Dangerously Placed Read Free Page A

gasped. If what I’d seen so far was surreal, the open space area took it to a whole new level. It was a room almost as big as the gym at Flinders High, with floor-to-ceiling windows for walls looking out on the kind of landscape I’d only ever seen on the cover of fantasy novels: towering pink mountains capped with sparkling snow, delicate turrets and domes rising out of walled cities in the distance, gold-tinged clouds drifting slowly across a soft blue sky. In front of this extraordinary backdrop was a ring of blackmarble cubicles with tropical plants spilling over the top, surrounding a central seating arrangement that appeared to be made of water. Seriously. It was a big, circular, couch-shaped object that had ripples and even a few bubbles floating around inside it, but no sign of plastic or anything else on the outside to hold the water in. I guess that’s the beauty of a virtual environment ,I told myself, y ou don’t have to be bound by the laws of physics. Or even the laws of cleaning , I thought, looking down at the pristine white wool carpet. Meanwhile, I wasn’t going to sit on that couch until I’d seen someone else do it.
    â€˜So, we will meet our colleagues now, yes?’ Inge put her hand on my back and propelled me into the middle of the room. ‘Everyone, this is Alexandra Thaler, our new work experience student.’
    Heads popped out from cubicles; a few hands were raised in greeting. I felt myself blushing at all the sudden attention and hoped that was something the Virk Suit couldn’t detect.
    â€˜Hi,’ I said, giving a lame little wave. ‘Please call me Alex.’
    â€˜That’s Kamil, Ricky, Li-Mei, Yasuo, Thetis, Viktor, Hannah, Natalya, Stefan, Jorge, Radek and Sohalia,’ Inge told me, indicating each of them in turn. ‘And that’s Dusty.’ She pointed at a small man in overalls who seemed to be sweeping the floor in one corner. ‘He’s a bot – an automated character who cleans up programming glitches and so on. We often have one or two of them around the office performing menial tasks. You can talk to them if you need to, though they mostly have quite limited understanding.’ Dusty disappeared through a side door.
    â€˜So,’ continued Inge. ‘As you might guess from the names of our co-workers, we are almost all from different countries. In fact, many of us still live in ourhomelands – in realspace, I am at home in Stuttgart right now.’
    â€˜So there are Simulcorp Virk Rooms all over the world?’ I asked.
    â€˜That’s right. There are thirty-eight of us in the Marketing Division, and we are located in fourteen countries altogether.’
    â€˜Wow,’ I said. ‘I would’ve thought it’d take a lot more people to run a whole division of a company this big.’
    â€˜Oh, yes, of course,’ smiled Inge, ‘but most of them just work in realspace.’
    She gave a dismissive wave, and for a moment I felt kind of sorry for the realspace guys. I had the feeling Inge saw them as some kind of mindless worker group, like ants.
    â€˜And here is the most important man for you,’ said Inge as a door to the left of us opened. In stepped a guy who looked only a year or two older than me. As he came up to us, I saw that he was wearing a purple sarong that would have turned Sky green with envy, an open-necked linen shirt and a wide smile on his face.
    â€˜Alex, this is Budi. He specialises in youth marketing, so we thought you might like to help him out while you’re here. You can learn a lot from him – Budi has an uncanny knack for working out what the latest trends will be before they happen. Actually, it’s more like he starts them than discovers them!’ Inge ruffledBudi’s dark hair, as if he were a pet or something, but Budi’s grin just became more mischievous. I found myself smiling back at him.
    â€˜And now I will leave you to