After lunch, Susan sat on the master-bedroom balcony, in the summer sun, reading a novel by Annie Proulx.
She wore white shorts and a blue halter top. Her legs were tan and smooth. Her skin appeared radiant with captured sunlight.
She sipped lemonade from a cut-crystal glass.
Gradually the shadows of a phoenix palm crept across Susan, as if seeking to embrace her.
A faint breeze caressed her neck and languorously combed her golden hair.
The day itself seemed to love her.
A Sony Discman played Chris Isaak CDs while she read. Forever Blue. Heart-Shaped World. San Francisco Days. Sometimes she put the book aside to concentrate on the music.
Her legs were tan and smooth.
Then the household staff and the gardeners left for the day.
She was alone again. Alone. At least she believed that she was alone again.
After taking a long shower and brushing her damp hair, she put on a sapphire-blue silk robe and went to the retreat adjacent to the master bedroom.
In the center of this small room stood a custom-designed black leather recliner. To the left of the recliner was a computer on a wheeled stand.
From a closet, Susan removed VR – virtual reality gear of her own design: a lightweight ventilated helmet with hinged goggles and a pair of supple elbow-length gloves, both wired to a nerve-impulse processor.
The motorized recliner was currently configured as an armchair. She sat and engaged a harness, much like that in an automobile: one strap fitting securely across her abdomen, another running diagonally from her left shoulder to her right hip.
Temporarily, she held the VR equipment in her lap. Her feet rested on a series of upholstered rollers that attached to the base of the chair, positioned similarly to the footplate on a beautician’s chair. This was the walking pad, which would allow her to simulate walking when the VR scenario required it.
She switched on the computer and loaded a program labeled Therapy, which she herself had created.
This was not a game. It was not an industrial training program or an educational tool, either. It was precisely what it claimed to be. Therapy. And it was better than anything that any disciple of Freud could have done for her.
She had devised a revolutionary new use for VR technology, and one day she might even patent and market the application. For the lime being, however, Therapy was for her use only.
First she plugged the VR gear into a jack on an interfacing device already connected to the computer, and then she put on the helmet. The goggles were flipped up, away from her eyes.
She pulled on the gloves and flexed her fingers.
The computer screen offered several options. Using the mouse, she clicked on Begin.
Turning away from the computer, leaning back in the recliner, Susan flipped down the goggles, which fit snugly to her eye sockets. The lenses were in fact a pair of miniature, matched, high-definition video displays.
She is surrounded by a soothing blue light that gradually grows darker until all is black.
To match the unfolding scenario in the VR world, the motorized recliner hummed and reconfigured into a bed, parallel to the floor.
Susan was now lying on her back. Her arms were crossed on her chest, and her hands were fisted.
In the blackness, one point of light appears: a soft yellow and blue glow. On the far side of the room. Lower than the bed, near the floor. It resolves into a Donald Duck night light plugged in a wall outlet.
In the retreat adjacent to her bedroom, strapped to the recliner and encumbered with the VR gear, Susan appeared oblivious to the real world. She murmured as though she were a sleeping child. But this was a sleep filled with tension and threatening shadows.
A door opens.
From the upstairs hallway, a wedge of light pries into the bedroom, waking her. With a gasp, she sits up in bed, and the covers fall away from her, as a cool draft ruffles her hair.
She looks down at her arms, at her small hands, and she is six years old, wearing her favorite Pooh Bear pajamas. They are flannel-soft against her skin.