Seattle was as gray and rainy as he remembered it.
It hadn’t been all that long since he had moved away. Mark only managed to stomach the city for six years, before its bleak, city-wide corporate culture drove him back to humbler, more familiar climes. Being back didn’t feel as uncomfortable as he expected. In fact, the familiar feeling of this place was welcome to him, now that he didn’t have to live here.
The light rail from the airport to the city center was densely packed with working-class travelers, most of which were just doing their best to mind their own business and avoid the notice of everyone around them. Not all, though.
“Trees! There’s so many! Look! Mom, look!” exclaimed a little girl a few seats over.
The girl knelt on her seat, turned all the way around to marvel out the window at what was probably her first-ever view of a pine forest.
“Shh, inside voice Abby, you’re bothering people.”
Mark smirked and found some place else to look, so the parents wouldn’t feel bashful about their child drawing so much attention. He contented himself to see amused smiles on the faces of the travelers around him. Out the window, the trees gave way to a field of sprawling industry as far as the eye could see. Low-lying hangars, offices, warehouses, and pavement filled miles of scenery between the highway and the waters of the Sound, where cranes offloaded cargo containers from enormous ships. A stinging thought wormed its way into Mark’s head, and the smirk on his face faded to something a little sadder.
A person walking in the center of the car stopped in front of him, hiding themselves at the edge of his peripheral vision. He gave it a few seconds before stealing a glance to see what they were up to. A young woman, maybe a few years younger than him, stared back at him. She was short, petite, and wore her shoulder-length black hair in a stylish undercut. As their eyes met, her’s lit up with recognition.
“You are him! I thought so! Prospero, right?”
Mark quickly looked around, as if he were an undercover agent who had just been compromised in a public place. This was the price one paid for streaming with a webcam, but such was the viewership meta.
“I go by Mark out in the real world, but yes. You’re a viewer, I take it?”
The girl pumped her fist triumphantly and laughed. “Sort of. I’m Analise, but—“ she leaned in closer and whispered, “—my stream-name is Valentina.”
“Oh shit, the vtuber. I recognize your voice too, that’s cool. You, uh… you headin’ where I’m headin’?”
“Bet so! Following the breadcrumbs of that creepy email?”
“Hah, yeah. Funny, you’re… pretty successful, right? I’m surprised you’d want to have a full-time work commitment that took time away from your stream,” Mark said.
“Yeah, I’m not totally sold just yet, but I figured what the heck? May as well hear them out. Research and Social Initiatives? Sounds all top-secret and fancy. Might be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. Beside, I love Unity Online. It’s the only game my friends and I all want to play all the time.”
Mark nodded his understanding and smiled at Analise. “Very cool. It’s not always easy to get a group of friends on the same page about how to spend time together. Maybe if whatever we’re doing affects the sequel, you can help craft it into something they’ll enjoy even better.”
“Exactly! See, this is why I like you, P—I mean, Mark. You just get stuff.”
Mark shrugged and smiled. “Eh, sometimes,” he conceded humbly. “Certainly not everything.”
“Hey, if this turns out to be like a battle-royal type thing, you wanna team up? We can join the same faction. I won’t cut your head off with my greatsword until we’re the last two standing. What do you say?”
Mark chuckled at her. “Jeez, I’m flattered. Sure, getting my head cut off later rather than sooner sounds like a good deal to me. I’d offer you something similar, but I think you probably know you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Analise laughed. “Yeah, you are the gentle guy after all. Worst you’ll do is like… call me out as a servant of an exploitative ruler or something, right?”
“Right. Which I promise not to do, as long as you aren’t one.”
“Deal.”
There was a brief lull in the conversation. Mark looked away for a second, only to look back, his expression now changed to look more inquisitive. “Why are you riding public transit? I thought you made big streamer bucks?”
Analise shrugged. “I do,” she admitted simply. “But I also live in New York. Don’t really drive, don’t trust ride-shares. I’m at home on a train. I’d be even more at home on a subway, but I guess they don’t do that here.”
Mark laughed politely. “They do not; steep grades and too much water. Would be cool though, Vancouver figured it out somehow.”
“Oh yeah! Vancouver’s close, right? Is it fun?”
The two spent the rest of their trip chatting. Mark led the way from their stop to the massive Unity Game Labs building, a massive tower in the Corporate Plaza overlooking Union Lake. When the two entered the building, they were greeted with the sight of shiny black marble floors, colorful glass art, and abstract light fixtures. A small stream of water filled with koi fish ran through the middle of the lobby, though its top was enclosed with glass.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
A smartly dressed woman stood behind the reception desk. She smiled at the two bewildered young streamers. “Mark Kimbell, Analise Narvaez, welcome to Unity Game Labs.”
Mark and Analise both stepped over to her desk upon being addressed. “Thank you,” Mark said warmly. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
The woman smiled cordially and slid two lanyards with photo ID badges across her desk to the two of them. “Here are your passes. Doctor Fourier is expecting you in the briefing room on level 42. Elevators are in right over there.”
Analise excitedly swiped her card and rushed toward the elevators. Mark smirked at her and picked his badge up also. “Thanks,” he said to the receptionist, then he walked after Analise, who had already boarded. He saw her fingers wrapped around the door of the elevator.
“Hurry up, I’m not gonna hold it forever!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Don’t rush an old man.”
“Pft. Old man. You act like an old man, but you’re not old at all! We’re practically the same age!”
“That’s what you think.”
“What?!”
The elevator arrived near the top of the tower, and Mark and Analise disembarked to find themselves in an otherwise bland and empty office hallway, save the signs guiding them to the conference room. They entered a room that was alive with animated conversation, but the chatter slowed to a stop as the eight people seated at the table turned to look at the last two attendees. Mark instantly recognized everyone at the table. These were all popular content creators and entertainers in the Unity Online community.
“Guys! It’s me, Valentina!” Analise said, as she merrily skipped over to join her fellow streamers at the conference table.
“Oh!” exclaimed a good many. Mark judged that this must be their first time seeing her in person, but they were probably already well-acquainted, or even friends. He, on the other hand, wasn’t even loosely acquainted with any of these people.
“And who’s your friend?” asked the man Mark recognized as Greg Miller, a famously charismatic and friendly streamer who was better at cracking jokes than playing the game.
“Mark Kimbell. I have a little RP stream on Unity. Nothing near the scale of everyone else here.”
“Ah, so you’re the token little guy,” remarked Andrew Chen, the power-gamer at the table, earning him a round of disapproving—but not disagreeing—looks.
Mark chuckled and raised a hand to wave away peoples’ concerns. “I am that, certainly.”
“He’s Prospero!” Analise proclaimed.
“Really? Huh, so you’re Prospero. I’ve heard of you. The virtue signaler, right?” said Zach Umber, the resident aggro gamer.
“Uh… sure, to some, probably,” Mark said. He gave Zach a puzzled, sideways glance as he sat down next to Analise, who was already excitedly talking to the two other girls at the table, Mai Yamada and Olivia Carver, who Mark knew respectively as Lady Ame and Queen Titania.
Conversation resumed, mostly speculation about what it was the experiment would be and what they would each be doing, as well as heated debate of who would win if it came down to a fight between them all.
Mark’s head was stuck on wondering why he had been selected to be a part of this cohort. He had seen enough to know that he was definitely the outlier in this sample group. These were all prototypical streamers who made their full-time careers out of playing a very aggressive, no-holds-barred version of Unity Online, whereas Mark was a professional scientist who recreationally streamed his decidedly “wrong” way of playing the game, which focused on storytelling and a more subtle approach to grand strategy. Chen had the right of it, he really was the token little guy.
Then a memory came back to him; a memory of an experiment he once assisted with in his lab career after college. Wherein outliers from a community were deliberately included, even in small sample groups, despite being highly uncommon in the overall population. This was done to make sure that small minority cases were evaluated in the experiment. And with that memory came a term:
Representative Sample.
So that’s what I am. No wonder Dr. Fourier thought my presence might alter the results of the experiment. The thought helped to resolve him not to feel like such an outsider in this group. He would certainly give her a different show than these others, of that Mark had no doubt.
As if on cue, a woman wearing a white lab coat over a lovely formal office dress stepped into the room, flanked by two technicians dressed in business casual under white coats of their own. The room got quiet as she walked in, but she didn’t miss a beat filling the silence.
“Good afternoon, everyone. I’m glad to see you all made it. I trust your flights were enjoyable?” said the woman. As a classroom-esque chorus of long, drawn out yes’s filled the room, she shot a sidelong glance and a wry grin at Mark, who didn’t know what to make of it. “I am Laura Fourier, and I’m the Principal Investigator for this experiment. I’d like to thank each of you for deciding to be here today to hear what we have to offer. Before I can get into that, we have some non-disclosure agreements and associated forms we need to get signed. Once we have the documents in hand, I can tell you more about our offer and what we’ll require of you.”
The technicians began passing out thick packets of paper. As they hit the table in front of each of the would-be contestants, they each took up their pens and began furiously filling in the blanks with their signatures. Mark cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Doctor Fourier. Would it be possible for us to have some time to review these binding legal documents in private? And perhaps with the benefit of our own legal counsel?”
That got a few people to stop writing so eagerly. Fourier breathed a laugh and nodded. She gave Mark an approving smile, and he read in it something deeper, something like self-satisfaction or eagerness, and it had to do with him specifically. “Yes, that will be acceptable. Linh, Kiernan, would you please show each of the subjects to private offices and make sure they know how to dial an outside line with the desk phones, please?”
Some of the ‘subjects’ gave Mark disapproving looks, as if he were just an impediment getting between them and the good part. Maybe that was true, but he for his own part was not about to take the plunge on this mystery without extracting every ounce of information that he could from such a thick “NDA”. He was already at a disadvantage here. Maybe the secret to gaining an edge would be researching the terms of everything they put in front of him exhaustively. Whether it would be or not, he planned to do so.
Once he’d gotten settled in the small office, he sat down and opened the legal document. The first five pages were indeed an NDA; a very constricting one at that. But the rest of the very thick document, even with its veiled and small document headers, was obviously the remainder of a work agreement. A non-compete and a separate moonlighting policy, broadcast disclaimers, waivers of copyright or IP for derivative works or merchandise, and so on.
The pieces fell together in Mark’s head. This experiment was to be a spectacle for the masses used to advertise the sequel to Unity Online, one that Unity hoped to profit from greatly, and one that the company hoped its contestants—or subjects—would not even be aware of.