I left Dalton by his desk. I'd written the world and entity ID on my arm; I didn't need to stick around Dalton any longer. As I navigated the vacant eyes and cold stares of the other employees, wandering down the passageway, I rolled down my sleeve and concealed those numbers - walking toward the far side of the office where the elevators stood. I pressed the button next to the elevator. Waiting, waiting, waiting...

I tapped my foot in frustration.

Eventually, the elevator doors opened as I stood there, and a crowd of people rushed from the lifts. They almost stampeded me as they all stormed out like lethargic bulls, and as they left, I quickly dodged out of the way as a myriad of elbows and briefcase threatened to knock me across the floor. After a moment, most of them had dispersed - blending in amid all the other torpid drones that littered the office cubicles.

I gripped my manilla folder tightly as I stepped into the elevator - pushing the button for floor 44.  

The doors slowly closed with a janky mechanical movement. As the elevator rose, I stared awkwardly around the claustrophobic cell as I waited for its ascent. Bored in the elevator, I pulled out the manilla file, and read into it in a little more detail.

"Andy Waters, 27," it read. 

As I glanced through the pages, it told small parts of a life story - not much more than Vincent had already imparted to me. A bit about poetry earlier in her life, but not much more than I'd already been told. The only really interesting thing that I had learned from the file was that Vincent liked his coffee dark: I gathered that much from the coffee droplets he'd slopped all across the second page. I guess if I was going to find anything, I was going to have to find it upstairs. Staring blankly into the manilla folder, I heard the Pavlovian chimes of the elevator as it reached the 44th floor, and - as if on instinct alone, I began to move.

Waltzing out of the elevator, I stared at the hundreds of identical Inspeculator machines that lined the corridors of this place. They were massive machines, made out of a sleek white material with the faint glow of some magical residue. Up here, you could smell the crisp scent of mana-burn drifting upon the air, an ever-present aroma that seemed to assail the nose with a smell somewhere between spearmint and charcoal.

While I looked up at them, A young attendant lady approached me with a ebony clipboard and an ersatz smile. She was a short gnomish girl, barely 4 foot tall, with a set of circular-rimmed glasses that seemed nearly as large as her face was.   

"Hi, how can I help you?" She asked with feigned enthusiasm.

"I was looking to grab an Inspeculator for an hour," I answered. 

"An hour?" The young woman asked. "That's a bit longer than our bookings usually go up here...."

"I know," I interrupted. "I like to work methodically."

As the girl stared back at me with a blank expression on her face, she looked down at the clipboard, slowly glancing through the pages. After a moment, she looked back up at me.

"Can I see your ID pass?" she asked.

Stretching my arm, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the laminated talisman from my pocket. Grabbing a small runic stone from her own pocket, she placed it against the circular symbol on the front of the card. The stone shone with emerald intensity.

"Not a problem," she said. "It looks like Unit #47 is available for use, but only for forty-five minutes, I'm afraid."

"...That'll have to do," I replied reluctantly.

Wandering down the passages of machines, I saw a young man emerge from one of the hulking contraptions in a state of near-delirium as he stumbled down the railed steps. The Inspeculators could really knock you around if you didn't know what you were doing: they still knocked me around a fair bit, honestly. I wondered; how much more would it knock me around, considering how little I'd slept?

These things took some serious mental acuity... and I wasn't exactly "mentally adroit" right now, in any sense of the word.

"Right this way," she directed. 

At the gesture of her hand, we wandered down the corridor - passing rows and rows of machines. '44, 45, 46, 47,' I counted, as we reached the old and wearied Inspeculator unit. It seemed much older than many of the others, with dents across the exterior and a coating of white paint that was slowly flaking - revealing the metallic chassis beneath. The attendant pulled the lever, turning on the machine as it whirred with prismatic radiance.

"Have you got a Client ID for the machine?" She asked.

Looking down at the file, I repeated the endless string of numbers listed at the top. "549-826-303-474-1, Andy Waters," I told her. Punching the numbers into the console, I could feel the arcane resonance deep in my gut as the machine pulsated: connecting with the client. The burst of energy was nearly nauseating, and I wasn't even in the machine yet. The feeling reminded me of my adventuring days; it was not a particularly welcome reminder. I gripped my mouth from the gut-wrenching feeling, steeling myself as the pulses began to fade in intensity.

Well, if I vomit in the machine, I vomit in the machine - not much I can do about it.

As the hood of the machine raised, I put the case file on the control panel by the machine, and clambered up the railed steps. Looking into the cockpit, I saw sweat-stains covering the seats - the pungent odour stinking up the interior.

"There's sweat all over the seat in here," I called to the assistant. "It stinks!"

"Cover your nose," she replied. "Sorry, but we don't have the equipment to clean these things."

She was lying of course. The only equipment she needed was a damp rag, and they'd probably have that in the break room - not that any of us spent enough time on break in this job to really get acquainted with the break room's interior. I sighed. I only had 45 minutes in this machine, and I wasn't going to waste five of them on cleaning the seat: hell, I probably smelled just as bad as the seat anyway. I pinched my nose as I stepped into the cockpit. As the lid slowly closed over my head, the chamber was enveloped in darkness.

I braced myself for what would come next.