Warren Murphy: Target of Opportunity

"I didn't see no knife."

"There's more than one way to disembowel a cat," said Remo, finishing the job by driving a knuckle into the empty cavity of the knife man's stomach and shattering his lower spine.

The knife man made a messy pile when he sat down forever.

Whistling, Remo painted a circle around his body and ran the diagonal slash across it, intestines and all, before driving off.

"Remo Williams," he said in a bright announcer's voice, "you just snuffed half the car-jackers in Furioso, Florida. What are you going to do now?"

In his own natural voice, he replied, "I'm going to Sam Beasley World."

Chapter 3

Flanked by a running roadblock of caterwauling blue-and-gray Massachusetts State Police cars, the Presidential motorcade raced away from the University of Massachusetts at high speed, lights flashing in alternation. Scurrying traffic crowded to the side of the road. Police and Army helicopters buzzed overhead like protective dragonflies.

No one noticed the weaving white Ford Aerostar van as it scooted down the opposite lane to turn up the UMass access road.

If they had, they couldn't have failed to notice the driver. Or the bulky virtual-reality helmet encasing his head like a sensory-deprivation sphere.

Despite the fact that he couldn't see past the helmet's blank eyephone goggles, the driver slid up the curving access road without scraping a fender.

"You're almost there," a voice inside the VR helmet said softly.

"This is so neat," the driver burbled. "It feels exactly like I'm driving a real car in the real world in real time."

"Pay attention to the mission, not the technology, " the soft voice told him. "You are in a totally immersive experience which requires absolute concentration."

"Got it. What was all that commotion back there?"

"You have entered the action phase of the experience."

"Great. No offense, but except for the high-res graphics, it's been a pretty uneventful ride so far."

"Did you notice anything unusual about the motorcade?"

"Yeah, they were hauling ass to beat the band."

"The President has just been shot."

"Damn."

"You and only you can find the assassin hiding in the brick buildings directly ahead of you."

"Good game concept."

"That is the parking-garage entrance on your left. Drive in there."

"Shouldn't I be making my own decisions?"

"You can try the branching nodes later. The clock is ticking. Here is the game scenario. Rogue CIA and Secret Service elements are trying to get to the assassin first. If they succeed, the cover-up will begin and the American people will never know the terrible truth."

"Count on me," said the driver, flooring the accelerator.

It was incredible, from the authentic sound of a racing six-cylinder engine to the acoustics that changed as soon as he slid into the virtual-reality underground parking garage beneath the illusionary University of Massachusetts.

"This is really cool," he blurted. "I actually smell stale car exhaust."

"The Jaunt VR System has a forty-thousand-facsimile olfactory library. We call the process 0lfax.

"Olfactory library. Sensurround sound. Vehicle simulation. Your guys have put together the VR system for the twentyfirst century here. Damn! Everything looks, smells, sounds and feels real. Really real."

"The Jaunt System has achieved seventy-five million polygons per second of resolution. Mere reality is estimated at eighty million polygons."

"Let me tell you," the driver said, parking the car in the nearly empty garage. "You can't hardly notice those missing five million polygons."

"Do not forget your weapon. You'll find it in the glove box."

The driver turned his insectlike head. The glove compartment popped open and revealed a revolver clipped to the panel. He picked it up. It felt real. Probably was.

"This is only a dinky little .38," he said in disappointment.

"Stuffed with Devastator bullets. Perfect for your mission."

"You could have at least included a laser targeting system."

"Make sure you write that on the survey questionnaire when the simulation is over."

"You bet," said the driver, stepping out of the car. He began walking, tentatively at first and with greater confidence as the computer-generated surroundings responded to his presence.

As seen through the eyephone goggles, everything about the game was incredibly real. Oh, there were electronic glitches here and there, but on the whole the fidelity was excellent. Even the close air of the "garage" smelled stuffy. You couldn't beat it for realism.

Except with reality itself.

And who cared about reality when by simply donning a senses-blocking head-mounted display, you could become whoever you wanted, do whatever you wanted and conquer any challenge-if you made the right decisions.

IN HIS THIRTY-ODD YEARS on earth, Bud Coggins had hardly ever made the correct decision. Not in school, not in work and certainly not in his personal life. As a consequence, he had gotten his fill of reality. He was too short, too fat, too balding and too poor to make reality work for him.

Games he could work. Standing behind an arcade video game, Coggins beat the youngest kid at Sonic Hedgehog II six times out of seven. A dozen years of playing every video game known to man had developed in Bud Coggins the lightning reflexes of a fifteen-year-old. The games had come and gone over the years. In the arcades and in home systems. Atari. Intellivision. Nintendo. Sega Genesis. Trio CD-ROM. There was no game he hadn't played, from Pong to Myst. Mortal Kombat to Lovecraft Is Missing. Give him a joystick, trakball or lightgun, and Bud Coggins could hit the target each and every time.

When the first virtual-reality systems came in, Bud got very excited. He soon fell into a deep depression because tending bar for eight-fifty an hour didn't pile up the money fast enough to pay for a ten-thousand-dollar personal VR game system.

But there were still ways. Trade shows. Public demonstrations. Anyplace Bud Coggins could score a free ride, he did. And because he adapted to virtual reality better than mundane actuality, the invitations kept coming in the mail.

Right now the game was called Ruby. And Bud had been selected by computer to be the first person in the history of the universe to play it. That was what the four-color invitational brochure had said. Bud Coggins had only to call a number and make an appointment.

A soft voice on the telephone had told him to come to an office park in South Boston, the site of the testing lab of Jaunt Systems, inventors of the only seventy-five-million-polygon totally immersive virtualreality gaming system on earth.

Bud had felt like an F-22 Stealth fighter pilot when they strapped him into a white Ford Aerostar van that was sitting off the concrete floor on big rubber rollers. That was so the tires would roll freely when he hit the gas, they had explained.

Once he was strapped in, they set the VR helmet on his grinning head and all went black.

When the eyephones came to life, Bud was looking at the same concrete warehouse interior he had entered. It was just as dingy, just as ill lit, and the three VR technicians were just as shadowy. All wore sunglasses, just like real life.

"Nothing's changed," he complained.

"You are not looking at reality, " a soft voice in his VR helmet had informed him. "You are looking at Ruby."

"Ruby?"

"The Mortal Kombat of VR game simulations. It will look, taste, sound and feel absolutely real. And in order to properly evaluate this experimental system, you must drive as if you are driving in Boston traffic."

"Good challenge," said Bud Coggins, who drove in Boston traffic every day. It was said when Parisian taxi drivers congregated to swap stories about the worst drivers in the world, they invariably threw up their hands at the mention of Boston drivers.