He wakes up in a small steel room, in a body not his own. He is a statue, precisely cut from stone and covered in circular glyphs that channel a blue energy down his limbs. He has sensation, but it is blunt and dull. He can't move.

Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA mimset, sings a artificial-sounding voice.

Physical-interface remote-ADMIN install, something in his mind translates for him.

The stone melts away, reduces to a generic human bodyplan. Sensation floods in. He still can't move, though. 

Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA-ki mimsai!

Physical-interface remote-ADMIN-Heartsong update!

Brown hair blossoms on his head and grows to the correct length, and his body grows and fills out, going from a generic neuter body to his body, correct in every detail. There's a shiver of cold air across his delicate parts as his sex forms from blank skin. 

minri li!

Tutorial Execute!

NAME: Teddy Anderson
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Data)
HYMN: •••
~Chords of the Hymn~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ◘◘◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: •••
CHA: •••
Heartsong: 『Share the Light』
When doing something for what you deeply and truly believe is a morally good reason, act as if INT, WIS, and CHA are all 1 higher.
Passion Core: ◘

The voice that was singing continues in what seems to be English.

"Welcome to Heartsong, Remote Administrator. You have been reincarnated here in order to repel the Corruptors, beings of twisted Heartsong that seek to overthrow the Hymn. This is a prerecorded message; I cannot know at what time this will find you or in what place. But you have been called here and given administrative access in order to do what we cannot. There is a manual of Hymnos in your user docs if you sing it. Good luck. Adzi, First Singer of the Hymn."

"W-wha-"

He takes gasping breaths.

He's not dead?

Were his parents right? Something after death? But-

He sits, naked, on the cold metal floor and breathes, staring at his feet, trying not to freak out.

He was hit by a truck. And now he's here. Nothing hurts. It doesn't feel like a dream. He thinks he's thinking clearly. But if he's not actually thinking clearly, does thinking he's thinking clearly count for anything?

You pinch yourself to wake up from dreams, right?

"Ow."

Okay, so, for now, assume this is not a dream.

"...Tutorial? Administrator- What is this- Where am I?"

A phrase comes unbidden to his lips: mamria-shalnea aka, remote-location display.

He has so many doubts about this. But fine. "Mamria-shalnea aka."

It comes out in song, with precise intonations that feel important. 

A blue and brown sphere forms in the air with a red chevron poking out of it. Apparently he is at the tip of one of the continents by a curving bay. It's a pure terrain map; no borders or roads or cities appear on the image.

"Syntax is important... Lucky I have a cheat sheet in my head I guess? What the fuuuuck."

Sigh.

"Hymnos? ...Minri lee satura-anske Hymnos."

A basic tutorial on how to display and access Hymnos records displays, followed by a list of basic functions, centering on the ability to retrieve data in various forms. 

Okay this is sort of familiar but... What... Is a Hymnos, exactly? A program, or a file? A song? A function? Can he figure it out from reading this?

Hymnos is the name for the sung language that precisely specifies code, which is then executed by the World-SYSTEM, also known as the Hymn. Some advanced songs in Hymnos specify code through dance as well. Here is an example, a song and dance that permanently enchants an object to produce heat along a given surface when activated via a Hymnos-defined switch. There is a written form of the language, it looks like a lot of circles with curlicues.

"This... Is a videogame. Or a rescue simulation..."

Fuck.

Deep breaths.

As superpowers go 'execute code on the world' is a pretty good one. Pretty convenient that he's apparently not going to have to practice singing.

Hopefully he can use macros or something. It might get embarrassing to sing all the time, not to mention dancing.

.......

If this is a videogame, and he's in the tutorial...

He'll have to face enemies sooner or later.

"...Minri li satura-anske Heartsong. Minri lee satura-anske Administrative Body. Minri li satura-anske Corruptors."

A Heartsong is a data record that precisely specifies for lack of a better word a soul. When executed on the SYSTEM as code, Heartsongs grant permanent unique abilities that are keyed to the personality of the owner. 

An Administrative Body is what he is wearing right now; ageless, tough as stone and steel, flexible as a living human. No need to breathe, sleep, eat or drink; energy to run the Administrative Body is provided by the SYSTEM. It plays host to his Heartsong and thus can be said to be him. That allows it to also function in all the ways that a living human can, if need be. Sex in particular has had some attention paid to it, due to its ability to recharge the Passion Core. (See manual entry for Passion Core.)

Corruptors are people with a Heartsong that has become infected with a virus that originates outside this reality. Their very souls have been twisted by unnatural code, and they seek to take over the Hymn and thus acquire local omnipotence. His duty as an Administrator is to prevent this.

...Why. Well, he probably won't be doing that. Unless recharging the passion core is important and it's the only way to do so. He'll - have to figure something out, then.

He looks for the manual entries for passion core, hymn, and looks for more details on the Corruptors. Also 'administrative body status' - HP? And core draw.  And int, wis, cha. The last three seem self-explanatory but double checking is prudent.

Passion Core: The part of the soul where flow lives. A powerful mana source, which can be used to repay accumulated cycle-debt to the SYSTEM, also known as Core Draw. Best tapped through sex or artistic endeavour. 

Hymn: The SYSTEM as a persistent, living metaspell. Not quite alive, but running continuously to make enchantments function and answer Hymnos spell declarations.

Corruptors Index II: There are four main methodologies used by the Corruptors: Destroy, Infiltrate, Seduce and Torment. Destroyers and Tormentors seek access through violent means, by threatening ruin unless access is given or by trying to sieze the physical hardware.  Infiltrators try to access the system through semi-legitimate means, and Seducers seek access through the intimate lives of users and administrators.

Administrative Body Status: Yes, it's HP.

Core Draw: Represents accumulated mana/processor debt to the Hymn. If maxed, you will be shut out from registering programs with the Hymn until you use your Passion Core to clear the debt.

Int, Wis, Cha: Are as expected representative of Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.

Seducers? Oh look, another reason not to have sex with anyone. As if he needed more of those.

So there's physical access points here. Hell, maybe he's a physical access point. It sounds like the Hymn is an overlay to the physical world... Not a simulation, but a physical place with persistent 'magic' that runs as a computer system laid on top.

If he believes that. All this information is new and videogamey and the easiest way to run a video game is on a computer, not in reality. And he definitely died. He was hit by a truck and crushed and ohgodithurts-

Deep breaths.

Anyway, there's so much bullshit here that it basically has to be a simulation.

What do the simulators want?

No, no, not the time to get into thoughts like that. He'll be stewing for days.

He's feeling restless and tense. A new world, coding-like superpowers (that he doesn't know that much about yet), a chance after death. And if he buys into the premise here, he's basically the hero from another dimension who has to save the world. He should be doing something. He should be figuring out how to get out of this metal box. If this is a video game he can blunder around exploring and nothing will immediately eat him.

But is it? Genre knowledge does not work in real life. If this is 'realistic', or somehow actually a real other world, his expectations of things based on how video games work are useless at best and misleadingly dangerous at worst.

...Ugh. Thinking in circles, just like he predicted.

He pulls up the Hymnos manual again. Does it have any function that can detect the Corruptor virus? For that matter, 'summon clothes'? Even if he's a "data" administrator (implying there's more types) there ought to be some general stuff right...?

The Hymnos manual has a Virus Scan function, yes! It's "[Target] [Virus-Detection] [Execute]", very easy to remember. 

Hymnos cannot generally make solid objects out of nothing, but for an administrator some rules are stretched. The system warns that materializing him clothes will take three Core Draw, but does so if prompted.

He can make heat and light and electricity, impart physical force to objects, scry on faraway locations (or close ones), manifest physical documents such as books or manuals... 

...Can he get the cost of clothes down to two or one by asking for less material? He tries various configurations of requests, cancelling them as soon as he gets the core draw warning. If the cost to make objects seems to be material-independent he might ask for several outfits at once as well as a cloth bag, and whatever other survival gear he can think of.

But he also needs to figure out how to get out of here.

He's on a planet, near the coast and near a bay. But he needs a much closer view to figure out how to... Escape? Well, it's a tutorial area, it won't be that hard, surely.

Wait. Video game logic = bad. This might not be a video game.

...He figures out how to specify location of the remote viewpoint spell, then calls for a view from a hundred meters above himself.

If he's willing to go for just underwear the Core Draw goes down to one, just shirt and pants is two, shoes and socks bumps it up to three. He can get a whole second outfit if he's willing to max the gauge to five. 

From a hundred meters above himself there's a bustling town, with a town square centered in the middle of the view. People are going about their daily business. It's evening. It seems to be vaguely medieval save for the fact that there are bright red streetlights all around the square. In the center of the town square is a tall statue of a man singing.

...He'll probably go for a full outfit at three core draw, trying to match the styles in town. But not quite yet.

He scries lower down on the town, a street level view after several guesses on height.

Huh.

What about the view... One meter away, on the other side of that wall? On all four walls, for that matter. And above and below him, why not.

There's gardens past the first wall, townhouses past the second and third, and the fourth seems to be a path down towards the harbour. 

There's nothing below him but dirt and rock. 

Above him is the pedestal of the statue of the singing man.

Hmm.

He is... Not actually sure whether he wants to attract attention or not.

Try to hide his special status, likelihood of success? Very slim. He knows he's socially awkward enough to probably fail. He doesn't know what's normal or not around here.

Hide-->Succeed, possibly minor, possibly major gain, in that the 'corrupted' won't have a reason to suspect him of anything.

Hide-->Fail, minor loss. Embarrassment, maybe reputation issues? He's not sure. He does know it would be trying and stressful and he might not actually learn much useful.

Do not hide-->Good reception. Major advantage. Probably embarrassment since, well, it kind of seems like this might be a religious thing.

Do not hide-->Bad reception. Unknown quantity of disadvantage. May have to run out of town. Worst case scenario: Actively hunted by locals, including Corrupted.

Hmm.

HMMMMM.

...He is not going to bother trying to hide his status.

Now, how to actually get out of this... Pedestal.

First, he looks around. Are the walls totally featureless? He'll scry around, if so, and try to find some hidden mechanism. If nothing, he'll need to figure out what Hymnos he's supposed to use here.

Scrying turns up a hidden mechanism to his left with a control panel consisting of hymnos symbols, and a hidden doorway. They appear ro be linked.

The obvious thing to do is to activate it, which his new brain happily supplies is ke.

Okay.

Okay, but.

His heart is pounding. Does he even have a heart? It feels like his heart is pounding. This is all too surreal.

He could stay here and read more, right? Maybe overnight. He could figure out how to listen through the scries, surely there's a function for that, and... Try to figure out how this society works, try the 'hide his status' thing. Get familiar with all the Hymnos commands, maybe work on some slightly more complicated algorithms than the samples provided.

He's nobody special. Why the hell pick him as a 'local admin'?

...He's being drafted, really. He's not dead, but now he'll have enemies to fight. It could be dangerous. It probably will be dangerous. He's never deliberately done anything dangerous or attention-getting in his life.

His mind runs in circles for a while.

He could try summoning a bunch of books here and reading them but that feels like cowardice, and also probably wouldn't be as informative as another person. As seeing things for himself.

...Does the virus scan function return a simple yes/no? Or a location of the virus?

He scries on the topography of the town for a while, then attempts to perform a virus scan of the whole town - defining the space so it will get any possible basements but not 'waste' space scanning the middle of the sky or deep below the earth.

A virus scan of that size costs a Core Draw, does he wish to proceed?

...What's the largest virus scan he can get away with without a core draw, he wonders. For that matter, probably these 'little' applications aren't actually 'free'. If he tries to game it by doing two things just below the threshold of a core draw, probably that... Gives him a core draw. Even if it's measured in distinct dots, it would make much more sense for it to have more distinctions. A 32 bit integer or whatever tracking resource use, marking a full dot when he's used so much.

And the virus gives a boolean answer. He can binary search it if the answer is yes, but if there's multiple Corruptors in town- Hmm. He'll scan the same thing, but in quadrants around the statue, at first.

North-eastern quarter of the town, defined thus with a somewhat long song: Any viruses here? And what about his core draw, does it cost one?

No tick on his Core Draw. No virus.