"Alright," Crisis said, settling into what I was already starting to recognize as her explaining voice. "I won't lie to you. The more you take on at once, the harder it gets to manage, so my suggestion is you start simple. Get a feel for things first."
She highlighted the first of three tabs sitting at the top of the interface.
"Tab one is the World Selector. Click the globe icon and you can search any fictional universe that exists in your world. Books, shows, games, whatever. If there are multiple versions of something, like a book series that got adapted into a show, it'll let you choose which version you want to work with."
I nodded, already thinking of about fifteen different things I could do with that.
"Tab two is Character Creation. You can make as many characters as you want, but here's where it gets important." She put a little emphasis on that last part. "There are two ways to run a character. The first is autonomous. You build them out, give them a personality, whatever abilities fit the world, whatever backstory you want, and then you let them go. They'll be born into the story like any other person in that universe and they'll just live. Make their own choices, deal with their own consequences. You're the author but they don't know that."
"And the second way?"
"Self-control. You go in yourself. You actually live in the world as the character."
I looked at her. "Like actually?"
"Like actually. Full immersion. The time ratio is 36,500 to 7."
I did the math in my head and it didn't feel right so I did it again.
That's almost a hundred years.
"Yeah," Crisis said. "It would feel like a full lifetime in there. When you came back, the whole thing would compress. It would be like you read a really long book. The memories would be there but the weight of the time wouldn't hit you the same way."
I leaned back in my chair. That was a lot to sit with. "Okay. But I still have a job. Bills. I can't just disappear."
"Already handled," she said. "Connect your phone to the PC. The app will download to it automatically and everything transfers over. You'll have full access from anywhere, and I'll be there with you no matter what device you're on."
She said that last part like it was nothing but I could hear the smallest bit of excitement in it.
I picked up my phone, plugged it in, and watched the app appear on the screen. It took maybe four seconds.
"Okay," I said. "That's actually kind of cool."
"I thought so."
She moved on before I could say anything else.
"Now, when you're building a character, you control everything from the jump. Personality, physical appearance, powers if the world has them, whatever background you want them to come from. If you leave the family setting on default, they'll be born into a randomly assigned household somewhere in the story's timeline. You can override that if you need them somewhere specific."
"And once they're in the story, I can watch?"
"That's the pop-up. A viewer will open for any character you've placed. It'll pull up like a show. You're watching their life in real time, or you can scrub through if you need to check on something. Every person in that universe who's part of the story's audience, they're watching too, just from their end. They think it's entertainment. They don't know it's real."
I sat with that one for a second. A whole universe of people watching something they think is fiction, and every bit of it is actually happening to a person I made.
That's a strange amount of power to hand somebody.
"The OmniCrafter handles the structure," Crisis continued. "Beginnings, story beats, endings. It'll build the scaffolding around whatever you create so the narrative holds together. You don't have to plot everything out from scratch. You'll get a feel for how much to guide it and how much to let it run on its own."
"And the third tab?"
"Reviews." She pulled it up. It was the smallest section by far, just a clean little panel in the corner. "People in the receiving universe leave reactions. Ratings, comments, whatever that world's version of feedback looks like. You should read them. They'll tell you what's landing and what isn't." She paused. "But don't let them write the story for you. The second you start creating for the reviews instead of the story, the quality drops. Every time."
"Noted."
She folded her hands on the interface in this little gesture that felt almost human. "I'd suggest you just start. Pick something you already know well, something you actually care about, and build from there. I'll walk you through anything you hit as you go."
I looked at the World Selector tab. The globe icon was just sitting there, patient, like it had been waiting on me specifically.
I reached over and clicked it.