“What are you working on?”
Asher was at the workbench. Younger — his face leaner, his hair shorter, the military posture still in his shoulders. He looked up at the camera with the flat expression Levi knew from inside the game when Asher looked at the NPCs. Theyou are bothering meexpression.
“Neural interface calibration for the fear-response module,” he said.
“In English?”
“I’m making the scary part work. Fuck off.”
The voice behind the camera laughed.
Cut.
A different room. There was a desk covered in drawings: concept art, storyboards, character designs rendered in a style that was beautiful and disturbing. The drawings were of environments Levi recognized. A forest. A ghost town. A sanitarium hallway.
A woman sat at the desk. Her back to the camera. Dark purple hair pulled up in a messy bun. A stylus in her hand, working on a massive tablet, the screen showing a 3D model of —
“Hey — we need to document how incredible this is. Want to introduce yourself? What you do for the company, how do you know Asher?”
She turned around.
Levi’s hand went to his mouth.
It was Maddie. Not the NPC. Not the party girl from the horror game with the hidden, endless flask, but a real life woman in her late twenties with half a glove over her last two fingers and a VV Technologies lanyard around her neck and an expression that was bright and excited.
“Oh my god, this is so stupid,” she giggled.
“Come on, this is going to be seen all over the internet one day. Humor me.”
She rolled her eyes and sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I’m Maddie Lavoie. I’m a 3D modeler and digital artist — I do the environment design and character concepts for the simulation to provide the baseline that AI will learn from. I met Asher in the MIT game lab, like, four years ago? He was brilliant and he showed me what he was building and I dropped everything else.” She grinned at the camera. “I still think he’s terrifying, but this project is going to change everything.”
Levi kept watching, because looking away wouldn’t make it not be true.
Cut.
A server room. There was a man at a computer, typing fast, with three curved monitors lit up in front of him, bobbing his head in time with very loud, very aggressive rap music played over a speaker. He turned when the camera-voice shouted his name for an introduction.
Owen sat there, a round-faced man in his thirties with glasses and a coffee-stained shirt and the posture of a person who had been sitting in that chair for fourteen hours, maybe longer. He sheepishly turned down his music.
“Owen Huston, lead programmer. Also secondary QA, also backup IT, also the guy who fixes the printer.” He pushed his glasses up. “I do everything nobody else wants to do, basically. Asher doesn’t care about infrastructure. He just wants the neural stuff to work. I make sure the neural stuff has a system to work inside of.”
The pit in Levi’s stomach grew deeper and colder. He couldn’t breathe.
Cut.
It was a motion capture studio. There was a large man in a bodysuit covered in reflective markers, stretching and contorting his body in a way that looked genuinely painful, crawling across the ground and making disturbing noises that made Levi feel sick.
“Dude, come introduce yourself!” the voice behind the camera called, laughing. “Get out of monster mode.”
The man untangled himself from his own contortions and jogged over.
“Tyler Russo.” He was breathing hard, pulling off the mocap gloves. “I do motion capture and physical modeling. I’ve been Asher’s crash test dummy since the prototype — every combat possibility with whatever the system creates is somewhat basedon motion capture sequences done on my body.” He flexed, grinning. “Somebody’s gotta take the hits.”
Cut.
An office. Cleaner than the others. There was a modestly dressed woman with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her hands folded in her lap, sitting across from the camera with the posture of someone who was used to being interviewed.
“Zoe Parker. I’m a psychologist with a focus on neuroplasticity and cognitive response to simulated stimuli. I was brought on to monitor the neural effects of prolonged immersion — make sure the system isn’t causing lasting damage.” She paused and looked at something off camera. “I take that responsibility very seriously.”
