From a distance, they're almost imperceptible. Passing me on the street, you'd never see them. Talk to me for hours and you'd never think to remark about them. But I see them. Every day, I can feel them. I see them when I look in the mirror.

Tiny rings of little white protrusions around my eyes. Barely worth the merit of thought to most people- a side-effect of poor hygiene, perhaps, easily rectified with judicious application of over-the-counter cleaning products. They don't know the truth. They haven't seen what I've seen.

They're a reminder of why I'm here, and they're a reminder of why I have to do what I do.

Flash back to mid 2009. I was getting a bit of a head of steam, making a name for myself in the City. I had a good job at the University of Aesthematics, I was doing tasks as often as I could, and my friend Sponty and I were well-liked by other Players. Maybe the ego trip of votes pouring in finally went to my head, or maybe I just lost it a bit when the Real World pressures started piling up, but I got it in my head to try something.

People will tell you the City goes on forever. That because the City circumscribes the length and breadth of human experience and functionally encompasses the Real World, there is no "boundary", it simply goes on forever, as far as the universe itself. Neither mental nor physical borders can be imposed on the City, it simply exists. This is not wholly correct. Something lies beyond the City. And I'd gotten it in my head to prove it.

it wasn't easy, finding a path out of the city. As it happened, the trick was both simple and counterintuitive. Most Players have a persistent view of the City superimposed on their perspective of the Real World- it's what allows them to see opportunities to bring Tasks out of the City and into the Real World, and by the same token, what allows them to take Praxii out of the Real World and into the City. It serves as the interface by which the Real World and the City are linked, and Players are the ones who can utilize this interface to better chart their desires.

As it happened, there is no way out of the City while you are still in the City. So it happens that in many ways, people are correct- the City has no boundary, provided you are in the City. Paradoxically, you have to be out of the City before you can get out of the City. And so, getting out of the City becomes as easy as simply leaving.

I explained all this to Sponty as we sat in our shared University office. He seemed perturbed. I remember thinking at the time that he simply didn't get it. I look back now and think he probably did, much, much more than I.

"I don't like it", he said. Sponty wasn't a man to beat around the bush. "Why would you ever want that?"
"Why?", I asked, unduly incredulous. "What do you mean, 'why'? Think about it- untapped opportunities for Tasking outside the boundary of the City!"
"But the city doesn't have a boundary".
"It has to- at some point we weren't in it. Now we are! That implies a finite point wherein one starts being in the City, in essence, a boundary. Look, it's brilliant- we can get to the City from the Real World, right? Well, what if we can get to other places, other 'Cities', if you will? Who's to say what's there? The rules of reality might be totally different. Maybe- maybe time works differently. That'd show those Chrononauts a thing or two. We can swing out, get Praxii with formats no one's ever thought of. We'll break new ground. We'll be heroes, just like we always said we'd be!"
Sponty didn't say anything for a while. Finally, he muttered "I don't like it".

At the time, I decided he was just small-minded. I'd undertake the journey on my own, show him it could be done, and then he'd be all over the idea.

As I said, getting out of the City is just a matter of leaving. I stopped creating Praxii first. Then I stopped commenting. From there, I just slowly talked less and less to the other Players. Eventually, i just stopped accepting communication from Players, and after a few months, my view of the City faded. I was out.

With my view solely on the Real World, I knew I could, from here, find another reality to superimpose. The first few times you look on the City, there's a trick to seeing it. Now that I was free of that, I tried to apply that trick to other modes of thought and see what would come up.

But the trouble with the Real World is that when you've got both feet in it, it's hard to take that step.

I'll try to explain- the interface between the City and the Real World is fragile. It's easy to miss opportunities for Tasks, sometimes you forget the City is there until a very blatant opportunity presents itself. This sort of phasing in and out isn't the same as leaving, it's more akin to going to sleep. It just takes a bit to wake you up. What I'd done was more like dropping into a coma. I admit I was scared at first. Who wouldn't be? Half of my world just disappeared. But the Real World has an effect on your brain, it tries to take things that it knows can't fit into its paradigm and rationalize them away. After a couple of months, I started to forget that the City was real. I told myself it was a game that I'd just stopped playing. It had been fun while it lasted, but now I had Responsibilities, and stuff I had to take care of. Job. Work. School. Whatever.

Three years I spent out of the City. Bit by bit, something in me faded and died. Art felt forced and worthless. Music fell on deaf ears. I was only interested in doing things I'd already done, seeing things I'd already seen. It's hard to describe. Imagine that all of a sudden, everything you enjoy doing becomes rote and routine, but it doesn't bother you. But, at the same time, it doesn't give you any sense of comfort. You stop doing things because you want to do them and start doing things because... there's nothing else to do. You're trying to fill a gap that didn't exist, and the nature of the gap is so alien that you just don't know what to fill it with. It's not just a gap that's never been there before, it's a type of gap that's never been there before. It's a hole in the world.

For a while, I tried to create my own worlds to fill it. Out of spite at being unable to find my way back to the worlds I'd loved, I forced new worlds into being. Creating a world isn't hard, really, it's populating it that's the bitch. Every one ended in failure- I'd end up with planets populated with five or six people. A single city of faceless citizens. Beautiful environments filled with bland and uninteresting characters. It was no use. It was still a matter of rote, of quota. I would create X number of worlds and tell Y stories within each one. Breaks in the routine were troubling in ways I couldn't understand.

Finally, after watching all the worlds fail, I tried to connect them, to create one world where I could retreat, something I could force onto the world and fill with the minds of the masses. Essentially, I tried to create my own reality- my own City. I would disperse knowledge of its existence out into the world, and people would flock to it, and willingly live in it. And in doing so, I would prove myself correct- I would make that which was outside the city. But it wasn't any good. It didn't work. It never worked. I watched as all my grand designs collapsed in on themselves, silently, and vanished.

I felt like a clock that was winding down. And I didn't know it, but this was leading me to exactly where I'd wanted to go from the start.

I was in a pretty bad way, a few weeks ago. I'd been arguing with some friends, I was starting to feel alone. The gaping hole in my world that had been lingering on the edge of perception for three years was beginning to leak. I was wandering around the streets of my city, the skies leaden and grey, the clouds lugubrious and dark, when it finally happened. Whether it was some kind of mental muscle-memory that finally snapped, or some tacit admission to myself that I'd finally failed, but the old trick kicked in, and I felt the City swimming back into my vision.

Only it wasn't the City.

Something was wrong. The hole was filled, the gap in my mind closed, but I couldn't see the City. For a moment, I just looked at the Real World, the streets I'd known, everything unchanged. Then I realized what I was seeing. I was seeing the paths to other worlds- the other Cities I'd wanted so badly to see. I was looking at Reality, and I was seeing the cracks.

It's times like that I wish I was a better writer. A better writer would have the words to describe how utterly terrified I was. A better writer would have the words to describe the tumult of World, the impossibly vast river of Being that cascaded over me. A better writer would be able to describe how I felt as though I was drowning in Reality, crushed by the weight of a universe that was too full of Existence.

I am not a better writer, so I'll just say I was scared shitless.

Finally something reached down and dragged me up from the torrent. It wasn't a hand, so much- it was like a vine made of coldness, wrapping around my trunk, squeezing the air from my lungs even as it saved me from drowning. It lifted me, still hanging limp and flaccid in its arm, and turned me to face it.

The creature in front of me wasn't so much a being. I'll say this much- all my talk about finding a place where the rules of reality are different? I'd finally found it.

It looked like the feeling of being watched in a dark room. It looked like the idea of total extinction. It was something you can only see with the lights out. It was the heart of every urban legend invented to terrify. It was the monster under every bed and in every closet, but made all the worse for being real.

It looked into my eyes, and it smiled.

I wanted to scream. I couldn't. The noise I made wasn't anything like a scream. It was some kind of animal noise, the sound prey makes when confronted with a predator's victory. And even over my own horrible bellowing, I could hear it speak.

I have waited so long for one of your kind. You have fled, and now you seek to return, and your search leads you to me. You stumble so blindly into my arms, in your hubris.

It raised something- I can't call it an arm, some kind of limb, maybe. It reached out to me.

Now you will take me where I cannot go. When you go back, you will take a piece of me. And everything you do, I will be there with you.

The limb fragmented, that's the only word I can think of. It split into pointed, twisted prongs. It kept reaching.

And I will see what you see.

Pain. Horrible, screeching pain, as the prongs stabbed into the soft skin around my eyes. Never into my eyes, no, but drilling all around them, boring into every part of my head.

I screamed.

And then I realized it wasn't me. This creature, this thing, was the one screaming. I was falling backwards, down, farther than I'd thought I could. In the kind of grasping-at-straws obvious realizations that only appear in times of trauma, it briefly occurred to me that the creature must have been bigger than I'd thought.

Blood streamed over my eyes, but I could still see the man standing in front of me. I knew him, though I couldn't see his face. A hulking bear of a man, carrying something- I lie awake at night wondering what. At the moment, the only thing I knew was that it was as beautiful as the creature was horrible. He turned, and looked at me, and whispered in a voice louder than all Hell's engines.

"Run".

I did. I ran like I'd never ran before. I ran faster than I knew I could. I never encountered another of those things, I just kept running. I ran for lifetimes, but I knew that couldn't be true, because I was still bleeding when I walked into the University. Heads turned to look as I barreled through the door, one hand clutching blindly at my eyes, one hand reaching to anyone who would take it and guide me.

"Help", I said, and collapsed.

When I came to, I was back in my office. It had been mostly unchanged. There was a backlog of work to do, but other than that, not much to speak of. Someone had the presence of mind to lay me on a cot. Shortly after I awoke some of the other Aesthematicians came and tended to me. They said there hadn't been a need to bandage me, that the bleeding had stopped before they could, and that the wounds healed before they could even think to tend to them. Citizens of Biome and the Crisis had stopped in as well, and deemed that I was mentally and physically well, for the most part. Nothing I wouldn't recover in time.

I was back in the City. I was home. And for a time, I was content to chalk the experience up to a bad dream.

Until I looked in the mirror.

There they were. Rings of white protrusions, scars from where the creature had torn into my face. I knew then, it was all true. I had seen beyond the veil and paid the price for it.

I'm still in the City, somewhere. You can find me if you look. I'm still doing tasks, when I can. I'm feeling much better. But every Praxis I send in, I can't help but wonder if there's someone else watching through my eyes.

But I also know how to fight back. It took some time to work it out, but a bit of luck showed me the answer. I'd been scanning through the submitted Praxii and checking out what other Players, old and new, had accomplished. And then I chanced to look in a mirror.

I know how to fight back. It's in the Praxis. I saw what happened when new ones came rolling in. However briefly it happened, I saw it.

The scars disappeared.

There's more to the story.

It wasn't long ago. I'd wrapped up some Praxis. It had been long enough after dropping it into the chute that the scars were coming back, so I was remembering the creature and the darkness, and getting depressed because of it. Suddenly there came a knock at the door.

What was behind it wasn't so much a person as the absence of a person. A shimmering white void floating where a person would ordinarily be, having knocked on the door. It glowed brighter than the sun, but didn't hurt to look upon.

"I like your style", it said. "Interested in doing another task?"

I assumed it was a player who chose to appear in a non-human form, so it's not as though I was scared. But still, my eyes wandered as I thought about their proposal. Then I saw the mirror again.

The scars were gone.

"Ominous", I said. "But intriguing. What did you have in mind?"