It was a city and sized appropriately. Perhaps not to the extent of something like New York or London but more than enough to support the initial player base. It broke down into three rough layers: The canopy, the surface and the underground.

The canopy was effectively every child’s dream of a treehouse city. There were some trees out on the outskirts but as you got into the core of the city the obstacles tended to get tamer and it connected to the roofs of the buildings that made up the city proper. There were still a lot of little nooks and crannies to explore and a network of ziplines she wasn’t ashamed to admit she screamed on when she first tried them out.

The surface was a fairly mundane city, though one without any cars. Paths for bikes and other small vehicles wove between the massive hexagonal towers that hosted a lot of the city’s housing and a variety of businesses, mostly restaurants and stores where you could buy basic essentials.

The underground was enormous. Most of the city’s shops and other businesses could be found in that warren along with the fully functional subway system. If not for the signs and the map in her interface she could easily see herself getting lost down there.

As her first day drew to a close Claire found herself with another group of players in one of the many courtyards on the surface awaiting the kickoff event. With a couple minutes left a musical theme started to play and the sides of the nearby buildings lit up with numbers.

A few people took a chant as they reached the last ten seconds and Claire joined in. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

And then the countdown was replaced with enormous renderings of a woman from all directions. She had shoulder length blonde hair and a somewhat round face graced with a broad if somewhat mischievous smile. This was Daisy Decker, the lead designer for Gates of Eternity and the founder of the Otherwhere Inc.

“Welcome to The Gates of Eternity. My team and I have poured our time, our creativity, and our ingenuity into making something incredible; and if I may say so myself, I think we’ve succeeded.” Daisy’s smile was bright as she spoke of her team’s efforts. Claire smiled with her.

“This game is something special, but there is one small catch. You’ll only get to play it once. Your accounts here are locked not to your headset or a credit card. They’re locked to you.” There were a few murmurs of disquiet at that, and one louder call of “Why?”

“So please, take care with your choices. Speaking of which I have a few choices for you to make; for being here at launch, each of you have now been granted five free perk points to allocate how you choose. I hope you all choose wisely.” With that Daisy disappeared leaving a slowly building clamor of conversation in her wake.

Claire thought for a moment. So that was Daisy Decker. Not quite what she was expecting. The speech was pretty short too. The whole you can only play once thing was a bit strange but... honestly, she doesn't care. The ability to feel like this, to feel comfortable in her own skin without having to avoid any sharp edges of dysphoria, without having to worry about how people read her gender. That’s priceless. Everything else on top of that is just a bonus.

Still, five free points. She knew how to open her interface now so it wasn't hard to open the perks screen.

She was greeted by a field of interconnected sparkling stars that unfolded across her vision. At the center there was a heptagon of 7 with little labels floating around them: Strength, Endurance, Quickness, Control, Acuity, Focus and Retention. Immediately beyond that she could see things like Melee Weapon Handling, Ranged Weapon Handling, First Aid, Research, and so many more. The stars stretched out past the edges of her vision there had to be hundreds of them or more.

Given that Daisy had just said to choose carefully and that she wasn’t sure what the implications of picking any of them were she decided to close the interface for now.

The thought occurred to her that she had been in game for a while and should maybe log out; but she didn’t really want to do that just yet.

On a whim she walked up to one of the many hexagonal apartment buildings. The lowest floor was mostly occupied by a restaurant but there was a small lobby for access to the apartments above.

As she walked in, there was a small chime and a notification bubble appeared near the interface diamond.

She stepped to the side to hopefully be out of the way as she looked at what it said. ‘Welcome, if you’d like to tour the building alone please press here. If you’d instead like a tour guided by the help system please press here. If you don’t want notifications like this you can disable them by pressing here.’

Well, Emily had recommended that she interact more with NPCs. She pressed the button for the guided tour.

Veria swirled into existence next to her. “Hello Claire. Are you thinking about renting an apartment?”

"Hi, Veria. I'm not really sure. I thought it at least wouldn't hurt to look around. Can you tell me about why I would want to?"

"Why you specifically would want to or why in general?"

"Is there a difference? Also can anyone else hear us? That sounds like it could get... personal."

"I'll make sure we're not overheard. At least here in Sanctuary, my abilities extend that far. Doing that outside safe areas requires a perk."

"Speaking of perks, can you explain what's going on with that? Oh and which perk?"

"Oh course. Every perk is at least a little different but the basics are the same. When you spend a point on it you get an immediate benefit called the foundation. If you do things aligned with the perk you can earn progress towards mastery and once you achieve it you earn a new point you can spend on another perk. Some perks have foundations as a pre-requisite and others have mastery."

"What does that mean for something like Strength then? Or Control."

"Strength here in Gates of Eternity is about how much force you can apply with your body. Perhaps a different name for it would be peak force.

"The foundation benefit from Strength helps you figure out how to apply your strength and how to train it. It also makes strength training work better and easier. That's a general thing about perks they'll always make it easier to advance towards mastery than if you didn't have the perk. As for Mastery, achieving mastery of Strength means you're on par with Olympic Athletes in that domain. Think power lifters but also the way rock climbers can hold their entire body weight with just their finger tips and their toes.

"Control is probably the most complicated one but it's about being precise with your movement. It helps you know where your body is and move it exactly how you want to. The foundation benefit for control makes it easier to move slowly. Mastery for control means you always know where every part of your body is and you can move with again the precision of an Olympic Athlete. Think of how Gymnasts can land jumps after flipping several times or how swimmers maintain really consistent strokes even as they're racing ahead."

"Those are starter perks though. Is mastery that hard or do we just become that far beyond human as things go on?"

"Do you think superpowers make you something other than human? To answer your literal question, there are levels of strength a good ways beyond the first strength perk. Exactly how far would be a spoiler but certainly into the realm of minor superpowers if not beyond."

"For strength, probably not. But if you always remember everything? Or you can focus on anything for unlimited amounts of time? That's starting to change a lot about how you think. Though I don't really know how the game could implement something like focus."