You all arrive in the waiting room of T.A.U.'S Locus facilities. After a small wait, an infomorph attendant signals you to enter Professor Ming's office through the nearby door.
The door opens to reveal a shielded glass dome. Plants thrive in the rocky arrangements around you and a small artificial stream runs in a large arc, separating the dome in half.
A hologram of Professor Ming is sleeved in a Chinese genotype menton morph and sitting at his sculpted oak desk. He invites you to take a seat (if you'd like) and then begins:
"Welcome to Locus, I hope your trip here was a pleasant one. I have called you here as it is the last known location of Tara Yu, our missing researcher."
He leans forward on his desk and continues:
"T.A.U. needs you to find her. To the best of our knowledge, Yu was most recently investigating the current whereabouts of military computer hardware recovered from a station in Earth orbit that was destroyed during the Fall, in the Battle of L4. Yu has been missing for over a month now. Long silences are not unusual during some of her undercover research missions, but she missed her last scheduled check-in. Last we knew, she was on Locus. We need you to track her down, ascertain her status if alive, recover her cortical stack if dead, and if necessary continue or assist her search for the missing hardware."
He takes a small pause.
"The simplest solution would be to interview her backups, but her insurance policies prohibit resleeving before the specified period is over. Assuming you can prove she is dead, they will resleeve her."
"Sadly, I cannot provide you with operational funds until you show reliable evidence. If you do provide such evidence however, T.A.U. administration will most likely agree to liberate funds for egocasting or equipment."

"If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, I would like you to introduce yourselves and I'll be on my way back to Titan."