“Oh, my God,” Lilly breathed. It was what Corrigan had feared.
Hatcher held the weapon between his hands above the tabletop, staring at it for a few seconds as if savoring the memories that it evoked. Then he looked up at Corrigan with a challenging expression and shrugged nonchalantly. “I started blowing ’em away. There’s probably something about it on the news if you turn it on.”
Corrigan groaned—not at the news so much as from the realization that his letting-up of fears had been a delusion. Tom was still very much borderline—right on the edge.
Hatcher interpreted his frozen expression as censure and rose up from the chair. “What’s the matter, Joe? Don’t you understand?—I’ve had it with animation freaks! There was no way, they were gonna shut me up inside anywhere again. . . . But it doesn’t matter a shit anyway. They’re just walking bundles of code. It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing—any of it.” He stood, waiting for a sign that they understood. But despite himself, just for that instant Corrigan was unable to return anything but a blank stare while his mind fumbled for the right thing to say. Lilly seemed to be affected the same way.
Hatcher looked at them and colored, angry now. He pointed back toward the front door, indicating the direction to the outside of the house but meaning the outside of the whole simulation. “Do you expect me to just walk around and carry on being a good guinea pig for those guys out there? I’m telling you, I’m getting out, and it won’t be with any of their permission.” He grinned crookedly as a new thought struck him, and turned the gun toward Corrigan. “I could get you outta here too, if you want, Joe—real quick.”
Corrigan’s reaction was reflexive. “Don’t point that bloody thing at me. Look—”
“What’s up, Joe? You’re getting this confused with reality. All that happens is the impact function of the bullet transforms as a superposition into the physical subfile of your physical matrix and makes it nonviable, and you’ll wake up in a cubicle. Why put up with any more of this shit?”
“Tom, you just let me handle it in my own way, okay?” Corrigan said tightly.
“We know how you feel, but why don’t we just relax and—” Lilly began, but Hatcher thrust the gun back inside his coat and was already moving toward the door. There was a look in his eyes that hadn’t showed earlier—final surrender when a last hope had failed to materialize.
“I came here because I thought you might be on an open wire out, Joe,” he said. “But it seems you’re just as trapped in here, and I sure as hell am not gonna sit around waiting for them to call me. Okay, you solve it your way, and I’ll solve it mine. This isn’t gonna get us anywhere. Sorry I messed up your evening. So could you just let me have my car?”
“Now don’t do anything—” Corrigan began, but Hatcher cut him off with a laugh.
“I don’t believe it. Joe. You still haven’t gotten it into your head. . . . There isn’t anything stupid that I can do. All those years must have got you really conditioned. Maybe I had it better after all.” He crossed the kitchen and opened the door leading to the garage. “Now the car, Joe—please?”
* * *
They watched the Ford drive off with a squeal of tires, and only then did Corrigan notice for the first time that one side of its front fender and the wing were mangled. He went back inside with Lilly, and they ate an uninspired meal of bachelor-fare oddments from the refrigerator.
Afterward, they resumed poking around the house for possible clues to an escape switch, but the enthusiasm went out of it as they soon found that Hatcher had been right about one thing: with no idea what they were looking for, the possibilities were virtually unlimited, and so was the amount of time that finding it was likely to take. Finally they agreed that it would probably be smarter to await a response from Sylvine as a first option. They retired early, Lilly taking the guest room, and drove back to Xylog first thing the next morning.