Jordan found the ad in a local newspaper. "Needed: Healthy male, age 18-30, for testing of a classified robotic prototype, $400 dollar stipend for selected volunteers" with some half-assed stock photo design and a number to call for information. Jordan's friends laughed when he told them about it, and warned him that it sounded like human trafficking or at the very least a scam, but he figured it couldn't have been so bad if it got in the newspaper, plus he was scrambling to pay his tuition and the money was too good to pass up. So he called the number and was given an address and a date to be there.
They did this every year. While working primarily on robotic technology for the military, the team at Vision Robotics spent their free time building another machine. Every year they would celebrate by placing an ad seeking a young male volunteer for their passion project, and the people who responded were always the same - stupid, desperate college students. Dan, the leader of the engineering department, paced around their creation now. As the boss and the best liar of the group, Dan was the most well-suited to interviewing the potential candidates. He always found a way to rope in the attractive volunteers, and to make up some legitimate-sounding reason for turning away the ones that seemed too aware of the world to agree to anything like what they were about to do. His pager went off now, alerting him that the latest volunteer had arrived, and he left the showroom.
Even though he kept telling himself he had nothing to worry about, Jordan still felt nervous walking into the building owned by Vision Robotics. He was reassured somewhat when the office, while located in a seedier part of the city, was clean and official-looking inside. It was brightly lit, with lots of white and grey that reminded Jordan a little bit of a sci-fi movie and a little bit of an Apple store. He approached the desk, and managed to stammer out something like "Uh, hi. I'm here because I saw your ad in the city paper and you told me to come in and ask for Dan." He thought he saw the person at the desk giving him a pitying look, but maybe it was just a trick of the eye.
"Name?"
"Jordan... Wilson." They nodded,
"You can take a seat in the lobby, he'll be out for you in a moment." Jordan sat in a chair by one of the few windows in the room. He tapped his foot and watched a pigeon eat the remnants of someone's McDonald's french fries on the sidewalk, but was roused within a few minutes by a firm hand on his shoulder. He turned quickly, and saw one of the gorgeous men he had ever seen. "Jordan Wilson?" the man asked, and his voice was smooth and deep. He stuck his hand out for a handshake, and Jordan took it, the size of his hand dwarfed by the older man's. "I'm Dan, I'll be conducting your interview today as well as guiding you through the robotics testing. Would you follow me?" All Jordan could do was nod and stare at Dan's broad shoulders as he followed close behind him.
Dan lead Jordan down a carpeted hallway and back to a fairly plain-looking conference room, where he pulled a chair out for Jordan to sit and took a seat across from him. Already, he could tell that Jordan would be a great candidate. He looked delicate and slender, and stared around his new surroundings with a sense of slackjawed wonderment. Plus, there was no denying the way he looked at Dan as if we was a God. Dan conducted the interview as usual, asking some miscellaneous questions about Jordan's health, then moving on to gauge how far Jordan was willing to go. "This robot is currently being developed for medical procedures," he lied, "so some of the tests we run may seem somewhat invasive." Jordan nodded. "We like to just reassure all of our volunteers before going in that this is all routine testing and there is no need to feel embarrassed. We're all professionals here and you can trust that we will be there to shut everything down if something goes wrong. Alright?"
"Sure." This kid was perfect.
"Now, just to get all this administrative work out of the way, I'm going to hand you this form which is just to document that you agree to all the details of this project. Just sign where I've highlighted at the bottom, and we'll do a quick physical examination and then get you over to the showroom to start the testing." Jordan didn't even bat an eye, he just flipped straight to the end of the document and signed on the line, pausing to ask Dan what the date was. He handed the packet back over, and Dan said, "Great. Follow me."
While Jordan hadn't necessarily come expecting invasive medical testing, he was reassured by all the official-looking paperwork that this was a legitimate operation, and was excited to prove his friends wrong. As he followed Dan down the hallway, he imagined returning to his dorm and showing off his new riches, and he looked forward to gossiping about the attractive man who would be leading the whole operation. He entered into a small white room behind Dan. The room had an exam table and some assorted medical equipment, plus the strange addition of a large mirror set into the wall. Jordan knew that was odd for an exam room, but he brushed it off and figured the building had been used for something else before Vision moved in. Jordan sat on the table and looked around the room while Dan got his height, weight, and blood pressure. He felt his heart rate increase when Dan got close to him, and he worried it would mess up the readings, but everything seemed to be up to Dan's expectations. Dan told him he would have to change into just a medical gown for the remainder of the testing, and left the room for privacy.