Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

“Oh, sure,” she said, slipping out of the seat. Lewis realized their host had dropped the formality of calling her “Ms. Bateman.”

Zhao walked over to the timeline wall and turned to her as he spoke. “Virtual reality is all about deception, convincing the user that they are somewhere they are not, doing something they are not. For years, players of VR games would get dizzy wearing headsets and sitting in chairs while their in-game avatars dove for cover and leaped off buildings. The headset could lie to the user’s eyes, but not their whole body. Here, we remedy motion sickness by giving you a physical space to walk around in, while haptic gloves and suits allow you to feel the digital world. But this created another problem: what happens when you run out of space? Simple: we use a technique called redirected motion .”

He pointed to a diagram of a headset-wearing person walking in a circle labeled “actual motion” while another line labeled “perceived motion” continued straight ahead from their starting point. As he continued, it seemed to Lewis as if Zhao was addressing Jenna specifically rather than the pair of them. “You can think you’re moving in a straight line, but really I’ll have you traveling in circles all day. I call it the ‘desert effect.’”

“Appropriate for a place in the Mojave,” she piped up.

Zhao smiled smugly and said, “Indeed it is.” He moved over to the next diagram. “What we have here at Arcadia, more so than at any other virtual reality attraction in the world, is an emphasis on changing sets.”

Lewis saw an image of a darkened room with rising and falling walls, and objects that popped up out of the ground. “Our illusions are more convincing because we spin them out of reality. I can have any number of differently shaped items appear and your haptic gloves and headsets will feel and display them as anything I want them to. I can have you trapped in an ancient temple by four, real walls. Or those fences could be the sides of a city alleyway that disappear once you leave, a corridor on a lunar base, or just about anything. Haptic feedback only goes so far, but you can’t push back against a physical barrier. We also have a number of fog, smoke, and smell machines, all perfectly safe, that contribute to the illusions we create. It’s like a virtual set, and we can cast you as the star in any type of story. That’s why we call them Studios. There are four of them in this building, that way.” He gestured down the hallway he had entered from.

Then he pointed to a diagram of a headset on the wall. It looked bulkier than a Rift or a Vive, like something out of a 1980s sci-fi film. “This is Nebula, our in-house headset and haptic feedback rig. Once suited up, you’ll be able to feel vibrations in response to a digital object or character touching anywhere on your legs, arms, or torso. The gloves enable you to hold items that don’t exist in the real world or to augment ones that do. I can make you think a square foam block in your hand is the grip of a pistol or the handle of a sword.”

The second half of the timeline was labeled Future Developments .

“These are our upcoming projects,” Zhao explained. “In addition to working on more advanced haptic feedback hardware and higher-definition graphics for our headsets, we’re creating a whole new type of Studio, one that’s a much more efficient use of space.”

The image showed a player wearing a full-body Nebula rig suspended from numerous cables, with fans and mist machines poised from every angle. Lewis noticed the headset looked sleeker and appeared to be actually part of the suit instead of a separate entity. Overall, everything seemed much more advanced.

“The player,” Zhao went on, “will be able to rotate 360 degrees in every direction. Once combined with our next generation haptic feedback suit, the Nebula Mark III, we will have achieved the closest thing to a totally immersive simulation in history. And that extends beyond mere video gaming. We already have contracts with the military and NASA to develop realistic combat and space exploration sims. We have a stripped-down version here called Lunar Latitudes for the guests, but we’re building a whole new structure – I’m sure you saw the construction site on the way in – for training simulators. NASA has paid us handsomely to deliver the most hyper-realistic Mars exploration VR sim in history. We’re more than happy to deliver.”

He strolled over to the very last diagram. It looked like the strangest of the bunch. The user lay on their back without any form of haptic gear, but a silver, metal band was fitted around the top of their head.

“This,” Zhao said, “is our pipe dream. It’s still ten years away at the very earliest, but when it arrives, it will change everything. We call it the Dream Machine, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. A Brain-Computer Interface, or BCI, that the player controls with their brainwaves. However, after the user is placed in an unconscious state, the Dream Machine will enable us to send images directly into their mind and essentially influence their subconscious thoughts, creating personalized dreams that will feel like hyperreality.”

“And you’ve begun development on this?” Lewis said, somewhat shocked.

Zhao turned to him. He looked surprised to remember that Lewis was still a part of this conversation. “I’m afraid only at the conceptual stage. Like I said, it’s at least a decade away from being commercially viable. The Nebula Mark III has to take precedence, not to mention we’re pretty busy balancing our daily visitors with construction and developing the simulations for our contracts.”

“So what exactly do you have right now?” Lewis asked, growing impatient. Jenna looked mildly bored too.

Zhao gave a conceited smile. Lewis realized he had a very punchable face.

“Allow me to show you.”

They made their way down the darkened corridor, passing doors for the other Studios. Lewis realized a fourth person had joined them, a short Latina woman with square-rimmed glasses. She held a heavy file folder as she walked a few paces behind them. He didn’t see where she’d come from; it was as if she’d materialized out of thin air. Her unexpected appearance and the dim recesses of the hallway made him feel uneasy.

Zhao stopped before the back wall and turned to his left, where a heavy door was labeled STUDIO 3. Behind him, Lewis saw another door on the back wall of the corridor and made out the words “Rear Exit, PERSONNEL ONLY” in the low lighting.

“Given your skillset Jenna, I believe you’ll find one of the experiences we offer in Studio 3 to be quite to your liking.” He pushed the door open and all four of them walked inside. “This is Katelyn, by the way.” He gestured to the woman who had joined them. “I believe you spoke with her on the phone, Mr. Lewis.”

“Uh-huh, nice to meet you,” Lewis said absentmindedly, his attention now focused on the area around him. It was a large space with several bright, white LED lamps hanging down from above. There were several thin, plastic walls erected around the room that went as high as nine feet tall, and he saw inch-wide slots in the floor where others could pop out. There were also different sized square trapdoors and he guessed this was where other objects could be deposited into the player’s game. The air was heavily conditioned in here and he shivered, catching a chill.

Off to the right stood an area with several monitors on the wall and a desk where a bald technician in his mid-thirties sat in front of a keyboard and an additional monitor. A stern black man stood beside him wearing what looked to be a bulletproof vest. Lewis saw he had a pistol holstered to his right hip.