The VR Room was on the opposite side of the building. As Misty, Angel, and I walked around the darkened movie theater hallways, I was struck by how large this theater was, despite it only having four screens.

“Misty, why do we have such a large theater here? I don’t see a lot of people frequenting this place.”

She smiled knowingly, “You don’t see that right now, but on average, there are hundreds of people who frequent this theater. We’re just in an off-season for now due to the power outages. As soon as we get back to normal operation, however, we’ll be back to being as busy as we were last season.”

“What draws such large crowds? Aren’t there other theaters with the same movies?”

“Oh! It’s the fact that we specialize in Director’s Cuts of the same movie, along with Director’s commentary for those who want that. We offer special radios for each viewer to watch the movies and listen in to a station where the director of each film can break down each scene. We’re the only theater in the nation that offers this service.”

“That does sound cool! But don’t you need a security clearance to get to this floor? How can so many people pass through to get to the theaters?”

Misty Rose wrapped her arm around my shoulder, gave me a slight squeeze, and looked at Angel, “My, my… she did forget a lot didn’t she?”

Angel shrugged and looked ahead.

Misty continued, “Madame President, one of your first motions as President was to open up the Library of Congress to anyone who wanted to learn and know. You then said that the theaters with commentary services would be open to the public as well (so long as each person checked in with the librarians below, maintained their library member card, and checked for weapons a second time at the security check by the elevator). Before you, most films were classified and not even cleared to be shared with public theaters. You changed that by making almost everything accessible with the provision that the films distributed to public theaters would be shortened versions of the original and all originals with commentary or director’s cuts would be played here. The nation loved you for your openness and transparency with data that was kept secret from the public for ages. Before you, almost everything was classified. Your whole platform was a ‘no secrets’ platform. And while the declassification of so many documents, films, and books did garner much skepticism from talking heads all over along with criticism from some leaders in our military, it’s actually counted as a success in your administration. You liberated ‘almost’ all of the knowledge for the public to know about and because of that, our democratic republic has been very strong.”

We walked up to a door painted the same color as the red walls. If you weren’t paying attention, the double doors would have been mistaken as a large utility closet. “So I said that you liberated ‘almost’ all of the classified information. Floors 7-9 contain that classified information along with this room.” She wrapped both hands around the ordinary-looking door handles and jiggled them up and down in a rhythmic sequence until she heard an unlock.

The doors opened to a spacious but ordinary-looking utility closet. Mops, brooms, buckets, vacuum cleaners, and various cleaning supplies hung neatly from shelves in the closet.

“A utility closet?”

Misty turned on a light in the closet and shut the closet door behind us. The heavy doors shut with a lock. She turned and pushed over some hanging mops to the right wall. Behind them was a retinal scanner and hand sensor.

“Madame President? Would you do the honors?”

“Me?” I looked at her surprised. I’ve never been in here before. How did I have clear— oh, right. I’m President. Of course, I have clearance. “Okay.” I let go of Angel’s arm and walked forward toward the wall.

“Just look into the retinal scanner and place your right hand on the hand scanner.” I did as she asked. A massive titanium lock unlocked and the shelf with the hanging mops swung to the left. Another doorway.

Once we walked through, we entered what looked like a small, cozy living room with theater sofas. A stone fireplace with a flatscreen TV above it was on the main wall. Some books sat on floating shelves to the left and right. There were also upright books on the floating mantle above the fireplace.

“Cozy room!” I said as I almost plopped myself onto the plush sofa.

“Actually, I need you and Angel to stand right there.” Misty pointed to the stone hearth. Angel and I stood with Misty on the hearth. Misty turned toward the fireplace and tipped one of the books forward toward her. Like a scene out of a children’s book, the hearth spun delivering us into another room. A VR room.

The room was dark except for black lights that made our light clothing and the light paint around the room shine. As we stepped off, I could hear the stone hearth swivel back to the other room. Misty walked over to the right wall and flipped a switch.

As my eyes adjusted to the bright lights, I was struck by how cool this space looked. Five omnidirectional VR treadmills stood side by side. VR headsets were charging and attached to the tops of the sliding poles that supported a pulley system with a heavily padded harness like that of a zipline harness or spelunking harness. A projector hung from the ceiling above facing a blank wall.

“So cool!” Angel helped me up on one of the treadmills then jumped up to the one right next to it. I looked at him unsure. “It’s totally safe! See! You can strap yourself in…like this.” He pulled the ‘spelunking’ straps over his chest, waist and legs and buckled himself in. “You won’t fall. This holds you in place.”

I followed suit and strapped myself in. The apparatus suspended me in the air with the right amount of gravitational tension that I needed to feel like I was supporting myself but not exactly “falling”. A small tray sat on top of balance rails around the treadmill. A small water bottle sat conveniently on the tray. I couldn’t help but notice a stark lack of handsets to go with the VR headset. As I placed my very thick glasses on the tray and pulled on the headset, I asked, “No handset?”

Misty replied, “Nope. You paid for the very latest technology in this room. The goggles have so many sensors, they can track all hand and foot movement. They can also sense everything about you such as eye tracking, breath control, heart rate and so much more. The goggles have bone conduction technology to allow you to hear all sounds in the experience and even the thoughts of the person we’re experiencing things through. Lastly, those bad boys can connect with the room, pulley system, and treadmill to really give you an immersive experience. So if for instance, we’re looking at some footage and you’re swimming, the whole room will simulate that near-weightless and wet experience. The goggles will send a signal to your nervous system that simulates feeling wet and cold. The pulleys can support your weight to feel weightless and, say for instance, you try to walk on the sand on the ocean floor, the treadmill can simulate how it would feel to walk on sand with the precise amount of friction and slip. And that’s just a day at the beach! Real state of the art.

“Because of how much detail this room gives you with each piece of footage we review, there’s really zero need to interrogate someone anymore. We just review the security footage in this room, choose from which person’s point of view we want to see things, and then reenact the entire scene. For major court cases, this helps us review a case in an unbiased view, you know. And for the most part, it also keeps us out of hot water from a human rights point of view. Ya know? No hard tactics here. But it also means that we have cameras just about everywhere.”

I was beyond impressed. Through the goggles, I couldn’t help staring at all of the elements of this secret room. I also loved that it matched my eyesight prescription perfectly. While Angel and I prepped ourselves, Misty entered yet another room toward the opposite side of the mantle. She walked out of it holding what looked like a debit card. She shuffled past us to the computer against the wall closest to the spinning hearth.

“Found it!” She said as she swiped the card through a card reader and typed away. I spun to face her, trying to get used to the apparatus. “What’s that?”

“This VR room can playback all security footage in full dimension. That means you’ll be able to feel, hear, taste, smell, and touch everything caught on camera in this realm and many other realms beyond this one. This info is so classified that I need to access a hidden security clearance card that’s usually kept in a safe where the code changes every few hours. If this card leaves this room, the whole realm goes on lockdown. Or at least it should do that while power works.”

“What happens in this room when we lose power?”

“Everything’s secure in here, but the problem is we’ll all be stuck in here. No one can enter and no one can leave.”

I observed the computer she was accessing this footage from. It was just a smaller flat monitor embedded into the wall. A keyboard and mouse rested on a floating shelf. “Is that a computer you’re looking this up on?” I asked.

“Oh, this is just a monitor that’s connected to the supercomputer. If you walk through the library, you’ll see several of these stations embedded into the walls and pillars for librarians and guests to access. This one, however, is the only monitor that can access the security footage record.”

She continued to enter keychain after password after verification code to get from one encrypted file to another encrypted file. “How far back did we want to go?” she asked.

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