At the entrance to an old western town, located in the middle of nowhere, a crowd of people were materializing out of thin air, one by one. All of their minds had just been uploaded into a new, digital world. Among them was a young man named Dan Mercer. Like everyone else, he was fully clothed in 19th-century American Western attire, complete with deep-green long coat, button-up shirt, slacks, and a thin vest. He pulled off his stetson hat to take a look. It was a light tan, which contrasted the dark tone of his clothing. While he slowly came to, Dan rubbed at his face, causing him to notice that his dark-brown hair and beard had grown out—now about the length of ten days stubble with a long mustache that concealed his mouth.

  All in all, it took only the briefest of moments for full consciousness to come back to him. Once it did, Dan surveyed the area around him. It was an easy enough task due to the miles of treeless, desert sands that surrounded him and the town he was about to inhabit for the next four weeks. The town itself was like those he'd seen in TV shows and movies. It was small—a few buildings, some of which held apartments on their second floors for the NPCs who ran the shops. Dan’s excitement built up in his chest until he simply couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “YEAH!!” Dan shouted and threw up his arms. His sudden outburst scared some of the others standing closest to him. A few chuckled, but most gave him dirty looks. He offered an embarrassed wave of apology and a smile.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I'm just really stoked!”

  They mumbled various replies, most forgave him, but he could have sworn he heard the word “ass” underneath it all—though he wasn’t about to let that bring him down.

  Dan smiled even broader, spread himself out in the wind and started taking a deep breath in before gazing around himself once more. This place truly is beautiful.

  What surprised him most of all was the precision of his senses—everything felt, smelled, sounded, and looked completely lifelike. The rough fabric of Dan's clothes were slightly abrasive against his skin. The breeze, gentle as it was, burned, bringing with it the smell of dust, and earth, as well as the now rumbling sound of conversation from the crowd surrounding him. In fact, if he hadn’t just experienced being strapped and wired to a table, naked as the day he was born he might have considered the possibility that he'd just been drugged, and dragged out here to cosplay, rather than becoming a digital being.

  At a modest five-feet and seven-inches tall, Dan was unable to see over the crowd to judge how many people had just uploaded with him. Fresh disappointment stung him as he reflected on the hard “no” he'd received after requesting to be taller. The developers had taken very exact measurements of his body before this. Then when he inquired, they looked at him, clearly irritated, before mentioning something about unrealistic physical changes, increasing the possibility of data getting corrupted, and so on. Most of it was technical stuff he didn't understand, anyways, he didn’t push the subject. He supposed it wasn't important. If he was being honest with himself, it probably wouldn’t have changed his comparative perspective. Most of the men before him probably asked to be taller, too. Still, he would have liked to experience life as a tall person.

  A sudden wave of cheers rushed toward Dan from behind him, causing him to whip around. Some of the crowd, he noticed, had just started gathering in front of the largest building in the town—it was a long, wooden structure topped by a sign that read Welcome Center. Something important must have just happened in that direction. Something he definitely wanted to see, and curiosity overcoming him, he walked over until he spotted what the commotion was all about. Ten professional-looking individuals stood in front of the closed doors of the welcome center.

  The team was smiling warmly, but didn’t seem to notice the people around them. Their anachronistic uniforms were crisp and new, with name tags that gleamed with the Lucid Enterprises logo. They weren’t themed to fit this old west setting. They had to be the ones running the show today, only here to guide these newcomers through their indoctrination. Dan also guessed that they were AI employees of Lucid, who’d soon disappear afterwards.

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  The crowd grew awkward as the silence of the AI team remained. It seemed that they’d all be waiting a while longer. No one knew how much longer it would last until the last person had finished loading in. It was at that moment that the team took action. They began splitting the crowd for indoctrination: each Lucid member moving forward, pulling a list out of thin air, then calling out each of the newcomers by name, one by one. Lines began to form in front of each AI, as they had instructed.

  Dan was called by a woman sporting a short, blonde bob. She handed each individual a flier as they congregated. A very short and thin woman, she had blue eyes and perfectly white teeth, and while she wasn’t unpleasant to look at, she was, somehow, off-putting. Trying to be respectful, Dan maintained his polite demeanor as he approached her. When she handed him his flier—heavy, and embossed with a glossy finish—he read her name tag: “Claire” was prettily etched into it with bold letters.

  Claire, still smiling warmly, flicked her eyes back and forth with the efficiency of someone who had done this too many times to count. Her intent for efficiency was made very clear as she walked right past Dan to the next individual in line. Dan looked at the flier more closely. Welcome to the Frontier! was typed across the top, followed by a list of instructions and basic guidelines for survival.

  Dan was half-way done through the instructions when Claire suddenly spoke in an assertive, yet gentle voice.

  “Congratulations on making the leap,” she began. “In a few moments, the doors behind me will open, and you’ll each be given the tools you’ll need to start your journey. Remember, this world is designed to be as immersive as possible. Pain, hunger, thirst—it’s all real here. Yes, just as real as it was out there. Well, as real as it needs to be.” Her smile widened. “But don’t worry, you won’t die unless you truly want to. That’s the only difference. The most important one, if you want my opinion.”

  Dan felt a prickle of excitement in his chest once again. This was exactly what he’d signed up for—a life where everything mattered, where every decision felt weighty, but not permanently so. He wanted adventure. He couldn’t help wondering, though, how many of the others around him felt the same or if some were already regretting the choice to leave the real world behind, forever, as the crowd stirred in anticipation.

  After giving them a moment, Claire went on. The other groups started filing inside the building. Some of the new citizens looked confident, others hesitated for a moment before following. But despite all of that, the process ran like a well-oiled machine. These AI were good at what they did.

  Dan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, however. Claire wasn’t showing any indication that they’d follow the others inside. Rather, they remained a good distance to the side, away from everyone else. As she continued to speak, Dan even thought he glimpsed a bit of sadism behind Claire’s eyes as everyone slowly realized something was going on and started to glance nervously at the front doors. Were they going to be rejected? Was their code somehow corrupted? For the first time since he’d arrived, Dan’s heart sank.

  But just before he felt like he’d completely lose it, they heard the doors to the welcome center shut. It was in that instant that Claire’s tone shifted. She was suddenly direct. Oh god, no! Dan thought, panicking. This is bad, what did they do to us!

  Then...

  “Now that we’re alone, I can freely inform you that we will be doing things a bit differently than everyone else.”

  Shit…

  “As you’ve surely noticed by now, they have entered the building, yet we remain out here. ‘Why?’ you’re asking yourselves… And I know you’re scared,” a gleam of light shot from her eyes as she swept across them until she finally pronounced, “The answer is simple. You’re all special.” Her smile was now broader than ever, as if she’d just revealed the best news in the world to them, but they were too stupid to understand it. Not a single person moved. No one said anything. Claire’s face relaxed, “You all, of course, remember the tests you took in the weeks leading up to today? You were told that they would serve as a baseline for your character models. We said we would use that information to match the brains and bodies you’ve now left behind. All of that was true. Yes. But there was one additional trait we at Lucid were looking for, one we informed nobody of. Something we thought would… alter the honesty of those in the building right now. Each of you has that trait,” she said, her eyes still scanning the group, back and forth. Claire then gestured quickly at the blank wall behind her.

  The group, now more confused than ever, peered around her breathlessly. Suddenly, the wall began to split, revealing a secret door that only she and the others in her team must have known about.

  “Any questions before we begin?”