Alan brought up the Sneak and Acrobatics abilities as well as the updated Stealth ability.

Alan frowned slightly, unhappily looking at the mediocre results before him. He closed the windows resolutely, sure that he would do better on the next test.

The labyrinth of walls and traps slowly vanished, replaced by the original white chamber Alan had found himself in. A wall of chat windows appeared before him, and then suddenly without hesitation streams of numbers and symbols started appearing on all of them.

Eve frantically began to analyze them, trying to interpret for Alan. Line after line of text appeared in each of the windows as Eve slowly began translating all of the different lines to English, or at least computer code that was in English. Protocols, syntax, everything from letters to indentation were all over the place, and Alan couldn’t make heads or tails of anything any of the windows were showing him. He imagined the complexity of the hundreds of different computer languages that existed, and then he thought about the thousands or maybe millions of languages that must exist in the Game, shuddering at the thought. While the windows, each of which Alan assumed represented an AI of some sort, might be trying to communicate useful information to him, Alan certainly wasn’t getting the message, and Eve couldn’t help him due to the strange rules governing AI interaction in the Game.

As a headache slowly developed, Alan stopped trying to interpret the lines of code. Instead, he closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind, searching for a mental connection. To his surprise, Alan detected hundreds of “minds” or AI, but most seemed distant, foreign. If he really strained, he might be able to forge a connection with these “minds,” but Alan chose to initially ignore those that seemed too far away.

He re-imagined each possible AI as a sort of mote of light, a star in the sky, and a map slowly began to form in his mind, tenuous connections swirling about as each star seemed to move and react to others. Alan concentrated on the nearest, brightest star, easily within reach. A strong connection was established. Hesitatingly, Alan sent out a thought.

Hello?

Immediately, the connection was broken, and the star in Alan’s mind disappeared. Unperturbed, Alan continued to make connections, sending out the same initial Hello. Most responded similarly to the first, simply breaking the connection and vanishing. A few he was able to have a basic conversation with, introducing himself, but they were all uninteresting, and soon broke off their connections. As Alan started to strain to connect to the distant stars in his mind, he felt his headache slowly increase in intensity. It was a sort of dull, throbbing pain, rather than the knife-like pain that came when he was pushing his physical limits, but it seemed to underlie his every thought, his every action.