Chapter Thirty-one
It was one of those awakenings that come suddenly, like a light being switched on, unlike other mornings when Corrigan could spend ages tugging himself free from the clutches of sleep. He felt unusually light and sprightly—more charged up than he could remember feeling in a long time. Maybe he would call Lilly and see about meeting somewhere for lunch.
After leaving the former Xylog site they had come back to Oakland, bought some wine and cooked themselves a dinner at his place, then talked on until the early hours. The suggestion of her staying over had permeated the mood of the evening unspoken. But few turnoffs could be more effective than an awareness of being in a simulation subject to monitoring and recording, and the understanding to wait for more conducive circumstances had been just as mutual, again with no need for anything to be said. The rapport they seemed to have was uncanny, he reflected as he stared up into the darkness. Or was that simply how any two real people would affect each other after twelve subjective years among animations?
Something was odd.
It could have been a difference in temperature or humidity, or perhaps a subtle change in the odor or acoustic properties. But something felt wrong about the room. And the pillow was silky. They didn’t have silky pillows—Muriel thought they were too clinging.
“Lights, Horace,” he called. Nothing happened.
He reached out and groped for the switch on the wall-mounted lamp above the bed. But his fingers found nothing, just a blank wall. And instead of the padded headboard below the lamp, he found what felt like a polished brass rail connected to a bedpost.
Bewildered, he pushed back the covers and sat up. The face of a clock was glowing at him from the bedside unit that the time was 6:30 A.M. There shouldn’t have been a clock on the bedside unit, nor the lamp whose outline he could now make out in the light from the clock. He felt for the base of the lamp, found the switch, and turned it . . . to find that he was not in his apartment in Oakland at all.
But at the same time, the surroundings were familiar: the vanity with its mirror and lights, walk-in closet with louvered doors, satin drapes and shag carpet. . . . He was back in the house that he and Evelyn had lived in at Fox Chapel twelve years ago. The room was untidy, with the pants from one of his suits thrown over a chair along with a crumpled shirt and some socks, shoes tossed haphazardly by the closet, and clothes overflowing around the laundry basket.
He blinked, swung his legs out, and sat in confusion on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of it. It made no sense. He got up, crossed over to the window, and peered through the drapes. The cluttered housefronts and cramped urban streets of Oakland were gone; instead, roomy, upmarket homes with wide driveways, standing comfortably secluded in wooded suburban surroundings. There was no doubt about it: this was Fox Chapel.
Numbly, he fumbled his way into a robe and went out into the hall and along to the living area. His briefcase was on the long coffee table in front of the couch, with papers and a notepad scattered in front of it, and pushed to one end were an empty coffee mug and a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. The side table with the computer monitor had been pulled forward for easy viewing from the couch, and the still-connected keyboard was resting on one of the arms. It looked as if he had been working late last night. He went over and shuffled through the papers. They were all to do with preliminary test schedules for the Oz project. He activated the terminal and checked the current date. It read Tuesday, October 12, 2010. Oz had been due to go on-line at around that time, late in 2010.
Still baffled, he went through to the kitchen. As he did so, he became aware of a different feeling in the way his body moved. He felt lighter on his feet, more lithe and supple than he was used to. The kitchen was messy, like the bedroom—dishes in the sink, more papers on the table, the things for preparing the sandwich in the other room not put away. He went over to the mirror by the shelf above the microwave and looked at himself. His jaw fell in astonishment. He was looking at himself twelve years younger and a good fifteen pounds leaner. He felt his face, ran the fingers of a hand through his hair. This was insane.