Watch out! The wall of the artery suddenly shoots up like the side of a mountain. The layout of tubes is like a demonic roller coaster. Dips, twists, spirals. . . no pattern. How are you supposed to spot anything when steering takes all the concentration you’ve got?
Pilot fatigue is a big factor on this second run. Maybe something else, too. Go ahead and say it. Alcohol withdrawal?
Don’t need any extra handicaps.
Really tight bend here. Huge amount of space compared to tiny Primus, but the bombs—if they’re here—must be tucked up along a wall, maybe partially embedded in it. Got to stay close. Can’t let the current fling the ship into the middle of the flow.
Is that. . . ?
No. Only another blob of plaque along the artery’s inner sleeve. They’re all over the place, every size. The really big ones trick the eye. . . make it see a bomb dug into the tissue. It’s damned hard to tell the difference.
The difference between failure and success.
Got to be coming to the end of the line again soon. If there’s nothing to see when the branching-off starts, what next? Take one of the offshoots? A successful stoppage of blood flow after that point would require bombs placed in dozens of smaller arteries. How many could they possibly have injected into her?
Which way to go?
Pilot’s discretion, they said. Means they don’t have a clue either.
A change of light up ahead. Must be the first junction. Lots of others soon after that. Then on to the hilus of the kidney—the notch into which the blood vessels, excretory ducts and nerves connect like an electrical plug into a socket. That’s what Tamiko’s briefing said. Hard to picture from here on the inside. Probably time to slow down—use some reverse thrust. Don’t want to be drawn into a side tunnel before getting a chance to look around.
Here it is. The main artery divides into three, then dozens of much smaller tunnels spring off in every direction. The only feasible route from this position is up to the right. There’s the first offshoot, right at the mouth. . . three more just becoming visible ahead, before the next bend.
And is that. . . ?
Yes! Something pale and milky, just beyond the nearest tributary.
Full reverse on the main engine. Kick the port thrusters to full. Ship doesn’t like that much. Heavy vibration. Hope the force of the current isn’t as strong closer to the wall. Bound to be suction from the tributary, though. Can’t get too close.
Target coming up very fast. More vibration. Shaking. Shuddering. Have to bring in the starboard thrusters—the current’s trying to pull the ship into that growing hole in the wall nearby. Pounding’s getting tough to take. Starting to cross the mouth of the opening.
Maelstrom!
Damn it! Right into the strongest convergence of cross-currents!
Starting to spin. . . now yaw. Bucketing. Wrenching. No way to control it. Engine thrust just adds to it. Throttle adjustment too slow to do any good.
Cut the power. . . ride it out.
That’s wishful thinking. Riding a vortex, pounded against rocks. Like the turbulence going through the heart.
Not a good memory. If conflicting motions keep building, how long before. . . ?
Feedback. Haptic feedback.
Shit! Here it comes.
The vibration building to a crescendo—earthquake to battering ram to jackhammer. Fingers useless. Vision blurring. Got to bail out.
The job’s not done, but no choice. Hit the kill switch. Wait for the nausea. The escape.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
It’s not coming. The change is not coming.
No nausea. No escape!
The switch isn’t working.
Try again. Punch it. Stab it. Pound it.
Wait. Something’s changed. What’s different?
Still in the bloodstream. . . spinning, tumbling, but. . . bearable. Tolerable. Has the feedback subsided?
What else? What else is different?
No readouts. No heads up display. How can that be?
Has the kill switch cut only part of the feed?
No. It’s not only the readouts. The feel is different. The sound is different. The whole damn view is different. What’s missing?
All the telltale clues. . . the hard-to-define traces that speak of computer imaging, synthesized sounds, artificial tactility. . . the constant reminder of processed reality.
Gone.
Gone, as if. . .
Virtual reality is no more. Only true reality remains.
The computer has fled and left the man behind.
God, no! No escape. No escape.
Get me out of here! Get me out of here!!
GET ME OUT. . . .
Nausea.
Blackness.
22
Gage stood over him. Tamiko cooled his face with a damp cloth.
Hunter cleared his throat again. It took an effort to speak.
Kierkegaard walked quickly into the room. “What happened?”
“Hunter says he had haptic feedback again. And something else,” Tamiko answered, taking a step back and holding the cloth behind her, as if reluctant for her boss to see her in the role of nursemaid.
“Something else?” He looked down at the pilot sprawled in the VR chair.
Hunter ran a hand slowly over his face and shivered. Instead of answering, he looked up at Gage.
“How did you set the kill switch to work? What does it actually cut out?
“It does what you asked me to make it do,” the scientist replied, annoyed. “It cuts the circuit that feeds all of the VR gear. . . the helmet, the suit. . . .”
“It doesn’t cut off the actual input from Primus?”
“No. We don’t want to lose contact with the sub. We’re still getting all the data right now.” He waved a hand toward the instruments. “It only terminates the feed from the computer processor to the virtual reality gear that you wear, so you stop getting video and audio. The suit no longer reacts.”
“It doesn’t just adjust the levels. . . eliminate the overload that’s causing the feedback?”
Gage’s frown grew even deeper. “According to our instruments there is no overload. We never saw any sign of it. No, it cuts the feed completely. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It is.” The younger man dropped his head and rocked it from side to side.
“Are you saying that’s not what happened?” Kierkegaard pressed.
“I. . . . Yes, I guess. It couldn’t have cut out completely. I was still getting something. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Bridges had come into the room and was listening with concern. The head of the project turned to the doctor.
“Is it possible that a haptic feedback loop could produce some kind of resonance in Hunter’s brain that would carry on even after the source was cut off?”
The psychologist looked from Hunter to Kierkegaard and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve never been involved with a virtual reality system as sophisticated as this. I don’t think anyone has. If we spend a lot of time experiencing certain kinds of strong motion—amusement park rides are a good example—we sometimes feel like the world is still moving even after the ride has stopped. Sailors have trouble walking on solid ground after a time at sea. I suppose something as violent as Hunter describes could get the central nervous system so revved up that it might take a while to wind down. But. . . ” He looked into the pilot’s eyes and spoke more softly. “Is that what happened?”
Suddenly, Hunter was reluctant to explain any further.
He dropped his eyes and said simply, “Yeah. It was something like that.” Then he looked back at Gage. “When I hit the kill switch, does it interfere with anything you’re doing at all? Cause any problems?”
“No. As I said, our instruments still get all of the same input. If we didn’t look at the VR indicator light, we wouldn’t
know or care.”
“Why do you ask?” It was Kierkegaard.
“If the kill switch could be modified so that I could cut the feed and turn it back on again, manually. . . well maybe these situations could be prevented. If I felt things beginning to get out of hand, I could just kill the VR for a few seconds or so, then jack back in and carry on.” He thought the justification sounded reasonable. Did it matter that it wasn’t his real reason?
Kierkegaard looked at Gage, who nodded resignedly.
“Why not? What else would I do with my time? It can wait until after lunch, though, can’t it? They have corned beef in the commissary.”
The pained look on his face broke the tension in the room as they all laughed.
Hunter caught up with Gage down the hall.
“ Kenn. . . er, Dr. Gage, can I ask you something else about the VR gear?”
“You mean something else needs fixing?” The voice was close to a growl.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What then?” He made no effort to slow down or look in Hunter’s direction.
“The nausea. I feel a little sick each time the VR engages or disengages. What causes that? It can’t only be from the head mounted display or the sounds. People have been using HMD’s to play VR games and simulations for decades. I never felt nauseated before.”
“Yes, we all felt a little of that with this system. It’s the electrodes.”
“Electrodes? I didn’t know there were any.”
“Sure. Three of them, one at each temple and one near the back of the neck, at the top of the brain stem. That’s why the helmet has to fit so tightly. They provide a small electric current, designed to make the brain more receptive to the VR. . . convince it to accept the processed data as real sensory input.”
“To boost the feeling of reality,” Hunter prompted.
“That’s what I said. So. . . ” He stopped at the entranceway of the commissary, clearly trying to discourage the pilot from following him there. “Your brain experiences a sudden shift of environment that it’s never experienced before, and so it reacts with disorientation. It feels like you’ve lost your balance.”
“Dizziness. Nausea.”
“Yes. Now don’t tell me you want me to change that, too. Because. . . ”
“No, I know. You can’t. That’s fine.” Hunter decided to be conciliatory. “In fact, I think it’ll be useful, just the way it is. I just wanted to understand it better. Thanks. Thanks for all your help.” That may have been laying it on a bit thick. Gage gave him a skeptical look, then turned and walked toward his too-long-delayed meal. Hunter fervently hoped the commissary hadn’t run out of corned beef.
This nausea wasn’t going to let up anytime soon.
Jacked right into the thick of it. Primus still in the maelstrom, spinning, twisting. . . certain motion sickness. But no haptic feedback. At least, not yet. Got to get moving before it begins.
Escaping this trap will require lots of finesse. Time it exactly right. . . there! No! Too late. Have to anticipate the optimal attitude of the ship before it happens. Guesswork, pure guesswork.
There! Main engine and thrusters to full. . . .
No, damn it! That accentuated the spin. Try again. Throttle back. . . wait for it.
Wait for it. . . .
Full throttle! Full everything. Directly in line with the swirling current.
Primus snapping forward, accelerating instantly with the combination of forces, surging ahead into a tight circle around the vortex. Faster. Faster. No more thrust left to give, but the speed is still building. Like an Olympic hammer throw, gaining more and more velocity, more and more centripetal force, trying to escape the tether that holds it. Still faster, the circle growing larger, the invisible leash stretching, straining until. . . .
Freedom! The grip releases. The ship breaks loose, flung outward in a straight line. Upstream, too, with enough force to defeat the blood vessel’s current—for a moment. Just long enough to be able to steer back toward the artery wall.
A second chance to approach to the bomb, even more carefully.
The current regains control. The ship swings slowly around, then gains speed, hurtling downstream toward the bomb.
Collision speed. Ramming speed.
Fear. Images of a ruptured hull, flood of fluid, explosion of lost air. Death by drowning.
Not possible. Not. . . .
IMPACT!
Thrown hard against the restraints. The nose of the ship buried within the shell, but strong fingers of current try to pluck it free. Extend the probe arm. . . trigger ignition. . . .
Fireball. A glorious swell of triumph as cascading billows of flame roil upward, and consume the bomb completely. Success. Unexpected, and sweet.
A rest would be great, but there’s no time.
If what he learned about diving in rivers applies here, there ought to be an area right up against the wall of the artery nearly free of current. Have to get the ship there before it’s swept too far. Nose pointed upstream, full forward power from the main engine, thrusters struggling to push sideways against the punishing current.
It works! The force lets up suddenly, only apparent meters from the wall, and the engine thrust begins to take effect. Slowly, Primus starts to regain lost ground, returning to where he destroyed the bomb. If the deadly device has companions, they’ll probably be spaced around the circumference of the artery, at about the same proximity from branching tunnels. The only hope to find them is to sidle painstakingly along the wall, like a crab in search of prey.
Locate a bomb. Travel upstream. Turn and ram. Search again, and repeat the ordeal until it can be certain that none are left.
It will take a very long time. It will be exhausting. But there’s no better incentive than success.
After the third bomb, Tamiko re-activated his text display and sent an urgent message: “You must be at your limit. We should stop.”
“No. Not yet,” he replied in a rasping voice.
She made an appeal to Kierkegaard, who told her not to interfere.
After the fourth bomb, she waited until Primus was in the stable zone near the artery wall again, then pulled the plug without consulting anyone. She rushed to his side as he went limp in the chair. He had been in VR for six hours straight. Ship’s time, it would have felt like days.
He needed help to clamber to his feet and get to the commissary to force down some food. Tamiko supported him with a shoulder, musing about whether it was a clever ploy to get an arm around her, but when she helped him to his quarters afterward, he collapsed onto the bed and was asleep before he could even think about getting undressed.
Tamiko hesitated, then turned out the light with a sigh.
23
Sometime before dawn he awoke and remembered that he hadn’t tried his plan with the kill switch. Had he been afraid to? It was terrifying the first time, when he thought he might never escape to his own world, the world of sanity.
Was that what he was afraid for, his sanity? Afraid his mind could no longer process two distinct realities, and might unravel? He shivered at the prospect, and the black night gave him no comfort.
Eventually he fell asleep once more, but his last conscious thought was a memory of a motivational speaker he’d once seen, who insisted that we choose our own reality. It had seemed so trite at the time.
# # #
The circle of faces around Hunter looked uniformly blank.
Kierkegaard stirred first, and asked, “What do you mean, you don’t have to go back in?”
“I have to move the ship, sure, but I mean I don’t have to search that kidney any more. Because the job’s done.” Hunter was still exhausted and their lack of comprehension was irritating. “All of the bombs there have been destroyed. There were only four.” Surely that was clear enough.
Gage scoffed. “How could you possibly be sure of that? Did you search every square micrometer? You didn’
t. I know, because I was monitoring.”
“I know it. I just. . . know.” Suddenly the meaning of Gage’s remark struck home. How did he know? It had been such an utter certainty in his mind that he hadn’t even questioned it. But where was the proof? Could he remember a key piece of evidence that had so completely convinced him? He could not.
“Why are you so sure, Mr. Hunter?” Kierkegaard asked gently.
The pilot felt his face grow red. “I can’t say exactly. I only remember that as I approached the fourth bomb I kept thinking that it was the last one—the last one there. Once it was destroyed I knew the mission was completed and steered the ship to a stable spot to park it there. I just had time to match the engine thrust to the current when you pulled me back out.” The others were looking at Tamiko in a strange way, and she wore an expression of discomfort.
“He’s right,” she affirmed. “I checked at the time, and again this morning. The ship is safely parked in a small backwater or whatever. A stable zone, at any rate. As if he’d planned to leave it there for a while.”
“I still don’t see how you can be so sure,” Tyson said. “We have no way of knowing how many bombs were planted there. The scanner still isn’t that precise. It can detect the presence of one bomb or many in a given area, but not distinguish the exact number.”
“I know that, Skylar.” They were right. He couldn’t refute their arguments. Yet the certainty in his gut was still there. “Maybe it was a whole series of indicators that I picked up without consciously realizing it. But it convinced me then, and I’m still convinced.” He shrugged slightly and turned in time to see a look pass between Kierkegaard and Bridges. It was clearly a look of significance, but he couldn’t read its meaning. “I’ll go back in and search again if that’s what you want me to do, sir.”
“Well of course you’ll have to search again . . . ” Gage began.
“No. No, I don’t think so.” Kierkegaard surprised them, holding up a hand to forestall a rush of protests. “There will always come a point when we will have to make the assumption that we have finished clearing an area of bombs. We simply don’t have the time for Primus to search every square micron of every site. We haven’t dealt with that fact until now, but it can’t be avoided any longer. At some juncture we’ll have to. . . take it on faith that the immediate task has been completed, and move on. We’ve reached that point now.”
The Primus Labyrinth Page 15