“Now that you mention it, yeah.” Har leaned forward and turned off the TV.

They went and collected Sid and Paxton, and they both showed up looking remarkably presentable ten minutes later.

“These guys and I were just talking about our first screen names,” I told them. Har and Marigold’s eyes got a little big.

“My first screen name was on Neopets. I know … frickin’ embarrassing.”

Sid and Paxton laughed a little.

“Mmmm.” Paxton thought. “I think it was RuneScape. Oh god, this is awful. What was your Neopets name?”

“Yours first!” I said.

But then Sid broke in and said, “I am not ashamed. I was CaptainSippyCup and I have no idea why.” I could tell that Marigold and Har were about to explode, but Paxton still hadn’t gone yet.

“That is pretty bad. I was Diggles, so, like, equally rough, though.”

“I don’t know about that. What about you, Paxton?”

He was blushing. “I don’t think I remember.”

“Oh, you definitely remember,” I said. And then I almost told him it was OK to not tell us, but that was clearly not what I was supposed to do.

Finally, he sighed and said, “LittleP-Nut.”

Har and Marigold screamed again, jumping up and down. They literally put their heads under my arms and lifted me up off the ground, screaming, “DIGGLES! You legend! You absolute legend!” Honestly, it was nice. I’d missed feeling like I was part of something.

It turned out that the dorm was actually physically connected to the campus. You didn’t even have to go outside. Most Altus employees chose to walk through the outdoor courtyard, but to give us a sense of how the giant C-shaped building was actually structured, they walked us through the hallways. From the dorms, then into the recreation area and gym, which was more about Ping-Pong tables than elliptical machines, and then into the areas dedicated to actual science. You could tell when you made the transition because the door was huge and thick and heavy. It must have cost a fortune to get it to the island.

The C was the bulk of the campus, but it certainly wasn’t the entire place. A giant cinder block building with prominent air conditioners on the ceiling was referred to as “the server farm.” I remembered that first article I’d read and realized they were mining cryptocurrency in there.

Marigold held his badge to the door. It clicked, and we went through. A lot of the labs were the ones we’d seen the day before, but there were just so many. They were so pristine and slick, and I was probably biting my lip like I was in love because I was.

But also I was nervous. Part of that was trying to make a good impression on new people. This whole experience had a distinct first-day-of-school vibe. But then also I was trying to catalog everything I saw in case it became important to my espionage, and that made me feel like I was constantly at risk of being caught.

“Do you use local workforce?” I asked.

“We do, there’s actually an on-campus dorm,” Har told me.

“Separate from our building,” Marigold added. “Pays very well. Though security means they can’t leave campus for the next year.”

“The next year?!” Sid—or rather … Sippy said.

“Yeah … THEY KNOW TOO MUCH! Otherwise we’d have to keel them!” Marigold joked.

After a solid ten minutes of walking through various labs, including comp science and what looked like a fabrication lab, we finally hit the administrative offices. Just the fact that we were in Val Verde and not Puerto Rico was hugely valuable information, but this walk through the building had given me even more. I had plenty to report back, if only I could get the phone to work.

Luckily, I’d seen a few things around the lab that had given me an idea.

I filed it away for the future, though, because we had just arrived at our destination. Enticingly, the door read “Demo Room.”

“OK, you’ve all been offered positions at Altus,” Marigold pronounced boldly, producing three clipboards from a table behind him. “These are your employment contracts. They say that you cannot leave this campus for the next twelve months. Not this island, this campus. You cannot contact anyone at home other than to say you’re doing fine in 450 characters or less a maximum of two times per week. All of your emails will be read by Altus security, and they are not joking around. Hidden characters, they look for them. Images, not allowed at all. Codes embedded in your email, not possible because of the character limit, but analyzed by a code-detecting AI nonetheless. If you sign this contract, you agree to that. You also agree that anything you discover while working here is the intellectual property of Altus. And you promise that you will not tell anyone ever about what goes on here. Forever. You have to sign this paper to go into that room … but you will not truly be Altus staff until you go into that room.”

“But, they said they were just flying us out here for an interview and we’d be going home,” I said.

Marigold looked at me and smiled. “They liiiied.”

It was still possible that this was a mistake. I had been certain just an hour before that I was going to be on a plane home, and the only people who had told me otherwise were a couple twenty-somethings who were acting significantly under their age. Knowing that I might have just slipped through the cracks, and with every intent to violate it, I signed the contract.

“OK, this is where we leave you. See you in a few, when your whole goddamn world has changed.”

Sippy and Peanut stood a little behind me as I reached for the knob. Heart thumping and head swimming, I pulled the door open and the guys slipped in behind me. I was somewhat surprised to find a woman in there. Neat, flat, chin-length blond hair fell around her round face.

“I’m Dr. Rhode, you can call me Claire.”

The room was white and windowless and sterile-looking except, of course, for the six cloth-upholstered La-Z-Boy recliners that ran through the middle of the room.

“Recliners?” Peanut asked.

“They’re significantly less expensive and also quite a bit more comfortable than medical-grade adjustable beds,” she said, efficiently answering every question I could possibly have had on the topic.

On one side of each chair was a simple monitoring station for blood oxygen, blood pressure, and heart rate. On the other side was a desktop computer tower with a VR rig sitting on top.

“The procedure here is very simple. Sit in chairs one, two, and three, please.” She sounded like she was following a well-trod script.

It took us all a second to realize she was already telling us to do stuff, but then she said “Please” again but more firmly, and we all scrambled into one of the first three chairs.

Dr. Claire Rhode helped us slip on blood pressure cuffs and O2 monitors.

“Place the headset over your eyes. There will be a test image. Adjust it until it is in focus and then give me a thumbs-up.”

I looked over and watched as Peanut took off his wool hat and smoothed back his brown hair. He adjusted straps and knobs like he had put on a lot of VR headsets in his life. I had not put on a lot of VR headsets. Dr. Rhode came to help with mine.

Once the headset was on, I could see a simple crosshairs design in the middle distance. I gave my thumbs-up.

“Now, stare directly at the crosshairs. Images will begin appearing, but don’t look away from the crosshairs.”