Neon Gods, Interlude

       I told the woman, who’d come in response to the advertisement, that she was probably heir to a pair of large business office buildings. This was not strictly true, or even remotely true. OK, at that point in the dream I had no idea why I lied to her. The buildings towered over the industrial center in town and were overlooking a lake on the edge of the industrial park. The buildings were about 23 stories tall, brown (as in milk chocolate brown) with dark grey windows. There was a ridge between each row of windows that stuck out about two feet, on the left corner of each ‘fin’ was a silver corner protector. All in all they looked like giant pinstriped heat sinks. I took the woman to a small door on the side of the building. It wasn’t even on the sidewalk; we had to cross a planter to reach the unmarked door. It was set in between a couple of the ‘fins’ and opened easily to my touch.
       I escorted the woman through a narrow corridor; she remarked that this was certainly not ADA approved. I concurred, but told her that the ladders accessed from here weren’t either. I opened up another hidden door and we were in an elevator. I pushed the button and told her to go into the conference center at the end of the walkway. I told her that was the central control of the entire building.
       That, too wasn’t strictly true. The room did have a large set of computer controls, and several large monitors that could be used to watch various selected security cameras. But it also had a 3d laser imaging stand, large enough for a person, and a sonic manipulation chamber. There was also a small chemistry lab built into the place, which I used from a similar, but real control center to walk her through the “verification” process. I checked her DNA first, just in case she really was the heir (odds were against it, but I had to check.)
       She wasn’t the heir, nor even closely related. Impersonating the computer controller of the building, I had her go through the imaging process, used the sonic scan to thoroughly pat her down, and then ran her through several physical and mental agility tests. By the end of it I had managed to find a place for her in the company, and convinced her that the tests were inconclusive, and that she would have the opportunity to prove her value to the company if she so chose. I knew that she had a record as a small time con artist, so made sure that information appeared on one of the monitors. I assured her, that despite her record, the job offer was real. She accepted without hesitation and I used the computer to guide her to one of the activity imaging rooms.
       I had chosen to base a character in one of our upcoming games on her, so had her change into an imaging suit and had her run, jog, jump and use several of the props in the imaging chamber. I then fired up the sonic imaging system to allow her to react to the presence of another actor. Hands, invisible to her, but simulated in the chamber, touched and manipulated the woman’s body. The recording became more and more intimate, but she continued to go along with it, eager to prove herself to the company, and then just eager. She finally asked if she was getting a bonus for all the groping. I assured her that she was, and that she would be very popular with the company’s customers after all of this.
       I met her after the recording session and invited her out for drinks. I explained that the company had some dormitories if she didn’t want to rent a hotel in town. We needed to make another forty or fifty hours of recordings, and then she would need to be available to clean up items. We would train her, if she wanted to stay on, as a match-move artists as well as performer. Apparently we had several who did both jobs.
       By the time we’d gotten her settled into her dorm room, not far from my suite, we’d gotten to be very cozy, and I suddenly realized that this was a natural fit for the “Neon Gods” story, giving a good conflict generating pair of characters to the story itself. That broke the dream up.