Business meeting over brunch?

A buff man was alone at a table in an empty shop, on the biggest level of a skyscraper. Blue skies surrounded him, and could only hear the noise made by the breeze of a gentle wind. And the glitches in those environmental programs from time to time. 

His table was filled with empty cups and plates with food scraps. While his appetite was out of the ordinary, something else made him stand out even more. He had a thick jawline, perfectly square, a bit too perfect, some might say, with angles that human biology could never sculpt. 

The man was sitting motionless in his chair while accessing a panel on a virtual plane using his visual implants. A few seconds later, he used his robotic hand to swipe and move panels around, while keeping a stern face, as if he had to make an impossible decision. Soon after, his concentration was undone when two new figures approached his table. One as a virtual avatar, and the other in flesh and bone.

-“Why hello Mister Joni. Working hard, I see?”, blurted out automatically a voguish woman, without even glancing at him. She graciously sat on a chair next to him, and firstly checked to see that her neck-long but lush hair was exactly as she prepared it. After she made sure that everything was intact, she stretched her glowing coppery skin, with little gems incrusted in her knuckles towards the man's sight, to garner his attention.

-" Joni. We're here, wake up darling."

The squared jaw raised his head for a second to check out his guests, and gruffed a greeting: 

-" Priya, Robert." The man then raised both of his shoulders, and shrugged: “ I’ve been trying to find something expressive and cool to post on a sub-company’s feed, and to my account, but I can’t find anything that pops, you know? I’ve been using my preferred go-to pages, but none of them posted anything that can be used, you know?”

The woman while seemingly uninterested in his complaints, still grasped what his blight was and nodded in approval. The hologram appeared the same, but he at least could feign ignorance, as, unlike his brunch buddies, he wasn't a hands-on type of CEO when it came to marketing. Priya, though, had to play along, so she put her side-by-side and used the jewels to summon the image and sound of applause.

-" Oh, certainty, I feel your pain. Yesterday I spent an entire hour checking the news flow to find something worthwhile, but nothing. An hour, can you believe it? I even missed some pricing offers for a small company from Robert’s Brand. “

The holographic, human figure, with map textures all over their body, answered with a mild annoyance in their tone. “Well, it’s not like you could have set some employees or C.E to monitor the market. And thanks to that, Alvara's Brand scored up by buying them instead of you. Now her Brand can use number four denomination, while yours is...what, five?"

-“Six, beneath mine actually”, interjected the jawed man. “It doesn’t really matter Priya, don’t let it get to you. If you don’t mind, I can offer you some veteran wisdom - you can just re-furbish some old products and market them again. You get points and you satisfy your board of investors.”

-“Oh, that’s your advice?”, she thought to herself. “That’s exactly what I did right after, and even added some extras that needed to be bought separately. Still…”. She simulated applause again and tried to compliment her peer- “Right, right, you are brilliant, Joni. Thank you for that. This way, I get those geezers off my case for a while. Phew. Now, since my crisis was averted, we can proceed with the meeting, correct?”

-“In a moment”, said Robert, “ We are still waiting for Elina. Guessing she wants to do her usual entrance, especially now that her Brand had to name itself eight three years in a row. Should we give her that dignity?”

-“Embarrassing. I guess this is her last chance before her board tries to ditch her?", asked Priya, with a bit of remorse in her voice though. " Still, I tried to help her this year, even pointed her into some ways for her to, uhm, save up some points, let's say while choosing her team".

Joni just lifts an eyebrow to that, and, as if right on cue, a flurry of wild colors and sounds can be seen and heard from the virtual entrance of the shop. The awaited fourth figure makes her presence known in the form of a sparkling hologram. Using whatever advantages the virtual space gives, from bombastic and colorful explosions to sounds of extinct animals, she conjures a glowing pathway before her. 

Robert and Pryia give her a parent's smile at their six-year-old school recital, while Joni stares bored at the circus show. The guest glances hopefully at the table, takes a deep cyber breath and decides on a model runway walk to approach the group.

-“Ola, hola, bonjour. Thanks for waiting for me and I apologize for being so late, but being a CEO is quite a challenging position, as you all know”. She plays her flamboyant role for a while, making small compliments and before she could add a few more words, Robert starts speaking over her, and Elina loses all her confidence and mousily takes her seat.

-“ Ok, we are gathered, so can I officially start this meeting to talk about R.O.C or Robotics Operations Challenges!”

-“Wait, aren’t they called the Games of Enhancements?”, Joni asks. “Was the name changed?”

-“No, no, no”, stepped in Priya.” It’s the Contest of Robotics Challenges or Great Race for Enhancements. Well, at least that’s what some employees are calling it.``

Before the talks could derail more, ‌Robert took over the reins of the conversation

- ”Yes, it has many colloquial names, as you know, but the official one is The R.O.C. Alright since it’s clear that you haven’t read the manual for it, or maybe forgot about -”

-“We are busy people Robert, you can’t blame us”, Pryia cheekily responds back.

The map man waited, with his arms crossed, for a few seconds to see if anyone else wanted to interrupt him but sighed in relief when he heard the sweet silence.

- “Good, let’s go over the basics quickly, then. So eight contestants, with a robotic partner will be left in a random part of the Playground. From what I can see, all the Brands have selected their patients, as the participants are called, and registered their partners, or C.T.Ds. Afterwards, they have to traverse the planes and pass the challenges to receive an experimental enhancement at one of our clinics. We also have the ok from the RnD departments and those locations. Now, to our and the media parts.”

-“The fun parts”, added Joni with a chuckle.