Presumably, then, Lilly must have been right in her guess as to why they had no clear recollections of what had taken place after commencement of the preliminary tests, when the project had supposedly run into problems and been canceled. Their memories had been suppressed and a cover story manufactured to camouflage the cruder, early phases of the simulation, when the system was in its infancy of learning. The disruption had been progressively reduced as the simulation got better, and the corresponding improvement in perceptions and thought coherence offered as evidence of “recovery.” The possibility of suppressing the memories of the real-world surrogates in this way was something that had been talked about often enough, but in all of Corrigan’s experience the decision had been not to use it. That was why his first reaction to Lilly had been to reject the suggestion as impossible. Evidently he had been wrong.
So exactly what was going on and why? He didn’t know. He would need to start practicing some real philosophy for once, and get in touch with Lilly again. But that was going to have to wait for a while, he decided. Virtual or not, there were some aspects of this reality that were simply just too “real”—and which, for the moment at least, there was nothing he could do to change. Before any more consideration of what it all meant and what he was going to do next, he would have to get some sleep. He got up, shrugged at the mess of the broken spice rack and scattered containers, and made his way blearily through to the bedroom.
Chapter Fourteen
Corrigan stood with Mat Hamils, the New York City-area sales manager, outside the main entrance to the Executive Building of CLC’s Blawnox R & D facility. With them were Victor Borth, Nigel Korven, and Amanda Ramussienne from Feller & Faber. Five months had passed since Corrigan’s visit to New York. Pinder had decided to hold things until the first implementation of EVIE was operating, and then there had been a further delay while the PAF system was expanded to handle several operators simultaneously; but finally, the long-promised F & F trip to Pittsburgh for a demonstration had been arranged.
Borth raised a hand in front of his face and wiggled his fingers. He turned his head to his two companions watching him, pursed his mouth approvingly, and nodded. He looked across the parking lot toward the main gate, and beyond at the tree-clad hills dotted with houses in the distance. The day was sunny and bright. Intermittent traffic sounds came from an unseen highway. To one side, a lawn edged by flower beds bordered the paved area where they were standing. A bee buzzed around the gladioli. Farther away, a crow landed on the lawn and cried raucously.
“I’m impressed,” Borth announced.
“I certainly prefer this improvement in the weather,” Korven agreed. The drive from the airport had been filthy, through heavy traffic with rain falling continually from a leaden sky. Hamils glanced at Corrigan and looked pleased.
There were still some peculiarities about the scene, however. The flowers and the grass looked normal enough close up; but with increasing distance they lost detail too quickly and became smeary, as if viewed by somebody shortsighted. The distant scenery was too flat. And although there could be no denying that the colors were an improvement over even high-resolution conventional graphics, they lacked some subtle, indefinable quality of richness and depth out in the sunshine. In some areas of sharp contrast, such as shaded spots underneath trees, or the view back inside the lobby, which was illuminated by tinted light, they were simply . . . wrong. Some correction mechanism that the brain applied to create the hues that it “knew” to be true, regardless of the raw data that the optic nerves were reporting, was not being emulated.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Corrigan suggested.
They stepped off the paving in front of the entrance and began following the driveway in the direction of the gate. Although their movements seemed acceptably smooth and natural, they all felt a hint of a vaguely disconnected, floating sensation that Tom Hatcher had described as “walk by wire,” which resulted from motor feedback not being perfectly synchronized with vision. Borth was relieved to note that a wrinkle in his sock that had been bothering him all morning was no longer there.