Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure

by Dennis L McKiernan

With a resigned sigh, Doctor Greyson picked up his half-glasses and turned to Toni at the lectern.

  Toni looked at Coburn, and at a slight nod from him, she prepared to continue. In that same moment, as rain pattered against the window, Alice came to realize just who held the power in this room. She glanced at Eric and he nodded; Alice shook her head and sighed.

  “As I understand it,” said Toni, “some six years past you became world champions in the virtual reality games held annually in Milwaukee. In those games each of you took on a persona, played as if you were a member of a group of mercenaries known as the Black Foxes. And in those same championships, you set a standard that no other team has even come close to, much less equaled or surpassed.”

  “Damn straight!” exclaimed Caine, a wide grin on his face. “Stealth and cunning and guile will out every time.”

  Toni acknowledged Caine with a bob of her head. “Just so, Doctor Easley. And because you gave the game such a good and proper thrashing, well, we jumped at the chance for the Black Foxes to be the first test group—the alpha test group—to enter one of Avery’s realities. You see, we believe you have the expertise to deal with whatever challenges Avery throws at you.”

  “You called us the alpha group,” said Meredith. “Does that mean no one else has been in there?” She tilted her head toward the screen.

  “Oh no, Miss Rodgers” came Avery’s electronic voice. “Many others have been in one of my realities, but you and your companions will be the first group. You see, I need to learn what it is like to interact with groups, starting with an expert group. To, shall we say, calibrate myself. The reality I have in mind should be a challenge for the Black Foxes. Mister Flannery has been good enough to provide Doctor Rendell—and therefore me—with information about the Foxes. I understand that when all of you were in college together, you enjoyed role-playing in the world of one of his favorite authors from the eighties and nineties—a Mister Daniel Patrick—and so I have read all his works. That is the reality I will place you in.”

  “You mean,” blurted Hiroko, “that we are going to be in Itheria?”

  “Exactly,” answered Avery.

  “Unreal!” exclaimed Caine, his eyes alight with joy.

  “Precisely,” responded Avery, “though at the time you will not think so.”

  “Huh?”

  “Avery means, Caine,” explained Eric, “that we will believe that it is indeed the real Itheria. In fact, we won’t even question it. So, unreal it is.”

  Meredith leaned forward. “Tell me, Doctor Adkins, presumably the VR world will entertain us. But I ask you, if we have no sense of who we really are, if we actually become different personas, then how will we know that we are indeed being entertained . . . especially if in the virtual reality we are, say, struggling over mountains or surviving disasters or facing peril? I mean, it seems to me that in reading a book or watching a holo or whatever, you can distance yourself from the desperate events portrayed. But in a virtual reality, especially one in which we actually become someone else, then how will we be entertained?”

  “Oh good god, woman!” burst out Doctor Stein. “Going in you remember nothing; coming out you remember all.” He leapt to his feet and in an irritated voice said, “Toni, there are things I should have been doing an hour past. You don’t need me here.”

  “Amen to that,” muttered Caine. “We don’t need you here. God, what a jerk.”

  Stein stalked out.

  In that moment the rain stopped. “Perhaps it is an omen,” Eric whispered to Alice, tilting his head first toward the windows and then to the door softly closing behind Stein’s departure.

  Toni cleared her throat in the embarrassed hush. “Miss Rodgers, what Doctor Stein so ineptly said was that when you enter the virtual reality, you remember nothing of your true life—it is left behind—but when you return, the full experience in the virtual reality is indeed remembered. Whatever joys, perils, griefs, or aught else that has occurred within, you will come back with full knowledge of those virtual reality experiences.”

  Meredith nodded, then said, “It seems to me, Doctor Adkins, that it is incumbent upon you and Avery to see that those memories are at the very least entertaining.”

  Tiny Hiroko held up a hand. “Tell me, how will Avery do whatever it is he is to do to us? How do we lose our own identities? How do we actually become a person in a virtual reality?”

  Greyson gently thumped the table with the butt of his fist and smiled. “Ah, my dear, wonderful questions, easily answered. You see, we are simply going to cast you into one of the caverns of Socrates.”

  4

  Shadowplay

  (Coburn Facility)

  Hiroko’s tilted eyes flew wide. “Cast me into what?”

  Greyson’s grin broadened. “A cavern of Socrates.”

  She shook her head and turned up her hands.

  Meredith reached across Caine and patted Hiroko on the arm. “I think Doctor Greyson is referring to a section of Plato’s Republic.”

  Greyson tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Quite right, Miss Rodgers. You are familiar with it?”

  “I am familiar with the concept,” she replied, “but not with the specific dialogue . . . though I seem to recall it’s in Book Seven.”

  As Eric stood and stepped to the coffee urn to fill his cup and take his seat again, Greyson nodded. “Once more you are right, Miss Rodgers. Plato tells of a discussion between Socrates and Glaucon. They were speaking of the concept of reality, which I will paraphrase as closely as I can.”

  “Oh, let me play the part of Glaucon, Doctor Greyson,” said Meredith. “After all, his part was small, and surely I can ad lib.”

  Greyson smiled. “Bully, Miss Rodgers. Bully. Shall we begin?”

  At Meredith’s nod, Greyson swept wide a hand, as if he were on a stage. “I, Socrates, have a conundrum to set before you, Glaucon.”

  Meredith smiled and canted her head theatrically. “Say on, O Socrates.”

  Greyson laughed, then drew sober. “Picture men in an underground cave dwelling, with a long entrance reaching up toward the light along the whole width of the cave; in this they lie from their childhood, their legs and necks in chains, so that they stay where they are and look only in front of them, as the chain prevents their turning their heads ’round. Some way off, and higher up, a fire is burning behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners is a road on higher ground. Imagine a wall built along this road, like the screen which showmen hide behind over which they exhibit the puppets in their play.”

  Meredith nodded and spoke. “I have it, Socrates.”

  “Then, Glaucon, picture also men carrying along this road all kinds of articles which overtop the wall: statues of men and horses and birds and other creatures of stone and wood and other materials. Naturally some of the carriers speak while others remain silent.”

  “A strange image and strange prisoners, Socrates.”

  “Think you so, Glaucon? Then let me say this: the prisoners are men like us. Yet do you think that such men would have seen anything of themselves or of each other?”

  “How could they, Socrates, if in all their lives they had been forced to keep their heads motionless?”

  “Just so, Glaucon. Now let us imagine that on the cave wall before them they can indeed see the shadows of the carried objects, shadows cast upon a wall by the fire burning beyond the men carrying those objects.”

  “I understand.”

  “Let us further suppose that the cave wall is shaped such that the voices of those carriers who speak are reflected from those very shadows.”

  “Oh, Socrates, this begins to take shape.”

  “Indeed. Now let me ask you, Glaucon, if these prisoners could speak with one another, do you not think they would suppose what they saw to be the real thing?”

  “Necessarily, Socrates.”

  At this point, Greyson grinned and shifted in his chair and sketched a seated bow to Meredith, which she gracefully echoed. Then Gr
eyson turned to the others. “Socrates and Glaucon went on to discuss the reality of perceptions. You see, setting aside the improbability of Socrates’ proposition—for I believe that such prisoners could not truly exist, unless they were raised more-or-less normally, and suddenly became amnesiacs upon finding themselves chained in this cave—still, it is an illuminating discussion. Down through the centuries it has led to many spirited philosophical colloquia—with most philosophers concluding that we can only perceive reality through our senses . . . though there have been and still are mavericks who maintain otherwise. Dissenters aside, and without getting into mysticism, we humans gauge reality by what we perceive, by what our senses tell us, and by what we make of those perceptions. And those prisoners, if they existed, would think that shadows on a wall were the real thing. Do you see, Miss Kikiro?”

  Hiroko nodded. “Oh yes. In fact, when I was a child the shadows in my room at night were alive and real . . . and magical . . . or so I believed.”

  Greyson nodded. “Yes, indeed, just as these shadows were real for the captives. But listen, should one of the prisoners get free and simply turn around and see the bonfire, his reality would greatly alter, for what he would then perceive would be a drastic change from the old. And should he see the men carrying the statues, again his reality would alter. And should he walk outside, well then, his reality would drastically change once again.

  “And should he come back and speak to the other prisoners and tell them what he has seen . . . well let me ask you, would they believe him? Or would they instead think he had gone insane?”

  “Uh,” said Caine, grinning at Hiroko, “I’d think he’d gone plumb ’round the bend myself.”

  Greyson nodded at Caine. “Yet he would be telling them the truth. He would have escaped his former realities and learned the truth. But, and here is the rub, would it have been the real truth?” Greyson turned and gestured outward through the window, where in the distance the lights of Tucson could now clearly be seen. “Is this truly reality? Or merely a false perception? How will we ever know?”

  “Perhaps,” said Meredith, “perhaps when we die we emerge from this cave we call the world and step into a new reality.”

  Greyson nodded. “You may be right, Miss Rodgers. But then again you may be wrong. Look, there are many images of reality: it could be that one of us is simply dreaming, and all of the rest of us are merely figments of his or her imagination.”

  “Perhaps it is God who is dreaming,” said Hiroko.

  “Ha! Perhaps it is me,” said Caine.

  “Then again,” said Greyson, once more gesturing about, “perhaps all of this is false, and we are instead merely brains in vats.”

  Alice tilted her head. “Brains in vats?”

  “Yes,” replied Greyson, smiling. “You see, in the middle of the night, when you were asleep, an evil scientist crept into your room and with incredible skill removed your brain from your skull. Then, with equally incredible skill, he took your brain to his laboratory and with microscopic electrodes he connected every one of your sensory nerves to an incredibly complex computer and submerged your brain in a vat of nutrients. Using his computer and sending signals through the electrodes, he now manipulates precisely what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and so on, so that you perceive that at this very moment you are in an executive conference room speaking with those of us here, and in no fashion can you detect otherwise.” Greyson’s gaze swept across everyone. “In fact, we are all brains in vats.”

  “Muhaha!” came Caine’s false laugh. “And it is I who am that very evil scientist.”

  A chuckle went ’round the room, and Alice shook her head and smiled. “What a depraved mind you have, Doctor Greyson.”

  “Oh, I can’t claim credit for that,” he replied. “It’s an old philosophical riddle of Arthur Penfield’s, inspired by the discovery back in the 1930s that memories and sensations can be relived by stimulating specific regions of the brain.”

  “Which brings us back to the briefing,” said Doctor Adkins, who still stood at the lectern. “In effect, when you are taken into Avery’s virtual reality, you indeed will be like a brain in a vat, except that this vat will be your own skull.”

  “Pardon me, Doctor Adkins,” said Hiroko, “but I still do not see how we will enter this virtual reality, how we will lose ourselves and become someone else in a whole new existence—become a Black Fox in Itheria.”

  “It is quite straightforward, Miss Kikiro: for you to forget who you really are and become an individual in virtual reality, through precise neural induction Avery will use a technique known as hemispheric synchronization to place you in a dissociative state. Then via selective memory augmentation he will cast you into the mold of your VR persona—you could liken it to being mesmerized and transformed into a different personality with the memories to support it. Furthermore, you will be in an altered state of sleep, and via inductive stimulation of the hippocampus, and of the various neural clusters in your manifold sensory maps, enhanced by images and odors and other stimuli fed through the rig you will wear, you will be that person and live in that virtual reality and have the time of your life.”

  “Oh, Socrates, this begins to take shape,” said Hiroko.

  “Stimulation of the hippocampus?” said Caine. “But won’t that cause dreaming?”

  “Precisely!” answered Doctor Adkins, delighted at Caine’s response. “But you see, under Avery’s control, it will be akin to lucid dreaming.”

  “Lucid dreaming?” said Eric. “But wait, I thought that when the mind was in the state of lucid dreaming, it meant that you were aware that you were dreaming and could take control of the dream and make it do your bidding.”

  “If that’s so,” said Hiroko, “if we know we are dreaming, then won’t we also know who we are? I mean, I thought that we would lose our own identities when we were in the virtual reality.”

  Toni held up her hands to stop the questions. “I merely said that it would be akin to lucid dreaming. Yes, in actual lucid dreaming the dreamer has free will and full control of the dream. However, in Avery’s virtual reality, although the alternate personality will have free will, he will only have free control of himself, but none of the rest of the dream. Meanwhile, here in the true reality, the dreamer will not be aware that he is dreaming. Avery will see to that.”

  “I see,” said Hiroko. Then she smiled at at Dr. Greyson and added, “O Socrates, we Foxes shall be in a shadow play.”

  “Not true, my dear Glaucon,” replied Greyson, “for unlike a play, there is no script; you will have free will instead.”

  Hiroko nodded in understanding. “Ah, then, we are playing against shadows that we think are real. I call it a shadow play still.”

  “Indeed,” said Greyson.

  Grinning, Hiroko turned to look at Toni. “You also said something about a—a rig?”

  “Avery, show a half-scale holo of the witch’s cradle, please, suit in place.”

  Witch’s cradle? Alice turned toward Eric to note the question in his eyes as well.

  The endless swirl of Avery’s spectrum disappeared and the screen turned to a silver-grey, and in the air before it appeared a holo of what looked to be a high-tech, high-altitude pressure suit—though one from the nineties—with a dark-visored helmet. The outfit was strapped into a recliner, and both helmet and suit were connected to it by bundles of fiberoptics. The recliner itself was embedded in a gimbaled rig—a witch’s cradle—able to assume all attitudes.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Caine. “It looks like some of the old training rigs, you know, like those used by the astronauts for the second wave of lunar missions.”

  “Or the ill-fated one to Mars,” murmured Hiroko.

  A faint shadow of remembered sorrow flicked across Toni’s face, vanishing as she stepped ’round the holo. “Similar to those, yet not the same. You see, this is no rig for a journey to outer space, but to inner space instead, a place where only the imagination can go.

  “T
hrough a combination of hemispheric synchronization, selective memory augmentation, quasi-lucid dreaming, inductive neural excitation, and projected sensory stimulation, all guided by Avery, you will be in a fantastic virtual reality indistinguishable from the true.”

  Eric glanced at Alice, and she silently mouthed [Wow!]. His eyes flew wide, for it was as if she had read his mind.

  Toni stepped back to the lectern. “To be able to do this, over the next three days Avery will assay a reasonably complete neural map of each of you.

  “During this time, you and he together will detail the characters you wish to become. Mister Flannery has been kind enough to provide a complete written description of your Black Fox characters—their skills, tendencies, abilities, talents, and so on—however, only you can give them your own personal touches. All of this and the neural data will be stored in a crystal identity chip keyed to you and to your VR persona.” On the holo of the rig, a small area on the forehead of the VR helmet was highlighted—and the tiny compartment for the ID crystal was shown in open cross-section. The crystal itself appeared to be a small polished cut of clear, hex-sided quartz.

  As the witch’s cradle reappeared, Doctor Adkins said, “You will live here in the Coburn complex and will be placed on a special diet—”

  “Hmm,” interjected Eric, smiling at Alice, “looks like the evil scientists have us in their clutches.” Then he crooked his fingers and twisted his face into a grimace, and in a cackling falsetto croaked, “I have you now, my pretty, and your little dog, too.”

  5

  Illumination

  (Coburn Facility)

  “We’re all here on the seventh floor,” said Eric. “Your room is sandwiched between Meredith’s and Hiroko’s. Caine and I are across the hall”—he pointed—”there and there respectively. Ah, here we are.”

  Alice glanced up to see 716 on her door. “Alice Maxon,” she said into the voice lock, which responded with a soft click. She pushed open the door and entered, but Eric stopped at the threshold.