Dangerously Placed (2 page)

‘Bugger!'

Looking up from the floor of the Virk Room, I shot a guilty look around. For all I knew, my work experience mentor was already watching me via security camera. It was bad enough that I'd fallen flat on my face in my first attempt to put on the Virk Suit; the last thing I wanted to do was give my mentor the impression that I was clumsy
and
foul-mouthed.

Disentangling the dense, padded material of the suit from my left foot, I stood up, put my other foot in and slowly pulled on one of the gloves. It was made of a silky, light-grey fabric that was difficult to grip with my slippery fingers. I hadn't even logged in to the office yet, and I was already sweating.

‘Think positive,' I muttered to myself. Sky was always telling me to do that – it was her mum's big philosophy. I tried to imagine what Sky and Ki would say if they could see me now. Probably something like: ‘You were
worried you'd fall on your butt – you've only managed your face so far.'

Even Ki would have been intimidated by this place, though, I was sure of it. The entire building, which I'd been told was known as Simulcorp AU-3, had been built by Simulcorp for one of the founding members, who apparently no longer worked for them. A black stone cube, it looked positively grim amid the bright houses and shops that lined Beach Road. Inside, there was a dimly lit entry room with narrow windows where I could leave my street clothes and lunch. Beyond that lay the Virk Room itself, a large expanse of smooth, grey floor that I'd been told would move under my feet as I walked in my Virk Suit and was always kept completely empty so you didn't trip over anything while you were moving about in the virtual environment. It wasn't just being alone inside something that looked like a cross between a giant tomb and an alien ship that scared me either – there was also the security system. When I'd been accepted for my placement, Simulcorp had sent me an email explaining how to get into AU-3 and use the Virk Suit, and outlining all the checks I needed to have before I could be allowed into Virk. The police check I'd understood, but getting an optometrist to photograph my retina had seemed pretty bizarre until I was standing outside AU-3, staring at a red beam coming out of the door while a computer voice repeated ‘Please align eye for retinal scan' at me. In a spy-themed virtuadventure, that kind of thing was cheesy and fun,
but now that it was for real I couldn't help wondering if I was the right person for this placement after all.

‘Finally!' Leaning my weight against the cables that attached the suit's shoulders to its power source and computer servers in the ceiling, I managed to pull the mask over my face. The Virk Suit sealed itself down my back with a hiss. For a moment, there was a chilling feeling of disorientation as the visor and breathing filters kicked in, and then I could see again. Only, what I could see wasn't the blank walls and hanging cords of my Virk Room, but a smooth golden door with a handle on one side and ‘Welcome to Simulcorp Virk
™
Marketing Division' in raised wooden letters at eye-level.
Of course you're the right person for this
, I told myself.
Putting on the suit and getting in here was just the first test
.

‘Delta three seven omega,' I said out loud, and there was a click as the golden door unlocked. I reached out, then stopped as I saw that my hands looked just like the real thing. I mean, they looked like
my
hands, not like a generic pair of hands in a virtuadventure. I stared at them for a moment, then blinked. This was no time to stand around gawking. I raised my chin, grasped the wooden handle and pushed.

My first thought was that someone had turned the colour levels in my visor up way too much. I was standing in a corridor that appeared to have solid gold walls, emerald-green grass for carpet and a bank of doors on either side, each one painted a different,
strident colour. And in the middle of the lawn-like carpet stood a tall blonde woman in the reddest dress I had ever seen.

‘Alexandra!' she exclaimed, and sauntered forward to take my hands in hers. ‘What a pleasure to meet you. I am Inge Wellenschnitter. I am to be your mentor.'

‘It's nice to meet you,' I said, trying not to gape at her. Not only was Inge's dress radioactive red, she was wearing heels so high they were practically stilts, her hair was coiled up in enormous platinum-blonde plaits on the back of her head, and she had the kind of figure that Ms Harmond, our Health Ed teacher, was always telling us was unattainable in real life. The overall effect was … well, surreal. But her curves, at least, had to be genuine, because I'd read that whatever your dimensions were inside the suit, that was what was projected into Virk. If it didn't work that way, people might program in their hips smaller than they really were and find themselves wedged against a colleague in a virtual doorway whenever the system didn't allow room for their real size. Not that most guys I knew would complain about being stuck in a doorway with Inge, I reflected.

‘Come,' said Inge. ‘Let us meet the colleagues. Don't worry, Alexandra, everyone is looking forward very much to meeting you.' She gave my hands a reassuring squeeze, and I was startled at how real her fingers felt – soft and skin-textured, with the solidity of bone underneath. I'd told my friends Virk was supposed to
be incredibly realistic, but I'd never imagined it would be
this
detailed.

‘These are the entrances of the Marketing subdivisions,' Inge told me, waving a hand at the brightly coloured doors. ‘Data Analysis, CGI, Public Relations and so on. We will visit these during your placement. But those of us who are at the core of Marketing, we prefer to be together in the central open space area. It promotes the free exchange of ideas – and makes it all so much more cosy, yes?' She bent her head to bestow a twinkling smile on me. ‘Here we are.'

With a sweep of her hand, she opened another golden door, and I gasped. If what I'd seen so far was surreal, the open space area took it to a whole new level. It was a room almost as big as the gym at Flinders High, with floor-to-ceiling windows for walls looking out on the kind of landscape I'd only ever seen on the cover of fantasy novels: towering pink mountains capped with sparkling snow, delicate turrets and domes rising out of walled cities in the distance, gold-tinged clouds drifting slowly across a soft blue sky. In front of this extraordinary backdrop was a ring of blackmarble cubicles with tropical plants spilling over the top, surrounding a central seating arrangement that appeared to be made of water. Seriously. It was a big, circular, couch-shaped object that had ripples and even a few bubbles floating around inside it, but no sign of plastic or anything else on the outside to hold the water in.
I guess that's the beauty of a virtual environment
,
I told myself, y
ou don't have to be bound by the laws of physics. Or even the laws of cleaning
, I thought, looking down at the pristine white wool carpet. Meanwhile, I wasn't going to sit on that couch until I'd seen someone else do it.

‘So, we will meet our colleagues now, yes?' Inge put her hand on my back and propelled me into the middle of the room. ‘Everyone, this is Alexandra Thaler, our new work experience student.'

Heads popped out from cubicles; a few hands were raised in greeting. I felt myself blushing at all the sudden attention and hoped that was something the Virk Suit couldn't detect.

‘Hi,' I said, giving a lame little wave. ‘Please call me Alex.'

‘That's Kamil, Ricky, Li-Mei, Yasuo, Thetis, Viktor, Hannah, Natalya, Stefan, Jorge, Radek and Sohalia,' Inge told me, indicating each of them in turn. ‘And that's Dusty.' She pointed at a small man in overalls who seemed to be sweeping the floor in one corner. ‘He's a bot – an automated character who cleans up programming glitches and so on. We often have one or two of them around the office performing menial tasks. You can talk to them if you need to, though they mostly have quite limited understanding.' Dusty disappeared through a side door.

‘So,' continued Inge. ‘As you might guess from the names of our co-workers, we are almost all from different countries. In fact, many of us still live in our
homelands – in realspace, I am at home in Stuttgart right now.'

‘So there are Simulcorp Virk Rooms all over the world?' I asked.

‘That's right. There are thirty-eight of us in the Marketing Division, and we are located in fourteen countries altogether.'

‘Wow,' I said. ‘I would've thought it'd take a lot more people to run a whole division of a company this big.'

‘Oh, yes, of course,' smiled Inge, ‘but most of them just work in realspace.'

She gave a dismissive wave, and for a moment I felt kind of sorry for the realspace guys. I had the feeling Inge saw them as some kind of mindless worker group, like ants.

‘And here is the most important man for you,' said Inge as a door to the left of us opened. In stepped a guy who looked only a year or two older than me. As he came up to us, I saw that he was wearing a purple sarong that would have turned Sky green with envy, an open-necked linen shirt and a wide smile on his face.

‘Alex, this is Budi. He specialises in youth marketing, so we thought you might like to help him out while you're here. You can learn a lot from him – Budi has an uncanny knack for working out what the latest trends will be before they happen. Actually, it's more like he
starts
them than discovers them!' Inge ruffled
Budi's dark hair, as if he were a pet or something, but Budi's grin just became more mischievous. I found myself smiling back at him.

‘And now I will leave you to chat,' Inge told us. ‘If you need me, Alex, I will be just over there.'

Budi watched her go.

‘I've no idea what makes her think those shoes work, do you?' he sighed. ‘But I'm glad she brought you! You're here for work experience, right?'

‘Yeah.' I felt kind of disappointed that he could tell straight away. ‘I guess I look too young to be an intern or anything.'

‘Actually, it's your outfit, sweetie.' He pointed at my stomach and I looked down. To my dismay, I realised that, unlike everyone else, I wasn't wearing a representation of real clothes at all. Instead, there was just my body shape – in full, curvy detail, I noted – and all of it except my hands and arms was shaded a monotonous dark grey.

‘My face isn't all grey too, is it?' I asked Budi anxiously.

‘Not at all. Those beautiful brown eyes match your hair just perfectly, and your skin is as soft and rosy as a peach. And getting rosier all the time!' Budi laughed.

Well, there was my answer to whether the suit could detect me blushing.

‘Hey, don't worry about it,' Budi said. ‘A lot of girls here in Indonesia would pay thousands to have peachy skin like yours. Not us guys, of course. We prefer the
manly look: a good tan, plenty of muscle, a pretty sarong …'

I laughed. There was something infectious about Budi's cheeky attitude.

‘Well, I have a friend who'd pay a lot for a sarong as pretty as yours,' I told him.

Budi raised his eyebrows.

‘Maybe you can introduce me sometime. I like a girl with good taste in sarongs!' He glanced up, and I saw that Inge was heading back our way. ‘But we'd better get to work. If we have a bit of free time later, we can work on programming you something gorgeous to wear. First I'll show you both around and explain how everything works, okay?'

‘Both?' I asked, confused.

‘Alex, Budi, this is Dale McCarthy,' came Inge's voice behind me. ‘He's our other work experience student.'

I turned to see a tall, fair-haired figure with a grey body outline just like mine stepping out from behind my mentor. Well, not
exactly
like mine – the Virk Suits left nothing to the imagination and there was nothing feminine about the firm, muscled body facing me.

‘Hi,' said the newcomer, his deep blue eyes twinkling and his chiselled features softened by a warm smile. I felt Budi nudge me with his elbow.

‘You're going rosy again, my little peach,' he murmured.

‘So tell me,' said Budi, ‘what do you know about Virk?'

‘It was invented by Simulcorp's CEO,' I said, ‘and this is the only company in the world that uses it.' I tried to look calm and professional, despite the fact that the water couch was lurching under my butt. It was important to take the lead, I felt. Dale was hot, but that didn't mean I wanted him to be everyone's favourite student from the start. If there really was the chance of an internship here, I was going to make sure they offered it to me.

‘I believe it originated from an idea the CEO had when Simulcorp was trialling a home-based work system – is that right?' Dale asked, leaning forward in anticipation of Budi's answer.

I glanced at Dale. You had to hand it to him – that mix of confidence and deference was pretty smooth. He caught me watching him and smiled.