If I reposition my head just so, I can get the virtual drone to line up in front of a bright office lamp and perceive that it is faintly transparent, but that hint does not impede the strong sense of it being present.

It is a virtual object, but there is no evidence of pixels or digital artifacts in its three-dimensional fullness. Intellectually, I know this drone is an elaborate simulation, but as far as my eyes are concerned it’s really there, in that ordinary office. I’m seeing all this through a synthetic-reality headset. It looks as real as the lamps and computer monitors around it. All the while it hums and slowly rotates above a desk. I step back across the room to view it from afar. I can see polishing swirls where the metallic surface was “milled.” When I raise a hand, it approaches and extends a glowing appendage to touch my fingertip. Bending closer, I bring my face to within inches of it to inspect its tiny pipes and protruding armatures. I can squat to look at its ornate underside.

I can walk around it and examine it from any angle. Inside, amid the low gray cubicles, clustered desks, and empty swivel chairs, an impossible 8-inch robot drone from an alien planet hovers chest-high in front of a row of potted plants. There is something special happening in a generic office park in an uninspiring suburb near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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