“Mr. Anderson took some personal time to see his daughter,” the woman says. “I’ll let Mr. Bhairava know you’re here. Please take a seat.”
Spending time with his daughter? Good for Bernie. He’s indeed making progress with resolving his issues.
Felix and I take a seat, but we don’t end up waiting long. Rattie arrives in mere minutes and smiles at me in the same way as the front desk lady.
What’s up with that?
“Hey, Rattie.” I rise to my feet and gesture at my technomancer friend. “This is Felix. He’s a brilliant developer. I brought him to help on the Lucid Dreamer project.”
Rattie shakes Felix’s hand. “Mr. Bale mentioned you.”
“That’s Valerian,” I whisper to Felix as Rattie insists Felix call him by his weird nickname and leads us through the floor.
Looking around, I begin to have an inkling about all the strange looks. The majority of the cubicles are covered by images of me, only with breast augmentations and wearing completely impractical outfits, like a bikini made out of chainmail.
Felix stares at one of the images in a way Maya would not approve. I clear my throat, and he blushes.
“Umm.” He clears his throat as well. “Are you a warrior princess in this game?”
“Of course not. I’m a dreamwalker.”
Felix cringes. Unlike me, he’s under the Mandate, a tool Cognizant use on worlds like this in order to hide their nature from humans. As a result, he wouldn’t be able to say he’s a technomancer to Rattie without deadly consequences.
Rattie doesn’t bat an eye, of course. “I hope you don’t mind that,” he says, eyeing the images with distaste. “The marketing team is behind these; they anticipate seventy-five percent of the game audience to be men. For what it’s worth, when in VR, the player takes your point of view, so they don’t really see you much. Not unless they look into a mirror.”
“It’s fine,” I say magnanimously. What I don’t add is that I’d let them depict me completely naked and rolling on gigantic breasts as a mode of locomotion if that meant I’d gain enough power to save Mom.
Looking relieved, Rattie herds us into a meeting room, where the screens are already down and his team from India looks at me with the same adoration. Sitting down, he folds his hands on the table like a boarding school student. “How about I give you an update?”
I take a seat opposite him. “That would be great.”
“The team has worked almost without sleep since we last met,” Rattie says, glancing approvingly at the faces on the screens. “Kind of ironic, given the subject matter of the game.”
I nod sympathetically at him and the screens. “I know how crappy sleep deprivation feels. Let me know if Valerian doesn’t properly compensate you guys for your hard work.”
On the screen, one of the developers goes from happy to worried. “Our compensation is generous. It really is.”
“It’s true,” Rattie says.
I immediately feel like an idiot. “Of course. I wasn’t trying to say anyone’s ungrateful or anything. Please go on with the update before I stuff more of my feet into my mouth.”
Rattie smiles. “The good news is that we got lucky breaks every step of the way, and the level is almost ready.” He pauses to give me a chance to beam happily at him. “But before we can let the testers play it, we need to solve a problem that isn’t game development, per se. There’s a security issue that—”
“Felix can help you,” I blurt.
“With security?” Felix looks at me like a puppy whose squeaky toy was taken away. “I thought I’d get to work on the game.”
“I’m sure once you prove yourself with security, the team will find some game-related tasks for you as well.” I look at Rattie pointedly.
“Definitely.” Rattie examines Felix intently. “If you’re experienced with—”
“I am.” Felix puffs up like a horny peacock. “Whatever it is, it won’t be a problem.”
Rattie looks at me dubiously.
“Felix is amazing at his job,” I say. “Consider your security issue solved.”
“In that case”—Rattie takes out a box, two pieces of paper, and two pens—“let’s get to the fun part.” He slides the papers in front of each of us. “Sorry about the NDAs. It’s a standard precaution for unreleased intellectual property.”
Waving his apology away, Felix and I sign the non-disclosure agreements while Rattie opens the box with a flourish and takes out the headset inside. “This is the Illusion Scope.”
“Wow,” Felix whispers. “So small.”
Actually, it’s bigger than any Gomorran headset, but for Earth’s primitive technology, it’s not bad.
“The room is already wired for hand tracking,” Rattie says and gives me the gizmo. “It’s only right you try it on first.”
I walk over to the open part of the room and put on the headset. The dashboard here is basic and only has one icon, a small version of me in a skimpy outfit. When I gesture at the icon, the game starts to load, and as I wait, I read the text under the heading of “Backstory:”