"How many times have I asked you not to call me that?" the furious pathologist bent down to pick one of the skulls from the foot of his throne and hurl it at his cultists. They ran away.

"Sorry about that. Ain't religion stupid?"

"Er..." Dev just stared at the old man. In place of his suit, he wore a long black velvet cloak over black robes fastened with a black sash. The cloak had red lining and very large shoulder pads. He looked like an evil wizard in a fairy tale, "You wanted to see me."

"Oh, you're the other guy from Earth!"

"We aren't on Earth?"

"We're very far away from home, brother." the man sounded sad for a moment, "Well, at least I'm not in prison any more. I've found out a lot from being here. It's changed my whole perspective on the world. Did you know that I found out what happens when people die? Basically, they..."

"What did you want to see me about?" asked Dev politely.

"I'm sorry, I'm being rude. There's something I have to talk to you about, Dev. You're looking for a girl called Doran, right?"

"I didn't know her name."

"She's the one who's sending people here." he told Dev, "She contacts you in dreams, doesn't she?"

Dev nodded.

"She has some amazing powers. I'm not sure what these powers are or why she has them but I know for a fact she is the one who sent us here. She is from this world. An exile. Like you. But she was sent to your world."

"I think I heard a story like that once..."

"She must have spent her entire life playing with portals, teleport techniques, ways to bridge your world and this one, so she can go home one day. She's been communicating with this world for years, wandering around in spirit form. And now she knows how to send physical objects through."

"So why doesn't she just go home? Why is she sending other people through?"

"I don't know. I think she still might not be able to send herself through. Maybe we're her experiments, like a scientist testing on chimps before he can put an advert out for human volunteers." his eyes narrowed, "There's something else you need to know about Doran. She's dead."

"What?"

"I went to the Game Over screen - where you go when you die - and her name is on the records. She's dead." he said, "But she's also still alive. I even managed to find out where her life signature is."

He reached into the pockets of his robes and pulled out a piece of paper. It was a map. It looked like the London Underground, a series of connected nodes in a rough cycle, except that it was far more complicated and all connected to a large square in the middle. In the square was an X. Dr. Kevorkian pointed to it.

"That's where she is. The Heart of the Wastebasket. Nobody knows what's in there - apart from Doran, apparently - so you'll be the first to find out."

"Why me?"

"My cult brings me lots of stories about people from Earth coming here. They all end up in different situations. The fact that Doran put you in the same situation as herself and keeps making you follow her around indicates that she likes having you around her. I wouldn't want someone to approach her who she didn't like. She might just delete them."

Dev shuddered. 'Delete' was not a friendly word.

"I'll do it on one condition." he decided, "You say you've been to the place where people go when they die?"

He nodded.

"Did you see a woman called Joan Clare-Lasbard?"

"Billions of life forms go there every second. It took me a week to find Doran on the database."

"Please look for her. If she's there, at least I'll know for certain... and I'll be able to mourn her properly."

"I'll do that. But... don't be so sad, young 'un." he smiled, "Death isn't a bad or evil thing. I used to think like you... death was bad when it took young people away in their prime, good when it came as a mercy. Now I know it's just an administrative process. It's just something the Universe does to you. Like switching off a computer, closing down a shop... or just ticking a box on a form. Game Over is a big office, that's all it is."

"That's... not the slightest bit comforting."

"I'm not here to comfort you, I'm here to do my job. Now go."

Airetam La Shiec gripped the pommel of his sword and walked confidently towards the gate. His cloak blew in the artificial wind on the asteroid that should not support life. The ship had left, the mercenary returned to Aiedo with a heavy pay packet. He had done his job; Airetam was at the gates of the inner sanctum of the floating castle and no longer needed protection. It was up to him to learn to fight for himself; he knew he wouldn't survive unless he understood this world, even though he was strong and fast and could use magic. This was his quest.

As his hand touched the stone door, there was a rumble and the enormous stone gargoyles ripped free of their holding. Masonry rained down onto Airetam's head. He whipped out his sword and slashed at the roaring two-headed things that floated towards him, breathing fire. He put a Saner up and forced himself to look at the numbers that he saw every time he sliced off a chunk of stone, whenever a creature drew blood and he felt pain, whenever he saw the light flicker from their eyes as they fell silent and dropped like stones from the air to crumble on the ground. I am level 98, he repeated like a mantra. I have 686 HP and 300 TP...

The stairs crumbled under him and he fell into a crypt. It stank of mould and decay. Statues of noblemen and ladies, once beautiful and elegant, now weathered away, stood either side of a moth-eaten carpet. He eyed the statues suspiciously but they stayed where they were as he walked down the carpet and into a corridor. It grew steadily darker. He was soon feeling his way through, measuring time and distance by drops of moisture falling. Suddenly he smelled rust. Something materialised from the darkness, things with leathery faces and soulless yellow eyes. They flickered in and out of existence from tiny pockets of gravity, peeking out from their negative plane. Claws flickered into being and raked at his face. Airetam drew his sword and slashed at one of them but the blade passed straight through it. He swore. Look at the numbers, he reminded himself. It's immune to physical attacks but very weak against the Gra technique. He focussed on the word - GRA - and felt the power well up inside the part of his brain he had never used before. Energy crackled around his hands. He pointed to the creatures and felt the energy transfer across. Gravity seemed to distort and ripple and finally implode and the creatures screamed as their portals collapsed in on themselves. He let out a cry of victory.

Light returned to the corridor as he neared the end. It was warm here, the walls were naturally blue from the rock and there was a low rumbling sound. He passed through a tall stone archway onto a small square platform in the middle of a lake of lava. It was a dead end and there were no other passageways. Now what, he wondered. After a minute's wait or so, he felt the ground shake and he realised that the platform was rising upwards like a lift. He saw gears and pistons and realised that this was the internal workings of the castle, the lava's kinetic and heat energy powering whatever maintained the artificial environment. He ascended beyond that and the square stopped in a large chamber made up of lots of these smaller squares. He noticed the intricacy of the pattern on the floor, its pixel-Hewn-pattern of blocky loops and whorls, square circles, different colours twisting around each other like a giant cycle. Music played in the background.

There was a 'FFAUGLM!' noise. Airetam drew his sword as something materialised in a fog of pixels. It was the girl.

"Who said you could come in? This is my room!"

"Are you the one who can send me home to my world?" he asked.

"You're not going home. I've decided." she said, yawning, "You've been very rude to me. And you didn't take care of me when I was an exile."

"You send me home right now, madwoman, or else..."

"Or else what?" she stretched her arm out and pointed to him. He felt a pain like a thousand knives vivisecting his soul as a column of wild pixel-energy crashed down onto him, pinning him to the ground. She walked over to him and dropped something near his hand. He tried to see what it was through the red clouds. An instructions manual for a computer game. Phantasy Star 4.

"I suggest you read it." she told him, "Because you're not leaving until you understand it. And what it is to be powerless, lost and lonely on and alien planet with nobody in authority giving a shit."

He grabbed the manual and tried to turn the page over. He felt the pain abate. It was so warm, like being back in the womb, he was helpless, all his strength gone... he couldn't remember ever having held a sword... he checked his stats - it came instinctively all of a sudden - and saw that he was level 1 again.

He passed out.