Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

“Heavy security you got here,” he said.

Zhao chuckled. “Our security guards have guns primarily for coyotes. Same reason why we have the fence. But we do own a lot of valuable equipment here and we’re miles from the nearest police station, so I like to think of it as an insurance policy.”

A rack of Nebula suits and headsets were hung up by the wall of monitors. Jenna walked over to them. “So I just put it on, or…?”

“Here, I’ll show you,” Zhao said, walking over to assist her. Lewis tried not to look annoyed as he pulled a suit off the wall and unzipped it for her. “There’s a changing area at the back. Just pull the curtain across.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking it and slipping off her sneakers. Zhao retrieved a pair of what looked like black athletic boots from the ground beneath the other suits and placed them on the floor for when she returned.

“How long does each game typically last?” Lewis asked.

“Usually around 30 minutes,” Katelyn said. He did recognize her voice from the phone.

“And it’s all-day access?”

“All-day access, but the users can only play four games a day. It’s still roughly 2 hours of playtime, and since each experience is entirely new for them, it feels like a very long two hours. Our exit surveys have all shown high levels of customer satisfaction,” Katelyn said matter-of-factly.

Lewis just nodded.

Jenna strolled back toward them barefoot, now wearing her Nebula suit. He got a good look at it: it was gray with black patches around the elbows and knees, and he couldn’t help but notice that it fit her figure nicely.

By the expression on his face, Zhao had noticed this too. “You look marvelous,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said awkwardly, putting the haptic shoes and gloves on.

“Only one thing left.” He snapped his fingers. Katelyn retrieved a headset from the wall and returned, handing it to Zhao. He turned it over in the light, admiring his technological handiwork, then helped Jenna place it over her head. He was about to do the strap for her, but she brushed his hands away.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ve used a lot of VR gear before.”

“Right,” he said. “How foolish of me.”

Jenna put on the haptic shoes and walked out into the center of the gaming area and slid the blocky visor down over her face. “I’m ready,” she said.

Sitting at the desk, the technician punched in some commands on his keyboard. The main LEDs dimmed, but a few spotlights shone on the area of play. A trapdoor opened a few feet away from Jenna and a platform rose with a gray, plastic object that looked like an assault rifle. It reminded Lewis of what the Colonial Marines used in the film Aliens . He glanced at the monitors along the side wall, the one in the center showing what Jenna saw through her VR headset.

There were two, semi-spherical views of the same thing: a landscape of purple-blue gridded lines stretching off to infinity. The only thing that occupied the cyberspace was a platform with a high-def render of an assault rifle. The other two monitors, on each side of that one, displayed a full-screen view of what her left or right eye was seeing. It made sense, Lewis figured, given that VR headsets gave their illusions by showing each eye a similar screen.

He decided to focus on the left screen since it had the same view as the right and was more comfortable to watch than the middle. Jenna strode forward through the neon grid toward the weapon. In the real world, she strolled across the gaming area and picked up the plastic prop. The platform immediately began lowering itself back into the floor.

“I’m digging the neon,” Lewis admitted.

“I’m a big fan of retrowave,” Zhao said. “I even named the game she’s about to play after it.”

Lewis nodded. Retrowave was a growing genre of music, video games, films, and other media that basked in synthesizers and 1980s retrofuturism. He looked back at the monitor. Jenna’s view showed a logo of a bright orange sunset and palm trees behind the large, chromed words: RETROWAVE RAMPAGE, and below them: SHOOT ANYWHERE TO BEGIN.

Both the physical and virtual worlds began to change around her. In the dark lighting of Studio 3, walls rose up at seemingly random places, while a darkened hexagonal corridor illuminated by orange neon lights constructed itself from the computerized void, stretching away from her until a door appeared at the very end. Jenna did a quick 360 and found another door behind her, but a red light glowed in the center, indicating it was locked.

She spun around and quickly trotted in a straight line toward the other door. Or, at least she thought she did. Lewis saw her walk in an increasingly tight circle while her vision never wavered on the screen. He had to admit he was quite impressed.

The door slid open automatically as she approached it, and she entered a loading bay full of metal crates with glowing green lights along the sides being loaded by armored men onto trucks with glowing red-rimmed tires. The sun was setting outside, bathing the virtual room in an orange hue. He saw storefronts outside across the street with bright neon signs for an arcade and a video store. A large building behind them towered upward and out of sight.

About fifteen feet in front of Jenna was a heavily armored non-player character sporting bulky headgear that looked almost like her VR headset but was clearly some kind of visor. A thin, neon yellow strip radiated from where his eyes would be.

“I want us out of here in five minutes tops. We don’t know when the S.W.A.T. team will –” The NPC spotted Jenna’s player character and gasped in shock. “Shit, they’re here! Kill ‘em!” He whipped out a blocky pistol and began firing at her. The other criminals, who had red visors instead of yellow, did the same. Jenna ran to the nearest chest-high crate and got down behind it.

Zhao leaned over to Lewis. “If she leans any part of her body against that crate, the suit will vibrate in that area to give her the illusion of touch. She’s probably feeling it on her shoulder right now.”

Bullets whizzed by over Jenna’s head. Very smoothly, she leaned up over the protective barrier and fired her machine gun at the nearest henchman. The bullets shredded through his armor, blood sprouting from red holes in his chest as he fell back against a stack of crates. Jenna ducked a burst of incoming fire, then physically jumped out from her cover, did a ninja roll across the ground, and brought the gun up in a swift motion toward another criminal. She opened fire, the enemy’s head exploding in a ludicrous amount of blood.

The next man was sprinting toward her, raising a shotgun to bash her across the head with it. He didn’t stand a chance. Jenna’s next round of gunfire blew his arm off at the shoulder and he collapsed to the ground and rolled around as a red geyser spurted from the horrific wound.

Lewis turned to Zhao. “A bit gory, isn’t it?”

“It’s a shooter game. Were you expecting puppies and unicorns?” he scoffed.

“Just seems a bit excessive, that’s all.”

Zhao shook his head, watching Jenna slaughter more NPCs on the screen. “I believe violence in video games is an underappreciated art form. It comments upon society’s need to satiate bloodlust, yet also fulfills it at the same time.”

Jenna swung her plastic prop, smashing the butt of her weapon across the man with the yellow visor’s head. He stumbled back, dazed, as Jenna held the rifle at her hip and opened fire. The projectile hailstorm tore him to bloody bits at close range, and what was left fell to the floor in a gory mess. Judging by the entrails strewn about, these enemies were not cyborgs, merely men outfitted in heavy futuristic gear.