DePresti must have figured out how uncomfortable she felt. “Want to go for a walk?” he asked, finishing his breakfast with a huge bite of egg.
She nodded.
They quickly cleaned up the kitchen. Parkowski brushed her teeth and got her Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt on while DePresti did the dishes.
She stepped over her boyfriend’s recently-acquired scuba gear, haphazardly thrown around the front door, and walked down the stairs to street level. Then, they walked the three blocks to the beach.
It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, but on this breezy November morning, the streets were already somewhat busy. A lot of people had the same idea as them — get a walk in before the storm threatening off the coast came in.
Parkowski wished she had put her hair up. It swept around in the wind coming in off of the Pacific, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They made small talk as they crossed the narrow streets before they reached the beach.
“North or south?” DePresti asked.
“North,” Parkowski answered after a quick scan. “Fewer people.”
They started walking on the sand toward Hermosa Beach.
“So,” DePresti said after a minute or so of silence. “How did the first part of your mission go? You know, before the dragon and all of that.”
“Honestly, pretty well,” Parkowski answered. She explained how she had gotten her VR gear on, how she had adapted to the environment, and the surprisingly detailed rendering of Venus.
They walked on the hard sand and she continued, explaining how she was able to control the two robots and how she was able to flip between them.
DePresti didn’t say much, just nodding and asking a few minor clarification questions. He, too, was an engineer, and wanted to know the details.
She started describing the anomalies, and DePresti started asking more questions. “Was the system lagging every time you pointed in the same direction?” he asked.
“I don’t remember,” Parkowski replied.
DePresti stopped for a second, kicking at the sand with his running shoe. “Something’s weird about this whole thing.”
“What do you mean?” Parkowski asked.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but this isn’t how my VR setup works,” the Space Force captain replied. “Granted, I don’t have as nice of a setup as you, but if you were getting that much lag, they should have been seeing it on the TV monitor.”
“Hmm,” Parkowski said, scratching her scalp. “That makes sense.”
“Unless it’s configured differently,” her boyfriend said. “Like I said, just throwing that out there.”
They kept walking north along the beach. The small waves started to take the tide back out, exposing more and more sand as they continued.
“When did you see the dragon?” DePresti asked.
She thought for a moment. “Right before I got to the last waypoint.”
“And there weren’t any other weird artifacts or other mythical creatures in the environment?”
“No, just some graphical tearing.”
“It’s just bizarre,” DePresti said. “I mean, I believe you, I have to, right? But even if I didn’t know you as well as I do, you don’t gain anything by telling everyone there was a fucking dragon on Venus. You’d have to have evidence to back it up.”
Parkowski laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. And who knows, they might have an answer by the time I show up on Monday.” It was time for her to ask a question. “Are you using your computer later?”
“My gaming rig?”
“Yeah.”
“Um, I was planning to play something tonight, unless we’re going out,” DePresti answered, momentarily confused. “Why?”
“I want to check something out,” Parkowski said, stopping again. She smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s wine night. I’m going out with the girls from about seven until ten or so. You can have your video game time.”
“Thanks, I guess?” DePresti said, still confused. Parkowski declined to elaborate — she had a plan, but it wasn’t fully hatched yet.
The two engineers made it to the Redondo Beach pier. “Want to grab lunch?” Parkowski asked.
“Sure.”
After lunch, a rare rainstorm passed over the coastal town. The wind from the Pacific battered the windows, but the darkened sky gave the townhouse a somewhat cozy feel. To the two transplants from the East Coast, it didn’t rain enough in Southern California — it was a welcomed sight.
Parkowski started a load of laundry in DePresti’s machine before going into the spare bedroom that he used as an office. He was there, working on his laptop.
“Doing anything interesting?” she asked.
“Nope, just browsing the news,” DePresti responded. “Why?”
“Going to test out a theory, to make sure I’m not crazy.” She pointed at the gaming computer on a minimalist, gunmetal-gray steel desk. “Going to use your rig.”
“Is this about the dragon?”
“Yup.”
He laughed. “Let me know if you need anything.”
She got to work.
Parkowski had her own account on DePresti’s computer for when her Dell laptop from college wasn’t enough. She logged in and got onto the Aering company portal. From there, she went to her personal folder on the corporate cloud. Parkowski had an old build of the Venus environment that she had saved there in case she wanted to run it for practice outside of work.
It downloaded fairly quickly; DePresti’s gigabit fiber-optic internet line he used for online gaming with his buddies from back in the Philly area was finally good for something useful. Parkowski quickly installed it and tried to boot it up.
She saw an error message. “Do you know anything about Unreal Engine?” Parkowski asked her boyfriend.
No answer. DePresti had fallen asleep. She repeated it, louder this time, followed by a clap of thunder.
He woke up with a start, almost dropping his laptop in the process. “Yeah, I know a bit,” he replied. “What’s up?”
“I’m trying to run something but I’m missing a dependency.”
“Google the filename of what you’re missing and put it in the folder you installed whatever it is you’re messing with,” DePresti suggested. “If it’s UE4 or newer, it should figure it out itself.”
“Thanks.”
She did as he suggested and it worked, bringing her to a splash screen with “Panspermia Studios — Internal Use Only” overlaid on the standard GUI that she had seen before in training. The name looked unfamiliar until Parkowski realized that it was the developer who had created the Venus environment, a recollection from a briefing long forgotten.
“Nice setup, right?” he asked as he got up to stand next to her. “Andrew Chang helped me set it up before he moved out to Barstow.”
She laughed. “Why would someone move to Barstow?”
“To get off the grid,” DePresti replied. “He’s nuts. Like grade-A crazy. But he’s a good guy.”
He hovered for a minute and then sat back down.
“Mike, another question,” she said. “Have you ever heard of Panspermia Studios?”
“Yeah, I have,” he answered as a bolt of lightning struck somewhere to the east outside of the office window. The rain was coming down harder now. “They make video games, and I think also do some special effects stuff for movies.”
Parkowski bit her lower lip. She was onto something here but was missing a piece. “Got it. Is it ok if I use your headset?”
“Go for it.”
She loaded up the Venus environment with a nominal scenario: two ACHILLES robots, only one controllable, in the Ishtar Terra region. She selected minimal lag, medium fidelity, and multiple control inputs — she could use DePresti’s keyboard or the VR controllers sitting off to the side.