Entoverse

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The familiar feeling of warmth and relaxation closed around her as she eased back into the recliner and VISAR’s intangible fingers took control of her senses.

“Tell me again how these Thurien protocols on privacy work,” she said in her mind to the machine. “What’s to stop you going deeper than just accessing sensory data, and extracting anything you want out of my head?”

“Programming rules built into the system,” VISAR answered. “They confine my operations to processing and communicating only what users consciously direct.”

“So you don’t read minds?”

“No.”

“But you could?”

“Technically, yes.”

“I don’t think I like that. Doesn’t the thought of it bother the Thuriens?”

“I can’t see why it should, any more than the thought of a surgeon seeing your insides organically.”

“No? But then I guess you wouldn’t. You were designed by them, so you think the way they do.”

“Possibly so.”

“Can the rules be broken?”

“It would require a specific authorization from the user for me to override the directive. So the user is always in control. Anyway, what could someone have to hide?”

Gina could not contain a laugh. “Don’t the humans ever have thoughts or a side of their nature deep down that they try to hide even from themselves?”

“How could I know? If they do, then by definition they don’t reveal it.”

Really? Gina thought. Ganymean minds might be capable of such commendable self-discipline, but she doubted if a typical human one would. “Were the Jevlenese as sensible and restrained in the way they used JEVEX?” she asked.

“I suspect not,” VISAR answered.

“So, what can you do, VISAR? I want to know what this system is capable of.”

“I can take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere among thousands of Thurien worlds, natural and artificial, scattered across tens of light-years.”

“How about Thurien itself, then?”

This time there were no preliminary sensory disturbances. Gina found herself at the edge of a terraced water garden near the summit of an enormous tower. The view below was of a cascade of levels and ramparts, falling away and unfolding for what must have been miles to blend with a mind-defying fusion of structures stretching to the fringe of a distant ocean. There were numerous figures around her, all Ganymean, walking and talking, others sitting around and doing nothing. She felt a faint breeze, and she could smell the blossoms by the pools and waterfalls. There were flying machines in the sky.

“Vranix,” VISAR informed her. “One of Thuriens older cities.”

The sudden transition made Gina feel dwarfed by the scale of everything. It took her a few seconds to adjust. “This is the way it actually is, right now?” she said. “These people are really there?”

“They are,” VISAR confirmed. “But since they’re not neurally coupled into the system, you can’t interact with them. You’re simply perceiving what actually is. This is called Actual Mode.”

“What else is there?”

“Interactive Mode. You’re in the same setting, but superposed on your perception of it are visual representations of other users physically in couplers located elsewhere. The images are activated by voluntary signals picked up from the speech and motor centers of their brains, so they act as they would choose to. The converse is just as true, of course; i.e., they see you in the same way. Hence the illusion of actually being there and interacting is total. It’s the usual way of setting up social and business meetings.”

“Switch to that, then,” Gina said.

The scenery stayed the same, but the distribution of figures changed. Most vanished, and others appeared where none had been before The overall number seemed to be fewer.

“Those other people that I saw a moment ago, they’re still there really?” Gina asked.

“They are. I’ve simply edited them out of the datastream into your visual cortex.”

“So who are these people that I’m seeing now? Where are they?”

“Here, there, in different places. They’re simply people who happen to have chosen this venue at the moment, for whatever their purpose is.”

The flying machines were still there, Gina noticed. She wondered how VISAR decided the boundary between edited foreground and authentic background.

Then a Ganymean couple who had been sitting on a nearby seat got up and approached. “I hope we’re not being presumptuous, but we’ve never seen a Terran this closely before,” the male said.

Gina noticed that several of the other figures were looking across at them discreetly, and trying not to make it too obvious. “No that’s fine,” Gina replied falteringly.

“Permit us to introduce ourselves. My name is Morgo Yishal. This is my daughter, Jasene. We like to meet here from time to time. Our family lived in Vranix when Jasene was young. This was one of her favorite places.”

“Where are you now-if it’s not a rude question?” Gina asked, still off-balance from the strangeness of it all.

“Oh, I’m teaching on the other side of Thurien now,” the man replied.

“I’m on a vessel that’s orbiting a world nearer to Earth than Thurien,” Jasene said. “Maybe I could show you it sometime. It’s quite an interesting place. And you?”

“Me? Oh, on one of your starships, traveling from Earth to Jevlen.”

“What brings you to Vranix?” Morgo inquired. “Seeing a Terran alone like this is most unusual.”

“Nothing special. I’m just experimenting with the system, really.”

“Of course, I can superpose Actual and Interactive modes,” VISAR’s voice interjected. The figures that had been present initially reappeared, mixing the “real” ones with VISAR’s virtual creations, and in moments Gina had lost track of which were which.

“Er, would you excuse me?” Gina stammered to the two Ganymeans. “I need time to absorb this. I’m still getting used to it.”

“But of course,” the man answered.

“VISAR, it’s too crowded. Get me away from people.” Gina glanced at Jasene. “I’ll get back to you about that visit… And thanks. I assume VISAR has your number?” Jasene inclined her head in what Gina hoped was an understanding nod.

Then Gina was standing on a barren, rocky ridge, looking down into a huge crater of molten magma, dull red and turgid, bubbling sullenly below yellow vapor and oily smoke. She could feel the heat on her face, and a choking, sulfurous odor seared her throat. The far rim was invisible through the haze, and behind her a tortured landscape of jagged peaks and bottomless fissures vanished into banks of dark, stormy cloud.

“I can take you where you couldn’t survive physically,” VISAR’s voice said. “Here’s a new world being born. The heat and fumes that you feel are just to give the flavor. In reality you’d be asphyxiated instantly, roasted in seconds, and flattened under two tons of body weight.”

“This doesn’t make sense. Do the Thuriens actually put sensors in places like this? It’s crazy. How many visits does it get in a thousand years?”

“Actually, this is largely simulation-interpolated from data being captured long-range from orbit.”

“Too hot and stuffy,” Gina pronounced.

Then she was in a sea of fantastic, mountain-size sculptures of shining white, rising and curving into delicate pinnacles against a sky of pale azure, fading into pink lower down in every direction. “A wind-carved ocean of frozen methane, not much above absolute zero in temperature,” VISAR said. “Again, interpolated reconstruction by instruments in orbit. Cool enough?”

“Too much. My bones feel cold, looking at it. But you don’t have to use sensor data at all, do you? It could all be pure simulation?”

“Sure-I can make you a world. Any world.”

“Let’s go home, then. How about Scotland? I’ve always wanted to go there but never have. I imagine it with mountains and lochs, and little villages tucked away in glens.”

She was sitting on a hillside by a rocky stream, looking across a valley over the tops of pine trees at green slopes topped by craggy bastions of gray rock. Off to one side, rooftops and a church spire huddled together before an expanse of water. Birds were chirping and insects humming. The air was cool and moist with spray from the stream.

“Is this real?” Gina asked, frowning. It couldn’t be, she told herself. Scotland wasn’t wired into VISAR.

“No,” VISAR answered. “It’s just something I made up-from what you said and what I know about Earth. I told you, I can make any world you want.”

“It’s too modern,” Gina said, studying the offering. “The road down there is built for automobiles. I can see power lines by the houses, and there’s a tractor in a tin shed.” She could feel herself being carried away by the novelty of it all. Perhaps she was feeling a sense of relief in being back among surroundings that she understood. “If we’re getting into fiction, let’s go back a bit and make it more romantic,” she said. “Maybe somewhere around Bonnie Prince Charlie’s time.”

“Those times weren’t really very romantic,” VISAR observed. “Most of the people lived lives ravaged by disease, poverty, ignorance, brutality. Three-quarters of the children died before they were-”

“Oh, shut up, VISAR. This is just a game. Leave that kind of stuff out, and make it the way we like to pretend it was.”

“You mean like this?”

The roadway turned into an unfenced cart track, while the power lines, tractor, communications dishes, and Other signs of the twenty-first century disappeared. The houses changed into simpler affairs, with roofs of thatch and slate, and a steel footbridge crossing a brook below transformed into an arched construction of rough-cut stone. A dog was barking somewhere. As stipulated, everything was neat and pretty.

For a few moments Gina was astounded, even though she should have had a good idea by now of what to expect. She stood up, staring hard and consciously going through all the impressions being reported by her senses. She could feel a pebble under her shoe, and a branch from a bush beside her brushing her arm as she moved. It was uncanny. The sensation of being there was indistinguishable in any way that she could find from the real thing. Her clothes felt unusually heavy and enveloping. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a shawl and an ankle-length skirt of the period.

She was curious again. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t look around?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

She followed the stream down to a path that joined the cart track. It led to the outskirts of the village. There was a small marketplace with stalls and crude, wooden-shuttered shops displaying meat, vegetables, dairy produce, all plentiful and fresh, fabrics and linen, pottery and pans. And there was a cast of players to complete the scene, correct in character and role: farmers, merchants, tradesmen, housewives; gentry on horseback, a miller with a cartload of sacks, a jolly-faced innkeeper, two Highlanders in kilts, and children, rosy cheeked and well fed, playing around doorways.

All of it crushingly bland, empty, and uninteresting. It came across as a not very imaginative stage set, populated by moving pieces of scenery added to finish the effect. Which, indeed, was what the inhabitants were.

Gina stopped by a gray-haired old man sitting on a doorstep, smoking a pipe. Alongside him was a sleepy-looking, black-and-white collie. “Hello,” she said.

“Aye.”

“It’s a fine day.”

“‘Tis an’ all.”

“This looks like a nice place.”

“It’s no’ sa bad.”

“I’m not from around here.”

“I can see that.”

Gina stared at him. His gray eyes twinkled back at her with good-humored, imbecilic indifference as he continued puffing his pipe. Her frustration turned to exasperation. “I’m from three hundred years in the future,” she said.

“We dinna get vera many o’ those around here.”

“VISAR, this isn’t going to work,” Gina flared. “These are just dummies. Don’t they know anything? Don’t they have anything to say?”

“What do you want them to say?”

“Use your imagination.”

“It’s your imagination that matters.”

“Well, can’t you figure it out from whatever you see in my head?” Gina demanded.

“I’m not permitted to,” VISAR reminded her.

“Okay, then, I’m permitting you. Go by whatever you find. Don’t take any notice of the things we humans fabricate to fool ourselves.”

This time the transition was not quite instantaneous.

There was music, muted to a background level. Gina found herself clad in a plain but gracious, classically styled gown. It felt deliciously light and sheer. She was standing among others in a reception room of a large house. It was a solid, mature house, dignified but not pretentious, with high, paneled rooms, lofty gables, and intricately molded ceilings, and it stood by the sea. Across the hall was her library, and off the landing at the top of the curving stairway, the office where she worked, with its picture window framing a rocky shoreline. How she knew these things, she wasn’t sure. But she smiled inwardly and gave VISAR full marks. Yes, it was a kind of life that she had sometimes conjured up in her daydreams.

The room that she and her guests were in had tall windows with heavy drapes, a fine marble fireplace, and furnishings in character. Above the fireplace was a crest, showing arms: unicorn and lion rampant, and a fleur-de-lis surmounted by… a shamrock. The music, she realized, was Celtic harp and flute. But from the dress of those present, and as she knew, somehow, anyway, the times were modern.

The words from one member of a group of people talking nearby caught her ear. “Ah, yes, but it would have been a different thing if this country hadn’t overcome its internal squabbles and resisted the English.” The speaker, a roundly built man with thinning hair and a pugnacious bulldog jaw, stood holding a cigar in one hand and a brandy glass in the other. He spoke with an English accent; his voice had a rasping tone and a hint of a lisp. “Ireland might even have gone solidly over to Rome when Henry VIII went the other way.”

“Oh, impossible!” one of the listeners exclaimed.

“Seriously. Purely out of defiance. Then who knows what we might have seen today? The Reversion might never have happened, and England could conceivably have dominated the Irish Isles. Then, America might have been started by some kind of Protestant, Puritan, monogamy cult. Then where would all of the freedoms be that we take for granted today?”

Gina stared in sudden astonishment as she recognized the speaker. It was Winston Churchill, one of her favorite historical figures.

The glowering, stormy-faced man with thick side-whiskers, sitting talking with two women on a sofa facing the fire, was Ludwig van Beethoven.

Shaken, Gina moved her head to take in others. “Nein. Zat is not really true, vat zey say. Only two ideas do I haff in my life, unt vun off zem vass wrong.” Albert Einstein was talking to Mark Twain.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I abhor war as much as anyone-more than most, I suspect. But the reality is that evil people exist, who can be restrained only by the certainty of retaliation…” Edward Teller, nuclear physicist.

“Let’s face it. Most decisions that matter are made by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.” Ayn Rand, to someone who looked like Mencken.

Another voice spoke close behind her. “Splendid to see you again, Gina. Doubtless dinner will be up to the usual standard.” She turned, now feeling bewildered. It was Benjamin Franklin, easily identified even in his dark, contemporary suit and tie. He leaned closer to whisper. “Tell the secret. What are you surprising us with this time?”

“Er, venison.” Gina found that she had a complete set of pseudomemories: deciding the menu; consulting with the caterers; planning the seating. The picture of the dining room was clear in her mind.

“Wonderful. One of my favorites. And my congratulations on the new book. It’s bound to raise a few hackles, but somebody needed to say it. Nothing could be more obvious than that individuals are not equal. They differ in size, shape, speed, strength, intelligence, aptitude, and in the disposition to better themselves. Of course, the opportunities to all should be the same. But to demand equality of results as a right is absurd. Since it is impossible for anything to grow beyond its inherent potential, the only way of achieving it would be to cut all trees down to the size of the shortest.”

Amazingly, Gina knew exactly what he was talking about. “I’m glad you agree,” she said, forcing a thin smile.

Franklin leaned forward again and covered his mouth with a hand. “Ayn is livid that she didn’t write it. You ought to try and find some way to console her.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Gina promised, puffing herself together at last and managing a conspiratorial smile.

“Good… And how are your husbands? Well, I trust?”

Husbands?

Gina’s smile froze as a new tapestry of recollections unfurled itself. “The last time I saw-” She balked. The image in her mind of the man she had driven to the airport had Vic Hunt’s face.

“Yes, which one? The Englishman?” Franklin inquired genially.

“VISAR, what does this mean?”

“You tell me.”

Heads turned toward the door. Gina followed their gaze. A lithe, athletic figure, resplendent in tuxedo and evening dress, had appeared and was beaming at the company with arms extended wide. He had piercing blue eyes, a droopy mustache, and hair that fell in yellow waves to his shoulders. “We thank all of you for coming. Dinner will be just a few minutes. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves. Feel that this home is all your homes.” Appreciative murmurs came from around.

Gina gaped at him with a mixture of disbelief and confusion. He came over to her, assured, confident, mocking behind the laughing eyes, and offered his arm. “Excuse us. May I have my wife back?” he said to Franklin.

“But of course.” Franklin bowed his head and moved back. They moved away.

“What are you doing here, Larry?” Gina hissed.

“You brought me here. I’m just obliging.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe yourself, then.”

“Why do you always insist on acting like an asshole?”

“Why did you marry an asshole?”

“That was a long time ago. It’s been over between us for years.”

“Only because you made it that way.”

“We weren’t suited.”

“Wrong. We could have had fun. You had the curiosity, but you didn’t know how to handle it. So you turned the problem into something else.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gina told him.

“Oh no? Come on, you’re not really interested in listening to this bunch all night. Let’s move the night along.”

The reception room and the guests vanished. Larry was dominating the situation, the way he always had. Gina started to rebel, the way she always had. Why had it always had to be his way?

They had been transported upstairs to the master bedroom. Larry’s jacket and tie hung on a chair, and he was standing by her. Another of his wives was lying propped against pillows on the bed. She smiled invitingly, her breasts and legs outlined through a thin, white robe that contrasted with her dark hair. Larry grinned at Gina challengingly. Despite herself, she felt an excitement rising inside her.

The woman stretched out a hand. “It’s only a dream, Gina. We can do anything we like. Haven’t you always been curious about everything?”

It was Sandy.

Gina felt Larry’s arm slide around her waist. She pulled back. “No, I don’t want this.”

“Oh, but you do,” VISAR’s voice said from somewhere distant.

Sandy started untying the belt of her robe.

“Get me away from here!”

And Gina was back in the coupler cubicle. She tore herself up from the recliner and fled into the corridor. Farther along, she passed Alan and Keith, who were just leaving the bar; she did not even see them. They exchanged baffled looks, shrugged, and continued on their way.

Ten minutes later, her chest was still thumping as she sat on her bed, smoking a tranquilizer. Yes, she thought. She had a pretty good idea of what could have deranged a planetful of Jevlenese. Small wonder that half of them seemed to have lost touch with reality.