Robert Punjabi was not an especially confident young man. Neither was he particularly insecure. What he was, more than anything else, was sensible. And about to take a risk. He felt jazzed up and more than a little queasy.
For one last time, Robert read the cover of the glossy, four-page Sunday supplement from a Nexus Times-Bugle:
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Put your fantasies to the test.
Explore the border where imagination meets reality.
Free the adventurer within.
REALITIES-R-US
Excursions custom designed to suit your needs while maintaining the highest standards of personal safety made available by Nexus' finest security professionals.
Call 1-800-YESYOUCAN.x47
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Robert flipped to the long list of expert endorsements.
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"Truth made manifest! Dabblers in the arts, beware. You are now without excuse. Realities-R-Us presents all who profess to love artistic expression with the opportunity to flesh out their aspirations, to put their butts where their mouth has been. Pursue this at any cost." -Trajan, Director of Nexus Academy of Performance Art
"Realities-R-Us provides a valuable service. Seekers will find direction for their pilgrimage. By putting one's desires to the test, one may sift subjective speculations of faith through the sieve of objective experience. Given any awareness at all, one cannot help but be changed by such an excursion. A greater knowledge of the perVasive OneNess is very nearly guaranteed. I commend Realities-R-Us to you all." - The Real Reverend T.J.X. Eusebius IIX
"The dedicated professionals on the whole-health team at Realities-R-Us prepare travellers for the chance of a lifetime. Once equipped for emotional breakthrough, anyone can benefit from a R-R-U excursion. Pursue with me these visions of healing -- compulsive conformists and weary workers safely unveil their repressed identimodes with utter psychoparental permission. Silent sex kittens will learn to purr. Timid warriors will flex their muscles in the sun. The secretly starving will be suckled. And it's all protected by the patented RealityRecall safety retreat technology." - Virginia Woo, PhD and author of the bestseller Who? Me?
"Never before have I encountered individuals more familiar with the gelatinous fringe that separates this multifaceted baseness from Those Who Are and Those Who Wait, other than myself. Truly may it be said that where I have been, they have gone, or will go. I can offer no higher recommendation to those thirsting after Athena's blessed fount, of which I have drunk to giddiness." - Luminous Frank, provider of esoteric services.
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Robert scowled. Since HGI had laid him off and left him with a bundle of severance credits he had no particular designs for spending; the timing was not going to get any better.
Robert picked up the phone.
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