Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  Dan squinted into the blaze of the setting sun while driving along the Beeline Expressway back toward Orlando.

  Traffic was lighter than usual this late Saturday afternoon, mostly trucks and semi rigs barreling along at more than seventy miles per hour despite the posted speed limits. Dan glanced down at his daughter slumped on the bucket seat beside him, her braided hair blowing in the warm wind coming through the car's half-open windows.

  Her safety belt had slipped over her slim shoulder; he wanted to adjust it and tighten it up but he would have to pull over and stop the car to do that. A double trailer rig whooshed past the old Honda, making it shudder in its turbulent wake. Dan decided to keep on going. The sooner we get home the better. I'll fix it at the next toll booth; they've got 'em every ten minutes, seems like.

  It had been a long afternoon of walking and gawking at the Kennedy Space Center. Despite her early indifference, Angela had stared wide-eyed at the immensity of the Saturn V rocket booster lying on its side. "It's bigger than a whale!" she had said. "Bigger than a whole lot of whales!"

  And the Vertical Assembly Building was so huge that the space shuttle orbiter standing inside it looked almost like a toy until they got up close to it. "The world's biggest building," Dan has told his daughter over the hubbub of the other tourists. "It's so big that sometimes clouds form up near the ceiling and it rains in here."

  Angela did not quite believe that, but she seemed to enjoy seeing the space hardware. She clicked away with her little camera, the bursts of its flash quickly lost in the immensity of the cavernous VAB.

  If Angie was still bothered by her experience in the VR game at school she showed no signs of it. She talked with her father on the way over to Cape Canaveral about Mrs. O'Connell, her teacher, and the other kids in class and whether or not they could put up a Christmas tree next month even though Florida didn't look very Christmassy with no snow and even the pine trees along the highway didn't look like the kind of trees you could use for a Christmas tree. She never even mentioned the VR games, not once all during the drive to the Cape.

  It was his conversation with Dr Appleton that kept preying on Dan's mind as he drove his sleeping daughter home. He had brought Angela to the communications center at Patrick Air Force Base, a pastel pink case full of magazines and hand-sized video games under her arm, and asked the officer of the day if there was someone who could take care of the twelve-year-old while he conducted his videophone call. The lieutenant's gold bars looked shining new on her shoulders. She had smiled and assured Dan that she would set up Angela at her own desk and personally keep an eye on her.

  The video conference room was small and stuffy. Dan was surprised to see that its windowless walls were covered with faded photographs of Air Force planes and rocket launchings. He had expected wall-sized display screens, as Muncrief had installed at the lab. Instead there was a bank of ordinary television monitors lining one wall and a row of scruffy student-type chairs with writing arms attached to them facing the TV screens.

  Dan slid into the chair that the tech sergeant pointed out for him, feeling as uneasy as if he had suddenly been thrown back into school. The screen in front of him brightened and then broke into a swirling pattern of colors that weaved and flickered nauseatingly. It took more than fifteen minutes for the link to Dayton to be descrambled so that Dan could see Dr Appleton's face.

  The older man looked serious, almost grim. He was in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened from his collar as usual. Dan remembered that deep blue tie; he and Susan had given it to Doc many Christmases ago. But Appleton seemed much older than Dan remembered him: what was left of his receding hair was very gray and there were lines in his long narrow face that Dan had never noticed before.

  "Good morning, Dan," said Appleton.

  Inadvertently Dan glanced down at his wristwatch before replying, "Good morning, Doc." It was eleven twenty-two.

  "I'm sorry to disrupt your weekend," Appleton said, "but we have a problem here and I need your help."

  "What is it?"

  Appleton hesitated a heartbeat, then, "Do you remember Jerry Adair?"

  "Adair?"

  "Fighter jock. A captain. Real towhead; his hair looked almost white."

  Dan nodded. "Yes, I think so. What about him?"

  The reluctance showed on Appleton's face. Dan saw that it was more than reluctance. Doc looked absolutely miserable.

  "He's dead," Appleton blurted at last. "Died while flying the F-22 simulation."

  Dan almost said, So what? But his mind worked fast enough to stop the words before they were spoken. Doc's telling me a fighter jock died while flying our simulation.

  "You think that something in the simulation affected him physically?"

  "We don't know," said Appleton.

  "The simulation might have killed him? Our simulation?"

  A shrug of the older man's bony shoulders.

  "That's not possible, Doc. You know that. It's only a simulation. We couldn't even put in the g-forces that the pilot would feel in actual flight. The guy just sits in the cockpit and reacts to the program. How could that hurt anybody?

  "We've gone through the program a hundred times in the two months since it's happened," Appleton said. "There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about it."

  "Has anybody else been affected? Physically, I mean."

  "Nobody's used it since Adair's death. We've spent the past two months checking and re-checking it."

  "What'd he die of?"

  "A stroke."

  Dan snorted disdainfully. "Come on, Doc! The damned simulation couldn't give anybody a stroke—except maybe the poor slobs who have to program it."

  Strangely, Appleton smiled. "You still feel possessive about it, don't you? Like a father feels about his child."

  "That simulation couldn't hurt anybody," Dan insisted.

  "Martinez wants to fly it himself, check it out."

  "Ralph? I thought he was redlined."

  Appleton nodded. "But flying the simulation isn't the same as flying for real. You said so yourself: the simulation can't hurt anybody."

  "He's still got the blood pressure problem?" Dan asked.

  "Yes."

  Dan fell silent, telling himself that just because one pilot happened to die while flying the simulation doesn't mean a goddamned thing and there's nothing to worry about having Ralph fly it, high blood pressure notwithstanding.

  But he heard himself asking, "The guy died of a stroke?"

  "That's right."

  "It can't be the simulation," he said again. "It must have been a coincidence."

  "I was wondering," Appleton said slowly, "if you could find the time to come up here—maybe next weekend—look the program over, make sure we haven't missed anything."

  Dan's heart sank. Inwardly he had feared that his old boss would ask for a favor like that.

  "Doc, I really can't. I would if I could but the workload here is so tremendous I hardly get to see my kids anymore. We're under tremendous pressure . . ." His voice trailed off.

  Appleton nodded grimly. "I should have guessed. I'm sorry, Dan. I didn't mean to lay this on you."

  But you did it just the same, Dan replied silently.

  "It's not your responsibility," Appleton said, and Dan heard his real meaning, just the opposite. He and Jace had created the F-22 sim, but for almost a whole year after Jace had left for ParaReality, Dan had worked on it alone, improving it, putting in new wrinkles while Ralph Martinez constantly prodded him to make it tougher, more realistic.

  "I had to bring Angie here with me just so I'd have a chance to be with her," Dan said.

  "I could send an Air Force jet down there to get you. Fly up here Friday night and be back by Sunday night."

  Dan realized he was gripping the little desk extension to his chair with both hands hard enough to hurt. "I can't, Doc. I just can't."

  "Okay," said Appleton, his grim expression unchanged. "I understand."

  "There's just too much in my lap righ
t now. Maybe after April things'll ease off."

  "Ralph wants to fly the simulation this coming week."

  "Maybe that's the best thing to do. If he flies it and nothing happens then you'll know the other guy's death was just a freak accident."

  Appleton's shoulders moved and then he brought his blackened old pipe to his mouth. Teeth clamped hard on its well-bitten stem, he asked, "How's Jace doing?"

  "Up to his armpits in snakes, as usual."

  Appleton made a wry smile. "And could you do me one favor?"

  "Sure! What is it?"

  "Talk over this situation here with Jace. See if he has any ideas that might help us."

  "Yeah, okay. I can do that."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "Sure. No sweat."

  "Maybe you can give me a call early in the week, before Ralph gets into the simulator."

  "Yeah. Right."

  "Thanks, Dan. "

  "Look, Doc—I'm really sorry I can't come up there like you want me to."

  "It's all right. I understand."

  "It's not that I don't want to help you."

  Appleton took the pipe from his mouth. "I understand, Dan. And you're probably right, the simulation is probably perfectly okay. I'm just a worry-wart."

  "I'll talk to Jace and call you Monday."

  "Good. Thanks."

  The blast of an air horn jolted Dan out of his reverie. Goddamned semi rig was inches away from his rear bumper; crawling right up his back. Dan flicked a glance at his speedometer: sixty-eight. He was in the right lane.

  Why doesn't the sonofabitch pass me?

  He pushed down on the accelerator and watched the speedometer's needle crawl past seventy. Another huge double trailer roared past him on the left and then the rig behind him pulled out and passed, shaking the Honda so hard that Dan almost went onto the shoulder of the road.

  Those fighter jocks ought to try driving around here, he said to himself. If they don't get a stroke here they'll never have to worry about flying jets in combat.

  CHAPTER 16

  Indian summer in Ohio. The trees were bare, the gold and red and auburn leaves of autumn long since raked up and carted away. On the suburban Dayton street where the Martinezes lived only the gnarled old oaks on a few of the front lawns still bore some of their withered brown leaves. But the sky was deep blue, the sun warm. Indian summer: the last good weather before the gray cold of winter.

  The Martinez house looked perfectly ordinary, a white saltbox with charcoal shutters and trim. A middle American home, it might have belonged to a junior corporate executive or a skilled factory worker, as did the houses on either side of it. Ralph Martinez was reclining on a folding lounge chair on the wooden deck he had built behind his house, wearing ragged cutoff shorts and a dark blue sweat shirt, but he was far from relaxed. The Cleveland Browns were on the screen of the portable TV he had brought outside with him; getting trounced by the Philadelphia Eagles. In one hand he gripped the remote control box for the little electric lawn mower that was faithfully humming up and down the still-green back lawn. His other held the portable phone to his ear.

  "I didn't think you'd get any help from him," Martinez was saying into the phone.

  Dr Appleton's voice replied, "Don't be so sure, Ralph. Dan takes a while, but he generally gets there. He'll think this over and call me back in a few days, you wait and see."

  "A phone call won't solve our problem."

  "Maybe he'll get Jace to think about it," Appleton said hopefully.

  "That flake! He doesn't give a shit about anything but himself. He's not going to help us."

  "I wouldn't write him off altogether."

  "He's a jerkoff. We can't sit around waiting for him. Or for Dan, either."

  "You really want to fly the simulation yourself, then?"

  Cleveland's quarterback disappeared under a ferocious green tide of Eagles linemen. Martinez winced. "Yeah," he said into the phone. "I want to get the equipment cranked up tomorrow morning."

  "It'll take a few days to run through everything, check it all out."

  "I want to be in the cockpit no later than Wednesday."

  "Why the rush?"

  Martinez knew that if he said Wednesday, maybe by the end of the week the simulator would be ready for him. But he said to Appleton, "Every day we wait is a day lost. That simulator was built to train fighter pilots, not sit idle and soak up tax money."

  He heard Appleton chuckle softly. "All right. All right. We'll have it ready for you by Wednesday even if we have to work overtime."

  "Good," said the colonel. "Do it."

  "Have a nice weekend. What's left of it."

  "You too, Doc."

  As he put the phone down on the wooden planking, Dorothy pushed the back door open, carrying a tray of snacks and two bottles of beer.

  "How's the game going?"

  "Don't ask."

  "That bad?"

  "Worse."

  She put the tray down on the table at her husband's elbow and pulled up the other recliner. Dorothy Aguilera had been the prettiest secretary in the lab when Martinez had first arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a smoldering raven-haired Latin beauty with big flashing eyes and a warm sparkling smile. Every man on the base was after her, even many of the married men tried to chase her down. Now, more than a dozen years later, she was still a feast for the eyes in suede jeans and a scoop-necked cotton tee shirt that clung to her deliciously. She dressed to please her husband and she was very successful at it.

  "The mower's heading for my flower bed," she said as she handed him one of the beers.

  "It'll turn around in time," said Martinez. "I checked the program this morning."

  Dorothy looked doubtful. When Ralph had first brought the little robot home it had thoroughly chewed up the beds of impatiens and marigolds that edged the front lawn.

  "Who was on the phone?" She asked.

  "Doc."

  "Did I hear you say you were going to fly the simulation yourself?"

  "Yeah." He turned away from her and watched the lawn mower. It stopped short of the flower bed, executed a precise ninety-degree turn, and began cutting the grass along the edge of the bed, just as he had programmed it to do.

  But Dorothy was no longer worried about her flowers. "Why do you have to fly it? Why can't—"

  "It's just a simulator. It's on the ground. I won't really be flying."

  "Jerry was killed in it, wasn't he?"

  Martinez tried to concentrate on the football game. The Eagles had fumbled the ball away; a break for Cleveland, at last.

  "Wasn't he?" Dorothy insisted, her voice rising.

  Martinez turned back toward his wife. Her eyes were fiery.

  "Look," he said. "I'm supposed to be the leader of this group. We've got a problem and it's up to me to find the answer. That's my job. That's what I get paid to do."

  She reached out and touched his arm, stroking it gently as she said, "Querido, there must be dozens of pilots who can fly the simulator."

  He tried to control his temper. I shouldn't get angry at her, he told himself. She loves me. She's just trying to protect me. But dammit, she doesn't understand! After all these years she still doesn't understand anything at all.

  "There isn't any real danger," he mumbled.

  "Then let one of the others do it."

  "No!" he snapped. "It's my responsibility. I'll do it myself."

  Dorothy knew her husband's limits. She knew how angry he was that he'd been grounded by the medics.

  She knew how worried he was that he would be passed over for promotion to full colonel and forced to retire from the Air Force.

  "It's bad enough they won't let me fly until this damned blood pressure comes down," he said. "If it looks like I'm scared even to get into a goddamned simulator, what'll they think of me?"

  She leaned across the distance between them and brought her lips close enough to kiss him. "Anyone," she whispered, "who thinks that my husband is afraid of an
ything is a damned idiot."

  But she was afraid. And he could feel her trembling for him.

  As he drove to work Monday morning, his mind churning over his phone conversation with Dr Appleton, Dan could not help but think back to his daughter's bad experience that first week of school. Angie seemed normal enough now. She had not had any more problems with the VR games. Yet she had fainted. And an Air Force pilot had died. In VR simulations.

  There can't be anything in the simulation that would kill a pilot, he told himself. The worst physical stress we can put into the simulator is to tilt the cockpit and slew it around to give the guy inside a feeling of the plane's motion. We can't duplicate the g's he'd be pulling in a real flight.

  But when he arrived at ParaReality he went straight to Jace's office. Miraculously, it had been cleaned up. Most of the papers that had littered the chairs and floor were gone. Dan could see that Jace had even cleared off his desk. He was bent over the keyboard of his computer terminal, long slim fingers flashing like a concert pianist's. They looked boneless, like snakes, they were moving so fast.

  Dan sat wordlessly in one of the plastic chairs in front of the desk. Jace did not seem to notice him; his eyes were focused entirely on the computer screen.

  After a few minutes, Dan said, "Jace?" Then louder, "Hey, Jace!"

  "Not yet," Jace mumbled, still bent over his keyboard.

  "Might as well get a cup of coffee," Dan said, and he started to get up from the chair.

  "Don't go," said Jace, still without looking up. "Hang on a minute."

  Dan let himself drop back into the chair. It squeaked. Then the only sound in the room was Jace's click-click-clicking on the computer keys.

  "Right!" Jace said at last. "Got it!" He lifted his hands triumphantly and turned, grinning, toward Dan. "That oughtta do it."

  "Do what?" Dan asked.

  "Fill in the background details of the baseball simulation. Now all you've gotta do is get that time-sharing program from Frankel and we're ready to knock Muncrief's socks off."