Adam smiled again. “There’s a mike in the V.R. mask. The computer digitizes it and sends it to me.”
“B-But your body’s dead,” Josh breathed.
A chuckling sound came through the headphones, then died away. “Is it?” Adam asked. “You see me, don’t you?”
“B-But it’s not real!” Josh protested.
“Of course not,” Adam agreed. “It’s just an image on
the screen. I figured it would be easier for you if you could see me instead of just talk to me. So I generated an image. It wasn’t any big deal.”
Josh felt himself sweating now, and tried to swallow the lump of fear that had formed in his throat. “Th-This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?” he pleaded, knowing even as he uttered the words that it wasn’t.
“It’s not a trick at all,” Adam replied. “It’s where I live now. I’m part of the computer.”
Josh felt his heart sink as he realized that in spite of his certainty that he’d figured out what they’d done to Adam and Amy, part of him had still hoped he was wrong. “I—I don’t believe you,” he stammered, his voice quavering.
Adam’s smile broadened. “You want to see?”
“See what?” Josh’s heart was racing now, his mind spinning. Part of him wanted to take off the mask, rip the glove from his hand, and run as far away from whatever was happening as he could get. But another part of him wanted to keep going, wanted to find out what actually w
as
happening.
“Anything you want, Josh,” Adam told him, his voice dropping slightly, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “Everything is in the computers, Josh. Everything in the world. And I can show it to you. What do you want to see?”
“I—I don’t know,” Josh whispered.
“Snakes. What if I show you snakes?” Instantly, everything around Josh changed. In front of him a large cobra suddenly raised its head, its tongue darting in and out. Gasping, Josh instinctively turned away, only to find himself facing a coiled rattìesnake, whose vibrating tail buzzed menacingly in his ears.
“No!” he screamed. “Stop it!”
The buzzing died away, and he heard the sound of Adam’s laughter as the image of the rattìesnake dissolved into another, this one of Adam himself.
“It’s even better if you’re here,” Adam whispered. “From where I am now, it isn’t just an image, Josh. It’s real. It happens inside your brain instead of on a screen in front of your eyes, and it’s as real as if it were actually happening. You don’t need eyes and ears, Josh. You don’t need any
thing. Everything you want is right there, and all you have to do is think it to make it real.”
“H-How?” Josh breathed. “How does it work?”
Adam smiled at him again. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “The only way to know is to do it yourself. And you can do it, Josh. You can come here, too.”
Josh’s heart was pounding. It was all impossible. Everything he was hearing and seeing was impossible.
And yet it was happening. Adam was
there
, an image of him so perfect that Josh felt as if he could actually touch him.
His gloved hand went up, and the image of his hand on the screen rose with it. He reached out, but just as he was about to brush his fingers against Adam Aldrich’s face, he froze as another voice came through the headphones that covered his ears.
“Help me,., someone help me …”
Josh’s blood ran cold as he recognized Amy Carlson’s voice. He tore the mask from his face and jerked the glove from his hand. But as he reached out with his trembling fingers to turn off the computer, he knew without a doubt that what he had heard had been real.
Amy was still alive somewhere.
But whom could he tell?
Who would believe him?
H
ildie Kramer came awake to the insistent electronic beeping of the phone by her bed. She groped in the darkness, found the receiver and put it against her ear, her eyes still closed. When she heard George Engersol’s voice, her eyes snapped open and she sat straight up in bed.
“You’d better come down here right away. We have a problem.”
She didn’t have to ask where he was—the single word “down” told her he was in the lab beneath the mansion’s basement. The last vestiges of sleep dropping away, she heaved herself out of bed, dressed quickly, and left her apartment, slipping quietly up the stairs to the fourth floor instead of using the noisy antique elevator. Letting herself into Engersol’s apartment, she summoned the second elevator that was hidden behind the bookshelves. Descending into the depths of the sub-basement, she wondered what could have happened to make Engersol summon her after midnight.
The elevator doors slid open, and Hildie stepped out into the tiled hall, turning toward the primary laboratory at the end of the short corridor. As she entered the room she stopped short, staring at the monitor that hung on the wall above the tank containing Amy Carlson’s brain.
On the monitor an image was flickering. At first Hildie couldn’t figure out what it was, for it seemed to be almost
fluid, shimmering and breaking up like a reflection on the surface of a rippling pool. Then, for a moment, the image steadied.
The pale face of a young girl, framed by curling tresses of red hair.
Amy Carlson’s face.
And yet,
not
Amy’s face.
The image held for a few seconds, then began to waver, dissolving for an instant, then reforming, but slightly differently from the way it had appeared before.
“What is it?” Hildie breathed, instinctively knowing that this was what Engersol had summoned her to see.
Engersol, who had been standing with his back to Hildie, his eyes fixed on the monitor, spoke without turning around. “It’s Amy. She’s already learned how to handle the graphics program.”
“But it can’t be,” Hildie replied. “It took Adam five days before he discovered how to manipulate it at all. And Amy’s only been awake for—”
“Twelve hours,” Engersol finished.
“Can she hear us?” Hildie asked.
Engersol shook his head. “I’ve turned the sound system off. But I’ve been watching her all evening, and I’m not sure what to do. She’s learning much faster than Adam did.”
He handed Hildie a stack of computer printouts, which Hildie quickly scanned, although most of the numbers and graphs meant little to her. On the last page she saw a comparison graph showing the learning curves of the two brains in the tanks.
Adam Aldrich’s brain had remained quiescent for the first two days after it had been put into the tank, and it wasn’t until the third day that it began to show signs of exploring the environment around itself, sending barely measurable electronic impulses through the leads to which it was attached, into the computers at the other ends of those leads. From there the curve had gone slowly but steadily upward as Adam’s brain learned to tap into the computer network of which it was now a part.
By the fourth day Adam had begun discovering how to locate the data he needed, and how to manipulate that data
so he could communicate with the world beyond the glass tank in which his brain was now ensconced.
It had been less than forty-eight hours ago that he had first sent that brief message to his mother’s computer, and only yesterday afternoon that he had begun experimenting with the full graphic potential of the Croyden computer in the adjoining room, constructing in his mind a program of complex bitmaps that he could then export to the Croyden, which, in its turn, would build the images Adam imagined on the monitor above his tank.
Amy Carlson, Hildie could see from the second learning curve displayed by the chart, had accomplished in only half a day almost everything that it had taken Adam Aldrich nearly a week to learn.
Hildie unconsciously ran her tongue over her lower lip as she thought about what it might mean.
“Is she learning from Adam?” she asked finally, setting the sheaf of data on the desk next to which she was standing.
“I think that might be part of it,” Engersol mused. “But there’s more to it.”
“She’s smarter than Adam,” Hildie pointed out. “Her IQ is seventeen points higher than his.”
“That’s another part of it. But I think it’s even more than that. Look.”
He picked up the sheaf of paper from where Hildie had left it, flipped through it quickly, then pulled out a single sheet. Hildie glanced at it, recognizing it immediately. It was a partial printout of the display she’d seen on the monitor above Amy’s tank as she’d awakened earlier that day. As Hildie was examining it more closely, Engersol gave her a second chart, this one showing the activity in Adam Aldrich’s mind as he’d awakened after the operation that had transferred his brain into the tank.
While Amy’s mind had gone mad with activity, creating graphic images that were nothing more than meaningless jumbles, Adam’s brain waves showed much more normal activity, clearly reflecting the pattern of a human mind awakening from a deep sleep.
Hildie glanced up at Engersol. “Obviously you see
something here that I don’t. It looks as if Amy went insane as soon as she woke up. But from what’s been happening to her since then, she apparently didn’t.”
Engersol’s finger tapped on the graphic display of Amy’s mental condition that morning. “Ruling out insanity,” he said, “what is the first word that comes into your mind when you look at that?”
Hildie’s eyes went once more to the graph, and she spoke without thinking. “Temper tantrum.”
“Exactly,” Engersol agreed. “What you’re looking at is a very angry child. She figured out very quickly what happened to her, and she’s furious about it. And she’s trying to do something about it.”
Hildie’s brows came together. “But what?” she asked. “What’s she trying to do?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to her yet. That’s why I called you. We’ll both listen to her, and then decide what has to be done.”
He sat down at the desk and began tapping instructions into the keyboard. Then, his eyes fixing on the monitor above Amy’s tank, he spoke into a small microphone that sat next to the keyboard.
“Amy, this is Dr. Engersol. Can you hear me?”
With the first syllable he spoke, the image on Amy’s monitor dropped away. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then, from one of the speakers mounted in the ceiling, a sound crept into the room.
Barely a whisper, the words held a toneless quality, as if they were spoken by someone who was deaf.
“I … hear … you.”
Hildie started to speak, but Engersol cut her off with a gesture, then leaned a little closer to the microphone. “Do you know where you are, Amy?”
Another silence, then: “I know.”
“Will you tell me where you are?”
Yet another silence hung in the laboratory, but finally Amy spoke again. “I want to go home,” Amy said.
Hildie Kramer and George Engersol glanced at each other. “You can’t do that, Amy,” Engersol said quietly. “If you know where you are, you know you can’t go home.”
“I
want
to go home!” Amy said again. Her words were stronger now, and Hildie could recognize Amy’s stubbornness even in the digitized voice. “Why did you put me here?”
“We couldn’t let you go home, Amy. We needed you. What you’re doing now is very important. Do you understand that?”
“It’s because of the cat, isn’t it?” Amy asked. Her voice had changed once again, taking on a plaintive, almost wistful note. “You’re mad at me because I didn’t like what you did to the cat. And you didn’t want me to tell anyone what you did to it.”
“Of course not, Amy,” Engersol told her. “I don’t care about the cat. The cat was only part of an experiment.”
Amy was silent for nearly a full minute. Then the speaker came alive again, and Amy’s voice was edged with anger. “I can still tell on you. I can tell anyone I want. All I have to do is send out a message.”
Engersol smiled at Hildie. “That’s true,” he agreed, as if he were engaged in a minor debate with one of his students. “But who would believe you? Adam has already sent out some messages, but no one believes they’re from him. Everyone thinks Jeff is playing tricks.”
“I’ll tell them what you did,” Amy said, her voice rising slightly. “I’ll tell them where I am, and that they should come and find me.”
“It won’t work, Amy,” Engersol replied. “Now, I want you to listen very carefully, because I’m going to tell you what will happen to you if you try to do anything like that. You’re not dead, Amy. You’re very much alive. But if you try to get anyone to come and find you, you won’t be alive anymore. All I have to do is cut off the nutrients, Amy. Cut them off, or put poison in them. And then you’ll die. Is that what you want, Amy?”
Again there was a silence, but this time it only lasted for a few seconds. The screen above Amy’s monitor came to life, and a list of file names began scrolling up the screen, moving so quickly that neither Engersol nor Hildie Kramer could read them.
“Do you know what these are?” Amy’s voice asked from
the speaker. Her voice had now taken on the same faintly patronizing tone and rhythm that Engersol had used only a moment ago when he’d threatened to kill her. “These are all your programs, Dr. Engersol. All the programs that make this project work. If I die, all these programs are going to be erased. Do you know what will happen then, Dr. Engersol? Adam will die, too, and everything will be wrecked.”
Engersol’s eyes flicked toward Hildie Kramer, whose worried frown had deepened.
“It won’t work that way, Amy,” he said. “All you’ll do is kill Adam. But the files can be restored, and the program will go on.”
The screen above Amy’s tank suddenly went blank. A moment later a new image appeared.
An image of Amy, but it was no longer shimmering, no longer swimming on the screen. Now it was sharp and clear, and Amy’s eyes seemed to focus directly on George Engersol.
“You shouldn’t have done this to me, Dr. Engersol,” she said, her voice crackling over the speaker. “I told you I didn’t want to be part of your class anymore. But you wouldn’t let me go. You should have, though, because all you’ve done by putting me here is make me smarter than I ever was before.” She paused, the image on the screen changing to reflect the anger in her mind. Her eyes narrowed and her demeanor hardened. “I’m smarter than you are, Dr. Engersol. And I’ve learned how to use the computer. So don’t try to do anything to me, because you don’t know what will happen if I die.”