“Alright Otis, so, when I leave, I’m going to need you to strip, and then head through that door.” The room the pair were standing in was small and had a bench on either side. Just above the benches, small metal hooks were hung. Layla stood in the doorway, while Otis walked about a third of the way down the narrow room, and placed his bag on a bench. Layla pointed to a small door on the opposite side of the room as she gave him instructions. “Inside the room, you’ll find a robe and some undergarments. Just put those on and wait, someone will be right there with you.”

“Okay, Thank you,” Otis said as Layla began to exit the room.

“I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, if not today, so see you then!” With that, the door closed, leaving Otis alone in the room. He quickly stripped, and shivering in the unheated room, he opened the door Layla had pointed to and walked in. The room was larger than the one he had come from and had a strange cylinder shaped pod in one corner. Next to the door Otis had walked through, there was a hook similar to the ones in the previous room. Hanging on this hook was a robe and a pair of underwear. He pulled these on and began to pace back and forth across the room.

A few minutes later, a man entered the room. He was taller than Otis and very muscular. Unlike the other men he had seen, he simply wore a light blue T-shirt, which sported the Delta Productions logo, and grey sweatpants.

“Hello there, you must be Otis. My name is Ebrima, but you can call me E. I’m going to be your personal assistant during the time leading up to your integration into the game. This means I’ll be letting you know where you need to be, what to bring, and that sort of stuff.” Ebrima, or E, talked with a thick accent, but Otis could still make out how unsurely he said the term ‘integrated.’ “This room is one of our cleansing rooms. That pod in the corner is basically an all in one cleaner and cryo-therapy pod.”

“And I’m assuming you would like me to get in it?” Otis said cautiously. Otis had hated the cold since he was young. His hatred for it didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason, but it was there, omnipresent and in some cases debilitating.

“Yes, I do. I don’t mean to sound pushy, but it may be a good idea to co-operate here. I wouldn’t put it past some of the others to force you into a pod considering the contract you signed.”

“Yeah…” Otis said with a tinge of regret. Only now, as the sheer terror set upon him upon his receiving of the voicemail yesterday, had begun to wear off, did Otis begin to truly understand the severity of what he had got himself into, and how little of it he truly understood.

“Okay, great!” Said E, motioning for Otis to join him by the pod in the corner. “This button here will start the process, just press it and get in. The entire cleansing will last about seven minutes, and then it’s done.” E pointed to a large green button with the word ‘BEGIN’ on it, before turning and strolling to another door on the opposite side of the room. “I’ll be back in around ten minutes to check on you, have fun!” The last phrase of this sentence was said so cheerfully it almost seemed sarcastic. Shrugging off the thought, Otis stripped again and placed the clothes he had just taken off on the hook he had retrieved them from. He walked over to the pod, pressed the button, and got in.

Otis stood naked and shivering in the pod for about twenty seconds before he decided to investigate. He was just about to open the small door on the side of the pod in order to press the button again when the process began. Immediately, Otis was slammed with what felt like a ton of scalding hot water from all sides. It rushed into his nose and mouth, making him cough and cover his face. After recovering from the initial shock of the water, Otis became more comfortable, save the pain of what felt like thousands of tiny jets of water slamming into every inch of his exposed skin. Otis was just getting used to the experience when the flow of hot water ceased, and was replaced by ice cold water, once again sending him reeling with the shock of having hundreds of litres of liquid being catapulted into him, this time freezing cold, causing Otis to crown down, sitting on the floor and covering his face with his knees.

For the next few minutes, Otis was subjected to an endless cycle of scalding hot, followed by freezing cold water being launched at high speeds into his skin. Otis only arose from his position on the floor when he felt the blasting intensity of the water replaced by a shower of what felt to be a liquid, but not water. Otis was about to open his eyes when he realized what it was. Soap. Just as this realization dawned on him, the water returned, forcing him back into his sitting fetal position. Eventually, the water stopped and was replaced by hot air, drying Otis’s skin. Otis stood up and rotated slowly, letting the warm air dry his now tender skin. When the hot air stopped, a robotic voice read a message to Otis.

“PLEASE EXIT THE POD, AND RETURN WEARING A STANDARD ISSUE CRYO-THERAPY UNIFORM.” Scurrying from the pod, Otis ran to the other side of the room. When he got there, he found that the clothes he had put on the hook were gone, and identical clothes were now folded and placed on the small bench under the hook. Whether these clothes were the same ones Otis had worn previously or not, Otis was not sure. He quickly pulled on the new clothes and hurried back to the pod. Next to the large green button he had pressed to start the process he found a smaller, blue button labeled as ‘CRYO’ next to it. He pressed this button and stepped back into the pod, which was now dry.

After waiting for a few moments, nitrous oxide began to seep out of vents on all sides of the pod. Otis became worried as the gas approached his face, filling the pod, but was relieved when the vents shut off as the nitrous oxide reached his shoulders. Otis sighed and began to inhale. That’s when the cold hit him.

The cold felt like a thousand knives being slowly pressed into each of his pores. Otis screamed silently, not wanting to make any more noise than needed. Otis stumbled backward as a reflex, causing some of the gas to lap at his face. The cold reached his face then too, and his eyes squeezed shut with the power of a hydraulic press. Otis eventually forced his eyes to open, just as the robot voice spoke again.

“NOW DRAINING ALL NITROUS OXIDE. FULL CYCLE COMPLETE. PLEASE EXIT THE POD ONCE DRAINING IS COMPLETE.” Sighing in relief as Otis heard the distinct sucking noise of a vacuum and the gas began to recede, leaving Otis standing exposed in the pod, still shaking from the experience.

Only a few seconds after Otis stepped out of the pod, he heard the door open. Otis turned around and winced as the fabric of the robe rubbed against his raw skin. When he completed his rotation, he saw E standing in the doorway, holding back laughter.

“Did you have fun?” E said, before letting a chuckle slide between his lips.

“Yeah, it was very refreshing.” Otis was determined not to let E have any small victory over him.

“Oh, was it now? Would you like to go again?” E said sarcastically as he placed his hands on his hips, his mouth pursed, but his eyes still smiling.

“Yeah, sure, let’s do it.” Said Otis, walking towards the pod, determined to best E.

“Fine, you win.” Earl conceded, before laughing heartily. “You are a stubborn one, aren't you. Anyway, grab your stuff and come back in here.”

Otis did as instructed, and when he returned thirty seconds later, carrying his bag, E was holding an identical uniform to the one he was wearing.

“Okay, put this on. It should fit, but if it doesn’t, well, deal with it.” Earl said as he practically pelted the pile of clothes at Otis, causing him to drop his bag and struggle to catch the clothes. A few seconds later, when Otis had regained his composure, he motioned for E to look away.

“Okay, but be quick about it, the wall isn’t very interesting to look at,” E said, looking away. Otis quickly dropped the robe into a pool around his legs and donned the clothes he had been handed. The clothes were the same as E was wearing, consisting of a light blue shirt with the Delta Productions logo on the top left, and a pair of grey sweatpants. The clothes fit snugly, but not too tight. The sweatpants were loose, but not large. Otis winced again as the clothes shifted into position against his skin, which still felt scarred from his ordeal in the shower, if you could call that torture machine a shower.

“Okay, I’m good to go I think, what now?” Said Otis curiously, feeling slightly more confident around E than he was around the drivers and Layla.

“I’m going to be taking you to where you’ll be sleeping for the duration of the tests. Plus, because we have no schedule for today, I can show you around the place before we go to your room. Just follow me.” E opened the door and held it open for Otis to exit as well. They stepped out onto a walkway that ran along the inside of the factory, suspended in the air by metal cables. When Otis looked down, he was stunned.

“How high up are we?” Otis asked as he looked over the edge again. Below them, the room seemed to extend downwards for miles. Walkways like the one they were standing on now lined the perimeter of the room in fifteen-foot intervals. Many people, mostly Africans, walked along these walkways, some in uniforms similar to Otis’s and E’s, some in lab coats, and some in what appeared to be body armor. “And are those people security guards?” Otis added to his question.

“Yes, they are, how did you guess,” E answered dryly, ignoring, or forgetting Otis’s first question. Far below the pair, on the bottom level of the building, Otis could make out what appeared to be a plethora of factory machines, with crowds of people working along them.

“Okay, so this is the hub, you wont be here much, but it’s the centre of the factory. Down there on the bottom level is where we produce VR headsets for selling in Africa, as well as where we develop all of our newer cutting edge stuff. Now let’s get going, up here is an entrance to what we call the catacombs.” E began walking towards a door in one corner of the room, stopping to let a man in a mail delivery service uniform pushing a metal cart pass.

When the pair reached the door, E produced a card from his pocket and presented it to a small black box situated to the left of the door. The box made a beeping sound and there was an audible ‘click’ from inside the door. E pushed it open and revealed a long hallway, which stretched for a considerable distance before trailing off into a flight of stairs. The floor seemed to be made of a vinyl tile, which was polished to the point where Otis could make out his reflection. The smell of detergent permeated the air, causing Otis to wrinkle his nose.

“These are the catacombs. Don’t try to learn how to navigate them, you won't be here long enough, and plus, I’ll be there to help you. Otis guessed this area got its name from the way the hallways seemed to go forever, ending in a staircase that surely led to yet another hallway.

For the next five minutes, E led Otis down the hall, explaining to him the purpose of each room they walked by. From lounges to conference rooms, to rooms dedicated to the designing of new factories, and even a gym, the catacombs, as E called them, had everything. Finally, they reached the stairs at the end of the hallway. Just as Otis had predicted, once the pair had travelled down two flights of stairs, the endless length of hallway continued, below the strip of the hallway they had just traversed.

Eventually, E stopped, and walked to a door labelled ‘The Instigator.’

“Here we are, this is your room,” E said, turning and smiling at Otis, who was studying the words printed on a metal label, mounted to the door just below a small window that allowed a clear, albeit limited view of the room. From through the window, Otis could make out a plain looking bed, a small desk, and a row of three portraits of tw0 men and a woman, all looking stern, and all white.

“Yeah, I see you looking at the portraits. Those are all the CEOs of Delta Productions. Down there, on the left, is Henry Deron.” The door was now open, and Otis began to walk cautiously into the room, still looking at the portraits “Henry Deron founded Delta Productions in 2001. When he died in 2016, his wife took over. Jessica Deron died only two weeks before Delta Productions became the highest valued company on earth. When she kicked the bucket in 2030, her son, Nathan Deron. He’s very mysterious, and as far as I know, only the board members have ever seen him in person.”

“Well, that’s not creepy at all,” Otis said lightly, shrugging off the seeds of discomfort forming in the back of his thoughts. Otis half jogged over to the desk in the corner, trying to escape the eyes of the men and woman on the wall above him. On the desk, there was a Lanyard with a Delta Productions strap and a card at the end that read ‘INSTIGATOR. LIMITED ACCESS.’

“Okay, so there is a restroom through there.” E pointed to a door at the end of Otis’s new bed that he had not realised was there. “I’ll give you a little while to settle in, but you can call me back by telling the room to.”

“Is the room listening to me?” Otis asked, looking around suspiciously. “I feel like I deserve more privacy than that.”

“Well, technically, you have no human rights.” E reminded Otis.

“That’s right, I almost forgot,” Otis said dryly but quietly, contemplating once again the depth of his circumstances.

“Alright, well, I’ll leave you be.” Said E gently, clearly noticing Otis’s change in demeanor. “The wifi password is YRNEH2001.” With that, E left the room, leaving Otis alone in his room, his mind, and the world.