostalgic for my last girlfriend from a few months back, Anne. She was a 24-year old all-around gamer, and practically latched onto me, someone who actually worked in a game studio. I remember playing some retro Smash Bros. with her, jokingly telling her "no fair," when she'd get this furrowed look on her face and just pummel me with cheap shots. I miss her lip piercing, purple feathered hair, and the superfluous trinkets on her wrist. It was heartbreaking how it fell apart with her, it was nearly impossible to maintain a relationship, with the mutual chaos of my product schedule and her college schedule. The last few times we'd see each other, our hormones would race, we'd make out, and then bicker because we were trying too hard to hold on to something that was elusive, something that was gone. Fleeting glimpses of her naked figure underneath me race through my mind.

I start to fantasize about getting back with Anne in my current form. I wonder if she'd like to be eaten out by a stoat. I imagine poking my cute little muzzle up into her gash and licking at her slowly till she moans. This in turn makes me all kinds of hot and bothered, and my paws shift downstairs.

I had thought I was good at pushing girls' buttons but I had no idea what it'd be like to experience first-hand. My right hand makes its way down along the course of my side, down to the tender bliss of my ready sex. My inner two fingers first cursorily touch the entrance of my slit, then I slip them inside me, my pinkie and ringfinger parting my fold in a diminutive V shape. I feel the heat of the exposed skin flush next to my hand, imagining my memories of being inside Anne, the totality of that experience now dawning on me. I close my eyes, hips writhing in time with my increasing tempo, my idle hand gripping the side of the basin so that my fingertips can penetrate deeper. I bite my lip to hold back a primal voice in my lungs that would tell everyone else in the inn that I've been playing with myself. I gasp, heady with the thrill, unshakably beyond the edge of all known depth and rationale.

My disposition improves and I start talking with townsfolk and running quests. I become a member of the Smithing Guild and make myself an anklet while apprenticing there. I generally forget that I'm in a game, that I'm a humanoid mink thing, and start to enjoy my life, even forgetting that all of the friends I've made are probably just mindswipes.

Outrealm is released, and floods with players. I realize this because suddenly the game is not only full of idiots who attempt to do things like sleep with the Liege of Anathos's wife and try to assassinate the head of the palace guard, but also adventurers talking about their job, dating, or their favorite movies. My heartache returns with a vengeance, and I feel the overwhelming need to tell my story, to prove I exist. I single out a few of them that seem kind, reasonable, and most importantly, open to talking out-of-character.

I explain everything. I try to be overly detailed with them, tell them my name, my age, my parents, my first home, my last car. They are somewhat confused, somewhat spooked. One of them wants to know what the quest is until I try to explain it's not an in-game quest. The next time they find me, they tell me Tom Fielding died of head trauma. I tell them to go find Doug DeWitt, they come back to me again and tell me Doug is no longer at Epsilon, or in the gaming industry at all for that matter. Someone actually goes so far as to email him, he reiterates everything I say, but the rumor spreads that I'm some kind of in-game tribute created by Doug. After all, he was known for some fairly strange bursts of creativity in previous games. I know, I've played them all.

Word spreads. I become an easter egg, a delightful quirk, something that players seek out for a lark. The strange case of the NPC who thinks it's really a human. Some players try to test me to see if they can get me to 'out' myself as just another NPC -- logic puzzles, Lewis Carroll-type nonsense, honestly a lot of existential bullshit. Eventually, I just stop trying to explain it to them or humor them. For a time, I avoid the towns entirely for this very reason, and live off the countryside.

One day I'm out alone along the banks of the Ceras, one of the deeper and more fast-moving rivers in the game, roaring and rippling past sharp stone boulders. I am searching along its eddies and by-currents for small gemstones that might have washed along its pebbly shore. I see a body wash past me, no wait, it's struggling and still alive, fighting and gasping in the throes of the water. It looks like a Vhxali like me.

I chase after the struggling figure, and finding a chunk of driftwood, scramble tentatively up the face of a rock in stream and hold it down for them. They grasp at it, then manage to find purchase with their claws in the slippery stone thankfully before I am pulled in by their weight. Thinking quickly, I reach into my knapsack until I can feel the surface of the Eye of Naxu, then use the magical amulet to hoist them to shore.

The victim is a male Vhxali. His tawny fur is soaked, and the armor he is wearing is hanging from his drenched body. He tells me his name is Savra, he mentions he was fighting a bear upstream, and fell in. I note that the last hours of sunshine are drawing towards a close, I smile and tell him I'll gather some firewood to build a fire so he can dry out. We build the fire, and share stories over it, and he's nestled up across from me, laying down as we talk. He tells me he needs to go, but he'll return tomorrow.

He does return the next day and tells me he is headed to a cairn a few days travel to the east. I tell him I know where it is, and ask if I can travel with him. I find myself secretly elated when he answers yes. And then we're walking beside brambles and pine, gravel of the forest path squelching lightly under the soles of our shoes.

I feel drawn to him, I start to wonder to myself if this is some kind of kink instilled in me by the game now that I'm a female Vhxali or if I really feel that way myself. I definitely wasn't into guys before. I start thinking about him with his clothes off, his splendid dark fur covering the taut musculature of his frame... I exhale sharply. He catches me stealing a glance, "What are you looking at, Vayla?" and I find myself pressing close to him, lips meeting his, drawn into the sparks of an electric kiss. Rather than being taken aback with surprise, he reciprocates with his strong paws on my shoulders, gently caressing them as his tongue dances with mine. And all at once, he's pulling us to lay down together at the velveteen moss at the foot of an ancient tree. I feel the unspoken firmness of his erection between us, and I ache with longing to be filled by him. He's working my clothes off as my own feverish hands strain to undo the clasp of his pants. I succeed in removing them, revealing the eminent length of his hardon, its tip dewy with a bead of milky white pre-cum. I fondle it gently, fingertips working down over the smoothness of his furry sac before settling on his rock hard cock. I wrap my paw around it tentatively to bring to the opening of my pert sex. I see a fire in his eyes as he leans me over on the arboreal carpet, splaying my legs just under his shoulders as he takes me spread eagle. My nectar is hot as I feel him enter me, I crest against the ground under me, arching next to him with my hips. I feel the deliberate, powerful swell of his member within in me, and I want to feel every inch of him in my needing pink passage. I lock my arms around the firmament along either side of his neck, to give me support to heighten his momentum, our lower bodies cueing to a synchrony of desire and intimacy. Savra erupts, his ass clenching, and I feel my womb fill with jets of his thick seed, claws digging into him as my own climax becomes manifest. I tremble, my breath ragged as I lean into his thrusts. "OH SAVRA! OH FUCK, SAVRA!!!" I scream as the fireworks of euphoria flicker throughout my body.

This is the first of many moments we give in to our sexual appetite for one another. And I would be lost if I tried to tell you how many times I mussed his hair, kissed his nose playfully, kneaded his tail. But then, all at once, I don't see him anymore. Days pass, then a week, then two weeks... I cry for a few days once I realize his player isn't coming back. That I was bonding with him, and the hate I feel at myself for being so weak.

Time moves on though. I discover undisturbed relics, fight hosts of hellions, win begrudging acclaim from even those skeptical of the Vhlaxi. I start to train in magic, becoming adept in it, still not as good as my mage character, but impressive enough given 'ferret-folk' are not supposed to be fluent in it. Of course, this results in quite a few nasty deaths from miscast spells, but I have more than enough patience and sparetime to keep trying. I learn to augment my fighting technique, to balance it with combat spells, in order to become a truly unpredictable foe. I even eventually learn to change my appearance at will, though anything other than a female Vhlaxi feels like a second skin...

I continue to take on lovers, though none as heartfelt as what I felt as Savra, perhaps I am a little wounded. I no longer have the predilections I once had, I sleep with both guys and girls of most races, the only thing that really matters to me now is whether I find someone attractive. I try to use the memories of my old body and the sensations of my new one to be an ideal lover. I seek out players specifically, as they tend to be more 'creative' at this endeavor. Deep down, part of me selfishly hopes our digital fuck sessions resonate so much with them that they cream their pants in the real world.

I even bagged a celestial being, which is the game's variation of a god. Celestial beings aren't really designed to do that sort of thing, so taking one through wave after wave of toe-curling euphoric orgasm is a bit like sleeping with a virgin with the physical endowments of Scarlett Johansson. After several confused attempts at brushing off my advances, Phaeandra, Divinity of Light, is awkwardly stammering "Uhm, mortal..." and I can see the outline of her firm nipples on the loose fabric of her robes. Then my fingers are riding up her up her smooth leg, caressing the subtle skin of her perfect pink netherlips, touching her secret places, supplicating my goddess as she quivers with growing need. And all at once she's fumbling with the leather straps of my top, while my own nimble paws are smoothly undoing the clasp of her tunic. And we're a tangle, and I'm tasting the ambrosia of her slick pussy as I teach her of the ways of mortal delights.

I could see her pale skin blushing hotly as she explained to me my quest the next day.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone on Epsilon is keeping tabs on me, if anyone I knew is still there, if there were any reason why someone would delete me, or why I hadn't been deleted already. I stare up into the sky of a million pinpoint lights in a cloud of dark and wonder if any are the sun, if I will ever go back to Earth, or if there even was an Earth that I lived in.

I become a sought-after guide, leading small groups through the outer reaches of Farrandia. Through the eye of the cliffs in the Sand of Storms. Amidst the cloudcoves of Althandia. Into the crags and turbid waters of the Krakenhold. Beyond the sanity-twisting crevasses of the Shatterrealm. Places where players want to be free to be alive in the open expanses of true wilderness, but few tread because of the perils of being torn apart by a Blood Warlock or eaten by a hydra.

My only hope is that I'm included in the next version.