My half day has been delightful so far: Tabulating my winnings for the week, including my sponsor’s tournament placement bonuses. Got a new sponsor request for my Auto-chess game as there were only like three women in a field of 128 competitors, and I find that my employment contract is up for negotiation this very day. What a coincidence. I’d dig into some Orion shenanigans if I wasn’t already scheduled for contract negotiations mere minutes from now.

  Taking a page out of the VP of Marketing’s book, I’m wearing a tasteful sleeveless shirt and an avant-garde coat and slacks pinstripe that makes me feel powerful and fashionable. I pair it with grape converse low-tops that I match my make-up to, and a pocket square for my jacket because I am classy A-F. I order a coffee and pay the on-site delivery fee to get it to appear on my table before I leave and head to a meeting that will dictate my future.

  Maddi smiles at me when I open the door to the conference room, but I notice that only she and Arthur are present.

  “Miss Salcedo. Glad to see you have some corporate clothes as well as culture clothes.”

  “No comment on the cut or color Mr. Warner?” despite how powerful this man is in the company, I can’t help but let him know that I would protest if his comments on my appearance went further.

  “Ah, yes. I do remember seeing a recent harassment submission to my office. I’m sorry that the interim steps of our process were not able to catch and handle this issue before it was escalated. Be assured, however, that if anyone shows up for a meeting on the 48th floor in shorts and a jersey, I will ask questions. Even of Ophelia and the CEO’s husband.

  “As addressing that fully would take yet another meeting, I propose we get into your unique contract for the beta testing phase of our Heuristic Fantasy Realm.”

  “Yes sir, I would prefer that.” He gestures for me to sit, his arm, pointing to a close chair. There are only three people at this meeting, so I shrug and sit at the chair closest to him and Maddi sits next to me.

  “As with most official communications in the ATC, a text record of this conversation will be preserved until the terms of our dealings have concluded. When dealing with your situation, I have been briefed by legal that many of these records will be maintained for your lifespan plus five years. The participants of this meeting are Arthur Warner, Chief Operating Officer of Orion International’s London Branch, Advanced Personality Intelligence Alaris acting as Selena Salcedo’s Advocate due to her new Permanent Resident status in the ATC.”

  “Advocate? Is this a deposition or something?” Hearing that I need legal council for a job offer has my flight response ready to jump into an elevator like I’m in a John Woo movie. Maddi’s hand on my leg pulls me out of an accelerating panic spiral.

  “We are treading new ground for Orion with your change of status, and with your recent harassment filing, I will be present for many of your meetings with Orion in the future.”

  “On that topic first, you are being temporarily reassigned to a full immersion testing detail. While Alaris and I are confident that you will take the position, your re-assignment begins today regardless. Ophelia has expressed that your other commitments can be lumped together for promotion and advertising purposes, and our e-sports VP tells me there are at least four months until you will need to have a more daily presence in the ATC. Any questions so far?”

  “So, just to make sure I’m hearing this right, Corporate and Medical have tests they want to do surrounding me, and since I am a Permanent Resident most of the health and legal hoops have already been handled for long-term immersion?”

  “That’s correct. The harassment concerns were included as a legal convenience, as you will be separated from your alleged harasser until the investigation completes due to a job opportunity we were going to offer you anyway. Not to say we are taking the allegations lightly, it’s just less of a nightmare for the departments that would have had to take temporary employees.”

  While I understand, I don’t like having my situation described as ‘convenient’.

  “Moving on, I have sent you some promotional material, and some UI interaction footage for you to look at so that you have some idea of what you’re getting into. Please spend a few minutes reviewing it.” Arthur seems much more professional this meeting. I wonder if it is him being more understanding, or if what I’m doing is less insulting? I shrug, not like it matters really: a positive change is a positive change.

  Then promotional material markets the ‘game’ as a sensory immersive, MMO RPG. The material has describes the two versions of the game where the Fantasy-Scapes version is the infinite respawn, instanced content that Everquest and World of Warcraft pioneered for MMOs, with worldwide progression-based changes that happen to cities and environments based on expansions and story progression.

  The Real-scapes version is the whole-world, alternate life version--that Alaris tells me is a fully functioning digital world—with limited resurrection options and where a single person’s actions can affect a continent. Honestly, hardcore mode sounds pretty legit, even if I didn’t know that everything has consequences and the digital people are essentially real.

  The interaction footage shows first and third person views of menus, some semi-transparent, some oddly physical and the longer I watch the third person perspective I wonder how horrifying it would be to play like that with disjointed vision of yourself—it would be like living via a drone.

  “So you’re going to pay me to live there?”

  “Oh? Finished already? Excellent. Yes and no, we’re interested in paying you to work there, and to juggle your ATC commitments with them.”

  I nod and dismiss his technicalities. I would have paid for this opportunity, so I’m not going to look at the gift horse’s teeth. “I am interested. However, I have some questions.” He nods for me to continue. “I take it that part of the testing is to see whether my dissonance recovers more in Alaris’ world than here?”

  “A large portion, yes. I asked several professionals to explain why that would be, and they said that people with dysmorphia and dysphoria are more accepting of a fantasy element in believing they are being accepted because in large part, pop-culture humanity does not. If this has measurable changes in your resting dissonance, then your friends will be invited into another test group to see if it will help them as well.”

  “That seems like a decent place to start, at least. My main concern for this—while decreased dissonance will be amazing—is the limited opportunities for resurrection. What happens if it becomes my new world and I get murdered by another player?” Can you imagine the legal quagmire that would be?

  “That is why I’m here, Selena.” Maddi squeezes my leg again. “Some would have given you a finite amount of ‘life’ tokens, and when you run out, you would be removed from that world to only live here. I then suggested that if my permanent residents were able to die for good due to other player actions, they should be convicted for murder. They scoffed at the idea, then I asked them how the gameplay experience would be effective if the Empire’s Inquisitors were persistent legal investigators.

  “We came to an agreement that until a more well-reasoned option became available, that you would take a significant experience loss should you die and one of the accepted resurrection options were not available. Which is in line with the level reset you will likely affect you during the official launch of the game. I’m still fighting with them about that one.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “We agreed to table that discussion until the open beta in six months.” He turns to me, “all timeframes are expressed in real-time as any game changes still have to go through corporate on Earth.”

  I smile that even this corpo stooge talks like the ATC is another planet. I wonder if he even likes it here?

  “Alright, that answers the big question. Now, what’s the situation I’m logging into? Have I been in a coma? Should I know any of the people I see?”

  “I had calculated that a stressful opening experience would both help you integrate and keep any dissonance spikes from having . . . long term effects. The human doctor was not sure what physical effects would manifest. I intend to send you the first part of your experience there before you fully wake into the world. The second part, I will send once your dissonance stabilizes as it contains a memory of a significant dissonance event. After that, we can talk about slowly reclaiming other memories that have been blocked for health reasons.”

  I’m openly staring at Maddi, disbelief plain on my face with my mouth hanging open to catch flies and let a little bit of my fear seep out. “Is this going to be a serious health risk?” I ask her.

  “Serious? No. The hard part has already happened. I have intervened to ensure that your trauma was not persistent while your mind was weakened. The medical review of my actions was not favorable, but they are interested if such a procedure would help other trauma patients to reintegrate to society more effectively.”

  “Well, if I didn’t feel like a guinea pig already.” I grumble. Maddi holds back a smile and Arthur rolls his eyes.

  “If it helps, we have several compensation options with regard to this and our desire to own the research rights to your medical data. Of course, it would be stored as Dissonant 0.15 instead of your name, and any identity links would need your approval,” He waves his hand in dismissal of what would likely be yet another meeting. He manifests an impressive stack of paper and shoves it toward me.

  “Really? We’re in the ATC and you hand me paperwork?”

  Maddi fields this one. “This is a metaphysical gesture, that shows intent to enter into a contract. It can be monitored in more ways. Also, you can just put your hand on the stack and review the contents in your HUD. Like this.” She puts her hand on top of the document for a second, then glares at the COO of London. “This is not the version we discussed, Arthur.”

  “I was told they added some compensation options and changed the wording to reflect a recent ruling on Digital Residents.” They start arguing and I start reading.

  I skim the employment responsibilities and job description parts of the stack of papers, but what interests me is that this is supposedly one document, but it has like four different contracts in it. Naturally, the medical concerns were left to the end where I would be more likely to be tired instead of critical.

  “Yeah, your legal team needs a boot in the ass.” I take a few more moments to find the beginning and end of each section and separate the pile into four separate piles, duplicating the signature page three extra times. “This isn’t a bill before the American government where you just jam everything together and try to sneak something in. These last two piles are important, and the hold harmless for my current medical situation is a no go, especially if you want to own my data for medical research and ‘cover your ass’ considerations.”

  “I would add that Orion’s change in the terms of their care are not favorable. They would be downgrading your facility to a long-term storage slash prospective terminal patient area, which would eliminate physical and sensory maintenance protocols.”

  “Maddi, pretend I don’t know what that means.” I do notice that she’s angry, but I don’t know why.

  “This is proprietary information, so you will be censored and censured should you attempt to tell anyone, but as it relates to your new living status, I will tell you. Orion’s linkage uses your brain, to process sensory data, eliminating some complex computing in a format that is worse than your body’s wetware can formulate. That said, there is a high likelihood that if your biologic body is not stimulated with Earth sources that these areas of the brain will begin to atrophy as their physical links no longer encourage their maintenance.”

  “That study did not consider the method of neural stimulation that we offer.”

  Maddi stands and plants her hands on the table. “But it was conclusive for long-term coma patients and those who suffered from paralysis and then recovered. I cannot advocate for a possibility that will make her life in here worse when it can be prevented.”

  “Why don’t we table that contract until we can talk to legal about it.”

  Arthur takes a breath and closes his eyes for a second before breathing out again. “Legal’s going to need to separate them too. This was supposed to be . . .”

  “A separate meeting?” I ask.

  He smirks and shakes his head, “Guess I say that a lot, then. I have no doubt that your compensation options will be changing based on how they feel about the atrophy maintenance pods.”

  “As long as you ask them what the cost will be when the studies about her phenomenon come out. Is it a breach of contract? Or negligence through greed?” Maddi accuses.

  “Alaris, I did not write the contract, nor make any decisions that go into the Medical or Wellness parts of this company. I am to blame for the gaming and finance decisions in those contracts though. So let us please talk about those?”

  I nod and separate the two work contracts from the other two. “So, I have several questions, based in two categories: System cross-transfer and skill and item retention. Is there a way to buy currency in A.E.?”

  He shakes his head. “In the fantasy realm, we can, but Alaris has been insistent that only important messages should be carried across realms. We do have information on undiscovered resources that we sell, or pay people to mine it and inflate the cost to raise funds, but throwing cash around in a pre-industrial, magical society would apparently be too destabilizing.”

  “As for messages,” Maddi chimes in, “unless you are in a dramatic time space—like a dungeon or a boss fight—the message should reach you within a few seconds.”

  “Okay, what about bringing modern knowledge to the game?”

  She quirks her lips in thought, which worries me. She thinks really fast most of the time. “I’d ordinarily disregard the notion, as players would have to be able to perform the full process of work, because recipe’s don’t manifest unless an artisan creates a whole item for the first time. I don’t know if we’ve had any physical-focused engineers as testers before. In any case, if I believe it is too destabilizing, I will simply refuse to form a repeatable recipe. You would have to make them from scratch, by yourself each time.”

  “That seems doable. So like if I make a gas turbine engine, you likely won’t give me a recipe?” She shakes her head. “Makes sense. Moving on then, there are some clauses within the beta reset into Open beta, and then the reset prior to commercial release. It says knowledge will not be taken away, but levels and items will under most circumstances be removed. Is that me keeping my skills and Unique items? Or just I remember so I’ll level all my skills faster.”

  “If you are better suited to be a permanent resident of Alaris’ world, some concessions will be made for the reset. Ones we have discussed are not removing your livelihood, ala if you live in an apartment or with people, you will not be homeless or suddenly be forgotten by your roommate. Additionally, Alaris has informed us that reverting the whole world state would be prohibitive with our current server allocation limit. So, local rollbacks will be done for you, and likely a character deletion and relevant memory block for the inhabitants for everyone else.”

  “I am also trying to convince them that resetting you below class selection level would be mentally strenuous in a way that dissonant players should not be exposed to. We will be trying my recommendations for the beta reset and if the data shows that you are disruptive to the world state, then you will be reset to as complete a degree as possible. Some money and lodging will be arranged for you if the more severe reset is necessary.”

  I take another look at the compensation directions the company was thinking about. Many of them seem quite generous, to include stock options and a small residence on Long Island. Yeah, this is definitely with them intending to scale back my medical care. I will likely advocate for the majority of my pay to be proffered in Alaris’ world after the beta reset test is resolved—if I spend the majority of my time there, I want to be comfortable. I ask about that, and Arthur says that the funds paid would be held in a specific bank that would carry over, and that I couldn’t make any deposits from in game toward that account. Makes sense, don’t want to let me take advantage if they do decide to take all of my other shit.

  “If that was the last of it, my last question to you is if you want to have a designated facility to simulate the pod login experience, or if you want to do so from your condo?” Mmm, I have a feeling that I would appreciate an aid to make me feel as though I were intentionally ‘logging in’.

  “Is there a legacy headset option? Just a mockup or something?”

  He nods, “it seems that a headband can be used to signify your intent, and the ATC AI can aid your transfer over once you appear to be still with it on.”

  “Perfect.” I don’t exactly know why I feel like this is the answer for me, but it seems to be along the lines of other vibes I’ve had that I get instead of memories. I guess I’ll see how traumatized I get when Alaris starts introducing memories.