It had taken more than a few greased palms, but Phineas had managed to secure a large space at the CES conference for their company.

Besides the usual kiosks with looping videos and brochures, they had set up ten large booths for people to try the VR headsets in safety.

His marketing team had worked long hours, and he was proud of what they had accomplished. Everything looked crisp and futuristic. And each graphic showcased the outstanding qualities of their new product: the AVR Explorer.

His employees had been so enamored of the devices, and especially the virtual workspace, that he had to establish a lottery to determine who would get the next batch as they rolled off the assembly line.

To minimize potential chaos, they had decided to run hourly cycles of presentation then demonstration. First, a fifteen-minute presentation, then people could line up to receive a guided demonstration of the headset and gloves.

He checked his watch. Just a few more seconds until the first presentation started. There were already a few dozen people gathered, including two faces he recognized. Both were journalists who covered technology and focused on gaming and VR.

The countdown on the large screens mounted around the space disappeared, and a young woman appeared on screen walking out of her bathroom wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt.

She grabbed something off the chair that was next to her bed and put it on. It looked like a long-sleeved shirt, but its material was translucent except for dark bands that ran down each side to a belt and along the side of the arms of the shirt.

On the nightstand beside her bed were a pair of hands sticking up from a flat white baseplate. And on each hand was a glove. She grabbed a glove and pressed it to the inside of her left forearm.

The glove stuck to her forearm as if it were made of sticky tape, then she placed the other glove against her right forearm.

After attaching the gloves to her forearms, she grabbed a headset that was small enough to almost be a pair of goggles, attached a cable from the headset to a connector on the shirt near her neck, then put on the headset.

As she donned the headset, the camera perspective changed to that of the woman's, and as the headset went over her eyes, the view briefly showed the inside of the headset before switching to show the room again. But this time, there were several icons in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

The camera view changed to show the side of her head. She reached up and grabbed an earpiece that was dangling off the headset headband and put it inside her ear. The earpiece was thin, molded to her ear, and looked like it didn't interfere with her ability to hear.

After she put on the other earpiece, the camera view switched back to her perspective.

One of the icons looked like an envelope and had a little red badge with the number 7 inside it.

The camera view briefly changed to show a closeup of her eyes and showed her looking down and to the left of the screen, which was down and to her right. Then the view changed back to the room and showed the icon next to the envelope enlarge, then shrink, then the envelope icon enlarged.

The camera view briefly switched back to a closeup of her eyes and showed her winking with her left eye, then the view switched back and showed the envelope icon depress.

The envelope icon expanded into an e-mail app window as the woman walked down the hallway and into her kitchen, where she began preparing coffee while also reading her e-mail.

To scroll the text of an e-mail, she would focus on the bottom third of the text, close her left eye, then move her right eye up the screen, dragging the text as she moved her eye.

After reading one of the e-mails, she eye-clicked the reply button, then she eye-clicked the dictate button and began speaking rapidly.

The words she spoke appeared on the screen. As she dictated her reply, she occasionally voiced changes as if she were dictating to a stenographer. Her changes were applied correctly, and she then eye-clicked send.

When her coffee was ready, she sat and took a sip of her coffee, then reached down and peeled the glove off her left forearm and put it on her left hand.

As soon as the glove was on, it shrank to fit her hand snugly and sealed against the sleeve of her translucent shirt. She repeated this with her right glove, then took another sip of coffee.

She reached up with both hands as if she were grabbing something just off-screen on either side of her head and pushed forward.

The icons that had been on the bottom left of the screen moved away from her, and the frame of a window appeared.

Her fingers were grasping the frame and pushed it away from her face, and as it receded, it became obvious that the icons were at the bottom right corner of that window.

Several more windows appeared, several of them showing code of some kind.

She looked down at her countertop, and a semi-translucent keyboard could be seen, with her coffee mug right in the middle of it. She moved her mug to one side, then began typing.

For the next few seconds, the video showed the woman editing code in several of her windows. Then, an icon began flashing along with a ringtone.

She tapped the icon with a finger, and a dialog popped up asking her if she wanted to accept a call from a co-worker. She accepted, and a man appeared just past her breakfast nook, sitting at a desk.

"Hey, Dean, what's up?" said the woman.

"Hey, Jules, sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but the deadline is approaching and I'm still struggling with this frambulator module. Can you help me, please?" said the man with a tone of desperation.

"Sure, Dean. Show me what you've got," said the young woman.

She reached out and touched his desk. He clicked something, then he and his desk swiveled around so he was sitting right next to the young woman.

He grabbed a window and pushed it over towards her. She grabbed it and began scrolling through the text on the screen.

The video switched to a fast-forward montage of the two people collaborating on their project, before they disconnected the call and the screen returned to just showing her own workspace.

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