Cyberdrome (9 page)

The main walkway
led to a raised circular platform in the middle of the room and a series of
control panels ran along the outer edge, facing outwards. A woman wearing a
white doctor’s uniform stood in front of one of the panels.

Maya and Leconte
stepped down to a narrow walkway that led around the room to the chambers. He
looked down and realized that the walkway was too narrow for his powerchair, so
he headed toward the center platform and stopped next to the doctor.

“He’s definitely
waking up,” the doctor said, tapping a code into the control panel in front of
her. She had dark brown skin and a caring face. She turned and smiled at him.
“You must be Mathew’s son,” she said. “You look a lot like him. I’m Angela
Benness.”

“Did you do
anything to initiate the retrieval, Doctor?” Leconte interrupted.

Dr. Benness
glanced back down at the control panel. “No, it looks like a self-induced return.”

“What’s the
count?” Maya asked.

Benness glanced at
Alek before answering. “Probe count has decreased by 30 percent,” she said.

“That’s really
slow,” Maya said. “It should be well over 50 percent by now.”

“I don’t know
why he’s returning,” Leconte said. “However, one person coming back means that
there’s a chance to bring them all back.”

Leconte stood
over his father, softly stroking the surface of his chamber. She looked like
she really cared about him. Was this more than professional concern?

Leconte looked
back at the doctor. “How long?”

Benness checked
the readout before answering. “About twenty minutes, I would say.”

“Twenty
minutes?” Alek asked, moving closer to the handrail that separated him from his
father. “Why is it taking him so long to wake up?”

“You’ve never
experienced an interface like ours,” Maya said, finally turning to face him.
“The neuroprobes are capable of leaving faster, but we have them go more slowly
to allow the brain time to get reacquainted with the body’s natural sensory
data. It’s sort of like decompression, like when a scuba diver stays in deep
water too long. The longer the interface, the longer the decompression
required.”

“Decompression
implies that you use some form of compression in your interface.” He thought
about that for a moment. “It sounds like you’re running your simulations faster
than normal.” He looked over at his father’s chamber. “So, how fast was he
going? Two, three times normal?”

“Originally, we
had estimated that the neuroprobes could boost brain activity to a maximum of
ten times normal,” Maya said. “However, it now looks like your father had been
experimenting with a much faster interface. When Ceejer became infected, we
think the entire system defaulted to his speed for some reason.”

“What do you
mean? How much faster was my father going?”

“Our best estimate
is that time is passing inside the simulations one hundred times faster than normal.”

Alek’s mouth
hung open as he fought to make sense of what she said. “That can’t be right,”
he said after a moment. “Even with nanotech enhancements, there’s no way your
brain could process information at that speed. It would be like living in a
world running on fast forward. There’s something else you’re not telling me,”
he said. “What is it?”

Maya glanced
over at Leconte before replying. “You’re right of course. Neuroprobes can’t
boost brain efficiency by that much all by themselves. We also use something I
helped develop, called Intelligent Avatars. We use a new form of
high-resolution biological scanner to digitize a person’s brain and body all
the way down to the molecular level. We then use this data to model an Avatar
body that’s a perfect copy of the person.”

“What you’re
saying is that these Avatars are so perfect, that your brain’s tricked into
thinking you’re actually inside these digital bodies.”

“Exactly.”

“That still
doesn’t explain how you can exist inside a simulation running a hundred times
faster than normal.”

“The Avatars do
more than simply transmit sensory data from the simulations,” Maya said. “At
higher interface speeds, they work as interpolation routines to help your brain
handle the increased data rates.”

“I think I
understand what you mean by interpolation. In a digital environment, movement
isn’t steady; it involves a series of steps per cycle. If I connect myself to a
faster-than-normal simulation, I might decide to start walking, and then
suddenly my Avatar would be at my destination. But a smart Avatar could handle
all of the little details for me, like walking.”

“That’s right.
It’s like watching those old two-dimensional movies; they trick you into
thinking you’re watching steady movement, when in fact you’re only watching a series
of still images. Our brains are easy to fool in some ways.”

“Something’s
wrong,” Dr. Benness said. She tapped on the display showing his father’s heart,
then pulled out a stethoscope and ran down to join the others near his father.
She pressed a button on the wall and the upper half of the chamber began
lifting up. She put the stethoscope on his father’s chest and held her breath.
“I’m getting a flutter,” she whispered. “I think he’s coming out early.”

“That’s not
possible,” Maya said, looking first at Alek and then at Dr. Benness. “Are you
sure the count is accurate?”

Benness glanced
up at the bio-readout on the wall. “If this display is correct, more than half
of the neuroprobes are still inside his brain.”

“Then how can he
be waking up?” Alek asked.

Maya began
chewing on one of her fingernails. “This shouldn’t be happening,” she said, a
look of distress on her face.

“Mathew,”
Leconte yelled, leaning over him. “It’s Rebecca. Can you hear me?”

His father
stirred. It looked to Alek like he was trying to move, but something was
stopping him.

Benness nudged
Leconte out of the way. “Dr. Grey? Please don’t try to move.” When his body
started to shake, she turned to the others. “His muscles are starting to spasm.
Help me hold him down.”

Alek started to
move forward but realized that he couldn’t help from his position. Both Maya
and Leconte pushed on his father’s chest, but he continued to shake.

Suddenly, his
father sat straight up and threw out both arms, knocking all three women backward
onto the floor. He turned his head slowly back and forth, as if he was scanning
the room. His eyes looked blank, almost lifeless. He took a slow, deep breath
and whispered, “At last, I am free.”

Benness stood
back up. She had a cut across her forehead that was starting to bleed. She
opened a side panel and began filling an injection gun, “Help me hold his arm,”
she said. “I need to tranquilize him before he hurts himself.”

Before anyone
could move, his father collapsed back into his chamber. Benness dropped the injector
and ran to him, just as an alarm went off. “He has no pulse,” she yelled as she
hit the button to reseal the chamber. She stepped back as the upper half of the
chamber began to lower.

“What are you
doing?” Alek yelled. “Someone help him.”

“We are helping
him,” Benness said. “The interface chamber has full life support capability.”

“She’s right,
Alek,” Maya said, climbing over the rail to stand beside him. “Your father has
a better chance in there than in a hospital emergency room.”

Alek sat there
and helplessly watched the display above his father’s chamber. He didn’t need a
medical degree to see that nothing was working. Bright red crosses began
popping up all over the glowing shape of his father. Eventually, the display
stopped changing and a small readout flashed red.

Benness looked
at the display and spoke solemnly into a microphone on the wall. “Subject
Mathew Grey. Time of death is 21:55.” She then turned to Alek. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” he
whispered.

Maya grabbed his
hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry too, Alek.”

“No,” he
repeated. “You have all of this high-tech equipment. Do something else.”

“Your father has
no brain activity whatsoever, Mr. Grey,” Leconte said. “I’m afraid that there
is nothing more we can do for him.”

Alek pulled away
from Maya, turned his chair around, and headed out of the room as fast as he
could
.

FIVE

A
lek
sat alone near the elevator for several long minutes. Even though he could see
his own breath, the ice-cold air in the room didn’t seem to bother him anymore.
He heard the elevator swoosh to a stop, and two men carrying a gurney swept
passed him and entered the interface room. A few minutes later, they returned
with the body of his father. They wheeled the gurney into the elevator,
followed closely by Leconte and Benness. With another swoosh of air; the
elevator took them all away.

Alek stared at
the open door to the interface room. The silence was almost deafening. A full
minute later, Maya walked out and sat down on a curved bench a few meters away.
He looked at her but she just stared blankly at the elevator shaft. Tears were streaming
down her face.

“I remember when
my mother was sick,” she said, still facing away from him. “About a year before
I met you. It was during exams and my father kept insisting that I drop
everything and fly back home, as though Argentina was just down the block. I
felt so horrible telling him that I couldn’t go. Luckily, she got better, but I
still have nightmares about that period. My father was so disappointed in me.”

“Uh-huh,” he
said, not sure what she was trying to say.

“God, I’m so
sorry,” she said, walking over to sit next to him. She placed a warm hand on
his shoulder. “I guess I really can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”

“I’m not sure
what I feel,” he said, and he was telling the truth. “My mother left him when I
was six, so I don’t have many memories of him living at home. Not that he was
home much before then anyway.”

“You told me
that he was married to his career,” she said. “That couldn’t have been easy for
you or your mom.”

“That’s why she
left him. She said it would’ve been easier to deal with if he was having an
affair, but to abandon his family for a job—well that she just couldn’t understand—or
accept.”

“Maybe this is a
nexus point for you,” she said.

“A what?” he
asked, looking up.

“You know I
don’t believe in fate, or any sort of destiny crap, right?”

“I don’t
either,” he said. “I think when someone tells you that you’re ‘following your
destiny,’ it’s a good time to do a ninety-degree turn and get the hell out of
there.”

“Well, my
grandmother use to say that instead of some sort of predesigned fate, there are
instead a limited number of crossroads, or nexus points, in each of our lives,”
she began. “Moments where a single event, or a decision you make, takes you
down a different path, permanently altering the course of your life.”

“Like when I
left you,” he said, only realizing as he spoke the words, that it was true.

She stood and
faced him. He looked up at her, desperately wishing he could stand. Instead,
she bent over and kissed him on the cheek. Before she could stand back up, he
grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth. She resisted only a
moment, and then he felt her tongue slide between his open lips.