'Mass Effect' and all associated video games, films, and novels belong to Bioware and Electronic Arts. Please support official releases.

To Jonathan O'Riley: Thanks for giving me this story and its outline to adapt as my own. I'll take good care of it while you work on that book of yours.

A World Known

It was as if I was suffering from the worst hangover of my entire life. My head felt as if it was about to explode, and my stomach was on the verge of emptying out whatever contents it contained. My vision was blurred, the crust in my eyes not helping. I felt groggy and cranky as my legs and arms fought against my commands.

What the hell happened last night, I asked myself with an agitated groan. Scattered and unorganized flashes of the previous night began flowing through my head, but they stopped when the vague memory of a certain individual coercing me to do vodka shots popped up. Michael. The guttural noises escaping my lips became louder and angrier. I'm going to kick his... the thought was cut off when I realized where I had been laying. A very hard and very cold floor. In a very dark and very smelly alley.

"Wha-... what the shit?" I rubbed away the crust from my eyes with the only hand willing to partially listen to me, attempting to focus my vision however little I could in the darkness.

"Mike?" I asked aloud, still slow and half asleep, after scanning the surroundings to find no other soul. My voice eerily echoed through the long and seemingly endless alleyway. "Seriously, man. This isn't funny!"

I continued to listen in hope of a response but found it to be a futile effort. It didn't take long for panic to begin setting in. My eyes were wide in an inherent fear of having been left behind at an unknown place and time, no significant recollection of prior events presently available. Fortunately, I soon noticed a small ray of light coming from the distance behind me. The alley seemed to continue on for at least a hundred or so yards in that direction.

With the only hope of learning my location that far-reaching source of illumination, I raised to my feet after several failed attempts and slowly maneuvered towards it. I was practically limping at first, barely able to not trip over myself. However, with a short time of stretching my legs and getting my body back into practice, my pace turned into a slightly uneasy but reasonable walk. The nausea seemed to steadily dissipate as well.

Okay... think hard and remember.

As I got ever closer to the end of the alleyway, with the originally small light gradually becoming garish, I attempted to focus as much of my attention as possible on memory gathering.

You and the squad drove to Manhattan. Went to a night club. Then you went to a bar and you were celebrating... I squinted my eyes and tried putting more brainpower into the thoughts. You were celebrating your twenty-first birthday! With a shake of the head, I grimly chuckled to myself. I love those guys, but I'm going to kill them!

To be honest, this had not been the worst of our close-knit group's misadventures. It was difficult to be angry when you'd done deeds that were just as foolishly stupid but nonetheless hilarious to the same people responsible. With that said, we had all agreed years ago to abandon such activities, our childhood lives long over. A couple of the guys were already starting families, and there had been enough scares in the past to learn the lesson of restraint.

By the time I was within a few dozen yards of the end of the alley, the beaming light had almost rendered me blind. However, the familiar sounds of a major city were as loud in my ears as ever, dozens if not hundreds of people walking and crowding together. The aromas of foods from various different cultures mixed together to form a unique scent. Yet, something wasn't right. Many of the voices I was beginning to hear were not in English, and the smell in the air was different.

Having been born and lived my entire life in New York City, the distinct smells of Manhattan, with all of its sub-communities such as China Town and Little Italy, had become ingrained in my memory and senses. These foreign languages sounding off before me were none I had ever heard before. I may not have been able to speak anything other than English and some Spanish, but I knew what the other popular languages of Manhattan, including Mandarin Chinese and Italian, sounded like. Everything now entering my ears was alien.

I'm still in Manhattan... right? Because I swear, if I'm somehow in Newark or Jersey City...

Then I took note of an important detail. As the floor at my feet was all I could clearly see without burning my pupils, it was impossible to not realize that I was standing on metal. Nowhere in sight was there concrete or asphalt. Unless my memory had well and truly been shot, no North American city I had ever visited could claim to provide streets or sidewalks crafted from metal.

Where the hell am I?!

Allowing my eyes to further adjust to the light, I finally looked forward with relative clarity only to have my mind blown away by what was revealed. Standing a few yards away, staring at me with an expression of confusion and suspicion, was a young-looking woman. The problem was that she had dark blue skin, these tentacle-like appendages sticking out from the back of her head, and large symmetrical tribal tattoos on the sides of her face.

Yeah, I knew what she was supposed to be. I've played the games enough times to know, but I just didn't want to admit it to myself. It must have been some kind of well-made cosplay, and maybe there was a video game convention in the city that I didn't know about. That train of thought ended, though, when I saw the other people passing by the alleyway entrance.

There were dozens of more blue woman standing in the street ahead, some even glancing at me with the same expression as the first. And when I looked up to the skyline for the first time, I saw countless aircars speedily soaring overhead. Once I finished staring in awe and disbelief, and after focusing more on the crowd in front of me, I noticed other strange figures scattered throughout. Some had green skin with ridiculously wide foreheads and large amphibian-like eyes. Others were almost bird-like with tough-looking skin, no lips, and 'spikes' at the back of their heads. To say I instantly sobered up was far from a lie.

Asari... Salarians... Turians...

I must have been daydreaming. What else could have explained it all? Believing this to be the case, I slapped myself across the face hard. Instead of waking in bed back at my home in Staten Island, however, I returned to the faces of aliens, whom's species should not have even existed, looking at me as if I was a looney. That was when it kicked in. That was when reality hit me in the face with the fist of Mike Tyson himself and I knew.

This place I found myself in was the fantastical world of Mass Effect: the home to legendary heroes and nightmarish villains, every teenage boy's greatest of dreams, and the wildest of Captain Kirk fantasies.

And I was petrified.