Near the far end of a nondescript white room, a group of four men in smocks were clustered around a chair that looked like it had been filched from a dentist’s office and then tricked out for a gamers’ convention. A hodgepodge of electronics was organized into several banks of readouts and keypads. He couldn’t begin to guess their function. An overlarge helmet in a cradle mounted to the back of the chair was connected to the electronic equipment by a thick umbilical cord.
“I thought you were going to take me to some kind of experimental submersible,” he said.
“And I have, after a fashion. This is only a temporary installation, but it will serve the purpose for today.”
The others said nothing. Two of them stood next to the equipment, in a proprietary way. One was a six-foot, large-framed man with a square face, severe eyebrows, and slicked-back white hair; the other was a few inches shorter, balding, with a fringe of hair that ringed his head like a monk’s tonsure shot with grey. No young hotshots here. Two men standing farther back were middle-aged and unremarkable. Hunter immediately dismissed them as assistants. It was the two in front he should watch. Their body language said they were reluctant to let him touch the product of their labors.
He turned to face the chair, noticing a wraparound visor on the helmet.
“Virtual reality,” he said. “Some kind of simulator? That’s what all this secrecy is for?”
“That’s a good enough description for now.”
The white-haired man looked smug. The bald one was amused, but in a more childlike way—the keeper of a secret he longed to reveal.
“So, show me.”
They helped him into the chair, and placed the helmet on his head. Hands fussed over him as the room disappeared behind padding and Perspex.
“Are you ready, Mr. Hunter?” Kierkegaard’s voice was now muffled and distant.
Was he? Part of him remembered the cold sweat that broke out whenever he rode in small elevators ever since the accident.
The helmet was too heavy for him to nod easily. Instead he cleared his throat and said, “Yes.” Then he waited for the visor to light up with a liquid crystal display. Instead a powerful electronic hum began in a low register and quickly swept up the frequencies until it became inaudible. He felt pinpricks along his scalp from front to back.
And the world swam away . . . .
Vertigo.
What the hell? What happened? Where is this?
The room is gone. The chair is gone.
Floating . . . floating in empty space.
The voices have receded into a vague wash of sound.
Colors gone, too. Only shades of grey. Like fog. Fog at dusk.
Something darker in front, like lines extending forward.
Manipulator arms. A submersible with arms outstretched.
OK. A familiar concept to hang sanity on. Except for one big difference—the view isn’t like being in the craft, it's like being the craft itself.
No claustrophobia, at least.
It’s not fog. Liquid. Some kind of specks or bubbles rising and falling within it, jostling around like ping-pong balls in a Bingo machine.
Time to move—get the feel of things.
Left pedal to pivot left. Right hand for forward thrust.
Oops. Turned too far. Correct with the pedal—just a touch. A little more thrust. Definite sensation of movement, even without visual cues. Sluggish at first, though. Extra resistance, like . . . thick water?
A zone of darkness ahead now—not wide, but tall, reaching beyond view above and below. Something cylindrical, maybe. Better ease back.
A shot of reverse thrust.
Nope. Spun the nose to the left. Try again, with a little more finesse, damn it.
Holy mother, is that big! Like a giant black tower as high as the eye can see. No features to give perspective—could be ten meters away, could be fifty. Black matte finish. Are those craters? Or pockmarks? Have to move closer to know.
Shit! Sudden stop produced a disturbance in the liquid. Must’ve hit the sucker.
What was that? A voice?
Very, very slow, and deep. Pissed off.
Bumped their toy.
All right, then, let’s see what this rig can do.
Hard right pedal. Nose down. Full forward thrust. Down the wall diagonally. See what’s at the bottom, if there is one.
Like the plunge of a roller coaster—stomach left behind.
Dropping down on something that spreads as far as the eye can see. But why is everything so damn blurry? Poor interface? Or just lazy programming?
Looks like a cityscape seen from above, but all of the buildings are the same height, with deep crevasses crisscrossing at right angles like New York intersections.
Into the canyons of the Death Star. Rush of adrenaline. Pulling up hard. Taste of breakfast in the throat.
Perfectly uniform walls on both sides—no protrusions. Damn good thing. Barely enough clearance as it is.
A corner coming up. The nose snaps around like a car on a track in a carnival ride. Nearly fishtailed into the wall, too. Need to be able to bank a little, like an airplane—work with the resistance of the fluid. This bitch could use some dive planes.
Better on the next turn. Right into the middle of the channel. Just need the nose up and a little rudder at the same time. Try a few more corners—got to put on a good show, right?
A sharp left, a long straight stretch, then a hard right. Swoop down toward the deck, then pull up the nose into a steep climb . . . a little more . . . over onto its back. Now crank it over into a barrel roll. Wow, yeah—effortless. Sweet response, once you get the hang of it. Are they watching all this?
A flash of red.
What was that for?
Another one. Whole field of vision flashing red every few seconds.
Did I lose the game?
No, a signal. But for what?
Danger? In a simulator?
Something’s happening.
Vertigo.
Light stabbed into his eyes and he felt like retching. Through tears he caught a glimpse of the white-haired man frantically snatching the helmet out of range, while Kierkegaard hastily slid a wastebasket to the side of the chair.
“The nausea passes quickly. Just relax and concentrate on your breathing.”
Hunter nodded, then sat back and drew a sleeve across his watery eyes.
“Well? Did you like our little game?”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing.” Hunter’s voice felt like it hadn’t been used for a while. He cleared his throat. “But that wasn’t a game. That was real, not a simulation. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What made you come to that conclusion?”
“The craft responds authentically for a vehicle in a fluid medium—a thick fluid, too. That would be a real challenge to simulate. So if it's a game, why go to that trouble, and yet put up with such shitty visuals?”
White-hair bridled at that. “If you had any idea . . . .”
Kierkegaard stopped him with a look. “Go on, Mr. Hunter.”
“Because it’s not a simulation. It’s a real environment somewhere. Although why you’d leave out the instrumentation, the colors, the sounds . . . I can’t guess.” He caught another flash of annoyance on White hair’s face. “How long was I at it anyway?”
“Five minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“Five minutes? It felt like half-an-hour, at least.”
“Yes, we’ve noticed that.”
Hunter waited for more of an explanation, but none came. Instead the other man looked at his watch. “That’s enough for now.”
Back in the car, Hunter protested, “At least tell me if I made the grade.”
“I think it’s safe to say that the head of the project will hire you. Pending one final security check.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m the head of the proj
ect.”
Hunter was only mildly surprised. He’d already seen the way the others had deferred to this man.
“One last question. Why were the other two guys pissed at me?”
“Oh . . . well, they’ve already tried out the equipment themselves.”
“And . . . ?”
“You made them look like children riding the bumper cars.”
# # #
“When are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Hunter asked Kierkegaard over the hiss of the airplane’s ventilation system. The older man gave an indulgent smile and leaned forward, though there was no one who could possibly listen in.
“What do you know about nanotechnology?”
“Small. Very small.”
“Indeed. And how did you like your submersible ride?”
“Is that why the graphics were limited? A super-small computer?”
“Not exactly. Perhaps I should ask if you enjoyed life in a test-tube?”
Hunter was speechless.
“An amoeba’s-eye view, if they had eyes. That submersible you took for a joyride is about the size of a virus. The ‘canyon’ you explored is an especially-etched silicon wafer—the kind used for computer chips. The tower you saw is a microfiber filament suspended in the fluid.”
“You’re not serious.”
“That’s what the appropriations committee said when I told them how much it would cost to develop.”
Hunter’s mind reeled. Had he really seen the world at the molecular level . . . traveled through a microcosm like a renegade ion? The sheer audacity of it was numbing. Yet all he could ask was, “Why? What possible use could there be for something that size in the ocean?”
“You’re thinking in the wrong terms. The universe is full of fluid environments. Including what we think of as the inner ocean.”
The light dawned. “You mean inside the human body? In the bloodstream?” A memory clicked. “Don’t tell me. You tour around the arteries fixing things. Except the heart. It’s ‘game over’ if you go through the heart.”
“Fantastic Voyage was a memorable movie and the initial inspiration for our project. That movie left a powerful mark on a pair of nano-engineers named Steinberg and Ellis when they were children; and when they met by accident fifteen years ago, it turned into the driving force of their careers—a compulsion to use their skills to create an audacious new medical technology. How much do you remember about the movie?”
Hunter gave a shrug and his grin was a little sheepish. “I loved it—great concept, great special effects. A lot of fun. The idea of shrinking a whole submarine with people in it was pure fantasy, I guess. Although when somebody wrote the novelization, he came up with an explanation, didn’t he?”
“Isaac Asimov. Yes. A kind of hyperspace that allowed the shrinking of matter without the excess mass presenting a problem. That’s still fantasy. But the story is correct in the fact that there are incredibly complex mechanisms that do patrol the labyrinth of the bloodstream, produced by millions of years of evolution. Incredibly small, but powerful.
“Some scientists have tried chemical means to adapt those organic systems and bring them under human control. Steinberg and Ellis turned to the technology they knew best: mechanical engineering at the nano-scale. Six years ago, I was recruited to head a team that would take their work to a whole new level of sophisticated machinery. Difficult to achieve, but incredibly robust.
“You mentioned the movie characters’ fear of going through the heart, but nothing the human heart could do would damage our submersible. It’s made of sterner stuff. Buckyballs and buckytubes—the strongest material known to man.”
“Bucky___? Now you’re pulling my leg.”
“Buckminster fullerenes, if you prefer. Named after R. Buckminster Fuller.”
“The architect?”
“A tremendously influential thinker. The shape of the molecule is similar to those geodesic domes Fuller was so fond of. It’s an extremely rare form of carbon, Carbon 60, and with the right amount of heat—something above 3000 degrees Celsius—we can make it form hollow tubes: nanotubes, because their preferred size is just over one nanometer in diameter. A billionth of a meter. The tubes are like rolled up chicken wire, all hexagons and pentagons, and incredibly strong: a hundred times the strength of steel at about a sixth of the weight!” He gave a self-satisfied smile. “The merely
mortal human heart could hammer away its sixty-beats-per-minute for a lifetime and not put a dent in our machine.”
“That sounds like ‘famous last words’ to me,” Hunter mused.
“Fair enough. In fact, the submersible’s sensor array isn’t nearly so robust and can be damaged. Then the craft would be blinded and out of contact. Still, if the Titanic had hit the iceberg and only lost its radio mast, I daresay no-one would have complained all that much.”
Kierkegaard stood up to stretch, then sauntered across the cabin to gaze out the window at the vastness of the ocean sparkling far below.
“We think ourselves so superior, sneering at the simple ignorance of Columbus and Magellan, who couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world. Yet even we supermen of the twenty-first century know little about what’s out there, under the oceans.” He turned to face Hunter. “Or even,” he tapped his chest, “in here.”
“Is that what you hired me for? To explore the bloodstream?”
Kierkegaard’s face clouded “When I first selected you, that’s exactly what it would have been. Now . . . something has happened. A national emergency, in fact. Our mission has suddenly become a matter of life and death.” He stared into space, a mixture of anger, disbelief, and regret playing over his face. “Even so, there will be no danger to you. Nothing so devastating as your nearly fatal experience of six months ago, I can assure you.”
Hunter’s head snapped up, then bowed in resignation. “Of course, you’d know about that. So why did you hire me?”
“Because I didn’t care about it. It’s not relevant. You’ll be in a virtual reality environment that you can leave at any time. However, I don’t get my way on everything. My superiors would only let me bring you in on the condition that you talk to a psychologist regularly.”
Hunter felt heat rise to his cheeks. “Did you just say I’ll have to see a shrink?”
“They insisted.”
“Deal’s off.” He sprang to his feet. “You can turn this bird around or just drop me off at the nearest airport.”
“Mr. Hunter, really . . . .”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Mr. Kierkegaard. I said that the deal’s off! Find another sucker and play around in his head—nobody’s doing that to me again.”
Kierkegaard was stunned. There was a sheen of sweat on Hunter’s face and his breathing was rapid. He stalked to the far side of the cabin and stood staring out a window.
“I thought I knew what you’d been through,” Kierkegaard said quietly. “Clearly I wasn’t fully informed.”
“Apparently not. I’ve had my fill of bastards who try to turn my head inside out, claiming they’re trying to cure me. They were just trying to prove I was nuts
before I was hired, so the company could cut me loose without a cent. It was only luck that I got a sympathetic judge.”
“I promise you, this will be nothing more than a
formality.”
“It’ll be nothing at all, because it isn’t going to
happen.”
The older man sat down in dismay.
“Mr. Hunter . . . I can’t tell you everything about our project yet. But I truly think we’ll fail without you. If we do, a life will be lost. Perhaps many more.” He looked up to catch Hunter’s eyes. “Obviously I wasn’t aware of how you’ve been treated, but I do know that Dr.
Truman Bridges is no sadist and no charlatan. He’s a lifelong friend of mine, already handpicked for our team. Please, just meet with him—I don’t care if either of you
says a damned word, but my hands are tied on this and we must have your help.”
There was a long silence.
“How often?” The words barely pierced the white noise of the cabin air system.
“My orders are for two sessions a week. So here’s where you insist on no more than every two weeks, and I reluctantly compromise at once a week.” He tried a tentative smile. Hunter didn’t return it, but at least his color was returning to normal.
“To save a life, you said?”
“A very special life, in my opinion.”
“If this shrink goes Freud on me, I swear I’ll deck him.”
“I’ll be sure to warn him.”
It had been an absurd standoff, Hunter had to admit. Soon he’d be using his mind to travel through the bloodstream of a living human being, yet he was more afraid of a quack with a clipboard and a pocketful of twenty-dollar words.
But then, as Kierkegaard had said, with a virtual
reality remote link there couldn’t be any personal
danger.
No danger at all.
3
Pulsing bass notes beat against shadows in a darkened room: martial music from the movie Gladiator. A tall figure flexed thickly-muscled arms sheened with sweat in a well-practiced rhythm, the heavy weights at their ends like mallet heads waiting to strike.
A flashing light called attention to the telephone. The man waved an arm over a sensor to mute the
music. His military-green T-shirt was wrinkle-free and the matching shorts were neatly pressed. Beneath them was a body with lightly tanned skin and limbs that moved with economy, never more than necessary.
He waited deliberately until the third ring was
complete, as indicated by the lighting of a green LED on the telephone’s cradle, then deftly lifted the handset. He did not say “Hello”—he wasn’t in the habit of giving anything away until he’d heard the voice on the other end of the line.
This voice was male, medium pitch. After a slight hesitation it said, “Noble patricians, patrons of my right, defend the justice of my cause with arms.” It was the opening of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, but in all likelihood the caller was unaware of that. It was something he had been given to say.
The Primus Labyrinth Page 2