Analog SFF, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I take it that didn't work, either."

  Lansky nodded. “Their problem was that ultrasound pulses only gave crude hallucinations."

  "It's like Goldilocks and the three bears,” Jerry said.

  Both Arthur and Lansky turned to him. “What?” Lansky said.

  "You know, the old children's story? The first bowl of porridge was too hot, but the second was too cold. The TMS thing you described is too big, and the ultrasound is too small. So what'd you do, go with a combination?"

  Lansky's jaw dropped. “How did you—that's exactly what we did. We built a VR inducer that starts with TMS and then fires ultrasound pulses."

  "So,” Arthur said, “in essence, the TMS makes the brain cells more pliable to receive the hallucinations, and then the ultrasound pulses deliver the hallucinations?"

  "Exactly. That's exactly it."

  Jerry whistled. “So we go from the Star Trek holodeck to The Matrix."

  "I suppose you could say that,” Lansky said, “but I'd rather you didn't."

  Jerry shrugged. “You don't have much choice about that, I'm afraid. People are going to describe this thing in terms that they know."

  "There's two things that are still bothering me, Dr. Lansky,” Arthur said. “First of all, what's Dr. Bingham doing?"

  Lansky sighed. “Trevor's had an epiphany. At first, he was excited to be working on IMVR, but then he became convinced that the technology would be used as a weapon. A common enough fear in our work. I dismissed his fears by pointing out that it was impossible to build a small enough inducer to carry around like a gun.” He paused. “I guess I was wrong. Now it looks like he's trying to stop the project from moving forward."

  "By putting the rest of you in comas?” Jerry asked.

  "Trevor fancies himself a humanitarian. He probably programmed the inducer to create a peaceful world for John to live in. But if he killed Rod..."

  "From what we can gather,” Jerry said, “that might not have been his first choice. After all, we found the inducer lying on the ground. Looks like there might have been a struggle, forcing Bingham's hand."

  Lansky shook his head. “I can't see that."

  "Moving on,” Arthur said, “we've got motive now, fine. But I've got a second question, and this one is technical. Shouldn't the hallucinations stop when the device is turned off? Why are the three victims still in comas?"

  "That's what I've been trying to figure out ever since yesterday,” Lansky said. “The hallucinations should stop once the inducer is turned off or is no longer pointing at them. Trevor must have figured out a way to create a feedback loop in the victims’ brains."

  "Can you help them?"

  "Possibly. The feedback loop is not something we ever considered. I might be able to figure out how Trevor rigged the inducer. If I can, I might be able to break them out."

  "Whether or not you can free them,” Jerry said, “we know he's still committed one real murder, the old-fashioned way. Which means we still need to find and apprehend him."

  "He wasn't at home?” Lansky asked.

  "Would you be?"

  "No, I suppose not."

  Jerry sighed. “Dr. Lansky, we could really use more of your help. Is there anywhere else Dr. Bingham might go? Does he have a girlfriend or family?"

  "I—” Lansky looked thoughtful. “You know, I really don't know. He's never been much to talk about his personal life."

  "Great. Any other labs where he might be working?"

  "I suppose you could check his personnel file."

  "We already have,” Jerry said, obviously nettled. “That's how we found his apartment. But he wasn't there, and he hasn't been spotted by stakeout.” He sighed. “At least he doesn't have the inducer."

  "Uh—” Lansky shook his head. “I wouldn't be so sure of that, Detective. Trevor's methodical. I can't imagine he would have left this one behind if he didn't have another one."

  Jerry said, “If so, then we've got a problem. If we approach him, he could give us hallucinations."

  "Exactly."

  "So how do we block this thing?"

  "Well, you'd need to protect the brain. Encase it in something akin to a Faraday cage."

  "What's a Faraday cage?” Jerry asked.

  "It's a hollow conductor that blocks electromagnetic radiation. Electric fields that hit the conductor cause the electrons on it to move around so that the field is nullified inside."

  Arthur stared at him. “You're saying that the best way to protect our minds would be to cover our brains in metal."

  "Well, not directly,” Lansky said. “It's not like you'd have to have surgery. You just need to wrap the top of your head with a malleable metal."

  Arthur blinked as an image came to his mind. He began to chuckle, but the chuckle soon grew into a loud guffaw.

  "What is it?” Jerry asked. “What's so funny?"

  Arthur wiped the tears from his eyes. “The best way to protect oneself,” he answered, “is to wear a tinfoil hat."

  There was silence for a moment, and then Jerry started to laugh as well.

  Finally the laughter trickled away. “That might explain why he knifed Dr. Carnegay, though,” Jerry said.

  "What do you mean?” Arthur asked.

  "According to the responding officers, Dr. Carnegay's hair was mussed, and scraps of foil were found near his body. If Carnegay had worn a tinfoil hat, Bingham would have had to resort to more primitive means, such as killing him."

  "And then he would have taken the hat away so we couldn't figure it out,” Arthur said. “Carnegay must have suspected that Bingham was up to no good."

  "So what do we do?” Jerry asked. “Issue tinfoil hats to the apprehending officers?"

  "That would be step one,” Arthur said with a nod. “As for step two—” He placed the bag with the inducer in it on a lab bench. “Dr. Lansky, do you have any idea how to program this thing?"

  "It's not that hard, actually. You can set it to stimulate a pattern of neurons in the brain that will create whatever VR simulation you want. Why?"

  "Because if you're willing to serve as bait, I think I know how to capture Dr. Bingham."

  Trevor was surprised when the police turned their search for him into a public manhunt. His face and name were plastered all over the media, with a phone number for people to call if they spotted him.

  However, he wasn't too worried. If anyone appeared to recognize him, a quick zap with his spare inducer would take care of that. After all, that was how he had convinced the cops who had knocked on his door that his apartment was empty.

  There was still one loose end he had to handle—Dr. Samuel Lansky. If they ever found his lost inducer, Lansky was the only person who could figure out how it worked. And if that happened, Lansky might patent it and reveal all its secrets to the world, and all of Trevor's work would have been for nothing.

  A new report came on NY1 cable news about his case. Apparently, the police were planning to transfer Dr. Lansky to a secure location, but only after giving him a chance to pack up the lab at Pupin. To keep Lansky safe, the cops would be guarding the building while he was inside.

  Trevor smiled. They had no way of knowing how easy they had just made his final “kill."

  * * * *

  Arthur crumpled the wrapper and tossed it, banking it off the wall into the large wastebasket in the empty lab.

  "New York's supposed to be known for its delis. That wasn't worthy of world-renowned."

  "You have to go downtown."

  "What, like Times Square?"

  "Lower. Katz's is what you want for authentic. Or the new Second Avenue, on Third."

  "So, you want to show me either place when we're done?"

  Jerry cocked his head and stared at Arthur for a few seconds. Arthur looked down at his lapel and tie. “What, do I have mustard on me?"

  "No, it's just—That's one very scary weapon out there and we're letting two scientists hash it out. Doesn't that bother you?"

  Arthur wip
ed his hands on a napkin and banked that off the wall, falling short this time. “I'm a scientist by training. They've developed some scary shit, but it's also very compelling work. You don't quite grasp the significance of Bingham's development."

  "Maybe. To me, it's just another way to screw with people's lives. I can recognize it from a distance, but seeing those three in the hospital ... well, better it remain a theory."

  "Too late for that, Jerry."

  "No shit."

  * * * *

  Dressed in an overcoat and cap, Trevor walked towards Pupin Hall. Sure enough, four uniformed police officers stood in front of the building, scanning the pathways in front, papers with his picture in their hands. Quickly, he stayed behind a tree, his back to them before he was recognized.

  He felt a moment of giddy dizziness, but it passed. One of the advantages he had over the four officers was that he worked at Columbia for years and knew ways into the building that outsiders wouldn't consider. He felt cloaked in confidence.

  Trevor entered the building and climbed the stairs to the TTA lab. He shoved the door open, and it banged against the wall.

  Dr. Lansky was standing behind a lab bench in the middle of the room, flanked by two men in suits, one older, one younger. Before they could pull their own weapons, Trevor fired the inducer, and they each collapsed, leaving Dr. Lansky the only one standing.

  "Trevor,” Lansky said, his hands trembling.

  "Samuel."

  "What happens now?"

  "I leave you in your own fantasy world for the rest of your life. Sorry it won't be a pleasant one."

  Lansky nodded. “Just one question. Why?"

  "You know why. This technology's too dangerous to develop."

  "That isn't your decision to make. We did all the research together."

  "Maybe, but I found a way to make it work. The rest of you twiddled your thumbs and said it couldn't be done,” Trevor replied.

  "So you proved yourself better. Was that worth killing Rod?” Lansky asked. His hands dove into the lab bench drawer and pulled out Trevor's lost inducer. Fortunately, Trevor already had his own inducer aimed. He fired it immediately. Dr. Lansky froze and fell to the ground, trapped in his own twisted world.

  Trevor walked over to him, picked up the lost inducer, and shoved it in a pocket.

  "Believe it or not, I'm really sorry, Samuel,” he said. “I'm not an evil person. You and John are both living in worlds you deserve.” He paused. “It's too bad about Rod, but he forced my hand."

  Lansky, of course, lay on the ground, unmoving, unseeing. Trevor thought he saw the hint of a smile on Lansky's face, but it was probably just his imagination.

  He left the building and walked home, enjoying the gorgeous weather. It was over. Everyone else who had been a part of Things That Aren't was now dead or as good as dead. Trevor had made the world safe again. He decided that he would wait a year, and only then reveal to the media exactly what he had done. The public would laud him for his noble actions.

  He was living in a perfect world.

  Arthur and Jerry looked at Bingham as he lay at their feet on the ground in front of Pupin Hall, his eyes staring blankly into space.

  "Well?” Arthur asked Lansky, who stood there with the inducer pointed directly at Bingham's head.

  "It's working,” Lansky said. “Dr. Bingham's in his own little fantasy world."

  Arthur looked over at the building, where the four uniformed police officers still stood, watching for any other potential threats. “I'm glad you zapped him before he could reach for his own weapon."

  "I didn't want to take any chances. But what now? We can't just leave him here."

  "No, we can't. Keep the inducer on.” Arthur put his hands on his head, checking to make sure that his tinfoil hat was secure. Then he walked over to Bingham, crouched next to him, and gently removed the second inducer from his grip.

  "Your turn,” he said to Jerry.

  Jerry bent over Bingham, lifted the man up into a sitting position, and cuffed him.

  "Okay, he's secure,” Jerry said. “Whenever you want to turn off the inducer, go ahead."

  "You sure you licked the feedback loop problem?” Arthur asked Lansky.

  "Once I opened up the inducer, it took me an hour to reverse-engineer Trevor's work. The benefits of having worked alongside him for years."

  Lansky walked over, the inducer still pointed directly at Bingham. “Ready?"

  "Ready,” Arthur said. “In some ways I feel sorry for the guy."

  "Sorry? How can you feel sorry for him?"

  "Easily. We just beamed a perfect scenario into his mind. As soon as he returns to reality, it will be the worst letdown of his life."

  Lansky grunted. “Better him than us."

  Arthur watched as Lansky got ready to turn off the inducer. He thought about the proverbial can of worms that once opened couldn't be reclosed. Now that the technology for creating perfect hallucinations existed, it was only a matter of time before others developed it as well and changed the world. Just as radio, television, and wi-fi signals were constantly broadcast as invisible waves around them, so too could TMS and ultrasound. Arthur imagined the new world as one in which people would have to protect themselves with tinfoil hats or risk falling into hallucinations.

  "He's in for a rude awakening,” Jerry said.

  Arthur nodded. “As are we all."

  Lansky turned off the inducer, and within seconds, Bingham's eyelids fluttered. He darted his head around, taking in his true reality, and he screamed.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Michael A. Burstein & Robert Greenberger

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  QUEEN OF CANDESCE: PART II OF IV by KARL SCHROEDER

  Illustrated by George Krauter

  * * * *

  Humans will take their foibles and intrigues with them into the strangest of new places, even if they must take strange new forms.

  The Story So Far

  A woman is falling from the sky. She's taking a long time doing it, so Garth Diamandis, aging playboy and exile on Greater Spyre, takes his time in setting up her rescue.

  Greater Spyre is circular, a vast open-ended cylinder of metal at least twelve miles in diameter. Spyre is thousands of years old and is slowly falling apart. Its inner surface is paved with dirt and trees and dotted with strange, inward-turned pocket nations. Garth's people have always lived here, either in the paranoid miniature kingdoms of the cylinder, or in the rotating cities that hover in the open air around which Spyre revolves. Few of them have ever taken an interest in the world beyond Spyre; yet this woman has drifted in on the weightless air from that very world.

  Garth manages to catch her before she tumbles to death on Spyre's inner surface and takes her home to the damp basement he's called home for the past dozen years or so. It is here that Venera Fanning awakens a day later.

  Ah, Venera: sociopath princess, pampered courtier, and spy-mistress; casual murderer, recent savior of the world, and wife of Admiral Chaison Fanning of Slipstream. Garth, ladies-man that he is, is immediately besotted with her. But he can't puzzle out her strange story, which involves pirates, betrayal, and ruin at the very heart of the world.

  Some of what she says is familiar. Garth knows that Spyre is one tiny object spinning in the immense artificial world known as Virga. Virga is a hollow sphere—a balloon, essentially—several thousand miles in diameter, orbiting on its own somewhere in deep space. The balloon contains air, water, drifting rocks—all the necessities of life, including man-made fusion suns that light small parts of its vast volume. Nations coalesce around these suns, and the greatest sun is Candesce, which lies at the very center of Virga. There is no gravity in Virga, save that which you can make using centrifugal force. Spyre is one of the most ancient of the habitats built to take advantage of Virga's strange environment.

  It is also a place where, once you have arrived, you may never leave. Garth tries to convince Venera of this fact, but she refuses to believe him. Sh
e comes from Slipstream, a nation of mile-wide wood-and-rope town-wheels and free-floating buildings and farms a thousand miles from Spyre. Born to privilege, used to freedom—and ever sure of herself—she sneaks away from Garth to attempt a grand leap off the edge of Spyre. Before she can reach weightless air and escape, however, she is captured by soldiers of the four-acre nation of Liris. Dragged inside the single cube-shaped stone building that makes up the ancient nation, she is forcibly made into a citizen and called on to serve Margit, Liris's “botanist” or ruler.

  Serving the botanist is educational. Venera learns that the claustrophobic principalities that dot the cylinder's surface are ancient. Some are so old that they still possess treasures taken from Earth when Virga was first made. Liris, for instance, is the only place in the world where cherry trees grow. Liris and its neighbors sell their rarities in the Great Fair of Spyre, and the botanist intends for Venera to work there until the end of her days.

  Margit is going to guarantee Venera's loyalty by injecting her with a drug that will cause madness unless regular doses of an antidote are provided. Venera knows that time is running out, but there are things she must know. She visits the Fair to ask about goings-on in the outside world. Almost immediately she learns that her husband, Admiral Chaison Fanning, has been reported killed in a great battle on the far side of the world.

  Overcome with ice-cold grief and outrage, Venera confronts Margit in her bedchamber. The two women fight but Venera gets the upper hand, injecting the botanist with her own diabolical drug and sending her screaming into the night. Then, assembling the stunned citizens of Liris, she declares Margit's most tragic victim to be the nation's new botanist. Then she walks away from Liris, with no plan and no home anymore to escape to. Alone, aimless and hopeless, she returns to the one man in Spyre she can trust: Garth Diamandis.

  * * * *

  7

  Venera didn't really notice the passage of the next few days. She stayed with Diamandis in a clapboard hut near the edge of the world and did little but eat and sleep. He came and went, discreet as always; his forays were usually nocturnal and he slept when she was awake.