Driving home from the office in LA was terribly slow, and when it wasn’t I was often driving on overcrowded mountain roads to avoid the freeways. Like tonight. I wasn’t doing much, just minding my own business, listening to some old rock music on the radio, when my brother called.

  “Yo Arthur what’s going on?”

  “Yo not much bro, where are you? Sounds like you’re having a great time.”

  “Taking the long way home. Got the mountains and the tunes…Hey how’s school going? Not partying too much are you?”

  “Haha, no bro! You know me, family first!”

  “Right. You coming over to mom’s this weekend?”

  “Yeah you bet! I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

  Suddenly a black car, sleek and long, flew over the lane divider and smashed into my Civic. I hung, slack-jawed, suspended in gravity, as a crash like a cymbal rang out.

  I found myself in a vast lobby, with words hovering in static everywhere like something from a VR game. Some were in ordered sequences, some advanced at a measured pace. Some seemed to manifest randomly.

  Something began to glow in front of me. The light arranged into the outline of a winged figure. A girl manifested. A little halo updated over her head.

  “You may select any role. Selection is required.”

  She spoke in a shining voice. She smiled and a glitch bent her face for a second.

  “This is a dream,” I said to myself. “Or, that crash was a dream, and this too.”

  “No dream, young soul. This is a journey. You are headed to a very special place next. Weywyrd.”

  I shook my head, walking away and looking over all the words. They were jobs apparently. Digital Farmer. Rope Inspector. Cargo Cleric. Porthole Cleaner. Signal Flag Operator. They went on, endlessly.

  Then some words popped up in front of me that hadn’t been there. Among the others, but these were one of those random occurrences. Just my luck. I read Wake. Sounds good, I thought, and pressed it, but there were more to the words than that. It said Driften Waker.

  After I pressed it more words appeared.

  [CLASS SELECTED: Driften Waker]

  [INITIALIZING: Weywyrd.world]

  [ERROR: Safe Drop Zone Not Found]

  [ERROR: Tutorial Skipped]

  [ERROR: Fate Overflow]

  Suddenly I was falling. The air rushed past me as I tumbled, way high up, above clouds. Something like a jet plane flew past me in a rush and I flopped around its wake. I blacked out.

  I woke up before I hit the ground. But there was no ground. There was just gray below me. Beside me a voice crackled, robotic.

  “This isn’t a shooting star, Brufo. It’s a guy. He’s alive I think.”

  There was someone in a flight suit beside me. Gray metal etched with lines of glowing blue power. Another came in on my other side. They were arguing about if they should save me.

  “No salvage and nothing edible!” the one that must be called Brufo said. “Oh well, let’s move on before we catch anybody’s attention.”

  “We can’t just leave him. He’ll, you know, splat. He’s got no suit, no nothing.”

  All this as I was still falling. I cleared my throat, then screamed “HELP!!”

  “Fine,” Brufo said. “Bring him up then Val. At least we can say we found some salvage. Hey, bud, can you like cook or something? What class are you?”

  “Class?” I tried to ask.

  Back on Earth, we didn’t have classes like I thought he was describing, like a video game RPG. But in games like those we had menu systems and we could access our class stats.

  Instead I passed out again.

  I awakened in bed. Well, in a bed. I had bandages around me. Out the window was nothing but sky and cloud. It was morning. I tried to get up, but everything hurt.

  The door opened and a dark-haired bearded guy walked in carrying a steaming tray of noodles. “Oh, good, yer awake. You were in a pretty bad way, dude, and so high up. What happened to you?”

  “I think I died,” I said quietly.

  Brufo laughed. “No lad, you should’ve though. Well, I’ll not pry, but I’m dying to hear about your high altitude sortie. What kinda class you carrying anyway, lad? You’re pretty young to be skyscrapping. Here, eat this once it cools a bit.”

  He set down the tray.

  I tapped my wrist. Just an instinct. The air shifted into numbers and shadows in a unobtrusive way.

  [Name: Daniel]

  [Class: Driften Waker]

  [Level: 1]

  [Skills: Dragoon, Wind Rider, Tech Appraiser]

  [Perks: Adaptive, Scavenger’s Eye]

  [Proficiencies: None]

  My stats were, well, pretty mid.

  “Driften Waker,” I told him.

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  “We-he-hell,” Brufo boomed, then called out the door, “Hey Val, your guy’s awake! We didn’t need to save him! He’s a Driften Waker!”

  The girl called Val came soon after. When she saw me she grinned brightly. Then her face became stone and she crossed her arms. She had auburn hair, and wore a leather vest and a ruby pendant. She carried what looked like a spanner wrench.

  “So, Driften Waker, what’s your name? I’m Valietta, and this is Brufo.”

  “Daniel. What is a ‘Driften Waker’ anyway?”

  My two, I guess I’ll call them nurses, exchanged glances.

  ”You mean to tell us,” Brufo began.

  “--That you don’t even know what a Driften Waker is?” Val finished forcefully.

  “I--to tell the truth I’m not sure exactly how I got here…”

  Too late, though. As I pondered that Val let out a snarl and jumped upon the bed, splashing me with scalding broth. “Ah!!” I screamed, both from the burning liquid and from my body, which felt like hell. She activated a switch or something on the wrench that caused it to whir. It was not a wrench. This close, [Tech Appraiser] triggered, and I knew it was a laser drill. She pressed it close to my neck. I could feel its heat.

  “Listen here, Daniel. If that’s even your real name. If you think we even for a second buy your amnesia story, think again pal. Now, my friend Brufo here is going to ask you again what your deal is, and you’re going to give a better answer. Say yes?”

  I nodded frantically. She turned off the laser drill and got off me. She grinned again, that innocent grin, and I now understood it differently as a kind of set-up punch.

  “The [Broth of Mending] only works if you eat it,” said Brufo. “Where are you from, pal?”

  “I grew up in LA.”

  “Ellay? Never heard of it. You, Val?”

  She shook her head. I hesitated. I could have tried to tell them about the city which is quite marvelous really if you’ve never heard of it. But I decided to just move on.

  “Okay, well, we’ll look into this Ellay place. What are you doing in our sky though?”

  I held out my hands. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew. I really don’t. I was driving my--terrestrial airship home listening to the radio when I got into a wreck. After that I woke up, met this angel, pressed a button and I was falling out of the sky. I know how it sounds. Please don’t kill me.”

  I squeaked out that last part. Val shrugged. She turned to Brufo.

  “I don’t see it. He’s no spy, Brufo. He doesn’t seem to really know what he is.”

  Brufo sighed. “That’s great to know now. I’ll go make him another bowl of ramen…get him into another bedroom for now Val, we’re gonna have to clean the mattress…”

  After he left Val flung back the blanket I was basically pinned beneath. It was cold without the blanket. I had on just my undershirt and underwear and socks.

  I started to protest. “Shove it,” Val said. “Nothing I haven’t seen before. Who do you think put you in the bed? You were unconscious. Bleeding, too.”

  “The car crash…” I murmured. “Val--I think I died. I remember dying.”

  She shook her head. “No. NO! You’re alive you idiot! Listen to me, Daniel. You. Are. A. Driften. Waker. Skydiving, like what I was doing, is what you do naturally. Without a suit. You guys are the stuff of legends!”

  She helped me out of bed. She gestured to my thigh which was reddened where the soup had burned me.

  “Sorry about your leg.”

  “It’s ok,” I grunted.

  She helped me limp down a carpeted corridor. It felt like one of my ribs was broken, on my left side. They’d taped me up like it was.

  “Better safe than sorry. Sky pirates are scary bastards. Wouldn’t be the first time they tried to spy.”

  “Ho!” someone called.

  I looked up, winded, to see a green-haired gentleman, well-dressed in black, speaking while he strolled up. His features were large and stretched, especially his mouth. His eyes were horizontal slits. He seemed to me somehow frog-faced. He wore a black fedora slashed with a red feather. He carried a baguette under one arm.

  “Who’s the new stowaway here, first mate?”

  Val spoke up. “His name’s Daniel, Captain. He seems to not know much about, well, anything. He seems to have lost his memory. He was…the falling object.” She lowered her voice. “Also, Captain, you should know that he’s a Driften Waker. He said he was.”

  The captain looked at a golden pocketwatch, then tucked it away into his coat.

  “Hm. Driften Waker. Manoeuvres may be needed soon. There was a pretty freakish storm barrelling in. Not sure we can outrun…” He chuckled. “Well, perhaps we could but why risk it? All right, Val--I trust you’ll take care of him? If he’s clueless he’ll need…”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, and in addition to the instruction, Brufo won’t be able to feed him for now. Here’s this instead.”

  Val took the baguette. The captain tipped his hat and walked away. I resumed my assisted limping.

  “That’s Captain Lorlux. What he meant was, if we don’t get things strapped down we could be in for some fun aerobics. In your state, I don’t want that for you. Let’s get you into a bed. Come on!”

  As she harried me I bumped into a wooden end table. A picture frame dislodged and shattered.

  “Aether flasher!” Val cursed.

  We went on. “Don’t worry. It’s just an old picture of the crew from a few years back. Captain’s thing, you know. He doesn’t really have a family it seems like so he does stuff like this. He’s pretty nice. Here.”

  She set me down and kept talking as I haltingly got into another bed.

  “I think he got that one done in Melpompne last time we were there…hang on I need to get it cleaned up before we turn!”

  She ran off. I laid back, pondering my strange circumstances, watching clouds rush by out the window. I could tell we were going pretty fast. I had no idea how fast. If I was a pilot class, perhaps I would know. Was there a way to subclass or multiclass? I’d have to ask Val to explain some of the basic building blocks of their systems here.

  She whipped past down the hallway again with a broom and dustpan. I heard the dustpan plop down, then scrapes of glass. She came back and gingerly placed the dustpan into the drawer of the dresser.

  [Neatness +1] floated near her.

  “Just for now I’ll keep it there. Look at this.” She showed me the picture. It had five people on it. There was Val, Brufo, the captain Lorlux, and two others I didn’t know, a little blond-haired guy and…well, the last one was like a lizard man or a dragon man.

  “Yeah, we got this done at the coronation of Queen Balira. That was like going on four years ago now. A lot has changed now, but it’s the same bunch since then. If you want to see some of the oldies, look around at some of those photographs. You…did have photographs where you came from, right?”

  “Yeah, we had photographs, and computers too.”

  “What’s computers?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure how to explain it. We don’t have airships though, not really. We have planes, but they can only stay in the air for a day or so.”

  Valietta laughed at that uproariously. Apparently that was quite funny. “Only a day! What the aether! Only a DAY!?”

  A blond pointy-eared person poked his head in. “Hey, what’s so funny Val? Didn’t Lorlux tell you--”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, wiping away tears of laughter. “Tamiro, this is Daniel.”

  I held the baguette up lamely in greeting.

  She continued. “Daniel…comes from a far away place. A place where they have airships, but…they can only stay in the air for about a day.”

  She stopped, deadpan staring at him, then they both busted up laughing.

  They were both taken off guard when suddenly they went flying. Such was the force that it ripped the baguette from my clutches. Then everything slammed back down. Tamiro almost went out the window. But both of them were ready. They braced and rolled like ninjas to avoid breaking anything.

  The bed kept me in, amazingly. Val clung to the bottom of the dresser and Tamiro clung to the doorframe, and we rode these maneuvers like a roller coaster, their bodies thumping as they struck the walls. After a minute it stopped. The intercom crackled on with a curt “All clear” and Tamiro let out a sigh of relief.

  Tamiro was hanging from the doorframe. He was really short. Like, he might not even be two feet tall.

  Val stood up. “Aether vaper! I wasn’t ready.”

  “That could’ve been bad.” Tamiro dropped down and retrieved my bread. “I think you lost this. Do you know what year it is?”

  I wanted to tell him it was 2026, but I was pretty certain he would think I was crazy. So I just let Val tell him I had amnesia.