Cal was studying the strange tangles of machinery embedded into the ceiling, almost resembling equipment from the car workshop he'd recently been hired at, or factory floors he'd worked in previously. If this really was a game of some kind, he wondered if it was an artificial reality setup, controlled by their real-world movement - but he saw no obvious display or headsets.

This sort of thing could only happen to Tess. Most people barely got functional pipes or a leakless roof when they bought property at auction, but she'd happened upon a whole extra room of gadgets. Cal had always considered her a perennial mess, too chaotic to maintain...