Mark looked around the room the doctor, Siers the other man had called him, had led him into. There, mounted on a small platform that raised it several inches above the floor, was the Pod they would put him in that would let them calibrate his own Pod to his brain's wavelength. Over there was a small indoor gym that they had mentioned they would use to determine what his body was capable of outside the digital world.

"Let's start with the treadmill," Siers said as he stepped into the room and moved past Mark to make his way to the machine in question. "I'll need you to step on the machine and follow my instructions. First, you'll move at a walk; try to move at your normal pace. Second, you'll speed up into a run or a jog; don't worry about speed, this is just to help with some of our testing when you enter the reading Pod. Finally, you'll be alternating between running, walking, and jogging as the machine adds extra resistance. Understand?"

"Yeah, I get it," Mark said with a nod. "Here's hoping all that cardio I do helps me out."

"I'm sure it will," Dr. Siers said with a smile before turning to the man that had been escorting Mark around the building. "Darrell, are you ready to take your notes?"

"Whenever you want to start, Doc," he told the older man.

Giving the technician a final nod and pressing a button on his tablet, the doctor turned to Mark and motioned toward the treadmill with a nod. Returning his nod with a smile, Mark stepped onto the treadmill and began to walk, quickly reaching his natural pace.

"Just tell me when you want me to speed up," he told Siers.

"Don't worry son," the doctor assured him. "I will."

After another few minutes of walking, the doctor nodded to Mark and pressed another button on his tablet, prompting Mark to speed from his walk into a light jog for a moment before going into a run.

"That's perfect!" Siers praised the young man. "Keep that up for this whole thing and you'll be done in no time!"

Mark didn't answer as he concentrated on keeping his balance on the treadmill, he much preferred to run around a track or follow a trail when he did his own running.

Eventually, after Mark had moved into the higher resistances on the machine, the technician spoke to the doctor and told him that he had gathered enough data and it was time to move to the other options.

"Over here I want you to move through sets of three," the doctor told Mark. "Three squats, three pull-ups, three bench presses, and three curls. Sounds easy right?"

"Yeah," Mark said as he steadied his breathing. "Doesn't sound too bad. I do more when I work out."

"I'm sure you do, son," Dr. Siers nodded. "We only need those exercises though, so I hope you don't take offense to our lack of body building routine."

"Oh, I didn't mean to sound like that," Mark backpedaled his words quickly as the doctor began to chuckle at his embarrassment.

"Don't worry, don't worry," he assured him. "What do you say that we get through the rest of this and then we can move onto the reason why you're here, hmm?"

Sheepishly, Mark nodded and began to add weights to the bar in preparation for the requested exercises.

"Which one are we starting with?" the tech asked as Mark placed another set of plates on the bar.

"I'm going to start with the benchpress and then I'll do the curls before doing the squats and the pull-ups will be last," Mark told him as he lined the bench up. "Spot me?"

"It's why I'm here," the tech told him as he moved into position.

With practiced motions, Mark reached up to the bar and began the three requested presses for the doctor as he made notes on his tablet and marked whatever he was keeping an eye on as Mark continued through the weighted exercises.

As Mark lowered himself from the third pull-up, the doctor spoke up again.

"Thank you, son," he said. "Now we're on the home stretch. I need you to perform a toe touch exercise for me and hold it while we measure the distance from the ground to the tip of your fingers."

"And then we're in the Pod?" Mark asked bluntly.

"And then we're in the Pod," Dr. Siers nodded as he handed a tape measure to the technician. "Please be precise this time Darrell, I don't want a repeat of Jonathan's mistake."

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"No worries, Doc," the tech said with a laugh. "I learned from his mistake."

"The second best way to learn," the doctor said quietly as Mark bent into a toe touch position and placed his fingertips on the ground.

"What do I measure?" Darrell the tech asked as he looked at Mark's perfect form.

"In this case, nothing," the doctor told him. "Excellent job, son. For bonus points, do you think you can do that the other way?"

"Not anywhere as close as I can this way," Mark said as he straightened to his full height. "But I'm willing to give it a shot."

"No need," Siers waved him off before turning to the Pod. "Now you'll need to enter the Pod. Don't worry about the slurry, it's changed out for each test. Before we put you under we'll need to work with you to determine the necessary temperature that is most comfortable for you. Once we have that, we'll input the data into your profile and when your Pod is made it will automatically reach that."

"Sounds neat," Mark said.

"The big man on high said that we needed to focus on our user's comfort when we did this stuff," the doctor told him. "Personalized Pods like yours will move into your desired temperature range automatically and can be adjusted as you want. The base models don't have that option but they do slowly bring the slurry to a more comfortable range."

"So, if they do that, what's so great about the personalized Pods?" Mark asked as the tech held masks up to his face to find one that would fit him best.

"The personalized ones don't need you to be inside them before they start heating the slurry," the tech answered him before the doctor could. "They also have the option for you to adjust a new base temp that they heat to for you. The basic Pods don't have that luxury. They also don't have the same capacity for the nutritional slurries that you can use. That means that you can put more of that in so that you can game longer without having to refill your stores."

"And that's not mentioning that you'll have a rest molded to your body which will reduce any fatigue that might come from staying in one place for too long," Dr. Siers said as he watched the Pod fill with slurry. "People that spent a long time in an office environment used to spend hundreds of dollars on chairs that offered better support to their backs and butts so that they weren't so sore after eight or more hours of sitting in one place."

"That sounds terrible," Mark said in sympathy.

"It was," the doctor said. "Darrell, have you found a mask for the young man?"

"Right here," he said, waving it in the air before handing it to Mark. "Try that on and let me know if it doesn't fit right."

"What he means to say is that if any of it is uncomfortable then feel free to tell us," the doctor chimed in. "This is another perk of the personalized Pods; I've had several people request larger masks be made rather than the simpler ones that only cover the nose and mouth. Of course, you'll also be able to choose designs for your mask just like you'll be able to choose decorations for your Pod."

"Cool," Mark said as he fiddled with the mask and tried to fit it to his face. "I think I need one of the ones that covers my whole face. This isn't comfortable at all. Feels like I'm breathing through a straw."

"I'm making a note now," Siers assured him as Darrell began to offer different masks to Mark in an attempt to find one that was more comfortable on his face. "Can you believe that I had someone ask if we could make a smaller mask? One that only covered their nostrils? I told them that if they wanted something like that, they'd still have to have something that covered their mouth so they didn't risk drowning in the slurry."

"Is that a concern?" Mark asked, his voice muffled through the mask he was trying on.

"One that we've thankfully never had come to pass," the doctor admitted. "Even in the earliest phases of testing this technology, we made certain that our testers were using the gear we chose for them to keep them safe and healthy. Except when we were testing the nutrient slurries, that was a difficult thing."

"We're ready, Doc," Darrell said before Mark could ask what had gone wrong with the nutrient slurries.

"Excellent!" Dr. Siers said in a brighter tone. "Son, if you'll just enter the Pod from those stairs over there, please. Now, your Pod won't have stairs, the Pods used for this sort of testing are the only ones that do, your Pod will be closer to a bed without a mattress than this small swimming pool."

As the doctor finished speaking he chuckled to himself at his joke before speaking again.

"How's the temperature?" he asked Mark.

"Could be warmer," Mark said.

"Give me just a few moments," the doctor said as he tapped more buttons on his tablet. "Tell me when."

Calmly, Mark half-floated, half-stood in the dense slurry as the minutes passed and the temperature rose slowly.

"This is fine," he told the doctor. "I'm pretty sure that when the Pod's made, it'll be smaller than this and having less slurry to heat will mean that it's going to feel warmer if I pick a higher temperature."

"How astute," the doctor told him with a smile. "I have to explain that to most other people when we're at this point in the calibration and they always say that I'm worrying."

"You said that the user's safety was the highest priority," Mark pointed out. "If they don't want to worry about that, then they're just a bunch of idiots."

"I can't just call the paying customer an idiot," Siers laughed as Darrell held out the mask that Mark had chosen, now attached to a tube. "The tube will ensure that fresh air is sent to you and your bad air is removed before issues arise. If at any point in your usage of any Pod the airways become obstructed, then the Pod will shut down and remove you from the game. Once that's done, the Pod will begin a full diagnostic on itself and it won't allow you to reenter the game until it is complete. Also at this time, the Pod will send a signal to the nearest branch of the company and request a repair team as soon as they are able. Do you understand?"

"I think so," Mark said as he moved the mask into position. "The tube lets me breathe and if there's a problem the Pod's gonna toss me out."

"That's the general idea," the doctor nodded. "Now if you're ready, let's get on with this part. It'll be the first time you get to experience a full virtual dive."

Nervous and excited, Mark laid on the platform that was meant to offer extra support while he was in the Pod and prepared for the next step in the process.