Inside the Fulfillment Center

The fulfillment center is visible from anywhere in the surrounding area. Four shiny black walls, approximately fifty stories tall, reflecting the sun. The structure dwarfs every building around it. You enter through the revolving door at the base.

A narrow tunnel lit by long tubes of purple neon. The hair stands up on your arms — the air is charged with a low-level electromagnetic field that eliminates foreign microbes in approximately fifteen seconds. Most participants find it invigorating. Some describe a slight metallic taste. The process ensures the biological integrity of the facility's systems.

A quiet, dimly lit room with a long counter staffed by vedders in red coveralls. A vedder pricks your finger — just the pinkie, over in a second — and feeds the sample into a diagnostic system for a full bio workup. While your profile processes, a silver wrist controller is snapped into place: two inches wide, three flush buttons, your connection to support and safety for the duration of your session. Behind the counter, a portrait of a serious-looking young boy in a blue jumpsuit. That's Dr. Zetlin. He was eight years old.

The center of the facility is a hollow core — look up from the base and you can see all the way to the apex. A central tube runs floor to ceiling, housing elevators for rapid vertical transit. Off this tube, hundreds of walkways spread like spokes at different levels, reaching the inner walls. Hundreds of tiers with balconies ringing all the way around. Every few feet: a door. Behind every door: a cubicle. A small white light beside each one. When it's lit, someone's home.

Simple and sterile, like an exam room. No furniture. One round silver disk — three feet wide — on the back wall. A square silver control panel beside it with rows of flat, unmarked buttons and a narrow readout screen. Press a button and the disk opens, revealing a circular tube stretching seven feet into the wall. A white table slides out. You lie down. The table retracts. The disk seals behind you. The space is close — only inches above your face. Your body grows heavy. Then something touches you — a breeze, a texture, a familiar warmth. The transition has begun.

While you experience your reality, a long glass-walled corridor at the base of the facility hums with quiet activity. Approximately two hundred workstations — enclosed cubicles with high-backed chairs, wing-mounted displays, silver control panels — are staffed by phaders in blue jumpsuits. Each monitors roughly thirty active sessions. Six thousand concurrent feeds under observation. If anything in your session drifts outside normal parameters, your phader knows before you do.