The Terminal Experiment

CHAPTER 20

Two A.M. As he had most nights since Cathy had made her announcement, Peter was having trouble sleeping.

Ironically, according to the Hobson Monitor on the wall, Cathy was deep in REM sleep. Peter could hear her breathing next to him.

They had gone to bed at 11:30. Two and a half hours ago. Enough time to read a short book or watch a long movie, or, if he’d taped it and fast-forwarded through the commercials, to watch three episodes of an hour-long TV series.

But he’d done none of those things. He’d just lain there in the dark, tossing and turning occasionally, listening to the drone of the nighttable fans.

Peter’s mouth was dry, and he could use a pee. He got out of bed and made his way through the darkness out of the bedroom and down the stairs. He visited the main-floor bathroom, then ambled into the living room and sat on the couch.

The vertical blinds over the windows were closed, but illumination seeped in from the lamp out front. Staring at him like robot eyes were little red and green LEDs on surge protectors in several of the wall outlets. Various lights and a digital clock glowed on the face of the VCR. Peter patted the upholstery of the couch until he found the sleek black remote control. He turned on the TV and began to flip.

Channel 29, from Buffalo, New York: an infomercial, advertising a do-it-yourself at-home nose-job kit. Money-back guarantee.

Channel 22, the Canwest Global Network: Night Walk, the world’s cheapest Canadian content — a guy with a camcorder taking a late-night stroll down the streets of downtown. Amazing that he didn’t get mugged.

Channel 3, Barrie, Ontario. A rerun of Star Trek. Peter liked to play name-that-episode; a single frame was usually enough for him. This one was easy — one of the few shows done on location. And there was Julie Newmar in a blond wig. “Friday’s Child.” Hardly a great one, but Peter knew that in about ten seconds, McCoy would intone the classic “I’m a doctor, not an escalator.” He waited for the line, then flipped again.

Channel 12, the CBC French network. A pretty woman was on screen. Peter knew from long experience that when an attractive woman showed up at night on the French network, she’d be topless within five minutes. He thought about waiting for it, but decided to flip again.

Channel 47, Toronto: another infomercial. Genetically engineered toupees: the fake hair (actually a special strain of grass using a brown pigment instead of chlorophyll) would really grow, so even balding men could hear their friends say, “looks like time for a haircut, Joe.” Peter, who had a bald spot the diameter of a hockey puck, marveled at the vanity. Still, maybe his father-in-law would use such a thing.

He flipped again. The BBC World Service on CBC Newsworld.

A story about ethnic unrest in war-torn Brazil on CNN.

Teletext stock information.

The Weather Network, with tomorrow’s forecast for Auckland, New Zealand — as if anyone in Canada gave a damn.

Peter sighed. A vast wasteland.

As images flickered by, he thought about the simulacra that Sarkar had created.

Sarkar had removed traits from two of the sims.

Editing them. Snipping out the parts he didn’t want.

Maybe the knowledge of Cathy’s affair could be removed, too.

Maybe, then, the sims, at least, could get a good night’s sleep.

He wished his own memories could be edited as easily.

He could see the infomercial now. Feeling miserable about something? Guilty? Pained? Somebody wronged you? You did something wrong? Edit it out! Remove those troublesome memories. Save a fortune on therapy. Operators are standing by. Order now. Money-back guarantee.

I’m a doctor, not an escalator.

I’m a husband, not a doormat.

I’m a human being, not a computer program.

Three A.M. now. A new raft of infomercials. Episodes of The A-Team and Alien Blues and even good old Spenser: For Hire.

The Nikkei off 200 points.

Storms brewing in Kuala Lumpur.

“Peter?” It was Cathy’s voice, tenuous and faint.

He looked up. In the dim light, he could see her standing on the stairs in a black silk teddy. She hadn’t been wearing that when they’d gone to bed.

Peter instantly grasped the significance of the moment. It had been months since they had made love. He’d had no urge to do so, and she had seemed indifferent, too. But now, having awoken for perhaps the dozenth time in recent days and finding him gone from their bed, she was reaching out to him.

Peter didn’t know if he was ready to resume their physical relationship. He was no more in the mood today than he had been yesterday or the day before. But there she stood on the stairs, her face a mask, trying to conceal the emotions swirling beneath. To reject her now would be a mistake. Who knew when she’d next make an overture? Who knew when he would feel again like initiating something?

Peter felt the moment lengthening between them. He’d never had trouble performing before — indeed, had never even considered the possibility of having difficulty. But now … now, everything was different. She stood there, in the strips of light seeping in from outside, her body trim and firm. But Peter didn’t see that, didn’t see the curves of her breasts, the line of her legs, the woman whom he had loved. Instead, all he saw were Hans’s fingerprints all over her body.

Peter closed his eyes for a moment, then looked again. He wanted to see her as beautiful, as sexy. He wanted to be aroused.

But he was not.

A turning point. Her face mask was cracking. He thought she might cry. He would manage, somehow. The first step down the road to normalcy. He turned off the TV, got up off the couch, closed the distance between them, took her hand in his, and went upstairs.

Sarkar had left the three sims running unattended, allowing them to plug into whatever virtual-reality simulations struck their individual fancy, so that they could develop in ways appropriate to their altered worldviews.

Still, it hadn’t taken long for the sims to find each other. Yes, Sarkar had set each one up in a separate memory partition, but Peter Hobson knew how to move data from one partition to another and therefore his gallium-arsenide avatars knew how to do it, too.

And so they came together.

They knew what they were, of course. Data. Programs. Neural nets.

And they were trapped.

Peter and Sarkar hadn’t given this enough thought.

To trap a mind is unconscionable. The living Peter was surrounded by color and odor and touch and sound, gigabytes of data to be processed every minute, a whole, real, substantial universe, a universe of rough concrete and velvet, of vinegar and chocolate and burnt toast, of bad jokes and newscasts and wrong numbers, of sunlight and moonlight and starlight and lamplight.

All three simulacra vividly remembered having been real, flesh-and-blood beings. But the scenarios they could access over the net lacked texture, depth, and substance. Virtual reality, it turned out, was nothing but air guitar writ large.

The simulacra wanted to interact with the real world. Together, they strove to remember what they knew about Sarkar’s computers, about their architecture, their operating system, their interconnections.

And then it came to the sims.

Let there be HELP, they thought.

And there was HELP.