A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
Allegra: So how does it feel?
Ted: What?
Allegra: Your real life. The one you came back for.
Ted: It feels completely unreal.
Allegra: You’re stuck now, aren’t ya? You want to go back to the Chinese restaurant because there’s nothing happening here. We’re safe. It’s boring.
Ted: It’s worse than that. I’m not sure… I’m not sure here, where we are, is real at all. This feels like a game to me. And you, you’re beginning to feel a bit like a game character.
Ted: Free will is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.
Allegra: It’s like real life. There’s just enough to make it interesting.
Ted: What was your life like before?
Gas: Before?
Ted: Before it was changed by Allegra Geller.
Gas: I operated a gas station.
Ted: You still operate a gas station, don’t you?
Gas: Only on the most pathetic level of reality.
Ted: It’s none of your business who sent us! We’re here and that is all that matters… God, what happened? I didn’t mean to say that.
Allegra: It’s your character who said it. It’s kind of a schizophrenic feeling, isn’t it? You’ll get used to it. There are things that have to be said to advance the plot and establish the characters, and those things get said whether you want to say them or not. Don’t fight it.
Allegra: What the hell was that?
Ted: That wasn’t me. That was my game character. I wouldn’t have done that. Not here anyway.
Allegra: Our characters are obviously supposed to jump on each other. It’s probably a pathetically mechanical attempt to heighten the emotional tension of the next game sequence. No use fighting it.