Death Dream Page 4

CHAPTER 4

  Angela had desperately wanted her father to take her to school on this first day, but Daddy had stayed home to help unpack. And Mommy had been busy with little Phil, like she almost always was. Angela loved her baby brother, of course, but ever since he had been born Mommy had less and less time for her.

  Her only friend was Amanda, the thumb-sized doll that her grandmother Emerson had made for her out of knitting yarn when she had been just a little girl, back in Dayton. Amanda was faded and frayed, but Angie had slipped her into the pocket of her jeans. She needed a friend with her this first day in a strange new school. She knew that Amanda was only an imaginary friend, but that was better than being all alone among strangers

  Mr. Muncrief had been nice, though. His car was totally hot and he walked her all the way into the school building and right to her classroom. It made her feel important because all the teachers and grownups in the school seemed to know Mr. Muncrief. He was an important man.

  Her teacher, Mrs. O'Connell, made Angela feel pretty much at home right away.

  "This is a brand-new school," she explained to Angela, "so everyone here is a newcomer."

  She brought Angela to the front of the classroom and introduced her. "Angela has come to us from Dayton, Ohio," she explained. "Is that the farthest any of us have come from?"

  The kids buzzed among themselves for a moment, then several hands shot up eagerly. After a few minutes the class decided that the one who had come the farthest distance was a blond, good-looking boy from Santa Barbara, California. His name was Gary Rusic.

  Angela did not have to say anything more than "Hello," to them all and when she smiled she kept her lips closed so nobody could see the braces on her teeth. She wormed her hand into the pocket of her jeans and felt Amanda there, comforting and familiar. Then she noticed that several of the girls wore braces and she felt a little better.

  "This is a different kind of school," Mrs. O'Connell told the class once Angela had taken the seat assigned to her. The students' desks were scattered around the room, not lined up in rigid rows the way they had been back in Ohio.

  Pointing to the six doors at the rear of the room, Mrs. O'Connell said, "We're going to be using virtual reality programs and games quite a bit. I know you're going to like them, because instead of listening to me tell you things or reading things out of a book, the virtual reality system will allow you to go places and do things so that you'll be in the places you're supposed to be learning about."

  Angela felt a little confused about that. Daddy worked on virtual reality stuff, she knew that. But she could not imagine how the things he did could be used here in school.

  She quickly found out.

  There were only eighteen students in the class, and Mrs. O'Connell divided them into three groups. Angela was in the second group. She read from a brand-new textbook about how the Native Americans lived before Columbus discovered the New World. But she kept one eye on the back of the room, where Mrs. O'Connell was helping the first six kids into the booths back there.

  After a while the teacher returned to the front of the room and started talking with the children about life in America before the Europeans arrived. Angela paid attention with only half her mind, wondering what the kids were doing in those booths.

  Half an hour later, the first group came out of the booths, smiling happily as if they had been to a movie or a party or something. Angela felt a little excited as Mrs. O'Connell got them settled back at the desks and then called for the next six to go to the booths. It was dark inside. Small as a telephone booth, but instead of a phone there was a little bench to sit on and a shelf with a funny kind of plastic helmet resting on it. Like a biker's helmet, only a set of wires came out of it. The wires were wrapped in coils of metal, just like the telephone wire in a public booth. Mrs. O'Connell helped Angela put on the helmet and wriggle her fingers into the fuzzy gloves that had been inside it.

  "It will get completely dark for a few moments," she said as she slid the visor down over Angela's eyes. Her voice was muffled by the helmet's padding. "You're not frightened of the dark, are you?"

  "A little," Angela confessed.

  "It will only be for a moment or two."

  It got very dark. Pitch black. Angela heard the door of the booth click shut. She reached out with her gloved hands and touched the walls of the booth. She felt scared. "It's all right," she whispered to Amanda. "Don't be afraid." Then she saw colors. Like a sunset, only these colors shifted and swirled around and then . . .

  She was in a forest. Big trees rising all around her, their leafy canopies almost blotting out the sun. The sweet smell of grass and pine. Flowering bushes everywhere. Birds calling back and forth, flickering in and out among the trees in darting flashes of brilliant color. It wasn't like watching a movie. She was in the forest. She walked among the trees, eyes goggling. The mossy ground felt soft and a little springy beneath her feet. A deer peeked at her from between some bushes, its big brown eyes limpid, its ears twitching. It was beautiful.

  "This is the forest home of the Iroquois," said a man's voice, "as it existed more than five hundred years ago."

  The voice spoke about the Native Americans for a few more minutes. Then suddenly Angela was lifted off her feet, rising through the trees, soaring above them. She was flying! Flying above the swaying tops of the trees, racing along in the sun-warmed air like a bird, an eagle, high above the ground.

  "And this," said the voice, "is the home of another tribe of Native Americans: the Aztecs."

  From her high eagle's vantage Angela saw a mighty city built on islands in a huge lake. Streets and houses and temples built atop steep stone pyramids.

  "Mexico City," said the voice. "The largest city in the world. The year is AD fifteen hundred. Would you like to explore this city?"

  "Yes!" Angela answered. She wanted to shout, but she was so excited all she could do was whisper. "Yes!"

  "My name's Gary Chan," said the Asian-American, after he and Dan had slipped out of the dank, hot control room.

  Dan shook his hand as he asked, "You work for Jace?"

  Chan grinned. "Who doesn't? When he needs somebody to run the board for him or some other errands. He rubs his lamp and we obey."

  They were standing in the hallway outside the control room. Dan studied the youngster's face. Not quite as inscrutable as the proverbial Oriental should be. Dan recognized the eager look in his eyes.

  "You said you wanted to show me something."

  Trying to sound casual, Chan said, "While we're waiting for Jace I thought I might as well show you some of the stuff I've been doing."

  "Okay. Good." Dan followed him down the hallway.

  "Jake's doing the conflict games," Chan said. "The rest of us have been putting together the simpler stuff." He was still trying to appear nonchalant, but the excitement in his voice showed through.

  Dan knew that ParaReality's main business was to create an amusement park using VR instead of the mechanical games and rides of older parks like Disney World.

  "Conflict games?" Dan asked.

  "Like the baseball sim," Chan replied, opening a door. "Two people can play against one another."

  "They've been doing that for years in video arcades."

  "Chan almost scowled. "Yeah, and they call that simpleminded junk virtual reality. It's as crude as cave paintings. Have you ever tried one?"

  Dan nodded. The kid was right. Those so-called VR systems he had seen at arcades were little more than video games, primitive and boring.

  The door Chan opened led into another control booth. Smaller. Simpler. The VR chamber beyond the one-way glass was also smaller than the one Jace was using.

  "I've been doing the travel sims," Chan explained he slipped into the only chair in the narrow booth and powered up the console. "Want to try one?"

  Dan wanted to see Jace. But he replied, "Why not?"

  Chan smiled boyishly. "There's a helmet and gloves over on the shelf. You know how to hook yourself up, don
't you?"

  "Sure."

  In a few minutes Dan was sitting in the chair placed in the middle of the otherwise empty VR chamber. The gloves felt stiff as he flexed his fingers; the helmet slightly unbalanced, as if it wanted to slide forward on his head. He saw his own reflection in the one-way glass, looking tight-lipped and slightly suspicious. He loosened his tie some more and waited.

  "You can slide the visor down now." He heard Chan's voice in the helmet earphones. "This sim is called Space Race."

  "Okay." Dan pulled the dark visor over his eyes. "I'm ready."

  All at once he was sitting at the controls of a futuristic spacecraft. Beyond its windows he saw a field of stars and several other spacecraft hovering in the dark emptiness.

  "Seven . . . six . . . five . . ." intoned a voice. Dan saw the displays on the console in front of him light up like a Christmas tree. Shit, he thought. Another goddamned cockpit simulation.

  "Two . . . one . . . BLAST OFF!"

  The lurch of acceleration caught him unaware and slammed him back into the cushions of his chair. All the other spacecraft sprouted dazzling flame from their rocket nozzles and streaked out of his view.

  "Malfunction! Malfunction!" his ship's computer blared. "Main thrusters have misfired. We are on a collision course for Space Station Alpha."

  Dan saw the space station rushing toward him, its spindle shape revolving slowly like the hands of a clock as his ship gyrated wildly. He felt the jerks and shudders of his ship in the pit of his stomach.

  "Manual override!" the computer voice urged. "Manual override!"

  Dan grabbed the two control sticks as the space station loomed bigger and bigger. He knew this was a game, a simulation. Yet his hands were sweaty and his stomach was hollow, queasy.

  The station hurtled toward him, close enough to see ribbing on its solar panels and a pair of space-suited astronauts flailing their arms at him. His earphones sizzled with radio voices screaming warnings. He yanked both control sticks all the way back and the station flashed past below him, leaving nothing but serene stars in his view.

  "You have avoided a collision," said the computer voice, calmer now, "but your maneuver has taken you far off-course."

  My maneuver? Dan argued silently.

  "At present velocity, you will leave the Earth-Moon system entirely and drift into interplanetary space."

  Dan scanned the controls. Not a hint as to what to do.

  "Your only chance of survival is to alter course and attempt a landing at lunar base Copernicus."

  "How do I do that?" he asked.

  The main display screen in the center of his control console showed a graph with a red curving line on it. A sweptwing symbol indicated the position of his spacecraft.

  "I get it," Dan muttered. "I've got to keep the ship the indicated trajectory. Looks simple enough."

  It was not. More malfunctions dogged his attempts to follow the trajectory. A meteor shower strafed the ship, puncturing several compartments and knocking it further off course. A pirate spacecraft began chasing Dan, firing laser beams at him, forcing him to take evasive action.

  Dan almost enjoyed it all. Part of his mind kept telling him this was a kid's game, meant to entertain twelve-year-olds no matter what their calendar age. But another part of him marveled at how realistic the simulation was, how detailed the graphics, how he felt viscerally every jolt and lurch of the ship.

  And there's no time lag, he realized. They've beaten the time lag problem! In all the simulations he had been involved in there was always a slight but noticeable delay between the moment you moved your head or hands and the moment the simulation moved in reaction. Only a fraction of a second, but enough to make you realize you were in a simulation, not the real world. Here there was no time lag at all: Dan moved and the world around him responded instantly.

  By the time he settled the spacecraft down to a safe landing at Copernicus Base on the Moon, Dan's shirt was sticking sweatily to his back and his hands ached from gripping the imaginary control sticks.

  "Touchdown," said the computer voice. "Welcome to Copernicus Base."

  "You made it!" came Chan's voice through the helmet earphones. "Good going! I thought you were going to buy the farm a couple of times."

  Wearily Dan slid his helmet visor up and saw that he was once again in the empty VR chamber. No spacecraft, no console, no control sticks. Nothing but the bare room and the chair he was sitting on. His hands were trembling slightly.

  "That's a helluva ride," he said as he lifted the helmet off his head. His hair felt damp, matted.

  "You can take a tour of Copernicus Base if you like," Chan's voice came through the speaker in the wall below the one-way window.

  "Uh, not right now, okay?"

  Chan opened the control booth door and crossed the VR chamber in three swift strides. "Are you all right? You look a little green."

  Dan saw that the kid was grinning at him. "It's a damned good game," he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  "Thanks." Chan seemed genuinely pleased.

  "How the hell do you get the physical sensations? I actually felt the accelerations and the maneuvers. Thought I was going to puke a couple of times."

  "Visual cues," Chan said, grinning widely now. "The information you get from your eyes almost overpowers all your other senses. when they conflict, you start to feel queasy. Your eyes tell your brain that you're bouncing all over the place while your inner ear and your tactile senses tell you that you're sitting still in a chair—"

  "Like space sickness, only in reverse."

  Chan nodded enthusiastically. "Sort of, yeah. In fact, I've been wondering if we couldn't work with NASA to train astronauts."

  "What happens if the player messes up? Like, if he hits the space station?"

  Leading the way back to the booth and then to the hallway outside, Chan explained, "Oh, we don't let that happen. The ship will miss the station and get away from the pirates and land at Copernicus no matter how lousy the player is."

  "How lousy was I?" Dan asked.

  Chan laughed. "You got through it safe, didn't you?"

  "That bad, huh?"

  "Come on," Chan said. "Jace ought to be about finished by now."

  CHAPTER 5

  Jason Lowrey worked the palm of his bare hand into the well-oiled pocket of his outfielder's glove. Nervous? You bet. Who wouldn't be with the game hanging by one run, runners on first and second, and Babe Ruth up there at the plate?

  The crowd had gone silent. Jace could hear the flags whipping on their masts up along the roof of the grandstand. A plane droned somewhere in the brilliant blue sky. The wind was blowing out, as if the Babe needs any help. Still, Jace backed up a cautious few steps on the outfield grass.

  Lefty Grove was pitching against the Yankees. Ty Cobb was in right field, alongside Jace, with Ted Williams on his other side in left. Two men on base. And if Grove walked the Babe, Lou Gehrig would come to bat with the bases loaded. Jace knew that Gehrig hit more grand-slam home runs than anybody in the history of the game.

  He could see the Babe standing at the plate in his odd pigeon-toed stance. He faded out a little, then his image stabilized but it still looked too much like a cartoon, with those pipestem legs propping that big balloon of a body. Gehrig, kneeling in the on deck circle, was only a vague blur. No definition at all. And the crowd in the grandstand was an undefined gray smear with splotches of red and yellow daubed here and there. A peanut vendor was hawking his wares loud and clear but there was no way to see him in the general flat background that represented the crowd.

  At least Grove looked clear and convincing, scowling at the Babe. He checked the baserunners, then threw a wicked low fastball. Ruth golfed it, a massive uppercut swing with all the power of that big torso of his behind it. The ball popped high into the air, over second base, a dying quail looping into short center field.

  Jace raced in as hard as he could but saw he'd never catch the ball on the fly; he'd been playing too far bac
k. Joe Morgan, the second baseman, was racing out but Jace knew he would never make it either. He yelled for the ball and Morgan dutifully turned away. The runners were moving. Jace let the ball bounce once in front of him, then grabbed it and threw with every ounce of his strength to Campanella at the plate.

  "JACE?" a voice boomed through the stadium loudspeakers. "COME ON OUT OF THERE, JACE. IT'S ME, DAN."

  Jace hunched, hands on knees, to watch the play at the plate. Campy tagged the runner out! The inning was over! The fans erupted into wild cheers, throwing a blizzard of straw hats and scorecards out onto the field in celebration.

  "COME ON, JACE. COME OUT AND SAY HELLO. I"VE BEEN WAITING FOR DAMNED NEAR AN HOUR."

  "Terminate," said Jason Lowrey.

  The baseball stadium disappeared. He lifted the visor of his helmet. He was standing alone in the low-ceilinged VR chamber of blank walls, wearing a plastic visored helmet and a pair of metallic gloves, all of them connected by a tangle of hair-thin optical fibers to an assembly of gray electronics boxes mounted on a table beneath the one-way window in the otherwise bare room. The helmet seemed very heavy all of a sudden. He lifted it off and shook out his long, tangled hair. He felt tired, let down, annoyed at having to come back into what people called the real world.

  Jason Lowrey was a genius. Everyone knew it, and if anyone doubted it Jace would immediately set him straight. He looked the part and dressed it. Tall and thin to the point of looking gaunt, he always wore faded old blue jeans and tee shirts. And Indian moccasins. A heavy Navaho belt buckle of silver and turquoise clasped a decrepit old leather belt around his thin waist. His sandy-blond hair was unclipped, uncombed, and often unwashed. His pinched face looked emaciated, all angular cheekbones and stubborn jaw and prominent patrician nose, with big yellowed teeth like old ivory tombstones. His narrow eyes were set too close together; it made him look almost cross-eyed. His skin was pasty pale from a lifetime spent first in childhood video parlors and then in front of constantly more sophisticated computers.