Joe wasn’t particularly fond of having to do more simulations, they were always either way too easy or way too hard. Although that couldn’t be blamed on the scenarios, as the computer was simply deterministic, which in turn meant all its actions would always be the same in the same situation, thus making it either easy or nearly impossible to beat it, at least in Joe’s opinion.
But he didn’t complain, as all that would do is disrupt everyone for no gain, so he plugged into one of the simulation pods.

He was greeted with a virtual, globular menu around his ‘cockpit’, mission scenarios and descriptions. Only one was apparently selectable, and already had a ‘loading’ bar underneath it at 90%. While waiting for the scenario to fully load, Joe decided to check back with the specialist whether or not everything is working alright, since some of the pods had been worked on: “Any quirks left in the system, or is everything as the manual states?”

“Err, yeah, everything should be just fine and to-the-book? Are you seeing something wrong, Mr… Verona, right?”

“I am not seeing anything out of the ordinary here, I just want to make sure you didn’t overlook anything and thus render your readings unusable.”

“I am the expert on that here, but thanks for caring. As I said before, do tell if the following little mission is a bit too easy, just reminding.”

The loading bar reached 100%, and Joe promptly selected the only choice.

He was thrust into the virtual environment of the simulation proper, with the ‘fabric’ of that world going fritzy every so often, making it lag or corrupt visually. James noted this and was intrigued, mildly worried.

“Are you feeling alright? Your readings are fluctuating heavily, at best. It’s wanting to just read ‘∞%’ sometimes... You should be frying in that case!”

“I am fine, although the simulation is frequently showing heavy visual and audio artifacts, alongside lag. Were the computers downgraded?”

“No, they’re the best available. I optimized them myself when I got here. Do you have anything unusual involving your nervous system in your medical history? Brain damage, electrical accident, anything at all?”

“Not that I know, but neural resonance tests I sometimes did in private always ended up reading NaN, not a number. I thought the software was faulty and reported it to the engineers, to take a look at it. They said it was fine before the last test I did, which yielded the same result.”

“Then what the heck is wrong…? I’m looking at your plug’s firm and software and it seems as up-to-date as possible and bug-free. Whatever’s wrong, it has to be with you I guess! Do you experience anything odd when in the cockpit or what?”

“Not that I know. What happens if you undo your optimizations and read out every variable after each calculation? The values causing the errors should be apparent then.”

“Well gee with you plugged in that does have a chance to make your brain dribble out of your ears. Perhaps you should just do this later while we figure this out?”

“Fine with me, do you want a recording of the current output of the plug for testing with a dummy plug?”

“...Do I look like a corporate lackey who has access to that sorta stuff? Or am I reading you wrong?”

“No, but maybe you got one somewhere, who knows?”

“Well I don’t, although I do need one in hindsight. It’d be really useful huh? In any case, you can climb out. You’re dismissed, I guess. Unless you wanna watch the others flail around.”

“I’ll stay to watch, I have nothing better to do at the moment.” After saying those words, Joe unplugged and exited the pod.