When James opened his eyes, he blinked curiously as he looked around the room he was standing in.

As he turned his head from side to side and took in the warm wood decorated room, he tried to get his vertigo under control. One moment he was listening to the pretty Dr. Amelia Richards as she began to talk with the tech girl, Calliope, while he waited on the Pod's bed to begin the calibration testing they were working through. The next he was standing in silence, in a room that looked like his great grandfather's log cabin. Though he did notice that it didn't have any decorations beyond a small table with two chairs. One of the chairs was taken up by a woman that looked a lot like Dr. Richards.

"Hello," James finally said as he got his stomach under control and his head stopped spinning.

"Hello," the woman greeted him. "Do you know why you're here with me?"

"I'm in the middle of my Pod calibration stuff, right?" James said.

"Correct," she nodded. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Only if you tell me yours," James answered.

"My designation is Eve-906," the woman told him. "I am here to walk you through the virtual calibration testing and to monitor your psyche and vital signs for anything that might show a lack of adaptability to the Pod's technology, or for signs of a disconnect of your mind and body that persists beyond the initial confusion and vertigo that you are likely experiencing. Please, tell me your name."

"I'm James," he said. "What's next?"

"Come sit down," she said with a small motion to the second chair across from her.

Shrugging to himself, James moved to take a step toward the table and immediately felt his vertigo rise before he fell onto the ground with a grunt of surprise.

"Forgive me," Eve-906 said as James began to attempt to move his arms and legs into position to rise from the ground. "Part of the initialization process and the calibration process is determining what signals of your mind mean what. I've been told that some find the difference in how their bodies determine the sequence of muscles to move to take a step, swing their arm, keep their balance, and breathe naturally interesting given the lack of thought your minds and bodies put into following those various steps."

"You could have warned me," James said as he finally got his arms working correctly and moving the way he wanted them to.

"If you had been warned, then you would have made exaggerated movements meant to account for any vertigo or loss of balance and those movements would have meant that your initial reading would have been inaccurate and that would mean that your calibration would be incorrect," she said. "An incorrect calibration would have meant that you would be risking going through this process at a different time."

"At least it didn't hurt me," James decided after a minute of steadying himself on one knee and working himself to a standing position. "What's up with that? I fell on my face. That should have hurt more than a little and all I felt was the impact without the pain."

"As your brain is read deeper by the reading Pod and myself, your sense of pain will rise to normal levels," Eve told him. "Until that time, your senses of pain, smell, and taste are being muted heavily so as not to overload your mind."

"But sight, hearing, and touch aren't being muted?" James asked curiously. "Why wouldn't that cause me to overload my mind?"

"Your senses of sight, hearing, and touch were muted for quite some time," Eve-906 told him matter-of-factly. "You simply did not comprehend the time between having them and not having them as we worked to acclimate your mind to them within the Pod."

"Neat, I guess," James finally said after spending a moment thinking about it all. "Why not turn all my senses on at the same time?"

"It was determined that dividing them would allow your mind to acclimate more quickly to having them if you were given access to certain ones instead of all of them at the same time," she answered before gesturing to the chair across from her. "Perhaps you would like to take a seat now?"

Without giving himself time to think and worry about falling again, James moved quickly across the room and sank into the chair across from Eve-906.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Now we begin the next part of the process," Eve told him with a smile. "Please take one bite of each of these dishes and tell me what you taste and what you expected to taste."

"What dishes?" James asked, looking downward in confusion at the table before jumping in surprise. The empty table now held a veritable feast of fruit and vegetables.

"Those dishes," Eve said as her smile grew larger.

Shrugging, James reached down to the sliced apple and grabbed a slice before tossing it into his mouth and chewing.

"That one tastes like chocolate and strawberries," he said after a moment. "I expected it to taste like an apple."

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"Please explain to me how an apple tastes," Eve said. "Describe the texture of the fruit's meat and skin as you understand them."

"Apples are kind of sweet," James told her. "Their skin is tough and tight while it's whole and covers a large enough portion of the fruit. The texture is difficult to explain, it's kind of dense, enough that you can tell it's there but not enough that you can't get through it. It's also supposed to feel wetter from the juice which is where almost all of the flavor comes from."

"I see," Eve nodded. "Perhaps try another apple slice now."

Taking her suggestion as an order, James grabbed another apple slice and popped it into his mouth before chewing.

"That's much better," he said after swallowing. "Exactly what I thought it was supposed to taste like."

"Please continue," Eve said with a smile as James began to take one or two bites of the fruits and vegetables in front of him and working through what they were supposed to taste like to him. Eventually Eve moved on from the fruits and veggies to meats and breads before finishing with liquids.

"I should feel stuffed from all that but I don't," James said in wonder as the last of the drinks faded from the table in front of him.

"You didn't actually eat anything," Eve-906 pointed out. "Now that your taste has been calibrated and we've begun to work on your smell, we'll continue. Please describe the smells that fill this room in as much detail as you can."

Deciding that the smells would flow regardless of whether he found them right away or not, James closed his eyes and lifted his nose higher into the air as he sniffed. Finally, he began to speak.

"It smells like baking cookies," he said. "Chocolate chip. There's the chocolate, kind of sweet but also thick. The sugar makes everything sweeter and makes my mouth water."

"Very good," Eve said. "And this one?"

"Ugh!" James recoiled from the smell that suddenly filled the room. "Smells like my friend Axel just ripped a fart after he ate fried eggs with ground sausage mixed with peppers and onions! That's so gross!"

"Perhaps something more clinical in the description?" Eve suggested.

"Rotten eggs dominate everything," James finally said after a moment. "The rest of it is just.... foul, I guess."

"Next," Eve said, waving her hand theatrically.

"Now it smells like a thunderstorm just finished," James said, relief tinging his voice as a more pleasant scent filled his nostrils. "Earthy and wet. There's that bit that makes everything smell great and fresh; clean I guess you could say."

As James worked through the smells that Eve-906 guided him through, he noticed a sort of pattern. Each new smell was as different as it could be from the one before it with almost no overlap. Eventually there were no new smells and he was able to smell the natural wood that made up the cabin, tinged with varnish and a touch of something sweeter like vanilla.

"Now, we're going to move through a short obstacle course," Eve said. "This course is designed to force you to make use of your entire body so that you don't have any disconnect occur in your day-to-day use of your Pod."

"No pain testing?" James asked.

"It was determined that such tests would fall under the category of torture," Eve explained to him. "Simple pokes with needles would escalate until we were shattering bones and plucking nerves to determine your body and mind's capacity for pain. In an effort to avoid any potential lawsuits, we decided to forgo any such testing and instead to work it into the testing the obstacle course would give you."

"Okay, I guess that makes some sense," James decided. "Let's go then."

Between one blink and the next, James and Eve were sitting at the table in the cabin and then they were in a clinically sterile room with balance beams, bars, ropes, and swinging bags of sand and moving platforms. They were still sitting in their chairs.

"Neat," James finally said after taking a look around the room. "I guess teleporting is in the cards when you control the entire world around us."

"In a sense," Eve-906 said with a smile. "You may begin at any time. Simply approach the red line there and as soon as you cross it, you will begin the course."

With a shrug, James stood and approached the red line, studying the course before him.

"There's no time limit on this is there?" he asked Eve as he plotted a route through the obstacles.

"Nope," she told him. "You're just going until you finish it."

Nodding, James took a runner's position and after a deep breath shot himself across the red line. Immediately his muscles locked and his skin began to crawl and itch as though a fire had been lit beneath it. The shock of it all sent him skidding across the floor and grit his teeth as the fire worked itself through his body. Finally, he let out a scream of pain as he began to claw and scratch at himself in an effort to remove the ants crawling beneath his skin.

Gasping for breath, James rolled onto his back and let the tears flow as the sensation faded away.

"That sucked," he gasped.

"Your body's sense of pain has been calibrated," Eve-906's voice broke through the fog that had filled his mind. "Now when you begin the course, you will not suffer through such a thing again."

"Can we just call it here?" James asked as he wiped his eyes.

"I'm afraid that we cannot," Eve informed him. "The obstacle course is necessary for our calibration. You may take all the time you need."

Laying on the floor panting, James attempted to work through his tears and think and plan for what came next. Eventually, he rolled onto his hands and knees before standing and approaching the line to begin the obstacle course. Idly, he noticed that the line was now green rather than the red it had been.

After another moment to collect himself and plan his route through the course, he launched himself across the line and began to work through the first of the simple yet varied obstacles.

Blinking blearily, James rose to a sitting position and looked up towards the Dr. Richards and her assistant Calliope as they stood on the small platform outside of the reading Pod.

"Good news, Mr. Rawlins," the doctor said with a kind smile. "Your calibration is complete and it is time for you to begin the final part of your Pod's creation. Please follow Calliope to the shower, she will explain what comes next and then you will begin choosing your decorations for your Pod. Thank you for your time today."

"Did Eve choose you for her body for any particular reason?" James asked quietly after he had removed the mask and pushed his slurry-filled hair from his face.

"The Eve line of helpers was encouraged to choose female forms and mannerisms so that they were closer in line to what we expected of something with a feminine name," Dr. Richards explained. "906 took a liking of sorts to me and based her own form on me. I hope there wasn't any confusion."

"Not really," James said quietly as he moved off the bed in the pool. "Where's the shower?"