Warrick laughed. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Is there anything you
can't
do?"
"Not a great deal, although there is plenty we haven't done yet. This is one of our more ambitious rooms. Come on." They started to stroll through the meadow, following a faint path.
"We have relatively few outdoor scenes so far. This, a beach I'm afraid I won't have time to show you, a few places around the city — mostly on the campus because it's easy to take the measurements to create them. There is an experimental live shadowing program which covers a small area outside the AERC — what you see there should be exactly what happens in the real world. Then there is a good deal of the inside of the AERC — we're working on techniques for generating basic suites quickly from plans and photographs. And we have a number of more characterful indoor rooms, to keep the sponsors happy."
Listening with half an ear to Warrick's dark, rich voice, Toreth took a deep breath, savouring the air. It was warm and heavy with the scent of sun-drenched flowers. Bees hummed lazily past them and a soft lapping of water sounded from the river-bank a few yards away. The illusion was perfect, and he said so.
"Not quite. This room reaches the limits of the hardware — it exists primarily to test techniques for pushing the boundaries without impairing the user experience." Warrick pointed up the slope. "Notice how the rippling of the grass blurs with distance? 'Over there', as it were, we're modelling sections of grass, not individual blades. Also, the trees at the top ought to move more irregularly. And the clouds just drift; they don't break up and reform. Tricks like that allow us to dedicate more processing power to making the physical interaction point look and feel real."
Warrick knelt down and stroked a clump of sedge, as if it were a particularly beloved pet. "See? Alive and a little damp; authentic dampness is really quite difficult."
Toreth knelt beside him and buried his hands in a thick, soft tangle of grass and flowers. Petals crumpled in his fist, then slowly uncreased themselves after he let go. Telling himself that they were purely an artefact of clever electronics made them feel not one whit less actual.
He imagined taking prisoners into something this real. Everything that happened to them could be an illusion and they would never know. There was nothing he wouldn't be able to do to them, over and over again.
When he tuned in again, Warrick was still involved in his technical explanation. "And beyond that, the interactive tactile simulation is highly accurate. That's even more processor intensive, since it requires the computer to translate actions between objects it doesn't control. Let me show you." Warrick reached over and ran his virtual hand lightly down Toreth's back. "Didn't that feel real?"
Toreth nodded. "And what about pain?" he asked.
Warrick held his gaze for a moment, then stood up and turned back to the control panel, here hanging disconcertingly in mid-air. "Not in this program."
"But it can be done?"
"Yes, of course. Don't worry, you can report back that it would all be extremely useful for your purposes,
if
they could afford it."
"My purposes?"
"Interrogation." Flat voice, eyes intent on the console.
"I'm a — "
"Para-investigator. That's what you told me."
"No, I didn't."
"Not quite in so many words, no. But you told me you rape minds."
"I said, 'I fuck minds,' I think you'll find."
Warrick shrugged. "It's all in the inflection, really."
"So what do you think about my inflection?"
The strange half-smile again, this time in flattering profile. "I think you probably can't tell the difference any more."
He knew before he invited me here, Toreth thought. He's known all along and he's disgusted by the idea of what I do, but he's still interested.
The realisation brought a sharp stab of excitement. He loved to see people wanting to do things they thought they shouldn't. He was about to speak when the meadow began to blur around him.
"I think you might like this next one," Warrick said. "It's a special favourite of mine."
The change from kneeling to standing, without conscious movement, did make him dizzy for a moment, but it passed before he felt any need to use the escape word. Toreth looked around the new room, noting how his vision adjusted instantly from the dazzling meadow to the now-dim light.
It was a historical curiosity, a bedroom from centuries back, with dark wood-panelled walls and heavy wooden furniture. Uneven floorboards creaked a little under foot when he shifted his weight. Dominating the room was a vast four-poster bed, with tied-back curtains matching the rugs and tapestries. It was probably the largest bed Toreth had ever seen in his life.
Very subtle.
He examined the details of the room. Smoke-darkened pictures hung on the walls between the tapestries. On one wall, mullioned windows leaded with small, thick diamonds of glass showed only blackness beyond — night-time, or perhaps simply nothingness, and he wondered briefly what the edge of the sim world would be like.
An ornate golden clock over the fireplace struck Toreth as a little anachronistic, given the rest of the decor. The low, crackling fire filled the air with the scent of wood smoke. There was another odd, almost sweet tang in the air, which probably came from the candles burning in various metal holders. Candelabras, he recalled from somewhere. He wondered if the smell was authentic and if so how the hell he smelt it, since to the best of his knowledge he'd never experienced anything like it. He asked Warrick.
"Ah, you noticed? Observant of you. Yes, I can't guarantee the smell is precisely as you would personally perceive beeswax candles. But it's averaged from a number of real-life perceptions. We hope to improve the technique, but for the moment the system feeds it directly into your brain; we have to do that for all the more exotic experiences."
There was a definite edge to that last comment, which Toreth chose to ignore for the moment. "So the sim affects brain function directly, not just through sensory input?"
"Didn't I say so in the lecture? Perhaps I was a little overtechnical. It's so hard to judge how to pitch an open talk."
The control panel still hung in mid-space. Warrick returned to it and started some more complicated piece of programming. "The brain can be controlled extensively, and quite safely. If you give me a moment, I'll show you. There. Lift your hand."
Toreth struggled to do so and found he couldn't even move his fingers, never mind raise his arm. The rest of his body was equally immobile. All he could do was breathe, blink, and speak. "What the hell?"
"That's a simple disconnect between input and output. Rather coarse, although the control can be finer."
Suddenly Toreth could move his head again, although his body below the neck remained frozen.
"The senses are open to fine control too, of course."
More work on the controls, and the left hemisphere of Toreth's vision simply blanked out. A few seconds later his remaining vision switched into monochrome, inverted, and then the world returned to normal.
If Warrick thought he was going to scare him into using the code word to get out of the sim, he was sadly mistaken. "Very impressive," Toreth said levelly.
"Why, thank you."
Warrick left the controls, which slowly faded away, and went to lean against the post at the foot of the bed. Toreth had to look round to follow him, because he was still rooted to the spot. Warrick had apparently decided to forget this, and Toreth was damned if he'd remind him.
"In fact," Warrick continued, "a lot of the truly impressive work is done by the brain. Integrating the signals, smoothing out the imperfections. It's a remarkably flexible organ. And it works both ways. With practice it's possible to train the brain to maximally exploit the sim environment."
"Yeah?"
"Very much so. For example . . ."
As far as he could see, the man didn't move a centimetre. But suddenly Toreth felt a hand trace a path down his chest from his collar-bone to his navel, the smooth palm brushing distinctly against naked skin. He looked down sharply, but he was still fully clothed. "How the hell did you do that?"
"I imagined doing it."
The hand returned and retraced the same path, more slowly. "The convention of moving the physical representation within the sim is purely that — a convention. With practice, intent alone is sufficient. Practice, and a little creative programming."
Warrick's voice never wavered from his lecturing tones. A second hand now joined the first, stroking gently up the backs of Toreth's thighs. The experience was utterly real and bizarre beyond belief. The hands kept moving and once or twice he caught Warrick's own hands twitching in unison with their invisible representatives. Warrick's eyes were hot and intent, watching his face for every reaction.
Toreth felt himself starting to shake, even though the tremors didn't affect his paralysed body. He looked away, trying to gain control of himself. This wasn't at all how things were supposed to happen. A third hand briefly cupped his face, turning his head back. Warrick was squinting slightly with concentration, and then the extra hand vanished.
"Damn. I can never keep that going for long. An internal visualisation problem, I suspect." Warrick was overarticulating beautifully. "More hands would be so useful, don't you think?"
Both remaining hands were now concentrating their attentions on his thighs and groin, making it very difficult to shape any kind of answer at all.
"I think — " What felt distinctly like a tongue ran teasingly down the join between leg and body. He tried for humour. "I think you'll need them to fight off interested corporates. Not to mention the Administration."
"Mm." Warrick's face darkened and the sensations vanished. Quite without meaning to Toreth made a small sound of protest and Warrick's scowl slid back into the half-smile, which was more a mask than an expression of emotion.
"Sorry. Lost the thread. Where was I?"
Now he could feel illusory lips passing right through his equally illusory clothes. The mouth ghosted across his chest, drawing an involuntary gasp as a tongue lapped gently at his nipple. How the hell was it possible for the man to imagine doing something like that vividly enough to make it so real? Lots of practice, he'd said, and wasn't
that
a nice job?
Hazily, he tried to send a thought in return, something to even up the score in the game between them, but if he could have managed it under normal conditions, he was defeated now. The mouth was everywhere, biting, kissing, and licking all over, everywhere except where he really wanted it.
He had the feeling — no, he was certain — that Warrick wanted him to ask for it. His mind flashed back to the lecture and he thought: control freak. Oh, yes. However, Toreth wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. He gritted his teeth against the need and looked down at himself, trying to make it feel less real by showing his mind that there was no one there, that he was completely clothed, that there was nothing . . .
A hand he couldn't see slid round his body and took hold of the base of his cock, which, in some weird reality, was erect and accessible. The endless, tormenting touch of the lips had stopped. He swallowed, waiting for what had to happen next, unable to hold back the moan when the mouth closed around him.
The mouth and hand began a slow rhythm. He didn't look at Warrick, he didn't try to struggle against the paralysis; he didn't — couldn't — do anything except stand where he was and accept what was being done to him. Fuck it, Toreth decided. Hadn't he come to the lab expecting sex of some kind? Enjoy what was happening.
Time passed, in slowly building ecstasy. He found himself panting, reaching for the orgasm, wanting it and yet not wanting it and . . . then the mouth was gone. There was not even a feeling of withdrawal — the exquisite sensations simply vanished.
"Ah, no, don't stop, don't — "
He bit off the words, drew in a ragged breath. Warrick's mocking smile was still locked in place. For the past few minutes, Toreth had managed to forget that he was immobilised. Now he felt helpless again — helpless and humiliated because he'd lost even the pretence of self-control. Then Warrick's mouth twitched slightly and the tongue came back, licking, teasing. He closed his eyes, gave up resisting.
"Yes. Yes, please . . ."
That was enough, because the mouth and hand returned in earnest, working quickly now. Invisible fingers gripped one hip tightly, which was pointless since he couldn't move, couldn't twist away, couldn't thrust, couldn't do anything except gasp out further humiliating pleas. After a minute, he opened his eyes again and saw Warrick still unmoving, still watching him with burning intensity. Fucking control freak indeed, but Toreth was far past caring. Their eyes locked and Warrick swallowed once, twice, and Toreth came — really came — into the virtual mouth.
When his vision cleared, Warrick still hadn't shifted from his station against the bedpost.
Toreth didn't want to ask, but he had to because Warrick looked like he was willing to wait until the end of the world. "Would you, please . . ."
Warrick snapped his fingers and the console appeared again, this time moulding itself neatly onto the table beside the bed. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and made a few passes over the controls. Suddenly Toreth's body was back under his control — mostly. He made it to the bed before his legs gave out.
He flopped down flat on his back and, distantly, admired the realistic drape of the curtains above as they swayed and settled back. Endorphin high, he thought, annoyed by how good it felt.
"You've got no fucking room to talk," he said after a moment.
"About what?"
"Not being able to tell the difference between rape and fucking."
Warrick was still busy over the console. "Oh, no,
I
know the difference. That was fucking. If you thought otherwise you should have stopped it."
"Stopped it? I couldn't move!"
Warrick looked round, the smile reaching his eyes this time. "All you had to do was say the word."