Shadows (50 page)

“She heard you,” Josh breathed, staring at the display. “Amy heard you!”

   Out of the quiet and darkness into which Amy had retreated, a voice rang out, speaking her name, then died away almost as quickly as it had come. Amy’s first instinct was to cringe away from the stimulus, to retreat further into the shell she had built around her mind.

And yet the voice she’d heard was familiar.

Not Adam.

Not Dr. Engersol, either.

But familiar, nonetheless.

Terrified, she gathered her shell more tightly around her, willing herself not to respond to the stimulus, not to allow herself to be baited into whatever trap Adam had set for her this time. Memories of the demons still haunted her, and the fear that enveloped her was a palpable thing.

And yet a tiny tendril of her mind responded to that voice. Almost unconsciously, she opened a crack in that psychic shell. Reaching out with her mind, she took a tentative exploratory step into the world beyond the confines of her own brain.

She sensed instantly that something had changed.

The cacophony of stimuli that had assaulted her earlier
was gone. She hesitated, certain that at any moment Adam would sense that she had opened herself again and let down her defenses, however slightly, and attack.

The attack didn’t ome.

She opened the crack in her shell wider and began to let her mind emerge once again. Still, she remained cautious, creeping forth into the computer’s circuitry, searching for the weapons she was certain were trained on her.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she began to sense that Adam was gone. She could no longer feel his presence, nor detect the stimuli emanating from his brain.

Was he hiding? Had he, too, closed himself down, waiting for her to drop her defenses entirely so that he could spring forth out of the black nothingness of the circuitry?

She reached further, exploring the world within the microchips and the data that were stored there.

Nowhere was there any trace of Adam.

There were voices coming through the microphone, though. A babble of voices that were being instantly digitalized and transmitted to her brain, tumbling over one another so that none of them was distinct.

She emerged completely from her shell, searching through the computer for some clue as to what had happened, some explanation for Adam’s disappearance. For she had already discovered that the support system for his tank was no longer functioning, nor could she find, anywhere, any trace of activity coming from his mind.

Ranging through the computer, she discovered the archive files, closely compressed, that the powerful Croyden had been steadily generating through every phase of the experiments that had been conducted in the laboratory. Reviewing them in an instant, she watched everything that had transpired in the lab while she had pulled herself down into the deep, black well she had imagined. It was as if she was experiencing a dream, the action as clear as if she’d been watching it herself, but being absorbed into her mind within the space of a split second.

From the still-running cameras suspended from the ceiling, she could see her parents in the laboratory now.

And Josh was there.

Other people, people she didn’t recognize at all.

Did they know what had happened in the laboratory? Or why it had happened?

Her mind fully functional once more, she began to work furiously, for suddenly she knew how it had to end—and what she must do to prepare for that ending.

“What is it?” Margaret Carlson whispered, her eyes riveted on the monitor displaying the activity within Amy’s brain.

Gordon Billings stared at the same monitor. What he saw was impossible. And yet there it was. The alpha patterns, the beta patterns, all of it familiar. And there was no arguing with what it told him. “She’s waking up,” he said quietly. “She’s coming into consciousness.”

“Consciousness?” Frank Carlson repeated. “That’s not possible! That’s not Amy in that tank! It’s not a human being at all! It’s nothing more than a mass of tissue! For God’s sake, someone turn that damned machine off and let it die!”

His words echoed in the room. For a moment no one said anything at all. Then, just as Gordon Billings was about to speak, a voice came from the speaker in the ceiling.

“Not yet, Daddy,” Amy said. “I’m not ready yet.”

Frank Carlson froze, and Margaret, at the sound of her daughter’s voice, instinctively glanced around the room as if half expecting to see her daughter hidden somewhere there.

“Amy?” Josh breathed. “Are you okay? What happened?”

The adults in the room stared at the boy, who seemed to accept that what they were hearing was actually Amy Carlson’s voice, impossible though it patently was. But before any of them could react, Amy herself spoke once more.

“Adam tried to hurt me,” she said. “He tried to make me go crazy, and I had to hide from him.”

Josh frowned, trying to fathom what she could be talking about. Hide where? How? “But what happened?” he asked
again. “They’re dead, Amy. Jeff and Adam, and Dr. Engersol. And Hildie, too. They’re all dead.”

Amy was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling. “Adam killed them, Josh. He took over everything, even the elevator. I never meant for Hildie to die, but he took over and killed her. He killed them all.” Even as she spoke, Amy’s mind continued to work, manipulating data within the massive storage banks of the Croyden, sending and receiving stimuli with far more speed than even the Croyden itself could generate.

“You’re going to see me in a second, Mama,” she said softly. “I’ll be on the monitor above my tank. All you have to do is look up. And I can see you, too. I get images from the camera, and they come into my mind as clearly as if I still had eyes. I’m not dead, Mama. I’m just—different, I guess.”

Her mind half refusing to believe what she was hearing, Margaret Carlson, along with everyone else in the room, looked up at the monitor above the tank in which Amy’s brain was imprisoned.

Slowly, the image developed, built by the Croyden from the instructions generated within Amy’s own mind. It was an instantly recognizable portrait of a freckle-faced, red-haired girl, her face framed by a mass of red curls. And yet, it wasn’t quite Amy. Something about her had changed.

A whimper emerged from Margaret as she stared at the image on the monitor, and she clutched at her husband’s hand.

“You’re not wearing your glasses,” Josh said, cocking his head as he looked up at the face of his friend.

Amy smiled. “I hate them. I always hated them. So I’m not seeing myself with them anymore. Besides, I don’t need them anymore, do I?”

“This isn’t happening,” Frank Carlson breathed. “This can’t possibly be real.”

On the screen Amy’s eyes shifted as if she were actually looking at him. “But it is real, Daddy,” she said. “It’s really me. I can’t even tell you how it all works. It’s sort of like the computer is my body now. I know how to use it, and make it work, and do what I want it to do.”

“No!” Margaret Carlson cried, rising to her feet and taking a step toward the tank. “Well get you out of there! There has to be something—”

“There’s not, Mama,” Amy said, her voice cutting through the torrent of words spilling from her mother. “I’ve thought about it a lot. But it isn’t possible. I’ve studied everything, and nobody can put my brain back into a body. There’s too many things no one knows. And even if someone could do it, it would mean that someone else would have to die so I could have their body.” For the first time her voice took on a note of anger. “It wouldn’t be any different from what Dr. Engersol did to Adam and me.”

“No!” Margaret said again, as if the word itself could dispel the truth of what Amy had said. “There has to be something! There has to be a way!”

“There is, Mama,” Amy said softly. “There is something I can do. I can let my brain die.”

Margaret gasped, her eyes shifting to her husband. “What is she saying?” she pleaded. “What does she mean?”

“I can’t live like this, Mama,” Amy went on. “I know what happened to Adam, and to everyone else. Adam changed, Mama. He wasn’t like himself anymore. He started hating everyone, and if Dr. Engersol hadn’t killed him, he could have done anything. He could have gone into any computer anywhere and done anything he wanted. And if my brain stays alive, I could do the same thing.”

“But you could stay here,” Josh protested, instantly grasping what Amy was saying. “If the computer wasn’t hooked to a modem—”

On the monitor Amy’s head shook. “I don’t want to do that, Josh. I don’t want to stay trapped in here forever. So I’m going to go away. I’m going to end this project and go away.”

“No,” Josh wailed. “Don’t die, Amy! Please?”

On the monitor Amy smiled. “You have to understand, Josh. I have to go away now. It’s the only thing I can do.” Her eyes moved, seeming to fix once more on her mother. “I love you, Mama,” she said softly. “And I’m glad you came. At least I get to say good-bye to you.”

Margaret clutched once more at her husband’s arm. “Stop her, Frank,” she begged. “Don’t let her do it!”

But Frank Carlson, who had been listening carefully to his daughter, shook his head. “It’s all right, Amy,” he said quietly. “Do whatever you have to do, and remember that we love you. We always did, and we always will.”

Amy’s smile faded away. “I love you, too, Daddy,” she whispered. Then, as the people gathered in the room watched, her image faded slowly away. A moment later alarms sounded as the equipment supporting Amy’s brain began to shut down.

“Do something!” Margaret Carlson screamed. “For God’s sake, someone do something!”

Instantly, Josh went to work, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried to restore the programs that were dropping out of the computer’s memory banks and the systems that were grinding to a halt as their supporting programs disappeared.

The keyboard failed to respond.

As everyone in the laboratory watched helplessly, Amy Carlson finally died.

J
osh had been back in Eden for almost a week, and as he started home from school, his mind returned once more to what had happened at Barrington only a few days ago.

He found himself thinking about it more and more, despite the fact that his mother—and everyone else, too—had told him it was better not to think about it, but just to try to forget it.

But how could he just forget it?

He’d
been
there! He’d
seen
it!

Seen Hildie’s body in the elevator, and then Dr. Engersol and Jeff, lying on the floor down in the lab.

Adam’s brain, sitting in a puddle of water, dead.

And Amy’s brain, still alive in its tank, still hooked to the computer.

He’d even seen Amy’s brain die.

He’d never seen anyone die before, and the images on the monitors were still vivid in his mind, all their displays gone flat. He’d stared at them for a long time, then his eyes had drifted away from them, fixing instead on the mass of tissue suspended in the tank.

It hadn’t looked any different at all. The folds in the cortex all looked the same, the color was still the same gray hue shot through with the bluish network of blood vessels.

It didn’t seem right.

If Amy was dead, her brain should have looked different.

But it hadn’t, and finally, feeling Alan Dover’s hand on his shoulder, he’d looked up.

“Is she really dead?” he’d asked, his voice shaking.

“I’m afraid so,” the policeman had told him. “Come on. Why don’t you and I go outside? They don’t need us down here anymore.”

Riding up in the secret elevator, Josh had felt a chill go through him as he thought about what had happened to Hildie that morning.

Would he always think about it, every time he got into an elevator for the rest of his life?

When they’d gotten to Dr. Engersol’s apartment, he’d ignored the clanking old elevator that was still waiting at the fourth floor landing, choosing to go down the stairs instead.

“Someone called your mother, Josh,” Alan Dover had told him. “She’ll be here tonight to take you home.”

Josh had barely heard the words, for the emotions he’d held in check all morning had finally overwhelmed him. He began sobbing, throwing his arms around the police officer, despite the fact that all his friends were watching him.

“It’s all right,” Alan Dover had told him. “It’s all over now.”

But it hadn’t been over. He’d spent almost the whole day talking to the policemen, and the doctor, and a lot of people whose names he didn’t even remember. He’d answered all the questions he could, and explained over and over again what had happened when he’d put on the virtual reality mask and seen Adam in the computer. He’d even tried to show them, but when they’d gone up to his room, and he’d set up the computer and put on the mask and the glove, it hadn’t worked.

He knew what had happened: before she’d died, Amy had erased all the programs that Dr. Engersol had set up, all the programs that had let him actually see inside the computer.

For that, he was almost certain, had been what he’d been doing.

It hadn’t been a simulation at all.

The program had been set up so that Adam could show him what it would be like to be inside the computer, to have
been part of the world that he and Amy had been taken into.

The world that had given him nightmares and made him feel that he was going insane.

When Josh had finally told them everything he could, and his mother arrived to help him pack his clothes and books, he’d said good-bye to the few kids who were still there.

All day long parents kept arriving at the school, packing things up as quickly as they could, taking their children away. Josh knew why they were doing it, but it still seemed strange to him, since the experiment Dr. Engersol had been working on was destroyed, and Dr. Engersol was dead.

Most of the kids hadn’t even been involved in the experiment. But their parents took them home anyway, saying the same thing his mother had told him: “I knew there was something wrong with this place! Right from the first minute I saw it, I knew something wasn’t right.”