Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (17 page)

He closed the heavy door, and instantly gray curls of holographic smoke swept around him.
 
He couldn’t see through the illusion, but he could smell burning sulfur, one of the packets from the scent-simulators.
 
“What the hell is that?” he muttered.
 

Shapes drifted in and out of focus through the dull red smoke, as if the software running the chamber had somehow gone awry.
 
He wondered if Lesserec had made a forest fire simulation.
 
What a waste of time!

A loud rumble came from within the walls and floor, the big wall speakers and vibration panels.
 
With a blast of hot air, the smoke cleared.
 
Hal Michaelson found himself transported to another world, one far more realistic than he had ever seen.

Leafy fern fronds towered over him as red sunlight speckled across the earthy ground.
 
A breeze ruffled the plants like scratchy fingernails, bringing a stench of methane and keratome-impregnated gas.
 
The air dripped with humidity, and the light seemed grainy and thick.

A ratcheting sound just to his right made him jump.
 
A dragonfly the size of a model airplane bore down with chainsaw wings and angrily buzzed around him, its green eyes as large as oscilloscope screens.
 
Michaelson swatted the giant insect away as it divebombed in, smacking his hand against a hard exoskeleton.
Damn, that hurt
!

The rash on his hands seemed to ignite with pain, and his face felt as if it wanted to peel off.
 
He tried rubbing, then digging deep with his fingernails, but the burning grew worse.
 
He felt as if he had fallen into a pit of glass fibers, and he couldn’t make the itching go away.

His heart raced, and he remembered the times in Washington he had overexerted himself.
 
He looked for the door.
 
Enough of Lesserec’s smoke and jungles and giant bugs.

Something crashed through the towering palms behind him with a deep-throated roar.
 
Michaelson heard armored tree trunks splinter, and he felt the ground shake as a thick swatch of smooth gray rumbled past, blocking the low orange sun.
 
Looking up, and up, Michaelson saw long, razor teeth set in a steam-shovel-sized reptilian jaw.
 
A dinosaur
?

He backed up.
 
This isn't real—they're just simulations
!
 
The wall of teeth turned toward him and the mouth opened in another subsonic wail.
 
Beady, coldly intelligent eyes locked on him.

Michaelson caught a sickening blast of keratome as the teeth moved closer.
 
The reptile thrust its head through the dense foliage above, breaking branches and ripping trees from their roots.
 
A shriveled head, outlined with grey bony exoskin and set apart by two eyes the size of grapefruits, thrust down.
 
The head was as big as a chest of drawers; the yellowed teeth were the size of baseball bats with chunks of red flesh hanging between the incisors.

Michaelson fell into the peaty mud, stunned.
 
He clawed backward, trying to get away, but his hands and face seemed to explode with the burning pain.
 
The monster’s breath made him sick to his stomach.

Still moving away, Michaelson closed his eyes, but the red pulsing light wouldn’t go away.
 
The burning—

It's not real
!
 
Damn you, Lesserec!

He backed against a spiky fern tree.
 
The dinosaur heaved its entire body into the clearing, thudding on piston legs.
 
Its head swung back and forth, sniffing, searching for Michaelson, jaws agape.

He screamed, searching for the door to the chamber, to shut the thing down.
 
The images might just be simulations, but the pain was definitely real.
 
He couldn’t breathe . . . the agony in his hands was fire now, his face started melting, dripping off and pooling to the prehistoric earth.

With a hissing explosion, a volcano split the ground and erupted nearby, geysering molten rock.
 
The dinosaur shrieked and honked as burning rock pelted its hide.
 
It fell, writhing and burning.
 
The primeval forest burst into flames.

Michaelson still couldn’t find the door.
 
With a great blast, the volcano showered him with incandescent lava, searing—

Tearing at his face with liquid metal hands, Michaelson tried to rip out his eyes to stop the pain . . . .

CHAPTER 17

Thursday

Building 433—T Program

Virtual Reality Chamber

Four hours of sleep and a lot of coffee was all Gary Lesserec needed to start the day.

Showing up at 6:45 A.M. at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he was able to claim the best parking spot in the minuscule open lot nearest to the fence surrounding the T Program trailers.
 
He enjoyed coming in even before the other early risers showed up, able to get more done in the first quiet hour than he managed to accomplish in the rest of the day with the phones ringing and the offices bustling.

Inside, the T Program trailer was utterly silent.
 
As he passed through the CAIN booth into the Exclusion Area, Lesserec flicked on only a few banks of the fluorescent lights, leaving the trailer in a comforting gray gloom that emphasized the quiet.

The light in Michaelson’s office was on, but the big man was nowhere to be seen behind his desk.
 
Just like him
, Lesserec thought with a scowl,
completely oblivious to the world around him
.
 
The rest of the trailer completely shut down to conserve energy, and Michaelson happily went home, leaving his own lights burning all night.
 
Not maliciously, just not noticing and not caring.
 
The world revolved around Hal Michaelson, after all.

Lesserec powered on his workstation, keyed in his password to access the parallel processor.
 
When the system came up, Lesserec checked the log and saw that Michaelson had indeed gone into the VR chamber the night before and had activated the new simulation, Lesserec’s masterpiece.
 
He hoped the new chips had done their stuff.

But he didn’t want anyone else to know about it.
 
Not yet.
 
For now, it was just a small example to keep Michaelson aware of who really did the work around here, who was the true brains and imagination behind T Program.

Michaelson was just a mouthpiece.
 
He and Hal had an understanding—and now, after having his mind blown by the incredible entertainment simulation, Lesserec was sure that Michaelson understood in a way that he had never done before.

Lesserec removed his entire package from the computer.
 
He had a stack of the original disks at home, and it would take hours to recompile the simulation for use; but he didn’t want it clogging up the machine, and he didn’t want anyone else stumbling into it.
 
The simulation was available to the right people, if they really wanted to see it—but for now Lesserec would play his cards close to his chest.

He stood up, cracked his knuckles, and went to the small kitchenette.
 
He yanked the white door of the refrigerator open.
 
A bright yellow Notice sticker insisted the refrigerator was to be for food items only, no film, batteries, or hazardous chemicals allowed.

The bottom and middle shelves were filled entirely with cans of Diet Coke, cases and cases bought from the local warehouse store, the cost of which was shared evenly by all T Program members.
 
A few long-forgotten lunches lay tucked at the back of the top shelf, and a box of rock-hard sesame-carob fudge leftover from the Christmas party.

Lesserec snagged a cold can, popped the top and slurped a big mouthful.
 
He’d had enough coffee before leaving his home, while Sandra continued to sleep.
 
She probably wouldn’t wake up until eight or nine.

Holding the can of Coke, he sauntered down the trailer’s carpeted back corridor.
 
The VR chamber was still sealed shut, and Lesserec worked the access panel, slipping his badge into the reader and keying in his PIN.
 
The vault door popped open.

Inside the silent, featureless chamber he found the body of Hal Michaelson lying contorted and motionless on the floor.

Michaelson looked like a roadkill sprawled with his arms and legs bent at odd angles, an insect sprayed with Raid.
 
His face and his hands had a sickly pale appearance like the soft white underbelly of a fish floating dead in a tank.

Lesserec bent over, his heart pounding.
 
He looked into the expression of agony on Michaelson’s dead face.

“Gross,” he said, then hurried off to call Security.

#

The Protective Services Officer used his master keys to get into the emergency exit door of the T Program trailer, and Lesserec ushered him down the halls.
 
The PSO didn’t know what had happened, obviously expecting something like a security breach or a tripped alarm that had not shown up on the monitors.

The guard had short blond hair cut in a butch and wore a dark blue uniform that fit like Spandex.
 
His keys jingled, and the leather on the gun holster at his side squeaked as he strode forward; the walkie-talkie at his left kidney squawked and hissed.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” the PSO asked.
 
His face had the scrubbed pink appearance from sunburn.

“Right this way,” Lesserec said, leading him down the hall toward the VR chamber.
 
“I hope you like paperwork and publicity.
 
This is going to be a real pain in the ass.”

He swung open the heavy door to the VR chamber.
 
When the PSO saw Michaelson’s body on the floor, his jaw dropped as comically as a cartoon figure.
 
He swayed back, grabbing the door jamb.

“Oh, my God,” the PSO said.
 
He froze, unwilling to step farther in.

Glad I could count on you in an emergency
, Lesserec thought.
A real man of action.

“What happened?” the PSO asked again.

“He died, that’s what happened,” Lesserec said scornfully.
 
“Aren’t you going to investigate or something?”

The PSO grabbed the walkie talkie at his hip.
 
“I’m calling for backup,” he said.
 
“Who is this guy?”

“You don’t know?” Lesserec answered in disbelief.
 
“I admit
—
”
 
He looked down at the corpse’s contorted face.
 
“He’s not very photogenic right now, but he has been in the news a lot.
 
That’s Hal Michaelson.
 
The guy on TV with the President the other night?”

“You mean
that
Michaelson?”
 
The PSO blinked his eyes.
 
“Oh, boy.”

The PSO clicked the button on his walkie-talkie and spoke rapid-fire into it.
 
“We’ve got a situation here.
 
A dead body in the Virtual Reality chamber over at T Program.
 
It’s apparently Dr. Hal Michaelson, the head of the project.”

“Say again,” the walkie-talkie said.

Lesserec reached out and grabbed the PSO’s arm.
 
“Do you realize you just blabbed all that over an open channel?”

The PSO blinked.
 
“What?”

“Your walkie-talkie.
 
Don’t they drill you guys on operating procedures?
 
News hounds listen on the open-band scanners just to pick up a scoop like this.
 
You just blew the story before we could put together an official Lab press release.”

“But,” the PSO said, still sweating, “it’s too early in the morning.
 
Nobody’ll be listening.”

“Get real.
 
Those people watch like vultures to see if we’ve had another tritium release or a security breach or anything.
 
You just told the whole world that the head of the President’s new high-visibility initiative is lying here dead.”
 
Lesserec shook his head.
 
“This place is going to be a circus in less than an hour.”

The walkie-talkie squawked again.
 
“Hello?
 
Apparent cause of death?
 
Please advise,” the voice asked back.

The PSO wet his lips and looked at Lesserec.
 
Lesserec put his hands on his hips and blew air through his lips.
 
“Go ahead, the cat’s already out of the bag.”