Even as it lifted from the ground, his beautiful bird, this last Molniya, was already obsolete.
Vitaly stood straight, determined to watch it as long as he could, until that point of light at the tip of the great smoke pillar melted into space.
… But now the pain in his arm and chest reached a climax, as if some bony hand was clutching there. He gasped. Still he tried to stay on his feet. But now there was a new light, rising all around him, even brighter than the rocket light that bathed the Kazakhstan steppe; and he could stand no longer.
Chapter 2 – THE MIND’S EYE
As Kate was driven into the grounds, it struck her as a typical Seattle setting: green hills that lapped right down to the ocean, framed under a gray, lowering autumn sky.
But Hiram’s mansion – a giant geodesic dome, all windows – looked as if it had just landed on the hillside, one of the ugliest, most gaudy buildings Kate had ever seen.
On arrival she handed her coat to a drone. Her identity was scanned – not just a reading of her implants but also, probably, pattern-matching to identify her face, even a nonintrusive DNA sequencing, all done in seconds. Then she was ushered inside by Hiram’s robot servants.
Hiram was working. She wasn’t surprised. The six months since the launch of his wormhole DataPipe technology had been his busiest, and OurWorld’s most successful, ever, according to the analysts. But he’d be back in time for dinner, said the drone.
So she was taken to Bobby.
The room was large, the temperature neutral, the walls as smooth and featureless as an eggshell. The light was low, the sound anechoic, deadened. The only furniture was a number of reclined black-leather couches. Beside each of the couches was a small table with a water spigot and a stand for intravenous feeds
And here was Bobby Patterson, presumably one of the richest, most powerful young men on the planet, lying alone on a couch in the dark, eyes open but unfocused, limbs limp. There was a metal band around his temples.
She sat on a couch beside Bobby and studied him. She could see that he was breathing, slowly, and the intravenous feed he’d fitted to a socket in his arm was gently supplying his neglected body.
He was dressed in loose black shirt and shorts. His body, revealed where the loose clothing lay against his skin, was a slab of muscle. But that didn’t tell much about his lifestyle; such body sculpting could now be achieved easily through hormone treatments and electrical stimulation. He could even do that while he was lying here, she thought, like a coma victim lying in a hospital bed.
There was a trace of drool at the comer of his parted lips. She wiped the drool away with a forefinger, and gently pushed the mouth closed.
‘Thank you.’
She turned, startled. Bobby – another Bobby, identically dressed to the first – was standing beside her, grinning. Irritated, she threw a punch at his stomach. Her fist, of course, passed straight through him- He didn’t flinch.
‘You can see me, then,’ he said.
‘I see you.’
‘You have retinal and cochlear implants. Yes? This room is designed to produce virtuals compatible with all recent generations of CNS-augment technology. Of course, to me you’re sitting on the back of a mean-looking phytosaur.’
‘A what?’
‘A Triassic crocodile. Which is beginning to notice you’re there. Welcome, Ms. Manzoni.’
‘Kate.’
‘Yes. I’m glad you took up my, our, dinner invitation. Although I didn’t expect it would take you six months to respond.’
She shrugged, ‘Hiram Gets Even Richer really isn’t much of a story.’
‘Uhuh. Which implies you’ve now heard something new.’ Of course he was right; Kate said nothing. ‘Or,’ he went on, ‘perhaps you finally succumbed to my charming smile.’
‘Perhaps I would if your mouth wasn’t laced with drool.’
Bobby looked down at his own unconscious form. ‘Vanity? We should care how we look even when we’re exploring a virtual world?’ He frowned. ‘Of course, if you’re right, it’s something for my marketing people to think about.’
‘Your marketing people?’
‘Sure.’ He ‘picked up’ a metal headband from a couch near him; a virtual copy of the object separated from the real thing, which remained on the couch. ‘This is the Mind’sEye. OurWorld’s newest VR technology. Do you want to try it?’
‘Not really.’
He studied her. ‘You’re hardly a VR virgin, Kate. Your sensory implants are pretty much the minimum required to get around in the modern world. Have you ever tried getting through SeaTac Airport without VR capabilities?’
He laughed. ‘Actually I’m generally escorted through. I suppose you think it’s all part of a giant corporate conspiracy.’
‘Of course it is. The technological invasion of our homes and cars and workplaces long ago reached saturation point Now they are coming for our bodies.’
‘How angry you are.’ He held up the headband. It was an oddly recursive moment, she thought absently, a virtual copy of Bobby holding a virtual copy of a virtual generator. ‘But this is different. Try it. Take a trip with me.’
She hesitated – but then, feeling she was being churlish, she agreed; she was a guest here after all. But she turned down his offer of an intravenous feed. ‘We’ll just take a look around and come back out before our bodies fall apart. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Pick a couch. Just fit the headset over your temples, like this.’ Carefully he raised the virtual set over his head. His face, intent, was undeniably beautiful, she thought; he looked like Christ with the crown of thorns.
She lay down on a couch nearby and lifted a Mind’sEye headband onto her own head. It had warmth and elasticity, and when she pulled it down past her hair it seemed to nestle into place.
Her scalp, under the band, prickled. ‘Ouch.’
Bobby was sitting on his couch. ‘Infusers. Don’t worry about it. Most of the input is via transcranial magnetic stimulation. When we’ve rebooted you won’t feel a thing … ‘ As he settled she could see his two bodies, of flesh and pixels, briefly overlaid.
The room went dark. For a heartbeat, two, she could see, hear nothing. Her sense of her body faded away, as if her brain were being scooped out of her skull.
With an intangible thud she felt herself fall once more into her body. But now she was standing.
In some kind of mud.
Light and heat burst over her, blue, green, brown. She was on a riverbank, up to her ankles in thick black gumbo.
The sky was a washed-out blue. She was at the edge of a forest, a lush riot of ferns, pines and giant conifers, whose thick dark foliage blocked out much of the light. The heat and humidity were stifling; she could feel sweat soak through her shirt and trousers, plastering her fringe to her forehead. The nearby river was broad, languid, brown with mud.
She climbed a little deeper into the forest, seeking firmer ground. The vegetation was very thick; leaves and shoots slapped at her face and arms. There were insects everywhere, including giant blue dragonflies, and the jungle was alive with noise: chirping, growling, cawing.
The sense of reality was startling, the authenticity far beyond any VR she’d experienced before.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Bobby was standing beside her. He was wearing khaki shorts and shirt and a broad hat, safari style; there was an old-fashioned-looking rifle slung from his shoulder.
‘Where are we? I mean.’
‘When are we? This is Arizona: the Late Triassic, some two hundred million years ago. More like Africa, yes? This period gave us the Painted Desert strata. We have giant horsetails, ferns, cycads, club mosses … But this is a drab world in some ways. The evolution of the flowers is still far in the future. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
She propped her foot on a log and tried to scrape the gumbo off her legs with her hands. The heat was deeply uncomfortable, and her growing thirst was sharp. Her bare arm was covered by a myriad sweat globules which glimmered authentically, so hot they felt as if they were about to boil.
Bobby pointed upward. ‘Look.’
It was a bird, flapping inelegantly between the branches of a tree … No, it was too big and ungainly for a bird. Besides, it lacked feathers. Perhaps it was some kind of flying reptile. It moved with a purple, leathery ruse, and Kate shuddered.
‘Admit it,’ he said. ‘You’re impressed.’
She moved her arms and legs around, bent this way and that ‘My body sense is strong. I can feel my limbs, sense up and down if I tilt. But I assume I’m still lying in my couch, drooling like you were.’
‘Yes. The proprioception features of the Mind’sEye are very striking. You aren’t even sweating. Well, probably not; sometimes there’s a little leakage. This is fourth-generation VR technology, counting forward from crude Glasses-and-Gloves, then sense-organ implants – like yours – and cortical implants, which allowed a direct interface between external systems and the human central nervous system.’