When she was safely on level ground, Gray said "There are obviously some inadequacies in this system. The new 4Cs use our morphing technology to actually create three-dimensional objects like stairs in real space."
Laura was no longer listening. She stepped off the curb into the white concrete roadbed and stared at the sights in utter amazement.
Spread out around her was the assembly building, the road leading into the jungle toward the Village, and the open fields surrounding the computer center all lit in brilliant sunshine under beautiful blue skies. Rising above the Village was the mountain, and high atop it were the glass walls of Gray's spectacular mansion. She turned to look at the blue-green sea, which was visible through the cut in the jungle made by the road leading out to the nearby launch pad.
Her perpetually gaping mouth was dry, and she swallowed hard before whispering, "I can even feel the sun." She reached for her shoulder and gazed up at the sky, squinting from the intensity of the light. Looking down, she saw the shadow of herself — her arm raised to her warm shoulder.
Laura turned to Gray. She had to fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. This world — Gray's new world — and the mind that had created it were overwhelming. The revelations were coming too fast.
She felt saturated, inundated with novel thoughts and ideas.
Every new experience taxed her nearly depleted reserves of mental and emotional energy. She'd had enough, and yet she wanted to know all.
"This is the world the computer sees," Gray said quietly, soothingly. "This is where it lives. This world exists because of the computer."
"I think, therefore I am," Laura whispered, and she looked back up at Gray.
There was a silence, a respectful quiet that Laura imagined to have descended upon the open plain around the computer center.
The wind she had felt brush across her bare arms fell still. The sounds of reality had faded into nothingness. No birds. No rustling trees. No distant surf. For a moment, time stood still. There was a total rigidity of all things — a world embedded in Lucite. Focused.
A car sped up to them. Gray held out a hand to move Laura back onto the curb. The winged door rose, and out stepped Dorothy Holliday.
As the car drove off, Dorothy walked slowly by them toward the steps, her small computer in hand and her pen poking at its writing surface.
Laura at first thought Dorothy was talking to herself. But then Laura realized Dorothy was actually singing to the tune of the music that poured through the earphones of the disk player she wore clipped to the waist of her jeans.
"You're not o-old enough — Yes, I am old enough — I'm yo man! — Da-da da-da dah-dah, bah-da bah-da ba-a-wa-a!" She walked right up to the top of the stairs without seeing Laura or Gray — her head bobbing and her face set in a fierce expression. Laura reached out, and her gloved hand went straight through Dorothy — her black sleeve remaining visible inside the girl's ethereal figure. When her elbow locked at full extension, her arm shot fifty feet across the lawn, casting a thin shadow on the grass below. She bent her elbow to pull her hand back, and the elastic limb quickly retracted to ordinary proportions. Laura turned and poked her fingers into Gray's hard chest just for contrast.
He opened his eyes wide in surprise.
While Laura had been watching Dorothy, Gray, she realized, had been focused intently on Laura.
And the sounds of the outdoors had returned. The ocean broke across the reef far beyond the island shore. The white noise and warm caress of the wind mimicked reality right down to the last detail. The wind even tickled the fine blond hairs on Laura's forearms as it blew by.
Laura found it hard to believe that a machine as fantastic as this would exist in her lifetime. That someone like Gray would live to dream it up and make it work. Laura's excitement over the possibilities opened up by the new technology built and built.
"Okay!" she finally exclaimed — grinning broadly. She felt a rush of elation, and laughter bubbled out of her. "Okay! This thing is amazing. Wonderful! I love it!" She waved her arm through the air, watching the graceful dance of her shadow bend at a right angle up the white curb. All was perfectly timed to her movements.
"What 'thing' are you referring to?" Gray asked.
"What?" Laura replied, momentarily thrown by his question — by the serious tone in which it was spoken. "I mean this contraption we're standing in."
"We're not standing in a contraption, Dr. Aldridge."
Her smile faded quickly, and she looked up at him with renewed unease. She couldn't read his perpetually neutral expression. "Then where are we?" she asked uncertainly.
"We're not in some thing, we're in a place. We're in a different world, and that world is called cyberspace."
"Well," she said, forcing the corners of her lips into a smile but shaking her head and shrugging, "I understand the metaphysical point you're making. I mean, I've heard plenty of those 'If a tree falls in cyberspace…' debates back at Harvard. But the fact of the matter is we're really inside those big white cylinders — those workstations."
"Are we?" he challenged. "Really?"
Laura frowned.
She raised her hands and signaled a "timeout." The scenery disappeared instantly and with the usual snapping sounds from the walls all around.
She was surrounded again by the familiar dark screens of the chamber.
She repeated the signal with her hands, and in an instant was back at the top of the stairs beside Gray.
The transition hardly affected her this time. "And just what did that prove?" Gray asked.
"It proved that I'm really in an oversized phone booth inside a concrete bunker, and not standing here," she said with a wave of her arm. Laura realized that didn't make any sense, so she said, "At the top of the computer center stairs, I mean."
"It proved, Dr. Aldridge, that you can move back and forth between the virtual workstation and the top of the computer center stairs by executing a command. The virtual workstation exists in real space. It is the portal — the entrance — to another world. This place here" — Gray's gaze left her to sweep across the open fields—"exists… in virtual space. In cyberspace."
"Inside the computer," Laura corrected. "The world as the computer sees it."
"Exactly, Gray shot back as if Laura had proved his point instead of her own.
"Mr. Gray, Mr. Gray," a loudspeaker blared from the computer center door, and a split second later it echoed across the flat lawn from the assembly building. "Please report to the main conference room."
Laura wondered whether he had been paged in the real world or only in cyberspace. She realized, however, that it didn't really matter all that much. The message to Gray had been received. He tapped his wrist with two fingers, and a clock appeared out of nowhere. It disappeared with another tap of his wrist.
Gray filled his lungs with a deep breath and looked up at the cloudless sky. He then focused his gaze on Laura. "Are you ready to go back?" he asked.
She wanted to say no. She wasn't ready at all. Laura still didn't understand what Gray was trying to say about reality and cyberspace.
There were so many questions.
"Hey," Gray said, a mischievous grin lighting his face. "One more thing I forgot to show you." Gray crouched low. "This takes a little practice," he said as he balanced himself with his hands held out in front, "so you stay here."
He took off running toward the assembly building, picking up more and more speed until he was going faster than the fastest car.
His figure grew so small that by the time he rounded the assembly building he was no more than a speck. A second later he reappeared on the other side and came streaking up so fast that Laura recoiled in alarm. Gray halted on the grass about thirty feet away. He rose from his crouch and crossed the short distance to rejoin her.
Gray and Laura both laughed, Gray slightly out of breath.
"Don't try that at home," he said as another car approached the computer center. Gray stood in the middle of the roa
d, and the front bumper of the car stopped just short of his legs. Hoblenz got out — reaching for his crotch to adjust himself before heading down the steps to the entrance. Hoblenz the ghost.
His car, however, looked solid. Its door whooshed and closed normally, but the vehicle sat there unmoving.
"We'd better go," Gray said, stepping onto the curb beside Laura.
The Model Three smoothly accelerated past them, heading off down the road toward the assembly building.
"Wait," Laura said. "You told me you made ghosts or whatever they're called out of animate objects because they moved around. What about the cars?"
"They're robots. Robots are real in this world."
"But they move around too, just like people."
Gray's gaze followed the departing car. "The difference is that they know we're here." He looked around at the sights — the panoramic view of his domain. "This is their world. The computer maintains this model, but it's open. The robots tap into it constantly just like we're doing with the workstations. This model does for them the same thing it does for you and me. It gives them a sense of presence. The sensory experience of physical embodiment in the world — in this world. This is where they live," Gray said, turning to face her, "in their minds."
His hand rose to make the "cut" sign across his throat. The world went dark to the snapping sounds from the black screens that rose from the floor all around.
17
Laura frowned. "I use a computer every day at work."
Laura hesitated. "Not really," she typed, then backspaced to erase her reply. "I don't have a clue, really," she entered.
"So I've learned. You're an optical computer, right? You don't use electricity, you use light." She hit Enter with a triumphant jab of her index finger.
Laura looked around the office involuntarily. She was all alone.
She should know what the word analog means, she really should. Her fingers hesitated. "No," she typed.
"Yes. That sounds like a computer to me."
"Yes. Programming computers is a complicated job."
"But you can figure those things out, too, right?"
Laura stared at the line. It was a short answer, not the usual paragraph in which the computer and Gray both tended to lecture.
"So what exactly does an analog computer do differently?"
Laura remembered the Business Week article she'd read in the Harvard library. It had poked fun at Gray's math-deficient program.
"When you say you're bad at math, you mean you can't handle something really difficult like calculus."
"Okay," Laura typed. "What is" — she randomly hit numbers on the numeric keypad—"8,649 times 5,469,4517?"
<47,301,867,849.>
Laura hesitated for a second, then typed, "Really?"
< I have no earthly idea. I would guess from the number of digits that it was fifty billionish, give or take. If you want the exact answer, I can get it very easily. I just need to ask any one of a few hundred very accomplished but very dull digital supercomputers that I manage on behalf of the Gray Corporation. Those computers are "my people," so to speak, but I've got to say they're a pretty humorless lot. Mindless, you might say.>
The computer's last comment caught Laura's eye. Was it just an expression? The computer was good at mimicking normal conversation — using figures of speech. "Well," Laura typed, "so far all you've said is that you're 'math challenged.' Plus Mr. Gray said you're somewhat error-prone. What is it that being analog gives you?"
Laura realized just how quickly she'd forgotten the miracle of the machine in the deep underground pool. She had grown used to the computer's brilliance.
It had become an accepted part of Laura's new world.
"No," she admitted honestly.
"Maybe it's easy for you, but I spill coffee all the time."
"But what does it mean that you say we're 'analog'?"
"And that works?"
Laura nodded as she read. She understood the computer completely. It was someone to whom she could relate.
"Well," Laura typed, "'To err is human…' right?" and hit Enter.
Laura had no sense of how much time had passed in the windowless cave of her office. Every time she looked at her watch, it seemed, another hour had ticked off. She was drained even though it was still morning.
She forced herself to type on. "You said earlier that you make a good head of the information systems department because you can rapidly communicate with the digital machines. You can operate at their speed, but humans can't. That raises the question of how you perceive time passing?"
Society of the Mind Page 19