Jeremy got out of the cab and walked into the office complex. He’d double checked the address he’d been provided and the office it directed him to was in a nice part of town. Not the rich upper crust area where only the one percenters did their work, but maybe just shy of that ballpark.

Pushing open the double doors he saw a reception desk that instead of having a person sitting at the other end, instead just had a computer monitor with the image of a cartoon woman’s head. Red hair and green eyes, she invoked nostalgia for sci-fi anime of the eighties. The animated woman looked at Jeremy and smiled. “Welcome to Rex Mundi Operations. Please have a seat, someone will be with you shortly.”

He slowly nodded. Glancing around the room he saw a line of chairs against one of the walls. Two other people were sitting and waiting. He moved to an empty seat and looked at the two.

The first was a woman, he estimated she was in her early twenties, shoulder length wavy brown hair with brown eyes behind designer glasses. She was very conservatively dressed with a turtleneck sweater and long skirt. A demin backpack sat at her feet. She appeared to be engrossed in a paperback copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

The other occupant of the waiting room was a slightly over-weight fellow with a fidgety leg. Bright red hair that matched the freckles on his cheeks. He wore jeans and t-shirt under a very old and worn out high school letterman jacket, listing a graduation year almost twenty years ago. Jeremy assumed it was their parent’s jacket, a hand-me-down. Looking over at Jeremy he said, “and then there were three.”

Jeremy nodded, “Three what though? You guys responding to the same e-mail I got? Has the creepy cartoon lady said anything more?”

The redhead smiled, “Maxette Headron? Nope. Told each of us just to sit. I asked her a ton of questions when I got here, but then it just felt like I was talking to a wall.”

“You were.” The woman said, not even glancing up from her book.

Jeremy extended his hand, “Looks like we might be in this together. Jeremy.”

“Chuck.” The redhead answered back, taking Jeremy’s offered hand. Jeremy then offered his hand to the woman. It hung there for a few awkward moments, eventually she looked up from her book after turning a page. “Well, we don’t know that we’ll be together. Just that we’re all here now. Cecilia, but everyone calls me Ceci.” She said without shaking hands, she just looked back down to her book.

Jeremy took his hand back, and looked over at Chuck, giving up on Ceci being a part of their conversation. “So, you got an e-mail?” Chuck nodded. “it said something about a possible job offer or whatever?”

“Maybe, it was kinda vague, but I guess I showed up. Not sure what it says about me.”

A new voice came from across the room, “It says that we were right about you.” The three turned to see an impeccably dressed man in his late 30’s to early 40’s standing in the doorway of a previously closed door. Maybe five foot ten with blonde hair and a neatly trimmed full beard, clear blue eyes, with a black suit with red tie.

“Allow me to introduce myself and welcome you to RMO. I am Ryan King. Here, we are working on developing the next generation of technology and are looking for people to help us test it.” He walked across the room and shook each of their hands, even Ceci’s, as the stood.

“Ms Hayes” he motioned to the receptionist ‘girl’, “told me that you’d arrived.” Mr King paused, with a slight frown on his face, “I’d actually expected one or two more, but . . . I guess they’ll just have to play catch up when they show.”

“Regardless, let me show you a little bit of what we do. Then if I’ve piqued your interest, we can talk about what we would like from you.”

Ceci reached down and grabbed her backpack, sliding her paperback into one of the pockets. The four walked across the room and through the door that Mr. King Had come through. It led to a large room with desk cubicles spread throughout. Despite having probably close to sixty or so cubicles, the room was empty.

“We’re much more active on the weekdays, this is really just where the digital paper pushers sit and crunch the numbers and such. Despite being a company trying to be at the forefront of innovation, we still have to have people to move through the red tape.”

“And what exactly is it you do here?” Jeremy asked as they walked through the desks. Jeremy noted that each desk had various amounts of personal items and decoration. The office space definitely looked well worked in.

“Ah well, that . . . Here at Rex Mundi Operations, we work on developing, patenting, and selling the latest VR and AR technology.” He lead them into another room that looked like a photographers studio, complete with a green screen backdrop and detailed camera set up.

“This is where we do some of the basic motion capture work for the animation we do. But what I really want to show you is in the next room.” Mr King stopped before another set of doors and turned to face them.

“Now I know from the background profile that we used to develop the mailing list we sent out our invites to that you all have at least some exposure to and use of virtual reality. What would you say is the biggest drawback to current VR technology?”

“It’s inability to completely suppress our natural sensory input while trying to generate a new set of input for us to interact with.” Ceci replied with slight clinical detachment.

“Oh, you are a smart one Cecilia.” Mr King answered back with a wink, “But, we knew that. Jeremy, Charles? Thoughts boys?”

“Bandwith.” Chuck said with a grin, “The way I look at it, all the sci-fi and fantasy stories you read or watch depict people using Alternative Reality with systems that are just processing way too much information to be able to be handled feasibly from our current set of technology. But, that’s just a matter of time, wait long enough and we’ll be able to increase that capacity.”

Jeremy nodded along with Chuck’s answer. It what he’d have said.

“You’ve got the gist of it. We are constantly working on trying to improve both of those issues. Now, this is where you’ll come in. With the latest batch of developments, we’re ready for human testing. There’s many ways we could’ve gone about finding volunteers, but in an effort to not get deluged with options, some of whom would only just report back to our competitors . . . the method we choose lead us to you.” He extended his hands, the promptly turned and opened the doors behind him, letting them enter the new room and look at what it held.

The room looked like a hospital room. A large, over-sized hospital room. There were four set ups for patients, set up in a row. Instead of beds, there were four large tanks, filled with water, or some type of liquid, it had a blueish green tint to it. There were monitors and cords attached to each of the set ups.

Mr King lead them to the closest of the tanks. “This a SD tank. Sensory Deprivation tank. Putting on one of our newest VR gear in combination with one of these tanks provides the highest possible synchronization rate with whatever virtual environment you want to experience.”

Chuck looked back and for the between Mr King and the tank, “You want me to get in there?” he asked incredulously, “Man . . . I hope you pay well. That doesn’t look very big, and in case you haven’t noticed,” Chuck grabbed his belly from either side. “I take up a bit of space.”

Mr King grinned politely, “Yes, well we figured we’d at least gauge your interest before discussing compensation. We’ve found that anyone that does this type of work strictly for the money doesn’t really have their whole soul in the game. They’re just looking out for number one. We chose you all because we felt you all would be interested in helping advance society first, and then get paid for it.”

Ceci spoke up, “In certainly intrigued. Of course, I do have other obligations and a job so scheduling might be an issue.”

“Oh, we can figure out logistics and schedules later. I’m just happy to hear you’re on board.” Mr King replied.

“Maybe.” Ceci corrected.

“On board, tentatively.” Mr King said with a smile, then he turned to Jeremy, who had walked over to one of the tanks and was about to dip his hand into the greenish-blue contents in the tank. There were sparkly granules of something or other in it, “how about you, Jeremy?”

“You know this stuff looks like shampoo? Not the cheap stuff either.” Jeremy said somewhat skeptically.

Mr King burst out in a hearty chuckle, “Well, that’s not a no. Sounds like all three of you are on board? Or at least enough to start looking at paperwork and contracts?”