A/N: Takes place after the first episode of the short-lived TV show "VR.5" (1995).

Dial Carefully

"Duncan, I have to experiment a little before I'll even consider working for Dr. Morgan and his committee; I need to know more about how this thing works." Sydney Bloom sat in her apartment in front of her computer, VR goggles pushed up over her hair and wearing her special gloves for the experience. The computer screen showed that it was awaiting a location to load the setting.

"I don't suppose I can convince you that knowing that you don't know is knowledge in itself?" Duncan was a great friend that Sydney had known forever, but sometimes he was just a little too philosophical for her. Maybe it was from working with communication equipment at Tel Cal for too long, but she felt sometimes knowledge just wasn't a substitute for actually doing something. Duncan, as he leaned against a wall behind her, seemed content to contemplate his navel or expand his consciousness or whatever it was called now.

"Nope. I've going to try and get into the head of Dr. Morgan; I've got his private contact number written down here and as long as he answers his phone I'll get a peek into what I might be getting into. I've modeled the office where I first met him as the landscape." She pulled the crumpled paper out of her pocket and studied it. The last digit had been smudged and wasn't easy to make out as she tried to smooth the paper before she stared at it with her phone in her hand, pausing.

"Getting second thoughts? Perhaps the Great Syd is gaining wisdom at last and Los Angeles has gained another sage. That is if it has any to begin with."

"No, I just can't quite make out the last number." She dialed the first six numbers. "Here goes..." she said as she dialed her first guess. A man answered "Hello?" and she slammed the phone into her modem's cradle. She was rewarded with the tunnel effect she had experienced before as she was transported into the virtual reality.

Whooosh.

Once again, she found that the colors around her were changed as though the hues were almost randomly chosen. But it wasn't the office she had modeled; not quite. It still bore the general layout she had replicated, but the storage drawers of bones the office previously had were replaced with some type of metal cabinets with wide handles. She pulled one open and was assaulted with heat; it was an oven, and a pizza oven at that. Looking down, she saw she was wearing a red apron.

"Whatta are you doing?" a voice said from her right.

She turned and faced a very heavy man with a matching apron and a stained chef's hat; in his hand was a large mass of dough. It wasn't Dr. Morgan - that was for sure. "I, ah..."

"Don't stoppa now!" he said in a stereotypical Italian accept. "Weya falling behind; hurry, get oven 1!" Sydney looked around and saw an oven with a '1' on it and hopped in front. She found some sort of long-handled, wide spatula in her hand that wasn't there a minute ago. Opening the oven, she slipped it under the pizza and pulled it out; it was five feet wide but somehow she was able to extract it. "Go, the customers he wait!"

Sydney saw a double swinging door and headed toward it, backing through and turning around with her steaming treat into a restaurant that had nothing but empty tables except for a short, elderly couple in the center. She whisked the pizza over to the table and slid it down onto the table's Lazy Susan. For a moment she watched the couple devour several pieces in seconds, not even chewing. She backed away from the feeding frenzy and hurriedly returned to the kitchen, but as she pushed through the doors she found herself in a long corridor. She heard a rumble and looked up in time to see a giant meatball rolling down upon her from above. Fleeing in terror, she ran in the opposite direction and as she ran she could feel the sauce from the rolling meatball splatter her from behind as it got closer. She could even imagine she smelled the spices that were in the meat as she was gained on by the mass. Not far up ahead she saw a door and as she touched the handle to attempt to open it an electrical discharge enveloped the room before she found herself sitting in front of her computer again.

Sydney pushed her goggles back and took several deep breaths trying to calm down. She looked over at Duncan. "Wrong number" she explained as she went on to describe her experience.

"You must have called a pizza place" Duncan suggested. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you watched 'Raiders' recently too."

"I didn't wa...oh wait, I guess I did yesterday. Okay, I know it doesn't look like a '1' and now I know it's not a '2'." She wrote down the numbers one through nine and crossed off the first two. A quick gulp of water and she was ready to go again.

She repeated the procedure ending the number with a '3'. A recording on the other end played several tones and told her it was no longer in service. "We move on to '4' now."

A woman's voice answered and a flustered Sydney slammed the phone on the modem accidentally instead of hanging up.

Whooosh.

"Try using water, honey"

Sydney took stock of where she was, starting with the bikini she was wearing and the rubber gloves on her hand. She held a large sponge in one hand, probably matching the bucket that sat at her feet as she stood beside a station wagon very much like her father's the night Dr. Joesph Bloom and her sister Samantha died in a car accident. As she shifted her view, she could see cars lined up in rows to the rear that disappeared into the distance beneath a sign that read "Big Al's Caar Bazaar".

"They only get dirtier the longer you wait sweetie. Now hurry up and wash 'em or we can't sell 'em!" A lady with a huge nametag bearing "Marge" pointed in the other direction. A chain-link fence held back a mob of people pushed against the barrier; a closed gate had a sign reading "Customer Entrance".

"All of them?" Sydney asked.

"Look dear, you took the job after we offered it to you. Now, you've got all your tools you need; bucket, water, soap, sponge. Figure it out." Marge turned and headed between a space in the cars toward a building in the distance.

Giving herself time to think, Sydney dunked the sponge in the soapy water and started scrubbing the first car while she pondered what to do next while she barely managed to hear some comments from the crowd.

"Good enough for government work!"

"You missed a spot!"

"Skip to the green one, that's mine!"

She wondered how she was supposed to rinse the cars, but noticed as she wiped the surface that it instantly dried clean. That was something at least but it didn't help her get out. She worked her way around to the back, and as she started to wipe down the license plate she barely noticed it had a Tel Cal plate frame before seeing the familiar electrical effect that brought her back to the apartment again.

"Now where were you?" Duncan asked.

"Washing cars in a huge car lot."

"Clean habits, clean mind" Duncan quipped as he looked around the cluttered apartment. "Of course there are always exceptions."

She marked off the '4' and took a deep breath uttering "Let's do this" before trying again by ending the number in a '5'.

Busy signal.

"Busy. That can't be his because their system has line rollover."

"Better reload your setting again, it looks like it defaulted to nothing after your first call" Duncan suggested.

Sydney initialized the office setting again and marked the last number off her list, and then tried again with a '6'.

A man's voice that was Dr. Morgan's said "Hello..."

Whooosh.

Sydney now found herself back in the office. No pizza ovens this time, but the storage bins had something moving inside that weren't the bones that she had seen in the real setting. She walked up to a rack of the shelves and stooped to look inside, only to find that she couldn't tell what it was. She pulled out a drawer and found a two-dimensional person moving about and talking silently on the drawer's shallow bottom, oblivious to Sydney. A noise startled her from behind.

"At the tone, you and your message will be stored for later retrieval" a robot spoke as it reached for her.

Sydney pulled back and backed away from the machine asking "Who are you?" As she continued to back away, the sound of a telephone ringing filled the room followed by an announcement.

"Hello, this is Dr. Frank Morgan. I'm away from the phone right now but if you leave a message at the tone I'll get back to you. Beep!"

After the beep a man appeared several feet away and began talking. "Hello Frank, this is Bill. Your appointment for Tuesday got pushed back to 4pm. Let me know if that doesn't work for you." After the man was finished speaking, another robot appeared and grabbed the man; in a flash he changed into a light pulse and streaked to a drawer, which closed.

"I'm inside an answering machine?" Sydney screamed. She looked around frantically and suddenly remembered the door from her first wrong number. Spying the door, she ran toward it.

"Wait, you haven't left a messa..." the robot started to say as she reached for the knob, touching it and being rewarded with the return effect.

Sydney snapped off her goggles and pulled off her gloves.

"Well?"

"Right number, but I got an answering machine. I think."

"If he even knows or suspects what you can do, he probably screens his calls now. If he didn't already, that is. I know I would; I'll give him credit for that" Duncan admired.

"I don't think I want to work for someone that I can't reach when I need answers" Sydney mused.

"Let's hope you have a choice, Syd."

The End

A/N: A short-lived show, and although it was done with a small budget and 1995 technology still not a bad effort. We got some character building and story arc through the season, not just the oft used "what happened last week doesn't count" episode style.