Fake Reality and Device Creation

After another fingerprint and some goodbyes for the officers who already knew the abnormal girl by name at this point, Amy left the building.

Instead of calling a transport though, she instead started to walk on the path between buildings.

Very few people could be seen walking around as using hovers was many times more common, but she wasn't the only one.

Either way, she was too close to the facility she wanted to reach to use a vehicle, and this one had a ground entrance even if it was a partly high-class service.

As usual, the people in traditional clothes would have their attention sucked toward the pink girl and she would politely wave at them.

Her small frilly dress fluttered as she walked around and her beaming smile enthralled anyone who saw it, so walking around was always fun for Amy.

Some of them would even be invited for a show at El Democrat, and some of those would even show up.

It was very sad for the pink girl that so few people walked around, and most by necessity only.

Either way, her many stops had brought the pink girl to her destination so it was time to stop thinking about the past.

She was now in what could be identified as an old cinema by its facade and style, but the massive skyscraper made of bricks had a different purpose.

This one was a very big and populated VR center where people without the space and funds for a personal machine could access the virtual world.

They could also choose to live here under the right circumstances which Amy couldn't understand well why so many would.

In fact, two-thirds of the hundreds of floors this building had were only meant to store patrons who lived there.

Amy was one of the few people who disliked VR on a conceptual level, but that was more of a trauma than of anything.

As it was though, she still needed to be here for work.

“Now we shall start some research…”

Heading with the flow of passengers and pedestrians entering the building in the middle of the day, the girl in pink got into the self-service booth.

There were many options to choose from, but she didn't even stop to think about it.

The most expensive option was obviously the right one, even if she wasn't sure of what was the difference.

With her room rented, she went to the elevators with a group of other users and then to one of the highest open floors.

There, she reached her final destination, one of the small but bigger than most, rooms of the building.

It was a good-looking three-by-three room with wooden walls, in appearance at least, and a nice-looking finish on the floor and corners.

As furniture, it had a single small table in one corner, a food-producing machine in the other, some comfort items, and the main character of the place.

Right in the middle of the room, and occupying most of it, was the massive and expensive VR device.

From the information she had, this one was the most advanced one could get and was so perfect it could make things more real than they were in the real world.

Her worries were in a very different place though.

“The sense of style from this place makes me very confused as usual, eh...” Noted the girl to anyone in particular. “Better not think about it like everything else though. Anyway! Give me a smoothie, friend, you can choose the flavor yourself while I strap myself on this thing, ok?”

After exchanging some words with the food machine that had turned itself on by this point, Amy stretched her body and took her seat.

Soon enough, the chair turned on and the helmet attached itself to the girl.

There was a tingly feeling of something piercing the back of her head hitting her soon after her eyes were covered, and then, all came to black.

After a few seconds though, Amy returned to herself while inside a white room with nothing but her own being around.

“Very liberating, eh? It makes me sick… Shall we start then, everyone?”

Her words aimed at no one echoed in the space as her eyes started to glow in an emerald color as four other Amys nodded their miniature top-hat-wearing heads and then walked away.

The clones vanished as if walking through invisible doors and left the girl alone again.

“Now, now…”

With the first step done and the whole machine tampered with enough for the current objective, it was now time to throw a smokescreen.

It would be too suspicious if she stood around the lobby for time enough to collect all the data, so she needed to do something here.

“Should I see why so many people live inside these things or should I try some immersion games? So many options make it hard to choose…”

As she was saying so, many different screens with another multitude of different 'worlds' to visit appeared around her.

Some were shooters in all kinds of time periods and some were fantasy RPGs, but many had the sole purpose of acting like the real world.

There were even shops where you could see the products before asking for delivery and cities to people who wanted to live there for a while, or forever.

Just as she had said though, there were way too many options and Amy lacked any real personal interest other than her life-long objective.

For her, it was very hard, if not impossible, to choose something without going by chance, or that was what she thought before realizing something.

“Wait! I know exactly what to do here! Why have I not had such a terrific thought before?!”

She shouted her new discovery while her dress got gaudier and gaudier with extra layers, ribbons, frills, and even some neon-like lines.

And with her outfit done, she pressed one of the many screens around her, waiting a moment as a common-looking city materialized itself.

It was time for some inter-world guerrilla.

A couple of hours passed on Amy’s time-killing activities until she received a note about her rented time being close to done.

Since she had her data and was happy enough with the results, she canceled any extension and decided to say goodbye to the crowd around her.

The plaza fountain of the virtual city full of people in “weird” costumes just like hers was quite disheartened when they heard so though.

“Sadly, my time is up for today, my dear audience, but we shall meet again some other time. Adieu!”

Amy’s goodbye was as flamboyant as her clothes and songs, but the people from the fake city seemed to appreciate it a lot more than the denizens of the real one.

She disliked this fact very much though.

Either way, while hearing some disappointed comments and seeing some people already leaving the area, the girl in pink logged out.

She then woke up on her complicated chair and gathered the pink-colored drink waiting on the machine before getting up.

“You choose well, friend. I shall return here eventually… Thank you.”

After thanking the voiceless machine, she left the room with her drink in hand and headed to the outside of the building.

Inside the VR, theories spanning through many 'worlds' were speaking about the mysterious performer from this day.

For one reason or another, her guerrilla shows in VR were more popular than her real ones and the term 'idol' was spreading around there due to that.

The surge in attention wasn't relevant for Amy though as most of her audience from today would never leave their cans to visit one of her shows.

After that, she soon returned to El Democrat while the virtual world was still in an uproar.

“Well, if things go wrong, I can probably use the homemade thing I will prepare to get fame with those weirdos. Though, if these blueprints are right, then these high-tech virtual reality chairs are quite the dangerous device... I guess some modifications to make it safer just in case would not hurt, right? I should tell the makers about this oversight too though.”

With her modified blueprint done and an anonymous report sent to the responsible behemoth company, Amy left her transport.

The balcony where the pub's entrance was located already had a good number of patrons lining up to enter, but Amy could just ignore the line.

She waved to the people waiting for their turn at the battery, where they would also receive their table number, and went to the main hall.

Getting there, she was soon greeted by the merrymaking noises filling the place and went to Boss' counter, one of the busiest areas.

She obviously made sure to greet anyone she passed by.

“You took your time for once, eh?” Said the big barman while serving a neatly made drink, one that wasn't his own creation for everyone's safety.

“I had to prepare a little for the next job this one time." The girl answered as she dodges the more tipsy customers. "By the way, I will need the workshop for a little while, Boss.”

“What you’re going to do in there this time, little lady?”

It wasn’t an unusual request coming from her, but the workshop was still, in theory, only meant to be used by professionals.

Due to that, Hazel always made sure to ask about Amy’s intentions even if he knew nothing would come from it.

“Just some adjustments, you see? No need for worrying or peeking.”

She was smiling but there was a weird danger on her cutesy warning that intrigued Boss as much as most of the actions of the self-proclaimed idol.

“It shouldn’t be allowed as usual, but you would threaten to quit if I said 'no', wouldn’t you?”

“You got to understand me terrifically well in just a couple of months, have you not?”

Her smile was almost enough to blind Hazel as she was happily noting how well her boss, and second friend in all history, had got to know her.

This was only answered with a dry laugh as this second friend of hers gave up on probing further as usual.

”You’re a real weirdo and that’s almost all I know, but who’s not a weirdo in this world, right? Just come back in time for some songs, ok? You managed to addict quite a few of my patrons, so they won’t be happy if you don’t sing at least a little every night...”

The dark-skinned barman pointed to an ever-expanding group of suit-wearing men equipped with pink-colored accessories.

Most of them were napkins, but some had their neckties in this color or even parts of their suits.

All of them were smiling and waving to the girl with clothes of this same color though, and she answered them right away with many times the energy.

“Having real fans is quite the exhilarating feeling... Maybe I should have gone for it from the beginning.”

“Haven’t you done so all along? You say some cryptic things sometimes, little lady…”

It was a confusing phrase, as Hazel had noted, but Amy knew somewhere in the back of her mind that it was the truth even if she wasn’t sure of why or how.

An idol couldn’t lose her smile though and hers was closing to melancholy now, so it was time to downplay the whole situation and move on.

“Ahaha… Just a slip of tongue, you see? I shall be back soon.”

“Ok… ‘Till later then.”

Giving a temporary goodbye to the heating-up patrons, her fans and the Boss, Amy went to the restricted area of the restaurant.

To the outside, it was a common wooden door, but El Democrat's backroom was as far as unprotected as possible.

In the end, it wasn't only where the food production and the repairs of the drones were made, it was false the area that connected to both Amy's and Hazel's homes.

Amy always looked with apprehension at that dangerous door when she used it.

Either way, the idol had a more important thing to do, so she entered the chaotic zone filled with scraps and spare parts thrown around.

She gathered a good deal of material from the workshop, carrying a mass of metal many times her volume to an open corner of the room before stopping.

“Now, little ones.” She told the small machines packed on head headgear while sending their orders. “The blueprint is done, so do your magic."

And then, she threw said small top-hat on top of the mountain of scraps and watched as it slowly dissolved and covered the whole pile.

After some minutes of waiting while the homogeneous grey mass changed forms later, some new VR machines were ready.

All left was to move them to her room, but it wasn't a problem too.

A few more minutes later, all preparations were done and Amy could go to her real job.