Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  "He has a family," Victoria murmured.

  "I know that. I'll give him a nice fat incentive bonus for doing this extra work. Start a trust fund for his kids, college education. How's that?"

  "It might work."

  "He'll do it. He doesn't have the guts to say no to me."

  "I wouldn't put it exactly that way," Victoria said. She hesitated long enough to draw in a breath, then asked, "What about his daughter?"

  Muncrief looked startled. A silence stretched between them. Electrical, crackling.

  "Well, what about his daughter?" he asked warily, his hands fluttering nervously across the desktop.

  Victoria thought her own words out very carefully. "Kyle, you're tampering with the VR games at the school when she plays them."

  He did not deny it. He just stared at her, eyes burning, face reddening.

  "And Jace is helping you."

  "The kid isn't being hurt," he mumbled.

  "She fainted."

  "That was two months ago! She loves the games now."

  "And she likes you a lot, too, doesn't she? She even calls you Uncle Kyle."

  "So what?" Truculently.

  Victoria said, "Kyle, what you do in your private life doesn't concern me. But if Dan finds out about why you're interested in his daughter it could wreck this company."

  "He won't find out."

  "Dan would kill you, you know. He's the quiet, soft-spoken kind who goes berserk. He'd pick up that lamp and smash your skull in with it."

  Muncrief inadvertently glanced at the heavy brass lamp on the corner of his desk.

  "I'm not hurting his daughter," he muttered.

  "That won't matter to him."

  With an angry scowl, Muncrief said, "Well, he won't find out unless somebody tells him." And he pointed his finger like a pistol at Vickie's chest.

  "I won't tell him, you know that. But if Jace knows about it, how long will it stay a secret?"

  Mrs. O'Connell had almost stopped worrying about Angela.

  Whatever had bothered the child two months ago in the VR booth seemed to have blown away. Angela loved the VR games now. She used the booths for her weekly reading skills demonstration, for her science lessons and her history lessons. And for games. Angela loved the games now.

  Almost too much so, the teacher thought.

  The day's work had gone smoothly, so that by the final half-hour O'Connell allowed the children a free period of independent study.

  "Can we use the booths for a music program?" asked Mary Mackie. O'Connell saw that she wanted to share the program with a girlfriend.

  Three of the booths at the back of the classroom were unused at the moment.

  "Angela," she called, "would you like to try the concert, too?"

  Angela looked up from the computer screen she had been studying. The display screen showed a map of Florida.

  "You do enjoy music, don't you, Angela?"

  "I guess."

  O'Connell directed Angela, Mary and another girl to the empty booths. While they were pulling on the data gloves and slipping the helmets over their heads, she went to her desk at the front of the classroom and tapped out the number of the program to be shown and the names of the children in each booth. The information went over fiber-optic lines, fast as light, to the mainframe computer at the ParaReality laboratory.

  As soon as Mrs. O'Connell closed the door to the VR booth, Angela pulled frayed old Amanda out of her pocket and sat the little doll on her lap.

  "This is going to be fun," she said softly to Amanda. "You're going to enjoy this."

  Once she put on the helmet it blocked out all light and muffled the sounds from the classroom. She barely heard Mrs. O'Connell's footsteps, her murmured, "Everything is connected properly; very good." With the data gloves on, Angela could not caress Amanda the way she wanted to, but it felt good to know she was there with her.

  The darkness slowly brightened into a soft glow and a voice said gently, "The symphony orchestra is one of humankind's greatest achievements." Angela saw that she was sitting in the middle of a big orchestra, surrounded by men and women tuning up their violins and trombones and flutes and other instruments she did not know the names of. The noise was chaotic, everybody seemed to be playing his or her own tune. And yet it had an almost pleasant feel to it.

  "Which instrument would you like to play, Angela?" asked the voice. It was a man's voice, but not Uncle Kyle's, as she had half-expected.

  Angela looked around the orchestra. All the other players stopped their tune-ups and turned smiling toward her. Angela twisted around in her chair, looking first one way, then the other.

  "Is there a piano?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid not," said the man's voice. "How about a violin? Or maybe you'd like to play the timpani."

  "Timpani? What's that?"

  After a few moments of discussion, she settled for a piccolo. It looked small and easy to handle. The voice told her to move to the woodwind section. A chair appeared there for her, with a piccolo resting on its seat. Wondering if the other girls were going through the same routine, Angela sat down. She realized that she was now wearing a long black gown that rustled when she moved.

  "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is called 'The Pastorale,' " the voice began explaining. Angela fidgeted on her chair. She wanted to play music, or at least listen to some. She saw Mary Mackie sitting up in the first row of violins. She started to turn around to find the other girl but just then the orchestra conductor walked out onto the stage and Angela realized there was an audience out in the darkened theater beyond the stage lights. She heard them applauding. The conductor stepped up onto his podium, bowed to the audience, then turned to the orchestra and raised his baton.

  Angela picked up her piccolo, wondering which fingers were supposed to go over which holes along the slim metal tube. "Don't worry about a thing," the man's voice whispered into her ear. "Just put the mouthpiece to your lips and have fun."

  The conductor swept his baton down gracefully and the orchestra began to play. Including Angela. She did not know how to move her fingers properly and she blew awkwardly into the piccolo's mouthpiece. But the instrument sounded sweet and clear whenever its turn came to play. Angela did not know whether to be pleased or annoyed.

  She was playing in the orchestra, true enough, but she knew it was not really herself playing the instrument. And then, as the beautiful music soared and swept onward, the orchestra slowly faded away and Angela found herself in a soft green meadow under a bright blue sky dotted with scattered cotton-white clouds. Her piccolo was gone and she was wearing shorts and a loose-fitting blouse. The sun was warm and she saw that the meadow sloped down gently toward a meandering brook where horses and smaller animals were drinking.

  The music followed her as she walked slowly toward the stream, barefoot in the warm grass. Birds fluttered overhead and from the trees not far away she could hear melodious singing. Everything in this pastoral scene seemed to move in rhythm to the music, even the clouds floating by. Angela smiled, then laughed aloud as she approached the stream's bank. Rabbits and deer were gathered there, so tame that she could pet them. A mare and her foal bent their graceful necks to drink from the brook, then turned their soulful brown eyes toward Angela.

  She had never ridden a horse before, but it seemed so easy to climb up on the mare's back and suddenly she was racing across the greenery, splashing into the brook and up the other bank, off into the woods with the foal running easily alongside in rhythm to the music.

  It was glorious. Angela clung tightly to the mare's back and leaned forward, gripping her mane with both hands. They broke clear of the woods and Angela saw an endless plain stretching out beyond the horizon where vast herds of horses galloped free and happy, raising great plumes of yellow-gray dust.

  The mare turned back, though, and they were among the trees once again, the brilliant sun winking in and out of the high leafy canopies. At last they returned to the brook and the mare trotted slowly along its b
ank, then stopped.

  And Angela found herself sitting in the orchestra again, back in her long black gown, her fingers tight around the piccolo, her eyes on the conductor. The man's face seemed to shift as he led the orchestra with graceful gestures, his features seemed to go into shadow and change slightly, like a distant landscape changes as drifting clouds throw their shadows across it.

  At one instant the conductor seemed like someone Angela knew, someone she had seen before. His face almost looked like Daddy's and Angela drew in her breath in surprise and sudden delight, but the face shifted again, changed even as she stared at it. It became, just for a moment, the face of Kyle Muncrief, smiling and happy.

  Uncle Kyle nodded at Angela as he led the orchestra and gave her a big wink. Then his face changed again and he was a stranger once more. The music ended. A voice said, "Game over. Please take off your helmet and gloves."

  Feeling more puzzled than alarmed, Angela wondered how Uncle Kyle almost always managed to get into her games.

  CHAPTER 18

  "Stuttering," said Dan.

  Susan almost laughed at him. "S-s-stuttering?"

  They were sitting on the chocolate brown living room sofa, drinking coffee and watching an old Steve McQueen movie on a satellite TV channel. The kids were asleep and Dan was telling his wife about his conversation with Bob Frankel.

  "That's the key word," Dan replied, utterly serious. "Bob wouldn't tell me much. He didn't like the idea of helping Jace."

  "He wouldn't tell you the name of the journal or the title of the report?" Susan asked.

  Dan shook his head. "Said I could look it up for myself. Can you find it for me?"

  Susan felt surprised, delighted, that her husband was confiding in her. He so seldom did. Dan had not mentioned a word about his talk with Dr Appleton on Saturday. She knew that much of what went on at the Air Force lab was secret, but Dan had ground his teeth horribly in his sleep for the past three nights. Now, out of the blue, he was asking her to track down the paper Frankel had mentioned to him.

  He needs my help, Susan said to herself. He really needs my help. Then a new thought struck her.

  "You wait right here," she said, getting up from the sofa. "Watch the movie. I'll see what I can find."

  "Now?"

  Susan grinned at him. "The computers never sleep," she said as melodramatically as she could. "And they obey my every command." With that she swept out of the living room, heading for her tiny office in the kitchen alcove.

  "While you're at it," he called to her, "can you find out what the word tonto means in Spanish?"

  "I don't need the computer for that. It means stupid."

  "Stupid?"

  "Don't you know that old joke? The Lone Ranger calls his faithful Indian companion Tonto, but he doesn't know what kee-mo-sabey means."

  Stupid. Dan sank back on the sofa, not knowing whether to be angry at Jace or himself. Pronto, Tonto. Right away, stupid. Jace's warped sense of humor. He sipped at the cooling coffee, ignoring the TV movie, grumbling inwardly about Jace and wondering what had excited Sue so much about a simple request for a data search. Probably a wild-goose chase anyway; probably the paper Frankel had told him about never even mentioned the word "stuttering." Curiosity overcame his resentment. He picked up the cups and saucers and went back to the kitchen. As he rinsed them and placed them in the dishwasher he cocked an eye at his wife. Susan was sitting in front of her computer in the tiny alcove, telephone headset clamped over her red hair. Dan could see the glow of the computer screen on her face. It made her eyes shine. The tip of her tongue was peeking between her lips. She looked like a kid having fun—like Angie did, he thought, when she was taking pictures of the rockets over at the Cape.

  Susan's mind was racing as fast as the lists of titles scrolling along her computer screen. If I can get Dan to make me a consultant, then maybe I can get into the computer system in his lab and take a really good look at the games they pipe into Angie's school. I don't care what Vickie Kessel says, something's not right with those games. Angie keeps seeing people she knows in them.

  The scrolling stopped and the screen showed a single title.

  "Got it!" Susan yelped. " 'Applications of Nanosecond Switching in Parallel Processors.' By Armbruster, Bernoff and six other guys. All from MIT."

  Dan went around the counter and leaned over beside Susan to peer at the screen. "It doesn't say stuttering," he muttered.

  Susan pecked at the PAGE DOWN key a few times and Dan saw a footnote, "This technique has acquired the popular name of 'stuttering.' It seems an inelegant description of the technique, but frequently barbarous usages find their way into scientific jargon. Witness 'quasar' and 'flop.' "

  "Holy cow, you did it!" Dan exclaimed.

  Susan pressed another key and the printer, on the floor under her little table, began chugging. Then she tapped the keyboard again. The screen showed an invoice.

  "You owe me a dollar seventy-five for the telephone charges," she said triumphantly. "And a hundred dollars for my fee."

  "A hundred dollars?"

  "That's my minimum fee," she said, grinning.

  Dan pursed his lips. "That's an awful lot for just a few minutes at the computer."

  She raised an eyebrow. "It's my minimum fee."

  "For just—" He squinted at the computer screen. "—six minutes work?"

  Susan pursed her lips. "I suppose I could throw in a bonus."

  Dan asked, "What kind of a bonus?"

  "What would you like?"

  He took her by the shoulders and helped her out of the chair. They kissed and headed for the bedroom, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder, while the printer continued to buzz and churn out pages of the MIT paper.

  Much later, as they lay warm and sticky next to each other, Susan murmured, "Dan?"

  He was already half asleep. "Hnnh?"

  "Dan, do you think you could hire me as a consultant?"

  "Consultant?" His voice was muffled by his pillow.

  "Like I was for your lab at Wright-Patt," Susan said. "I could do all your searches for you on a regular basis. For the whole company!"

  Dan turned over and looked blearily at her. "I guess I could ask Vickie about it."

  "Does everything have to go through Vickie?"

  "I thought you liked her."

  "I don't dislike her," Susan said. "But she seems to be at the center of everything that goes on at the lab."

  "Y'p, she sure is."

  Susan thought, Vickie must know that there's something wrong with Angie's games. Then it hit her. Someone's altering the games Angie plays! And Vickie must know all about it.

  Dan brought the printout of the MIT paper with him to the lab the next morning, closed his office door, turned on his phone's answering machine to intercept any calls, and settled in his desk chair for some heavy reading. No one but Jace would disturb him when his door was closed.

  But Jace had been coming into the lab later and later each week, dragging himself hollow-eyed and gaunter than ever. Dan wondered what he was doing with his nights and weekends; it certainly wasn't the baseball simulation.

  Frankel gave me the straight scoop, Dan said to himself as he scanned the list of references after finishing the text of the MIT paper. These guys have got it down in black and white. Stuttering. Good technique. Good job.

  His door banged open and Jace slouched in, bleary and unshaven. His clothes looked as if he had slept in them for a week. His grimy tee shirt read, Curiouser and Curiouser.

  He flopped onto the couch

  "So?" he asked, his voice a croak.

  "What's happening to you, Jace?" Dan asked, feeling a surge of worry. "You're falling apart, for Pete's sake."

  "I'm okay. Been working nights, that's all."

  "Working? On what?"

  Jake's eyes shifted away from Dan. "Something special," he said evasively. "My own business. Private stuff."

  "You going into business on your own behind Muncrief's back?
" Dan tried to make it sound light, joking, but inwardly he was surprised that Jace was working on something that he obviously did not want to share with him. Surprised and hurt.

  Jace gave him a red-eyed stare. "That'll be the day," he mumbled.

  "I found out what tonto means, by the way."

  Jace grinned at him.

  "I don't like being called stupid."

  "It's just a joke."

  "I still don't like it."

  "Don't be a sorehead."

  An uncomfortable silence grew between them. Dan could feel it, like a palpable force. It bothered him. Dan felt torn, uncertain of what he should do or say.

  He picked up the MIT paper in one hand. "I got the goods from Frankel," he said. "A group at MIT did it. They call it stuttering."

  Jace snapped wide-awake. He sat upright, almost quivering. "Stuttering? That's what we need?"

  Dan nodded.

  "How quick can you put into our program?"

  "A couple of weeks, maybe three," said Dan. "Then I'll have to de-bug it. That might take another three-four weeks. Maybe a little more."

  "That's no problem," Jace said, hopping to his feet. "We can get Charlie Chan or one of the other slobs to do the de-bugging."

  "Gary's got his own work to do," Dan said.

  "Then we can automate the friggin' de-bugging."

  "Oh no! We can't let some half-ass AI program debug this, it's too damned important to let a computer screw it up."

  "Don't be an old lady," Jace countered. "We can use the same AI program we've used to de-bug the program so far."

  "I don't trust it. This is too important to mess around with."

  "You're just being possessive," Jace said, with a lopsided grin. "I know you, Danno. You're the kind who can't bear to see anybody else touch his precious program, not even an AI system."

  "It can make mistakes. And it did, when we started using it on the graphics program. Remember?"

  "And we fixed the mistake. Remember? It'll never make that mistake again."