Instantly, without warning I’m taken up, and dropped into an alternate reality. Snap. All the rules are different.

Time is ticking. It’s The Maze. At first I don’t realize. The faster I escape this maze, the bigger the reward I’ll get. The first time the random event swept my Runsecape character into it, I did a double take. One second a friendly player I just met and I were strolling our way to Dryner Village. The next second, I was lost. I didn’t know how to communicate back to my friend to say thanks and goodbye. I definitely didn’t know how to get out, or if the computer had gone mad, and loaded some random game. I’m lost in there for fifteen minutes, long past any reward. It was so much worse than the puzzle random events. Nothing redeemed me. Tears of frustration, dread of being whisked back there at any time, and sometimes a heroic, nephew rescue. finally, I got a pad and pen to keep track of the order of the clues. And with that a systematic quick get away. It started getting easier.

Game life got better. Life got better. No more stuck for 24 hours in the maze. Learning to use the chat features to tell my friends that I had been kidnapped by a random event helped. But, sometimes I was gone when I needed to be somewhere, or left people waiting. Sometimes, they left me waiting.

After playing a few days, you’re on the same page with other players. The good feeling of being in the know, where everything is under control, makes it okay to suddenly disappear from the main game. Then, just as suddenly, to reappear in a mini-game, and stay there till you solve the puzzle or escape the maze. It get exciting, then feels normal. Though the game never gave you a choice.

Later you discover fascinating by choice mini games with rich rewards. The rewards entice you to leave the World of Runescape to play in a game in another dimension of Runescape where the object, and, all the rules are different. When you win, you get super cool stuff, envied by those not brave enough to venture into the inner-game.

When you choose to play a game within a game, and leave reality, or you are randomly swept away to an event in that other dimension of Runescape, no one calls you demented. Dimension travel is not dementia. It is not medicated, institutionalized, curable, or non curable. No one figures you lost touch with reality, or you got manic. No one doubts your sanity. It is not a pink elephant.

It seems like The World is like the world of Runescape. Except that people never get used to random events. No one is supposed to acknowledge that anyone else is choosing to play an extreme mini-game, and will be out of the main game for a while.

In this world we pretend that there is only one game, one set of rules, one God, one reality.

Only one is true.

The Truth.