Alex grinned as they opened the door, "Hello! Thank you for coming by. Jolana is already set up in the vr room."

Max waved as he follows Alex inside, "Thank you for having me over. I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Shaking their head, Alex led the way, "No, we have hit a bit of a snag with our experiments. Playing around in the sims can help us find inspiration, and it helps us refine the simulations anyway."

Shrugging as he entered the vr room, Max whistled as he looked around at the setup. They had expanded to 6 immersion chairs along the sides of the room, each padded with memory foam and adjustable to varying body sizes. "This is rather elaborate... How much does this cost to set up?"

"... Not enough for the doctor to care. The chairs can also be packed down, and folded into neat cubes, so they are easy to transport. We just need to refine the software to a more commercially usable scale, and we could probably ship this."

Max nodded in appreciation, makinng his way to one of the empty seats, Jolana and Ren blissfully unaware in their sims, "Hey, speaking of the doctor... Will they be joining us?"

"Not today. They are out in a meeting with a potential partner for the OHPS, one that was indicisive until now." Settling down into one of the other chairs, Alex smiled calmly as they demonstrated how to get everything running.

After confirming Max had started up his unit, Alex cycled down the AHOR to standby, and transfered primary focus to the sims. Thankfully most of the input was now bing handled locally by Greg's systems, but the actual simulations themselves were still under Alex's control.

Starting the pre-recorder tutorial for Max soon after he loaded in, Alex went ahead to see what Jolana was doing. Ren was holed up in his own room, chat open but otherwise busy running sims on AHOR, which they had agreed not to show Max quite yet.

Finding Jolana sitting on one of the roooftop gardens in the mid-spire region of the sim, Alex waved hello as they sat down next to her, "Enjoying the view?"

"Yup! There are usually a handful of birds, though... You should look into more ambiance like that." Smiling as she wiggled on over, she lent on Alex's shoulder with a giggle.

"... That's just teasing now. I know you can't feel that." SMiling anyway, Alex sighed contently as they looked over the glittering surface of the spire, stretching out as far as the eye could see from here, surface a patchwork of gardens, small farms, luxury suites and radiation traps, interconnected and hiding the metropolis spanning countless floors below them.

"I might not... But you could~" Poking her tongue out, she giggled again as Alex poked her in the forehead, "Besides, this is... Comfortable."

Alex glanced down at her, before getting distracted by a message from Max asking to meet up with them. Waving a hand off to the side, Alex created a door to connect with Max's lobby-room, letting him into the sim proper.

Stepping through, Max whistled as he stared out at the landscape, nodding in appreciation, "Daaang. See, what you did over at my place was impressive... This though? It's..."

"Like you fell asleep, and are dreaming you are over the spire?" Grinning, Alex waved him over, "Not having to compete for bandwidth helps. We have great proccessing power here, which makes all this possible. That, and some efficient selecting on what actually runs..."

"Oh? Do tell." Laughing softly as he sat down nearby, Max glancced around curiously, taking in the view.

"Well, the actual buildings below aren't being simulated. Most of it becomes a blur from this high up anyway, so that is used to our advantage. Same goeas for the buildings far away. Normally it is easier, down in the middle of them, but... I thought we could do with a little showing off."

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"You certainly did that." Curious, Max picked at the grass he was sitting on, blinking in surprise when he plucked out some blades of grass, tiny specks of dirt tumbling loose, "Uh... How accurate is this?"

"Depends on how close to a user it is. Within about a 2 meter diameter... Molecular. A few more meters are rougher voxels, and further still can vary." Grinning, Alex looked up at the sky, "The doctor's old research into physics simulations inspired me, so I tested what this system could do."

Sighing, Max shook his head in wonder, staring with a faint smile as he simply took it all in, "You know... Put a system like this, in the hands of some friends of mine... And we could make something amazing."

Alex smirked, "I bet they could. Problem is, we are making use of a supercomuter with some... Unique design to it. Smaller sscale could be doable, given the time an effort into adjusting the simulation to match." Max chuckled as he nodded, unsurprised.

Glancing down at Jolana, Alex grinned cheekily, "In here, though... There is some free reign. For example..." Holding up a hand, Alex brought up some settings for the sim arounf them, and sped up time for a moment. Max and Jolana gasped, watching as the sky rushed past, the gas giant looming eternally on the horizon as the sun shimmering in the distance sank lower to meet it.

And then Alex set the time back to normal... Stopping just when the edge of the sun met the horizon, sky tinged a dull red as they looked back down, the rooftops they had looked at a moment before now dyed in pale blues to the edges, oranges and reds playing across the smoother surfaces closer to the horizon.

Max shook his head, sighing, "... I should go topside more often. It has been too long since I have enjoyed a view like this... Escpecially since sunset takes so long. You kinda just... Forget, you know?" Jolana nodded wordlessly, squeezing Alex's arm gently as her eyes swept over the glittering cityscape, lights flickering from the buildings below.

Chuckling quietly, Alex watched with them, not quite understanding... It was views like this that had made the station so memorable, after all.

Maxwell laughed as he waved goodbye, getting into a mag-pod before he overstayed his visit, needing to get back home and rest. Alex and Jolana waved back, Ren having said his goodbyes earlier.

As they turned back inside, Jolana nudged Alex in the ribe with a smirk, "You had a lot of fun with that, admit it."

Grinning sheepishly, Alex nodded, having gone through a lot more demonstrating after they had all started thinking of things to simulate, "It was fun, yeah. Made me think of home when I fiddled with the time, from my times stargazing using the station."

Jolana sighed as she wandered towards the stairs, "If only we could see that the way you do... Us squishy humans only get two eyes." Grinning, she paused after a moment, looking back, "Say... You feeling okay? Normally those sims take a lot out of you."

Alex nodded cheerfully, "I was careful. Besides, I had a lot on my mind, that I hadn't dealt with... My little holiday dealt with that. I am scheduling a memory dump soon, so I do appologise if I forget some small things."

"Oh? I'll keep that in mind." Humming softly as she made her way to her room, she slipped off to bed, having gone a little overboard brainstorming ideas herself. Alex glanced after her, before heading to rest as well... While they could stay up, resting after a sim was still a good idea.

Settling into the maintenance cradle, Alex closed their eyes, relaxing... And was soon dreaming of stars, both from the familiar view, and from a rooftop.