“It’s been tough all around,” Lilly said.
“This is the Tom Hatcher that we talked about,” Corrigan told her. “Worked with me on software for years. Now he runs a big slice of the development work at Xylog.”
“I’ve heard a few things about you, Tom,” Lilly said.
“Well, wait until you hear my version before you make your mind up. You know how it is with these Irish guys.” Hatcher’s voice had dropped. The forced humor was an offering to placate.
“Hi,” Lilly conceded with a nod.
Hatcher turned his head back to look up at Corrigan. “I figured out how it must have happened. You remember how it was between you and Frank Tyron back then? There was a group who had him all set up as their man to run COSMOS as a way of cashing in on the work done at SDC. But you screwed that up by selling the company on Oz, and the war changed to which one of you would move into Jason’s slot when he went back to Blawnox. You remember all that?”
“How was I supposed to forget?” Corrigan said.
Hatcher went on. “They had another group somewhere that we didn’t know about—probably back in SDC—that they kept updated with all the research work that we did. These other guys worked it up to a full-world sim and added in a memory suppressor. You, me, and the others who were part of the regular schedule got wiped as soon as we were inside, and the Tyron campaign committee has been running a gimmick-tester for Madison Avenue ever since. That’s how come all that money kept pouring in. And now somebody has decided to restart the whole thing. But this time there isn’t going be a discontinuity at the changeover that needs to be camouflaged. The simulation has gotten good enough to merge in smoothly with reality. We weren’t supposed to know anything about that, but this time the suppression screwed up.”
Corrigan made a sign that there was no need for Hatcher to go on. “Okay, we pretty much figured it out the same way, Tom,” he said. “I found myself coming together again after supposedly being messed up in the head by a project that was canceled years ago. After years of being a convalescent, I ended up working as a bartender.” He looked across at Lilly. “Lilly was on the right track before I even suspected.”
The news seemed to deflate Hatcher, as if something that he had been pinning a hope on had collapsed. “So you’re not . . . you’re not just in here as an observer right now?” he said. “You can’t decouple and go stop this from the outside?”
Corrigan looked surprised. “How could I? We’re both in the same situation. You just spelled it all out. . . .” His voice trailed away as he realized that Hatcher had been asking him again to double-check: Was Corrigan really a memory-suppressed surrogate? Or did he know more than he had let on? In short, had Corrigan been a party to the group that had sprung this?
Hatcher’s manner became more subdued. “I had to ask,” he said. Clearly this had been one of the reasons why he had contacted Corrigan.
“I understand,” Corrigan said.
Lilly caught Corrigan’s eye in a way that asked if any of this mattered. Weren’t they missing the whole point that this was supposed to be all about? Corrigan got them back to it.
“On the phone earlier, you said we put in ejector buttons. What was that all about?” he said.
Hatcher took a long drink from his mug. “By the time we got into the serious tests, some funny things were going on. More strangers being brought in from outside that we hadn’t expected. Installations and integrations that weren’t scheduled. We couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody. . . .”
Corrigan could only shake his head. “I don’t really remember.” It was all mixed up in the confusion of half-memories from immediately after that time, twelve years ago.
“We didn’t like it, Joe. And the more we talked it over, the more we agreed there was no way we were gonna go into the sim with all these guys we didn’t know pressing buttons on the outside, without taking out the kind of insurance that we’d figured out for memsupped surrogates. You went into the simworld that night—the day we talked about it. Your memory must have been wiped back to take out that day, which is why you don’t know anything about it. But I wasn’t due to go in until a day later. So I remember us talking about it.”