It's Friday morning, her eighth. Casual Friday, which she hates.
She hates wearing jeans, prefers slacks, something looser, more feminine. She usually wears dresses. She had to buy the danged jeans just to fit in at work, and being so tall the only pair she could find were men's. Too narrow at the hip, too low a rise, they press against her sex when she sits. She has gained a few pounds or the jeans have shrunk from washing, but today they are a lot snugger than she likes.
Rowena, beside her cubicle hands it to her.
Now this. A summons to the editor's office.
Rowena raises her eyebrows, shrugs.
"Master Blaster wants you." She coos with her evil smile.
Karen scoops up her latest bit and scurries down the room, thinking, "Maybe he is going to fire me. I hate doing obits anyway; I know I can write if he would only have given me the chance."
She walks past the sports writers. The bullpen pauses and eyes scan her from breasts to lower body as she approaches. She knows they watch her bum wiggle after she passes. She seethes and squirms inwardly, hates being over six feet tall, the target of every ambitious Lothario for miles around. The shorter they are the worse they get.
She knocks, walks in to the glass walled office.
She tugs her long loose tee straight, looks at him across his messy desk.
A small aluminum plaque perched precariously near the front edge of the desk says Morris Blass Editor.
A bald headed forceful face on top of a broad powerful body. Blue eyes crinkle at her from below his bushy brows. He makes a wry smile with a pencil jutting out the corner of his mouth. The pencil wags as he speaks around it.
"You look terrified."
His big Black Lab mix flows swiftly from his basket in the corner of the room straight at her. As usual he wags up to her and thrusts his nose firmly in to her crotch.
She jerks forward one hand trying to fend him off, twisting away as Mr. Blass yells, "Down Rascal!"
He leaps around the desk and grabs the dog by his collar. He looks back over his shoulder as he drags him back to his basket.
"Stay!"
Back in his chair he says, "Sorry about that, doesn't usually happen. Please relax, take a seat."
She sidles to the chair and sits, feeling flustered and awkward as Mr. Blass looks at her crotch the whole way.
"Hope he didn't hurt you. Did he?"
She sees the blue eyes linger long on the zipper of her jeans. She presses her knees tight together.
"N no, oh no not at all!" She mumbled.
She feels her face flush red, looks down at her feet. She knows the tight jeans reveal the rise of her mons, her loose top is not long enough to cover it.
Mr. Blass looks at her face after a few seconds.
"Back to business." His voice is brisk.
"I hope you didn't worry about this summons. I have been reading your obits for the last week.
'I think it is time to give you a bit more to write about."
She looks up, surprised.
"We need a reaction piece for the Sunday edition. Can you give us a thousand words by Saturday afternoon's deadline?"
"Reaction to what?"
"There is a new concept business. Opened last month, apparently very high tech.
'They say it is a way to record people's sensations so they can and experience them later or share them in a sort of unique anonymous way."
'I talked it over with Maratha and she agrees we need an in-depth experience piece for the New Science section, can you work tonight?"
"Dressed like this?"
"They say it doesn't matter, it would only be a recording session, whatever that means, and the actual replay would be the following week when they have had enough time to process the raw data and so forth. Are you up to it?"
"Bbbb but – jeans and a Tee?"
"Stop stalling. You know it's a great opportunity. These guys are geeks; therefore no dress code. You'll be lucky to see them without overloaded pocket protectors and a dozen bits of gear hanging out of the rest."
"I, I, I, " she stutters.
"I know you prefer dresses, I like seeing you in them, but this is the way it goes in the News business. Besides, if the first article goes well, and we do a follow up next week, you would be the writer. Byline on the article."
Still wanting to say no, she nods assent. "This is a real opportunity," she thinks.
"I called them to set up a press pass for you. They sent it by courier, and said they will have someone to greet you and show you around."
He passes her a blank white plastic card with a thin emerald green rim. It looked like a credit card.
"They call it their Carte Blanche, it opens the door."
On the way out she acknowledges to herself that she is both relieved and happy to have been given the chance. It has been worth the persistence and the initiation via the Obits almost all reporters go through.
She feels his eyes sliding all over the back of her jeans as she closes the door.
She shudders as she walks back past the bullpen, eyes scanning her approach, never rising to her face.
--------------------------------------------
The deep green sign shows in the alley just a few yards in from the main boulevard; there is nothing on the sign except its color; and under it a big green door of the same shade.
The door opens to her white card. A chime rings deeper in the building.
In the brightly lit hall, she sees a very short woman with a huge mass of very curly brown hair floating on her shoulders as she walks forward.
The woman looks up from a small PDA, smiling.
"You must be Karen from the paper?"
She nods hesitantly, waving the card, wondering yet again if she was wearing the right type of clothing for this place.
"Hi, my name is Suze, I am your guru tonight. I will get you through the recording studio, then show you how the system works. I like it. I find it intriguing, it shows me a whole new side of men, women, social mixing."
"Yes, my editor told me it's a really new technology? Can you explain it a bit to me?"
"Easier to show you, follow me."
At the end of the hall was a window looking in to a large room divided in to several work stations. A few white boards propped up with arcane diagrams on them wee scattered between them.
"That is the farm as we call it. Its a cube farm where we write the code and test various improvements. We have been at for five years now. We are ready to go beta next week."
Through a second door, there is hall with a row of open doors showing small rooms with what looks like school lockers and some strange looking equipment in each one.
Suze beckons her in to the nearest, closes the door behind them, flips a simple catch to lock it from the inside.
"Here is where all the test subjects get fitted. We custom fit the input hat in ten minutes. Each hat is sterilized and refurbished after each use. The hat you use if you make a second visit has an inner liner that we make to your size in the recording studio. In the farm they call them party hats." She grins.
Suze shows her the clipboard, "I have a release form you need to sign, and I have to give you a warning about the process."
"Warning?"
"Yes, the process is interactive with your brain waves, it measures physical stimuli and emotive reaction, as well as being able to feed some sensations to you; and if you shut the recorder down in mid stream, there may be unfortunate events with your synapses."
"Unfortunate events?"
"A bit of confusion in sensory routs, a bit of disorientation - dizziness, memory lapse, but it passes after a bit and you come back to normal. Really it's quite safe."
Karen skims through the dense legalese and signs the document.
Suze indicates the padded bench and locker "Here is where you all take your clothes off and put them in the locker so you can change in to your input suit and do a system check before any replay. We will start with the cap fitting right away; then it takes a couple hours to do a thorough sensory scan."
"All my clothes?"
"No. No, that is for the replay. And only if you want to replay your session."
"Wait a minute there, sister. Does this mean there is some sort of recording anyone can just sort of read about me?"
"Oh no, this is just to scan your skin and input the data for the hat. After the scan, you put all your clothes back on and next week we hand you a Party Hat to wear. With the party hat and the feedback suit you can feel and experience almost the exact experience you had the last week. That is - unless you want to be interactive."
"Interactive?"
"Oh, you really don't know anything?"
"Nope."
"This part of the process scans your brain for the impulse waves caused by sensory stimuli on the skin. The stimulators have strain and pressure gauges attached to record how much pressure causes how much sensation. Then later we can do a playback combining generated input to your sensory system and give you a virtual feeling of being there, just by sending the signal to the party hat. Its wireless. You will be able to feel yourself dancing, while sitting in a chair."
"Um, wireless? Dancing while sitting?"
"Seems like Science Fiction doesn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Anyway, passive means you receive feelings from the hat, active means you send and receive. Active is more difficult, takes practice, and takes more gear. Costs more too."
"This input scan, does it hurt?"
"No, you get to determine how much pressure you find is too much, and we limit it to that. But some women have felt a bit – embarrassed because it is kind of thorough and a bit intimate. But it's really private here, and you only need to do it once. We take a recording and can put you back in the Party Hat again anytime you come back."
"Will I be able to remember everything?"
"Of course, it isn't mind control."
"And the data you collect about me? Will it be publicly available?"
