“Yes, you know her, Frank,” Corrigan said, reading the situation as Morgen came in last of all, closing the door. “This is Lillian Essell, one of the Air Force volunteers that you interviewed in California a month ago. Except for her it’s been twelve years. I’m not sure if they’ve made that clear to you yet, out there—the memory suppression of the first run didn’t work. It was a neat idea, but you messed up. We still remember everything.”
But Tyron was already waving a hand impatiently and grimacing. “You don’t understand. The rerun is showing some amazing things already. Just stay with it for a few more days. There’s—”
Corrigan slammed a hand down on the table in the center of the room. “Days for you!” he stormed. “That’s the whole point I’m trying to tell you, but you don’t seem able to space for get it into your head. It’s going to be years all over again for us!”
“Not years,” Tyron argued. “The contradictions are beginning to show now. It can’t go much farther. You’ve got to push it to its limits. That’s the only way we’ll learn what we need to know to make it better.”
“So that you can deliver what they want, while I’m the schmuck locked up inside it? What do you take me for? I might be Irish, but I’m not all Kerry green. The answer’s no—no way. Forget it. It’s over. We’re getting out.”
Tyron’s expression changed to something approaching a leer. “Well, it’s a pity you feel that way, Joey boy, because when the chips are down you don’t really have that much of a choice. We can exit at any time. . . .” To prove it, Tyron vanished before their eyes and reappeared a moment later ten feet away, on the opposite side of the table. He pointed a finger at Corrigan. “But you depend on an external disconnect.” He shrugged with a grin of emphasized unapology. “And we’ve got the switch out there. You don’t.”
Lilly stood up and broke in, “That’s not true. What about Tom Hatcher? We can get out anytime.”
Tyron shrugged again, evidently having already considered the point. “So go ahead and opt out,” he told them. “That won’t score very high with the people who own the show, will it? So the simulation loses a couple of surrogates. So what? There are still four dozen others. The show goes on, with you or without you.”
“You talk as if you think it’s yours,” Corrigan said.
Tyron leered again, more broadly this time. “You quit now, and it will be,” he answered.
Corrigan shook his head, bunching his mouth grimly, and threw out an arm. “Oh no, it isn’t as simple as that; at all. Haven’t you heard? You’ve created another crazy world out there. Ever since Hatcher showed them how, they’ve been wiping each other and themselves out all over Pittsburgh. What use do you think a simulation like that is going to be to anyone?”
Tyron made a show of being unperturbed. “We overcompensated on the assimilation parameters. So we set them back a little. It’s no problem.”
Corrigan’s neck reddened. He was about to reply, when the door opened again and Pinder appeared. Pinder moved a pace into the room and stood, looking around at the company perplexedly. “Will somebody tell me what the hell’s going on around here?” he demanded. His eyes singled out Corrigan, and he was about to say something further, when he noticed Lilly beside him, and her visitor’s badge. “Who are you?” he asked her.
Pinder was an animation. He would know nothing of what was being discussed in the room. Corrigan knew more about what Lilly was doing there than any of the others. He gave the only answer that he could: “Her name’s Lillian Essell. She’s a journalist from California, doing a piece on the project. I told her she could use this room for the morning.”
Pinder waited a couple of seconds to see how that explained anything, and when nothing more was forthcoming, shook his head, refusing to add another layer of complication to what there already was. “I’m sorry, Ms. Essell, but this is strictly an internal company matter. I must ask you to leave us, please.”