Death Dream (17 page)

First, though, he snuck back to his old neighborhood one evening, searching for Crystal. He had dreamed of taking her with him, off to Canada or South America or Xanadu, anywhere to be away from the life her mother had forced on her. But there was no trace of his mother or Crystal. No one he questioned admitted even to remembering them. They had disappeared. Or died.

He went to Toronto alone, then, and took the first job he could find, as a delivery boy for an office-supply firm. He rode in a pickup truck through the downtown business district and lugged heavy cartons of papers into plush offices where the carpeting was thick and the air was hushed with the quiet urgency of big money. He spent most of his salary on clothes. After years of living in hand-me-downs or institutional uniforms, Kyle became a fashion plate. He wore the latest styles and he wore them handsomely.

He knew how to make friends, and even began dating some of the filing clerks and secretaries he met on his delivery rounds. But when he dreamed, he dreamed of his sister Crystal, the twelve-year-old that he had failed to protect. Even when he finally summoned up the courage to take a young redheaded typist to bed, he fantasized about his sister while he made love clumsily to her.

Within little more than a year Kyle was working as an accountant in one of the business offices he had delivered supplies to. He rose quickly, despite some sneers from his fellow workers about "the eager-beaver Yank with the flashy wardrobe." Then he met Nancy.

She was the daughter of one of the firm's vice presidents. She had a pretty face but an overweight, heavy-legged body. She was intelligent, gentle, and shy, but beneath it all there was a good sense of humor and a trace of mischievousness. Her father was wealthy. They met at a company picnic. Kyle recognized the opportunity she represented. Her physical appearance did not matter much to him; he was not driven sexually—or so he told himself. Nancy's parents were at first alarmed that their daughter was attracted to the eager-beaver Yank with the flashy wardrobe. But as they began to see how happy he made Nancy they began to regard him as a diamond in the rough, and told each other that he was honest, hard-working, and undoubtedly a good catch.

By the time President Carter granted amnesty to most of the Vietnam draft-dodgers, Kyle was engaged to Nancy and on his way to a vice-presidency of his own. He had no intention of ever returning to the States. But to his horror he found himself helplessly attracted to Nancy's sister, Judith, who was fourteen. For almost a year he struggled against his growing obsession as each night he dreamed of Crystal and each day he tried to avoid seeing nubile, laughing Judith. That summer she lolled around the family's lakeside cottage in nothing more than a tee shirt and underpants, or ran off for a swim in the cold lake wearing a skimpy bikini.

Local boys seemed to rise up out of the ground wherever she appeared and she was enjoying her first experience of sexual power.

Kyle never touched her, never allowed himself to be in the same room alone with her. But he knew it was only a matter of time until he his self-denial crumbled. He could not see Nancy without seeing Judith. And he could not take his eyes off her. In his dreams she became his sister, his lost, lovely, loving Crystal. Crystal was the one he wanted, and he began to loathe dull, overweight Nancy.

Kyle fled once again. He left Nancy without a word of explanation and went back to the States. Once again Kyle Muncrief found himself starting a new life. He worked his way into a position with a small Wall Street investment firm that specialized in finding start-up money for new high-tech companies. He met dozens of scientists, most of them wildly impractical when it came to business. But even from the most unrealistic of them he learned important hints of what was possible, what could be developed in the reasonably near future.

He swore to himself that he would never even look at an underage girl again, but it took every ounce of his willpower to keep that oath. The pressure within him built relentlessly, night after night. He needed Crystal, she was the only person in the world he could trust, the only one who loved him, the only one he could love.

He began prowling the seamy night streets searching for Crystal, staring at the pre-teen girls being offered on dark corners, knowing that Crystal was much older now, fearing that he was going insane. He worked out at gyms, he went on religious retreats, he saw psychiatrists. He denied it all night after night after night. But inevitably, inexorably, he would find himself searching for the sister he had lost. He began to think about suicide.

He worried about his secretary, a sharp-minded woman named Victoria Kessel. Soon enough she learned that he was visiting psychiatrists. She was clever enough to discover his secret, and the thought of Victoria finding out about Crystal filled him with fear. But Vickie made it clear that she sympathized with her boss. Whatever demons were driving him, she made no judgments. But she wanted responsibility, authority. She wanted power.

Shaken, Kyle realized that he had found someone he could depend upon. He had to trust Vickie; even in the swinging world of Wall Street, where cocaine was commonplace and sex a tool of power, mental illness was beyond the pale. Kyle reinforced Vickie's loyalty by giving her the kinds of additional responsibilities she craved. With her added responsibilities, of course, came added salary, and bonuses, and perks. And his added dependency on her.

Kyle first learned about virtual reality from a magazine article that Vickie pointed out to him. He was intrigued. Could a man create a long-lost sister in the electronic world of virtual reality? He visited several university laboratories, tracked down the best minds working on VR. He decided that he could not risk having some scientist or engineer develop what he wanted for him. Not unless he could be absolutely certain that the man (it would have to be a man, he was convinced) could never reveal his desires.

But there was more to it than that. Virtual reality could be a money-maker, a big one. Kyle saw that the technology capable of producing private fantasies could be sold to the public as entertainment. He searched the nation for the key technical expert, the man he would build his company around, and found him at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Everyone who knew anything about virtual reality agreed that Jason Lowrey was the brightest, most innovative, most daring specialist in the field. "But he's a madman," Kyle was told time and again. "He's hell to work with. A total flake."

Kyle flew to Dayton and met Jace Lowrey. He sat in a simulator cockpit and experienced a virtual reality dogfight. That night, trembling with fear and anticipation, he asked Lowrey if VR could be used for personal fantasies.

Jace seemed neither surprised nor disapproving. "Oh sure," he answered easily. "I've already done that for one of the blue-suiters here. I could put all the whorehouses in the world outta business if I wanted to."

Muncrief hired Jace on the spot, left his investment firm in New York and founded ParaReality Corporation, bringing Victoria Kessel with him to be vice president.

One by one he found Hideki Toshimura, Lars Swenson, and Maxwell Glass, each of them eager for the profits they foresaw from Muncrief's vision of Cyber World. Then he set up shop in the Orlando area, only a few miles from Disney World, and started building a technical staff around Jason Lowrey. He gave Jace two priorities: First, develop the conflict games that would make Cyber World unique. Second, give him his dearest heart's desire: give him Crystal.

And now, as he flew home from Washington, he knew that a branch of the US government was going to force its way into his company whether he liked it or not. He only hoped that they did not know about his obsession and his sessions with the psychiatrists in New York. And that they would not find out.

In Jason Lowrey he had at last found the man who could construct the fantasy that haunted his dreams. As long as Jace got what he wanted he seemed perfectly content to create a virtual reality simulation of Crystal—and to keep silent about it. Kyle knew that this gave Lowrey a hold over him, but the antisocial introspective genius appeared to have no interest in pressuring Kyle for anything more than additional equipment and assistants so that he could further his own virtual reality dreams. Still, Kyle worried. If his investors found out about it, if Glass and Toshimura and that self-righteous prig Swenson knew, it would bring the roof down on his head.

That's why I've got to play along with this Smith character and whoever he's working for, Muncrief told himself as the USAir flight approached Orlando. I don't know how much the bastards know, and I can't afford to take the chance that they know everything. Maybe it'll be okay after we get Cyber World up and running. Once the money starts pouring in, maybe then it won't matter. But until then I've got to play along with them.

CHAPTER 13

Dan stood encased in a bulky spacesuit on the surface of the Moon, staring at Tranquility Base. It looked like a high-tech junkyard, abandoned equipment strewn across the bare, barren ground around the spraddle-legged base of the landing module Eagle. The American flag that Armstrong and Aldrin had unfurled still stood stiffly in the airless silence.

Picking his way carefully through the scattered equipment, awkward in the clumsy suit and thick boots, he slowly approached the landing module. Welded to its side was a stainless steel plaque, still polished and gleaming after all the years.

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH

FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON

JULY 1969, AD

WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

He was surprised at the lump in his throat. It's only a simulation, he knew, yet still . . .

Turning slowly away from the lander, Dan saw that the bare dusty pockmarked lunar surface stretched to the hard uncompromising slash of the horizon. Beyond the horizon was the black emptiness of space. The only sounds he could hear were his own breathing and the suit's air-circulation fans whining like distant mosquitoes. He turned again slightly and his breath caught in his throat.

Hanging there in the dark sky was the glorious beckoning crescent of the Earth, glowing brilliantly, rich deep blue streaked with perfect white swirls of clouds, shining down on the empty rocky wasteland of the Moon, a haven of life and beauty in an empty and cold universe.

"It's awesome," Dan whispered into his helmet microphone.

Gary Chan replied, "Yeah, isn't it?" Even through his earphones Dan could hear the smile in the younger man's voice.

"So what's your problem?"

"Gravity," Chan answered. "Everything's supposed to weigh one-sixth of what it does on Earth."

"Uh-huh."

"Try lifting your arms."

Dan raised both arms. "Feels okay to me."

"That's just the problem. It feels normal. Just like on Earth."

"Oh."

"Try jumping."

Dan hopped several times, almost landing on one of the abandoned instruments littering the ground. It was nothing like the films he remembered seeing of astronauts floating across the lunar landscape. This was more like jumping in a gym or your own living room. It made him realize that, despite what his eyes were showing him, he was standing in a simulations chamber a quarter-million miles away from the Moon.

"I see what you mean," he said.

Chan's voice was somber. "I can make anything you pick up feel like it should on the Moon, but I can't make your own body feel lighter. It ruins the illusion that you're really walking or jumping on the Moon."

The kid's done a good job of reconstructing the Moon, Dan said to himself. But if he can't get the gravity right the whole simulation's a bust.

Muncrief wanted the Moonwalk to be absolutely authentic, of course. Gary had spent weeks studying NASA photographs and Vickie had even found a retired astronaut living in Arkansas to serve as a consultant.

His spacesuit weighed nothing, because it existed only as a set of instructions in the electronics of the VR system's computers. But to Dan it seemed completely real. He lifted his gloved hand and touched the smooth curved plastic of the fishbowl. It felt reassuringly solid.

But raising his arms, moving his legs to walk, it all took just as much effort as it did on Earth.

"I don't know what to do," Chan said. "I've run into a blank wall on this."

"Maybe we're being too sophisticated about it," Dan said. "Or not sophisticated enough."

"What do you mean?"

"Well . . ." Dan pumped his arms up and down once twice, then said, "Why don't you try ignoring the user's weight? There's nothing you can do about it anyway."

"But—"

"But make the environment around him react as if it's all in one-sixth gravity."

"I don't understand." Dan picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it. In the airless light gravity it soared out toward the horizon until he could not see it any more against the dark sky.

"You've got all the objects around the user behaving in one-sixth g. When the guy moves—when he walks or jumps or whatever—program the environment around him to react as if he really weighs only one-sixth of his normal weight."

"Program the environment?"

With a nod, Dan explained, "Set up everything to move as far as it would if the user really was one-sixth his Earth weight. If you can't raise the bridge, lower the water."

"Man, that would take a thousand hours of calculations! Maybe more. And he'd still feel his own internal weight, anyway."

"He'd still feel his weight, yeah, but remember that his internal sense of his own weight feels completely normal to him. If he sees that world around him moving as if he weighed one-sixth, he'd believe what his eyes are telling him and forget about his inner sense of weight."

"You think so?"

"Just like your Space Race game makes people feel motion sickness."

"Yeah, but the calculations I'd have to do."

"That's why we've got computers, Gary. I think I can dig up a program that'll let you take a few shortcuts."

"Really?" There was eagerness in the younger man's voice now. Excitement.

"Yeah. If I remember rightly, there's a—"