Cyberdrome (12 page)

“Back?” A half
smile spread across her lips. “Oh I get it. I guess I should expect a newbie
like you to be confused.”

“Confused about
what?”

She wiped sweat
off her face and pushed her long brown hair back. “Your Avatar’s channeling its
sensory data directly through the dream centers of your obviously tiny cerebral
cortex. In layman’s terms, it means you’re asleep right now and having the most
realistic dream of your life.”

Tiny cerebral
cortex?
Why the hell was she being so rude to him? Then what she said about being
asleep sunk in. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re
interfaced, newbie.” She waved her hands at the room. “This, in all its glory,
is a part of what we call Cyberdrome.”

He reached out
and touched the smooth surface of the chamber. It felt far too real to be a simulation.
“If this is a simulation, why does this room look exactly like the interface
room?”

She sighed.
“It’s a copy—obviously. You’re currently inside one of the ships used to study
the Earth simulations.”

“You’re talking
about Survey Vessels,” he said, remembering the description in the datapad
Cloudhopper had given him. Huge floating space ships that housed both ALife and
human researchers in the simulated worlds.

“Much of the
ship’s interior is a copy of the main facility,” she said. “It makes it easier
for us to work here, knowing where everything is.”

“That explains
why your facility’s laid out like a buried spaceship,” he said. “But why have
an interface room inside a simulation?”

“This room’s
used to transport the ALife researchers back and forth between the simulations,”
she said as she walked to the far side of the circular room. “These chambers
use matter-energy converters to transport us, which is also how we enter and
exit Cyberdrome ourselves.”

“Matter-energy
conversion is physically impossible, at least for transporting living organisms.
Aren’t you breaking the laws of physics?”

“The laws of
real
physics, I suppose. But, it works in here, at least well enough to allow us to
get in and out of the system without causing a crash.”

“So, where are
Maya and the others?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Out placing the
third deletion routine,” she said as she pulled what looked like another
folded-up black bodysuit from an opening in the wall. “One of us has to stay
behind and protect the ship.”

“Protect it from
what?” he asked.

She bent over
and pulled the bodysuit over her long legs and up her body. As she did so, the
material seemed to move with her, actually helping her get dressed. He blinked
twice, wondering if he was seeing things.

“They’re called
Omnisuits,” she said, obviously aware that he was watching her.

He touched the
material of his own suit—it seemed to react to his touch. “Virtual clothing?”
he asked.

“Think about
that statement,” she said. “Virtual clothes wouldn’t obey the laws of physics,
would they? The Omnisuits are an intelligent, silicon-based nanotech fabric.
They allow us to adapt our clothing to the environments and cultures we study
here. They can also be used for camouflage, of course, which is why some people
call them ‘Hides.’” She stared at him. “Get it? You can use them to
hide
.”

“I got it,” he
said as he examined the material on his arm. He thought back to what Leconte
had told him about the DNA-based memory they used to run the simulations. In
order to contain any potential THI programs, everything and everyone would be
forced to follow all of the laws of physics, or at least the ones programmed into
the system when they created it.

“Each has a
voice activated interface,” she said as she lifted an arm up to her mouth.
“Standard uniform.” He saw a blur as her suit changed into the dark blue
uniform she and Cloudhopper wore back in the real world.

“Wow. How many
types of clothing can it make?” he asked. Unable to move from the waist down
made it difficult getting dressed every day. An Omnisuit would certainly make
his life easier.

“Almost
anything,” she said. “It also adjusts itself automatically to maintain optimum
body temperature and can even help you in emergencies.”

He lifted his
arm and described the outfit he wore before interface. Within a few seconds,
something surprisingly similar covered his body. As he felt the sleeve of his
shirt, he asked, “What do you mean by emergencies?”

Lorena made a
signal on a wall pad, closing the lid of her chamber. “Well, let’s say we took
this ship into high orbit around a planet. Then, let’s say I shove you out of
the nearest airlock. Your Omnisuit will realize that you’re in danger and turn
itself into a functional spacesuit.”

“You mean it can
provide air and life support?” he asked, ignoring the implied threat.

“It’s not
magic,” she replied. “It can only change shape and color, like the skin of an
octopus. In the hypothetical event I just described, the suit would stretch to
cover your face with a bubble and seal itself to keep whatever air was inside
from escaping. You wouldn’t last long that way, but like I said, it’s not
magic.”

“Still, if this
fabric really is based on the laws of physics, that much movement would have to
eat up a lot of energy.”

“Each suit has
enough internal power for about three days of normal use, much less if you ask
it to do anything fancy. After that, you need to recharge it—like I was just
doing when you interrupted my workout.”

“Sorry for
dropping by unannounced,” he said.

“Speaking of
which, I’ve got things to do,” she said as she turned and walked toward the
exit.

“Wait a minute,”
he yelled. “You can’t just leave me in here.”

“Oh, that’s
right,” she said, stopping just before the door. “You were in some sort of
servo-chair, weren’t you? Well, don’t worry—the software would’ve automatically
repaired your digital body during the scanning process. You should be able to
walk in here just fine.”

“I thought
Avatars had to be exact copies of your body for the fast interface to work.”

“It’s your brain
that has to be copied exactly,” she said as she turned and headed through the
door. “Bodies can be tweaked quite a bit.”

The door slid
shut and he was left all alone. “What if the damage isn’t physical?” he yelled,
panicked that he would be a cripple in this world, without even the use of his
powerchair. “What if the problem’s in my mind?” he asked the darkened room.

Determined to
follow her, he rolled out of the pod and grabbed for a nearby handrail. In the
darkness, he missed the rail and hit the floor hard on his knees. The pain shot
through his legs. As he lay there curled up in a ball, cursing at his mistake,
he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I thought you
said you couldn’t move your legs,” Lorena’s voice said.

“I can’t,” he
replied, “but I feel pain just like everyone else.”

“Well, if you
can’t move your legs, tell me how you managed to land on your knees? Rolling
off that pad like you just did should’ve made you land right on your face.”

He looked up at
her and realized that she was right. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

He took a deep
breath and reached for the rail. He felt a strange warmth spread through his
leg muscles as Lorena helped him up to a standing position.

“What the hell?”
he exclaimed.

“Try taking a
step,” she said as she held his hands and moved backward a few feet, pulling
him gently toward her. He took an awkward step forward. As he repeated the
movement with the other leg, he realized that he was walking stiff-legged, like
Frankenstein’s monster, but it still felt amazing.

After a few
steps, she stopped abruptly and he almost ran into her. “You’re taller than I
thought,” she said.

There was an
awkward silence as he looked down at her. Something about her felt strangely
familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“Now I really
have to go,” she said as she turned abruptly and headed for the door.

His legs still
felt stiff, but he tried not to show it as he followed her out of the interface
room and into the central elevator. It also looked identical to the one back in
the Cyberdrome facility.

“Well, Ms.
Aston, if I remember correctly, there are something like a thousand artificial
people on these ships. So, what do I say to them when I meet them?”

She sneered at
him. “Unless you want to make it formal and have me start calling you Mr. Grey,
Lorena will do,” she said, making the hand gesture to start the elevator. “But
to answer your question, except for the two of us, this ship’s empty. We transported
it in along with the mission team.”

“You sent this
entire ship in with you? Seems like a huge database.”

“A single human
Avatar is more complex than a hundred of these Survey Vessels. Someone as
bright as you claim to be should know that.”

“Right,” he
said, hating the way she kept talking down to him. He decided to change the subject.
“So, when will Maya and the others return?”

“Soon,” she said
as she stepped out of the elevator and headed down a long hallway.

As he followed
her, his stomach let out a loud gurgle. In the silence of the empty ship, it echoed
down the hall. He realized that he had not eaten since the previous afternoon
“Must be lunch time,” he said, then came to a halt. “Wait a minute. If I’m
inside a simulation, why do I feel hungry?”

“Your brain’s
now fully connected to your Avatar body,” she said over her shoulder, not
bothering to stop. “And, it’s operating just like the flesh and blood version.
In other words, it will get hungry. Unless you’re a lucid dreamer, you will
have to get used to it.”

He was about to
say that he actually was a lucid dreamer, but something in her manner told him
to shut up. “What do you mean?” he asked.

She stopped a
few steps away and turned to face him. “Lucid dreamers are people who can
control aspects of their dreams,” she said, obviously bothered that she had to
explain the facts of cyber-life to him. “I already told you that the data feeds
to our Avatars are directed through the dream centers of our brains, so you do
the math.”

“Lucid dreamers
would have the potential to alter their own realities here,” Alek said,
realizing the weight of that statement. “Leconte told me that breaking any
rules here could have a disastrous effect.”

“It could cause
a system-wide crash,” she said, “and each of us would lose all sensory contact
for as long as the neuroprobes kept us interfaced.” She looked glumly at him.
“Do you have any idea what that would do to us?”

Alek felt a
shiver go up his back. “Total sensory black-out,” he said. “I’ve heard people
say that it’s worse than death, and they just experienced it for a few
seconds.”

“For obvious
reasons, everyone’s screened before interface.” Without another word, she
turned and walked back down the hall at a brisk pace.

They didn’t
screen me,
he said to himself.
Then again, I’m not supposed to be here.

As he jogged
down the hall to catch up with her, he realized that his legs were steadily
becoming used to the movement. He had a flashback to playing soccer again, but
then remembered that this was all an illusion. When the mission ended, he would
be going back to that other body, the one still confined to a powerchair.

For a moment, he
imagined what it would be like to stay inside Cyberdrome permanently.
Would
it be so terrible?
With time passing one hundred times faster than normal,
he could experience an entire lifetime in less than a year. In ten years, he
could live out the lives of ten men. Then something else dawned on him; was his
unexplained ability to walk in here a result of lucid dreaming? Was he unconsciously
willing his legs to move? Was he risking the mission and everyone’s lives just
by being there?

Just then, he
felt the floor suddenly move. He lost his balance and ended up pressing Lorena
up against the corridor wall. “What the hell was that?” he whispered a few
centimeters from her ear.

She pushed him
gently away. “The ship seems to be repositioning itself,” she said. Her face
told him that she wasn’t sure why.

“I thought there
were no artificial people here. Who’s flying this thing?”

“I’m the pilot
on this mission but when I’m not on the bridge, it’s controlled by an ALife collective
that’s built into the ship,” she said, looking distractedly down the hallway.

“You mean an
auto-pilot?”

She didn’t
respond as she pressed her hand against a wall panel, lighting up a hidden display.
She then drew a shape on the input pad with her index finger, and the display
switched to an exterior view of the Survey Vessel hovering over a metallic-blue
plane with light blue circular markings that stretched to the horizon.

“Is that the
Core?” he asked.