"You really read until four a.m.?" Mara asked from the other side of the thin dorm wall.
"I had to finish the chapter," I mumbled, one eye on the glowing phone screen. The words blurred, then the phone blinked once and died.
A cold electronic voice filled my skull before I could stand. "Host detected. Initiating Farm System."
I froze. "What the—"
Light pushed behind my eyelids. The room lurched, then the floor went away.
I hit straw. I tasted dust and old hay. I tried to move and found my fingers sticky with a sour, plant-smelling sap.
"Welcome, Host Kali Warren," the voice said, flat and precise. "Farm Level: 1. Available plots: six. Structure: one-room shelter. Initial mission posted."
I yanked at the air where sound had come from. My hand slapped something thin and cold. Virtual text popped into view like a panel glued over the world, bright green letters in the corner of my vision.
"This is not real," I said out loud because talking made more sense than staying silent.
"Reality verification failed," the system replied. "Empirical consciousness transfer complete. Health: 100 percent. Nutrition: baseline. Respiration: normal. Farm boundary active."
I laughed, a short, sharp sound that surprised me. "So I'm dead and I get a farm. That's your idea of a joke?"
"Host status: unknown," the voice answered. "Resurrection conditional. Objective: Raise Farm to Level 5. Secondary objective: Accumulate two hundred thousand points within forty days. Failure will result in host termination."
Two
