The Administration Series (4 page)

Interesting approach. Toreth caught sight of the receptionist blushing, and imagined the cool voice dictating the message down the comm. Probably spelled out 'fucking' to her, just to make sure it didn't get lost in the transcribing.

Toreth considered whether to go in to work. He had only two cases left now, both marked 'interrogation pending'. What that meant in practice was that the prisoners involved occupied valuable cell space while he waited for their Justice reps to pull their fingers out and process the damage waivers. If he went in to I&I, he'd have nothing to do but chase the waivers up through a maze of people who didn't give a damn. Sara could do that without him. This morning promised too much pleasurable anticipation to waste in a futile attempt to speed up the grinding wheels of the Department of Justice.

He called Sara to tell her he would be out for the next day or two, but she should call him in if a paperwork miracle occurred or any of the prisoners decided to talk anyway. The latter happened considerably more often than the former; the para-investigators weren't the only ones who suffered under the pressure of bureaucratic delays.

Toreth spent the morning in the gym. Then he had a light lunch and reached the campus in plenty of time.

The SimTech offices and laboratories occupied most of the Artificial Environments Research Centre, a brand-new building set a little apart from the Computing Sciences Department. Toreth looked at the clean, elegant design and the abstract sculptures in the granite-paved area outside, and read corporate money and Administration interest. Plenty of both, if he were any judge.

The glass-fronted atrium proved to be as expensively decorated inside as he'd expected from the exterior. He sat in a chair comfortably upholstered in the SimTech grey and blue, whilst the receptionist called through to Warrick and authorised a security badge. With the potential in the sim technology outlined at the talk, the affluence was hardly surprising. I&I would be taking their place in a very long queue. Having a contact here certainly wouldn't hurt.

Or at least, if Tillotson queried the expenses, that would make an adequate excuse for spending division money running down a reluctant one-night stand. And the man had been reluctant . . . but not entirely so. Toreth smiled.

"Mr Toth? Excuse me, Mr Toth." The receptionist looked annoyed at having to repeat herself.

"I'm so sorry." Reflexively, he melted her irritation with a smile. "Miles away."

"Doctor Warrick is waiting for you. Security will show you up to the lab."

Security proved to be large, professional and uncommunicative. The two of them rode in the lift up to the fifth floor in silence. When the doors opened, Warrick stood waiting.

"Nice to see you, Toth." He shook hands, dismissed the guard with a peremptory wave, and escorted Toreth along the corridor.

The tour of the labs wasn't the perfunctory formality Toreth had thought it might be, and also proved rather enjoyable. One-to-one, Warrick was an even more engaging speaker than he had been at the lecture, adept at spotting which parts of the tour his guest found interesting and which to gloss over. However, it was purely business — either Toreth had completely misjudged his target, or the man was too deeply in love with the sim to mix work and pleasure. He suspected the latter.

Finally, Warrick showed him through a heavy door, with card-controlled access and an iris scanner, into a room containing the sim machines. The room held four chairs, or, more accurately, padded couches. There were indentations for body and limbs, presumably to position them appropriately for the sensors and nerve stimulators within. The rest of the room looked like a stereotypical laboratory, with yards of tangled cables and slot-in components lying on the benches.

"I'm afraid I have something to do elsewhere," Warrick said. "It won't take long, and there are a few things for you to get through first here. I hope you won't find it too tedious." Then, with a smile, he left Toreth in the hands of a technician.

The preparation took much longer than he expected. The technician explained what he was doing as they went along — a body scan to create an accurate physical representation for the sim, neurological baseline measurements and other personal calibrations. Toreth nodded, made interested noises at intervals, and otherwise didn't pay much attention.

Eventually, Warrick reappeared. "All done?" he asked the technician, who nodded and then left the room. "Excellent. Take a chair, please."

Toreth picked one at random and sat down.

"Settle your arms in. Get them comfortable."

Toreth did so, and Warrick pulled padded restraints from the sides of the armrests and began to strap his arms down. He didn't pull them anywhere near as tight as Toreth would have done, but then he was dealing with a volunteer, something outside Toreth's expertise.

"Why does it need the restraints?" Toreth asked.

"I thought I explained all that at the seminar."

"Explain it again."

"The sim is a kind of dream, to put it very crudely. It feeds sensation in through normal sensory channels via the peripheral nervous system, and also by direct stimulation of the CNS, at the same time masking real-world inputs. Then, under the guidance of the computer, the brain interprets those signals as if they were real."

Warrick moved down and began tightening straps across Toreth's legs. "The system should induce sleep paralysis for the duration of the sim, but that part, I'm afraid, still requires fine tuning. Sometimes the body mirrors the movements in the sim and it's possible to cause damage to oneself."

"Or to the very expensive machine?"

Warrick smiled. "Quite."

"Why not just use a muscle relaxant?"

Warrick paused, both hands resting lightly on Toreth's thigh. This time the smile was an odd half-curve of the lips, which didn't bring any warmth to his eyes. "System flexibility. We don't have the luxury of assuming potential users will be drugged."

He stood and walked round behind Toreth. "Get your head comfortable."

Leaning back into the padded headrest, Toreth moved his neck until he could relax. "All right."

Warrick fitted a restraining strap across his forehead. "You aren't at all claustrophobic, are you?" he enquired, and before he even finished the question he lowered the visor.

Toreth wasn't claustrophobic, but for a few seconds he seriously considered it as an option. The visor was totally opaque, with heavy padding over his ears. His eyelashes barely brushed against some kind of components right in front of his eyes. The mask stretched down over his entire face, curving round to rest against his throat; he swallowed, feeling the padded edge against his larynx.

There was a long moment of silence, then a humming in his ears as sounds returned.

"Say 'yes' if you can hear me," Warrick instructed.

The sound quality was so good Toreth could hardly believe it was coming over speakers. Then he realised it wasn't — it had to be direct nerve induction. "Yes, I hear you," he said.

He also heard a door open and close, and then footsteps as someone else entered the room.

"Good," Warrick said. "Now, you're about ready so I'll get myself set up. Once we're in the sim you don't need to talk — just subvocalize as if you were using any other throat microphone. If you speak out loud, you'll get a slightly strange echo effect in the sim. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it."

Warrick's voice had grown softer, and then came back loudly again. The person Toreth had heard enter must have been strapping Warrick into one of the other chairs.

"While we're waiting," Warrick said, "I'd like you to choose a word and say it out loud. Some people don't react well to the sim. If you start to feel dizzy, or sick, or if you want out for any reason at all, say the word and the computer will disconnect you automatically and immediately. I suggest you make it something you won't say accidentally."

"Chevril," Toreth said clearly.

"That was fine. If you do disconnect, you'll find it's possible to slip out of the straps without waiting for the technician to come back. Now, we'll be able to do about half an hour. Longer is perfectly safe, but a first time can have some disorienting side effects, so it's best to stick to thirty minutes or so. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

There was a long pause.

"You have to open your eyes," Warrick said, a touch impatiently.

Toreth did so. Then he blinked and a few seconds later realised his mouth was hanging open. Warrick looked thoroughly delighted by his reaction.

The other man stood a few feet away from him, and Toreth simply couldn't believe he wasn't real. That everything around them wasn't real. He'd seen the pictures at Warrick's lecture but dismissed them at the time as creative exaggeration.

Toreth was sitting in a low chair, in much the same attitude as the sim couch he had been in only moments before. Tentatively, he rose to his feet, the movement so natural that he felt convinced there had to be a trick involved. This
couldn't
be the sim. He looked round the small room: white walls and floor, no carpet, a few chairs scattered around a square table, a desk underneath a window. Through the window he could see the university campus, autumn sun shining.

He been expecting something slightly disconnected, something obviously computer generated, but this was nothing like that. Wonderingly, he reached out and touched the back of a chair. Cool metal felt slick under his fingertips.

"Fucking
hell
," he said.

Warrick grinned. "Not bad, is it? This is a simple test room — a copy of a real room on this floor, in fact."

He opened the door, revealing a familiar corridor. "If you went out there, you could walk back to the sim suite. But you've seen that already."

He walked over to a console set into the desktop and pressed a few buttons. The scene around them blurred and then sharpened into a larger room, something like an old-fashioned private club room, with dark red walls and large comfortable-looking armchairs. Shelves of leather-bound books filled one wall, and there were carpets Toreth could scuff with his shoe, tables with glowing reading lamps, and an old library smell. Warrick stood by the controls, now set into a panel on the wall.

Still reeling from the impossible reality of the sim, Toreth tried to think of something to say which sounded even vaguely intelligent. "Is that always there?" he asked, pointing at the control panel.

"In a way, yes. But it doesn't have to be visible if it spoils the look of the thing." Warrick waved his hand over the panel and it faded away into the red wallpaper. He snapped his fingers and it returned.

Spotting a mirror on the wall, Toreth went over. Half expecting some strange effect, he saw only himself, imperfectly reflected in the antique mottled glass: short blond hair waved back from his forehead, well-defined cheekbones, blue eyes he'd always thought of as one of his best features — currently appearing rather wide — narrowish chin, and lips he'd prefer to be a little fuller. The usual slight shock of realising that, despite studious use of moisturiser, he was thirty-two, not nineteen.

He frowned at the reflection, trying to look a little less overawed by the sim.

Warrick appeared behind him in the mirror.

"It's just like me," Toreth said, then thought how stupid it sounded. Warrick, however, nodded seriously.

"Indeed it is. I had them take a detailed scan. Of course, it's possible to look like anyone in the sim. And be mistaken for them, if one is a good enough mimic." His voice dipped, darkening. "I spend a good deal of time in other people's bodies." Then, as Toreth looked round, he smiled. "Please, take a seat."

Toreth sat down carefully, feeling the springs give slightly beneath his weight, and ran his hands over the fabric of the arms. "I can't believe it," he said, almost involuntarily.

Judging by the widening smile, his reaction was clearly everything Warrick could have wished. Obviously showing off, he clapped his hands, and a tray holding two glasses of something clear and fizzy appeared in the air beside him. He took the tray and set it down on a table.

"Here, have a drink." He proffered a glass.

Toreth took it, pausing to brush a finger down the side. Beaded condensation ran at his touch and he watched a drip splash onto his leg. Except, of course, it didn't. The sim had fed the tiny impact and small, spreading chill directly into the nerves. He touched the spot, acutely aware of the separate sensations making up the simple gesture.

"Go on," Warrick said.

When Toreth took a sip, he discovered it was gin and tonic — the flavour was wonderfully real. He felt the cold liquid in his mouth and all the way down his throat.

"That's amazing." Toreth was beginning to get annoyed with himself for sounding so overwhelmed, but it
was
pretty fantastic. He took another mouthful, licking the drops from his lips, marvelling at the fizz on his tongue. Worth a trip here, even if the demo was all he got out of it. However, judging by the meditative way Warrick was watching him drink, it wouldn't be.

Warrick took a taste from his own glass. "Won't get you drunk, either, which is good or bad depending on how you look at it. I want to put in a controlled ethanol release eventually, but unfortunately all the pharmaceutical add-ons are still in testing. Stand up."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to shift the scene and it makes some people queasy if they start out seated and end up standing. It's an inner ear problem."

Toreth stood and waited as Warrick returned to the controls.

"Now, this one we're
very
proud of. Not my personal work, but . . ."

The glasses vanished from their hands as the walls dissolved away completely to reveal a vast expanse of water meadow. They stood at the foot of a long gentle slope leading up to a distant tree-topped ridge, dark against the vivid blue sky that arched over them. Elsewhere, the flat meadow stretched away until it finally shimmered into a summer heat-haze.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Toreth said, giving up any attempt at intelligent comment.