”VM” SWITCHES TO VOICE MODE (COMMAND EXEC ANSWERS TO ”ROGER”)
* * *
Lilly gasped, awed. “Joe, is this what I think it is?”
“Joe,” Judy’s voice came, strangled, fearful. “Out there—Betty. Something’s happened to her.” Corrigan looked past the doorway and saw that Betty was standing by Judy’s desk, inanimate like a mannequin, her mouth open and arm raised in the middle of a gesture. Tyron had gotten through: the controllers outside had deactivated the animations. From outside the building there came the distant, muted sounds of multiple vehicles crashing. Corrigan looked back at Judy suddenly as the further implication registered.
“You’re real!” he said in astonishment.
“What are you talking about? Of course I am,” Judy said. “Do something about Betty.” She must have volunteered for the rerun and had her memory suppressed, just like the others the first time. She didn’t know anything about the first run.
Farther back, Tyron, Endelmyer, Velucci, and Borth were coming across the area of open floor beyond Judy’s desk, looking grim and purposeful, with Morgen and Sutton following. Behind them, just before the corner to the corridor, another Endelmyer, another Velucci, and Pinder were standing immobilized.
Corrigan hurriedly tapped OV into the pad, followed by VM, and then said aloud, experimentally, “Roger, do you read?”
“Loud and clear,” a voice answered. It was in his head, but he heard it in his ear.
“I’m in full exec access now?”
“You’ve got it.”
Oh, boy. He was going to enjoy this. “Define operand class: all current surrogates,” he instructed. “Exceptions by name: Corrigan, Essell, Tyron, Morgen, Sutton, Endelmyer, Velucci, Borth.”
“Specify operation?”
“There’s nothing to worry about, Judy,” Corrigan muttered. “I’ll explain later.” Then, louder; “Disconnect them, Roger.”
And Judy vanished—as, in that same instant, did all the other bewildered surrogates all over Pittsburgh who had just seen the world around them turn into statues.
Tyron strode into the room ahead of the others. “What do you think you’re doing?” he barked at Corrigan.
Corrigan ignored him. “Roger, put SPD generic on my screen.” A format appeared specifying the set of Surrogate Physical Descriptors that the system used to manage the interactions of each projected persona with its environment. Speaking quickly, Corrigan directed, “Operand class by name: Corrigan, Essell. Zero reaction coefficients of M-sub-M, M-sub-P, and delete spatial conflict restrictions.”
“Get away from that. . . . What the? . . .” Tyron came around the desk and grabbed at Corrigan’s shoulder to pull him away from the screen, but his hand met no resistance and went straight through. Corrigan had in effect turned himself and Lilly into ghosts.
Tyron brought the communicator up to his mouth and snapped, “Control, do you read?”
A harassed voice answered, “We seem to have problems. Nothing’s responding out here. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You don’t have control anymore,” Corrigan said. “I do.”
“That’s impossible,” Tyron declared. He stepped forward, moving through Corrigan’s body, but struck his knee on the edge of the chair, causing him to curse. Corrigan smirked and waved a hand invitingly toward the touchpad. Tyron stabbed savagely at several keys and saw that it was ineffective. The others closed around the desk, all seemingly talking at once so that Corrigan was unable to understand what they were saying—not that he cared a great deal anyway.
“Roger, display Global Dynamics. Reset k-sub-g to twenty percent.”
“Done.”
The plant out on Judy’s desk straightened itself up visibly. Papers that had been lying on the desk and in other places around the office and outside suddenly lifted and began blowing about in currents from the air-conditioner vents. Velucci, who had been walking around the edge of the room behind the others, seemed to unglue from the floor in midstep, went into a strange, floating leap that carried him toward the wall.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, losing his balance and falling in slow motion over a chair. The others felt giddy and strangely light on their feet. Sutton tried to sit down on the nearest chair, but everything about the movement felt wrong; she misjudged the distance, succeeding only in tipping the chair over, and she and it went down together. Corrigan had reduced the gravitational constant to a fifth of normal.