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"Do you feel better now?" she asked.
"Yes, much. Thank you for asking."
She chuckled. "I wondered why you were Mr. Grumpy one minute and Mr. Polite the next. Your tummy has been bothering you on and off."
Nodding, he leaned over to the side table and picked up his drink. "Now that I feel better, I remember you thought this cruise was for Perfect Match employees. What made you think that?"
She tilted her head. "It isn’t?"
"Not as far as I know."
"So, who is it for?"
"I think it's mostly Kian's family and friends."
So, Kian was the name of the secret partner. He was the guy whom Tom had called to ask if he could bring her and Margo along, so it made sense.
"Yeah, well, he and his wife own half of Perfect Match Virtual Fantasy Studios, so it might be a combined event."
"I didn't know that." Doug finished his drink and put it on the side table. "I've seen the ads on television. Is the experience as good as they claim?"
"I've never done it myself, but I hear it's amazing." Frankie took a long slurp of her mojito and dove into telling Doug about Tom and Mia falling in love in a Perfect Match adventure. She omitted the part about Mia regrowing her legs because she wasn't supposed to tell anyone about it, but she told him about the Swiss heart clinic Tom had taken Mia to and the miracle treatment she'd received there. "That's why Tom bought half of Perfect Match. He wanted them to have access to it whenever they wanted."
"That sounds very romantic. I might have to try one of those adventures and see for myself."
"They are very costly." Frankie sighed. "That's why I wanted to become a beta tester for the adventures and help Mia develop new ones. There was no way I could afford them on what I was making as a glorified secretary."
He frowned. "I was not aware of a position titled glorified secretary. How is it different from a regular secretary?"
Was he teasing her?
He seemed perfectly serious, though. How was it possible that he had never heard that expression?
"An executive assistant is a glorified title for a secretary, and that was my job until two weeks ago. I'm supposed to start working for Perfect Match after the cruise. I assumed that all the employees were here, so I couldn't start right away, but that was silly of me. There is no way that all the studios worldwide are closed for ten days so every employee can be here. It must be just the company's top executives with a few key employees, and they are the only ones who can handle hiring new people."
Dagor
Interesting. So, the clan of immortals was involved with the Perfect Match Studios. Given the amount of advertising on network television and cable, it was a successful enterprise, and the clan was making a lot of money. The question was whether they used Anumatian technology to create the interface.
When Dagor had seen the ads, he'd dismissed Perfect Match as an overhyped multiplayer video game that was also trying to be a matchmaking service. But if the clan contributed advanced programming to the enterprise, it could be all that it promised to be.
On Anumati, entertainment of this kind was trendy, but no one expected to find their perfect match there. It was pure escapism and didn't require being hooked up to the contraptions he'd seen in those ads. It was as simple as crossing a threshold and stepping into the virtual world. Every patrol ship had several rooms that provided entertainment during the long intervals of travel between planets.
Stasis was practical for the extended period of time required for travel from Anumati to the sector the patrol ship was about to cover and for the return trip. However, it wasn't practical while they were actually performing the duty of checking on the different planets the gods had seeded in that sector.
"Doug? Is your stomach bothering you again?" Frankie looked at him with genuine worry in her expressive blue eyes.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize that I had zoned out." He smiled to reassure her that he didn't have stomach issues. "I'm fine."
"What were you thinking about?" she asked.
"About Perfect Match and wanting to try out an adventure. Would you like to go on one with me?"
If she said no, he would know that there was someone else, but if she said maybe, a committed relationship was not a factor. He could initiate a hookup for tonight.
"I don't know." Her heartbeat accelerated. "We've just met, and as you know, those adventures are romantic. Also, I can't afford it unless we can beta test for the company. The sessions cost nearly four thousand dollars."
That was so expensive that most people couldn't afford it.
