Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘It’s kind of like having a prosthetic, except that in the case of a brain, the artificial one offers a different conscious experience — one that’s created by me. There’s another important difference. To them it will feel almost exactly like the real thing.

‘Get ready, gentlemen, you have ten seconds before entering Simworld, on my mark. Ten seconds. Nine, eight...’

Cavor glanced at his prosthetic arm and reflected that lately it hadn’t felt like a prosthetic at all. It had felt much more like the real thing. Possibly even better, if such a thing was possible. Not stronger exactly, just different, in a way he found hard to describe. He knew it had to be something to do with the drugs he was taking.

‘Five, four, three, two, one, switch.’

Prevezer pressed the button that consigned his two charges to a different conscious experience and then, having checked their vital signs and seen that everything looked normal, glanced wearily at the faces of his onlooking colleagues. It was almost as if they actually expected to see something happen to the two men wearing the geodesics. He laughed scornfully, and said, ‘You guys look as if you thought they were going to disappear or something.’

‘I’d sure like to see what I look like in virtual reality,’ said Ronica.

Prevezer winced. ‘Please don’t ever call it that. If you want to describe what we’re doing here, you say it’s a simulation, or a model, or a surrogate world, or a Simworld, but never virtual reality. That stuff’s for kids.’

‘Whatever you want to call it,’ replied Cavor, ‘I’d kind of like to see a Simworld version of me, too.’

‘How will they remember things that won’t actually have happened?’ asked Ronica.

‘You remember your dreams, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but dreaming is something the brain does for itself.’

Prevezer shook his head. He wasn’t much used to explaining the tricks of his profession. Mostly you just stuck someone into a Simworld and then put your feet up while they got on with it. He was getting a little tired of all this Q and A.

‘Whatever goes through sensory processing ends up in their memories. And when they come back to the natural world, their recollections will seem quite real to them, I can assure you. As real as any of you might have of our flight to the Moon, for example.’

Lenina didn’t think much of that comparison: To her mind the flight hadn’t felt any different from any simulation she’d experienced. And she wasn’t much impressed with Prevezer’s highhanded attitude.

‘While you’re making such a good case for your expertise,’ said Lenina, ‘you might reassure me that they’ll be okay.’ Her own experience of simulations had been that they were only as good as the person operating the computer.

Prevezer made a face. ‘Of course they’ll be okay. There would be no point in making a model for them to experiment on if there was a significant risk of injury. They might just as well go ahead and tackle the real thing. Which is not to say that things can’t feel very unpleasant, even painful. I mean everyone’s heard of bad simulations, right? They can leave you feeling exhausted, even traumatized, but there’s nothing physical that can happen to you.’

Even as he said it, Prevezer knew this wasn’t true. People frequently died in simulations, but that was usually because they were sick and wanted to go that way.

‘Besides, I can usually figure what’s happening. I may not be able to see into the simulation itself, but the program numbers give me a good idea of where they are and what’s happening and when they’ve finished in there. Also I keep a close eye on all their vital signs — heart, breathing, brain activity. With experience, you get to recognize when things are going wrong. If they are, you just hit the button and bring them back.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that. Hey, listen, no one’s ever been injured inside one of my simulations.’

This was only partly true. None of Prevezer’s clients had ever been physically injured. But there were a few whose minds had never been the same again.

Lenina looked at Gates and then nodded. ‘Glad to hear it. For your sake. Because if anything happens to Gates, you’ll need a cyberglove to feel your dick. Understand?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Think about it,’ she yawned, for the tenth time in as many minutes. By now she had faced the truth that lay behind her constant state of tiredness, and the rash on her body. There could be no doubt about it. She had less than one hundred and twenty days to live. Much less, to judge by the way she was feeling. ‘That guy’s all I’ve got in the world. And I’m not about to let anything happen to him.’

‘Everything’s going to be just fine,’ he insisted, through clenched teeth.

‘Good. In that case, I think I’ll lie down. Do you mind if I use your bed, Prev? I’m beat. I don’t think I’ve adjusted to the lunar time zone yet.’

‘Be my guest.’ Prev watched her go into his bedroom with a mixture of irritation and pity. He’d modeled enough simulations for people with the virus to recognize the Three Moon phase when he stared it in the face. He guessed that underneath all the makeup Lenina was wearing on her face, there was a rubelliform rash. He also felt a degree of admiration for her. She was pretty tough just to be walking around like that. He guessed that everyone except Ronica had the same thought. Ronica hadn’t seen enough of the virus at close quarters to recognize a Three Moon phase.

‘Where exactly are they now?’ she asked, when Lenina had gone into Prevezer’s bedroom.

‘Where else but at the beginning?’ he said. ‘In the RLV, approaching the Descartes Crater.’

‘Three, two, one, switch...’

Dallas opened his eyes to find himself seated on the flight deck of the Mariner RLV. In front of him were Gates, in the commander’s seat, and Lenina’s surrogate, in the pilot’s. Leaning slowly forward in the authentic microgravity conditions of a Moon space flight, he touched Gates on the shoulder. The big man started as he saw that they’d made the switch to the simulated world, but instinctively checked the controls first before turning to face Dallas.

‘Welcome to the unreal world,’ smiled Dallas, although to his touch, it felt real enough. Gates’s shoulder, the pressure suit he was now wearing, the back of his own flight-deck chair, the payload bay window behind his helmet, the whoosh of the RLV’s air-conditioning on his face, and the familiar stench of inefficient waste management in his wrinkling nostrils — all of these were reassuringly substantial.

‘Thanks,’ said Gates, adjusting the microphone in front of his mouth and then his seat belt. ‘Feels like we were never in TB at all. Like we dreamed the whole thing, y’know?’

‘Except that I had the same dream,’ offered Dallas. ‘What’s our position?’

It was Lenina who answered him, her voice sounding perhaps a little inhuman.

‘We’re on automatic pilot,’ she said. ‘Approaching the Descartes Crater along a south-by-southwest course. Our current position is ten degrees latitude by twenty degrees longitude. Altitude one thousand feet. Horizontal velocity, one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Sixty-five miles to target. We’ll be there in half an hour.’

Gates pulled off his glove and touched Lenina’s cheek experimentally with the back of his hand.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What’s the deal?’

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, amused at how her skin felt as smooth and cool as it had when he’d first met her. She was not wearing makeup and there was no trace of the Three Moon phase of P2 that threatened to kill the real Lenina back at the hotel.