“Damn girl, you live like this?”

I was utterly embarrassed. If I had an inkling of an idea that Brian would worm his way into coming over, I’d have spent time yesterday cleaning the apartment. As it was, the place was a certifiable mess. The coffee table in front of my couch, as well as my desk, was covered in empty beer cans, a few empty whiskey bottles, and old food wrappers. The floor in the living room was also a minefield of delivery boxes and grocery bags, with the only clear areas being where I walked to and from my kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.

“Well… Since I’m here, let's get this mess cleaned up. The place smells like your old hockey bag filled with stale beer, I don’t think I could stomach this for my full job pitch.”

“Don’t worry, I got you,” I said as I dug through the trash on my coffee table. After knocking several cans onto the floor, I picked up what I had been looking for. Walking over to my small dining table, I placed down a red candle which I immediately lit with an old blue lighter.

Brian looked up at me with a blank look on his face. “Yes, that should help. Now it smells like sweat, booze, and spiced apple.” He looked at me, shaking his head. He didn’t seem very amused with me. “Come on, where do you keep your trash bags? Let's at least get this shit bagged up and thrown out.”

The wall terminal next to my desk lit up and Pat responded. “Trash bags are located in the second drawer from the bottom just left of the refrigerator in the kitchen.”

Brian’s eyes lit up with a look of surprise as he started to walk towards the kitchen to grab some trash bags. “So does your AI assistant always respond to just anyone when they come into your apartment?” Asked Brian.

“It’s not supposed to,” I said pointedly. “Pat, you know you shouldn’t just respond to any questions by anyone other than me. Keep that in mind.”

“I’m sorry Erik. You just so rarely receive visitors. I will keep this in mind when you receive future guests.” replied Pat.

Brian came back into my living room with a box of kitchen-sized trash bags. We started to pull out several bags as Brian said, “You know, I think Pat here was really just excited to finally have his apartment cleaned up.”

“I doubt it. His personality settings just shifted to being overly helpful over time.”

Before I barely finished my sentence, Pat responded, “I am very excited to have a clean and tidy apartment. When Erik leaves trash to sit for this long, it can become quite bothersome to run the floor cleaning units.

I let out a sigh and said, “Pat, please go into privacy mode. I will let you know when to come back online.”

Pat responded, “Will do Erik. It was nice to meet you, Brian. Have a good day.”

Over on the wall, Pat’s terminal dimmed until he finished winding down into a privacy mode that would allow me and Brian to talk without any future interruption from Pat.

Brian chuckled a bit before saying, “Well, your AI assistance seems to be a good fit for you, but if I’m being honest, I think you need to focus on having some real human interaction.”

“Hey, that's why you're here. Now get your ass to work.”

We spent several minutes going through my apartment, tossing empty cans, bottles, and other assorted trash into the trash bags. While Brian finished up, I took a moment to pick some dirty clothes up off the floor of my bedroom and start a load of laundry. Fortunately, my apartment has a self cleaning system in place for both my bathroom and kitchen that Pat runs through each night while I sleep, meaning we only had the living room to worry about. While Brian ran the trash bags out to the dumpsters behind the building for me, I lit a couple more candles throughout the apartment to help remove the old smell of alcohol and bits of rotting food. I went into my kitchen and started to make a full pot of coffee, physically replacing the filter from the batch that was made this morning.

By the time Brian came back up, the apartment was filled with the smell of fall-scented candles and freshly brewed coffee. I poured Brian and myself a mug and placed them, with the pot itself, on my dining table, which sat at the back end of my living room, next to the door to the kitchen. Brian came in, sat down in a chair next to his mug.

“Well, now that I can actually breathe in here, I think we can go over my job proposal.” Brain said as he pulled his tablet from his bag. “To get started, I need to make sure your AI assistant isn’t recording, like from a microphone or security camera.”

I shook my head and said, “The apartment doesn’t have any recording devices, security or otherwise. The only cameras I know of are out in the hallway.”

“Ok that's good,” Brian said. “So first thing, I need to show you a quick video. I’m going to go ahead and stream this over to your TV.”

I could see Brian opening something on his tablet, followed by my TV hanging on the wall to our left turning on. On-screen was what appeared to be a medieval-style township.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Ok, I just want you to watch this, and then when it’s all done, tell me what you think,” Brian said before hitting play on his tablet.

The video began with the camera moving through the village that was on screen. The camera periodically panned around and showed people in mostly rough spun clothing going about their business. I could hear a metal on metal pounding sound which reminded me of someone hammering at something on an anvil. The camera was quickly approaching a gate to what looked like a small castle. Guards wearing chainmail under a red and blue tabard approached the camera. Each had a spiked mace attached to a belt on their hips and a steel helmet with a wide brim.

“Outworlder, the Duke wishes to speak with you, please follow us.”

The scene suddenly changed to a heavily forested area. The camera, this time, was stationed up in a tree. Just like in the last scene, the camera was obviously a first-person recording. On-screen I could see the subject of the recording knock an arrow on a bow, as they watched a large deer slowly walk into frame. The person drew back on their bow, and then let their arrow fly. The arrow buried itself into the chest of the massive deer-like creature, causing it to fall to the ground before it could take another step. The person then deftly dropped from the limb, landing on their feet. They slowly approached the dying animal, now holding a knife in their hand.

Scenes started to change frequently after this point. One scene was a bare tundra, snow blowing over permafrost. In another was someone walking up a thin trail on the edge of a mountain as rain fell lightly from the sky. In the final scene, the subject of the recording was on the back of a horse, galloping across a desert landscape. I could hear him, it was clearly a man, urging his mount to move as quickly as possible. On-screen, I could see projectiles fly by him. At first, it appeared to just be arrows, but I quickly began to see bolts of what looked like fire and electricity fly by as well. Eventually, his horse let out a scream, and the camera did a somersault before it stopped, staring up into the clear blue sky. The camera slowly panned down to a group of men and women, also on horseback. The one nearest to the man on the ground stared at him with a grim expression, before the man brought a long polearm looking weapon down onto the head of the person recording, causing the screen to go black.

The screen faded to black and Brian turned back towards me and asked, “Well, what do you think?”

I was at a loss for words. To be completely honest, I couldn’t make heads or tales of the video. Lightly shaking my head I said, “Ahhh… I don’t really know. It seemed like good location scouting and prop building to my eyes. The CGI for that deer and those spell effects looked really good. Like real-life good. What I don’t get is why you're showing me early cuts of some new movie, or I guess it could be a show.

Brian gave me a slight smile as he shook his head. “I wouldn’t show you something like that. I’m a computer engineer. Like I said at lunch, I spent the past several years helping to develop the firmware for a new device. Give it another guess.”

I sat for a minute to think. It wasn’t a recording for any kind of show and it was related to a device that Brian had helped develop. Even though I have never heard of Ironwood developing hardware before, the only kind they would likely invest in is some kind of virtual reality headset or peripheral, and based on the video I would have to assume it's a new type of VR headset. But why go through the trouble of recording and producing such high-quality footage for a headset? Sure, some of those scenes could have been some general B roll footage, but a few of them clearly took a lot of setup and post-production CGI to produce.

I looked back up at Brian and said, “You’ve been working on a new VR headset right? And the video is some kind of high production first-person video demo you're using to help showcase it.”

Brian rocked his head side to side before replying, “You’re sort of right. I’d say half right on the headset idea, but still wrong on what the video actually is.”

“Well, I’m at a loss then. The only thing that anyone uses VR for other than video games are first-person shows and movies, and those are pretty niche,” I said while pointing at the TV screen. “If you're saying that's not a video, then what is it?”

Brian just stared at me, a smile slowly creeping onto his face. A stared back, with doubt in my eyes. “There's no way,” I said while shaking my head in disbelief.

Brian just looked down and opened another video on his tablet before hitting play. This video was much shorter than the first, maybe only 10-15 seconds in length. This time, the camera was situated in open grassland. Over a hundred feet away were short green creatures, with a few taller creatures with light red skin. The creatures, numbering well over a dozen, were running towards the camera.

Somewhere out of frame, I could hear someone yelling, “Come on, you got to fire it now! Holy shit NOW!”

The camera tilted up and I could see two arms holding what appeared to be a basketball-sized orb of fire. The arms came down like they were making an overhead pass, and the ball flew through the air, making an impact on the ground in front of the figures charging towards the camera. The flaming orb exploded on impact, throwing most of the humanoids to the ground while setting every other creature and surrounding blade of grass on fire.

I blinked once, then twice. I closed my eyes as hard as I could before opening them one more time, only to see the same impossible creatures, bodies covered in real flame, in the middle of a field of smoldering green grass.

“Those are goblins right?” I asked.

“They are, the red-skinned ones are hobgoblins. And before you ask, yes that was someone casting a fireball spell.” Brian said

I looked back and forth between the screen and Brian for a few seconds before responding, “How is that even possible? There is no hint that any of it is computer-generated, no hint that anything isn’t anything but… real.”

Brian nodded his head in understanding. “When I first logged into the game during one of my first development tests a couple of years back, it was hard to understand how it could all look so real. Truth be told, it's gotten even better since then.”

“So this game was developed for your new VR system?” I asked.

Brian nodded before answering, “Yep. It is, quite frankly, the most realistic video game that has ever been developed and it has been developed in lockstep with Ironwood's new full-immersion virtual reality system.” Brian’s voice grew serious as he continued to speak. “Erik, this isn’t just some updated VR headset with top of the line haptic gloves and suits. This is true immersion. For all intents and purposes, while you use this headset and play this game, it's like you are actually there, in person. Casting spells, sword fighting, working at the smithy, drinking at the tavern. It all looks, sounds, feels, smells, and tastes real.”

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, I asked, “What’s the game called?”

Brian responded, “Hazelsong.”