by Needles, Dan
TO: Austin Wheeler, CEO Nexus Corporation
Austin,
I need the numbers on the cost of a recall ASAP. Do not contact me directly. Ms. Hwang or I will contact you.
Ed Davis
25
Skip Harvey struggled to lift his head from the saddle as the Nexus fought against him. I must be dehydrated. He adjusted his virtual hat and scanned the desiccated landscape. No signs of water.
He was in the middle of an immense valley in the Sonoran desert. Through the rising heat, the bare mountains wavered in the distance. Like the valley, the mountains were devoid of any life. Across the valley floor, several dust devils scattered sand and dirt about. Eons of sunlight had bleached the ground, leaving it pale and parched. Hidden under a thin film of dust was a gravel-strewn surface.
Skip’s head drooped. The sun blinded him as it reflected off the light grey dust and sparkling quartz that peaked through. He readjusted his hat, but could not escape the heat or the glare. His horse stopped.
Skip raised his head. A huge dry wash cut across his path and bared his passage. “Oh bollocks,” he cursed.
The walls of the wash were high and forbidding. His horse was in no condition to negotiate the steep grade much less cross through the thick sand that lined the dry streambed. Up stream, the wash meandered all the way to the mountains. Down steam, the wash snaked its way across the valley floor and disappeared over the horizon. He sighed. There was no place to cross safely.
It would take a little longer, but he could still reach the mountains by following the wash’s bank. Skip lifted his hat and wiped the virtual sweat from his brow. The dry, hot air sucked the moisture away. Since the morning, Skip had searched for shade, but he had found none—no rock formations, no trees, not even a large bush under which he could hide. In fact, except for the sparse brush that lined the banks of this dry wash, he had seen no vegetation at all. He hoped his luck would change upstream. Skip pulled the reigns and nudged the horse’s ribs. The beast turned and followed the wash’s bank.
Further upstream, purple stems, stripped bare of leaves, reached out of small bushes. The drought had flushed their leaves into a deep green. A clump of dried vines rooted at the base of the wash reached up and tangled itself in the bush. Despite it being June, a red yucca plant stood with no flowers on its tall stalk. The plant’s normally vibrant green leaves were shriveled and gray with a veneer of dust. It had not rained here for months.
“No luck,” he grumbled.
A virtual drop of sweat ran into his eyes. It was salty and stung—or at least it stung as bad as the Nexus would allow him to feel. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at the sun. Only 1 p.m. and already the hot air baked his skin through his shirt.
He felt moisture on his lips. Dabbing at them, his hand came back red with blood. This was bad. He had to find a spring, a cactus, or some sort of water source soon. Setting across the desert at sunrise, he had misjudged the distance to the far mountains. At least another ten miles lay ahead of him. There he might find shade or even water. His shoulders sagged. He could not take another ten miles in this heat. Worse, the temperature would not peak for another hour.
I’m going to die.
Skip laughed. He couldn’t help it. The whole experience felt empty. Something very important was missing. True, his eyes smarted, his lips were chapped, and he had difficulty moving. All his senses testified that this experience was real, that he was dying of dehydration; but it was not enough. The fact of the matter was that he just wasn’t thirsty.
Thirst and hunger were still beyond the grasp of the Nexus. Skip was not thirsty when he logged on eight hours ago, and he was not thirsty now, not even in the slightest. He was getting hungry, but that was a poor approximation of thirst. Next time he would remember not to drink water the night before. There would be a next time, because he was not going to make it to the settlement. He would have to try again.
Something else was missing. Skip didn’t feel confused or delirious. The state of mind was yet another dimension of human experience out of the Nexus’ reach. The more he thought about it, the more surreal the whole venture seemed. Skip sighed.
At least the experience gave him some sense of what the journey had been like. Create Your Own Adventures had reconstructed the entire adventure for him. Skip was tracing the path that his ancestors had taken when they trekked across the desert between Plemons, in the Texas panhandle, to Salome, Arizona, in the middle of the Sonoran desert. His great-great-great-grandfather, Flavius Josephus Brown, had come here in the late 1800s. In the last couple of years, Skip had become enamored with his past. He researched all he could about his ancestors. After two years of searching, he still felt discontented. He wanted to experience and feel what they felt. That’s when he decided to cross the Sonoran desert.
When he told his friends about the expedition, they laughed and said he was just being trendy. That was the same comment his wife Betty had made to him this morning. Superficially, they were right, but Skip had introduced a new twist on the old theme: reliving one of his ancestor’s experiences.
Create Your Own Adventures was unique in providing customized adventures. The other sites, although dedicated to exploring and experiencing the past, limited their virtual trips to canned famous expeditions. They entertained with everything from Leif Ericsson’s discovery of North America to the first manned mission to the moon. Usually, the excursions were edited and abridged, compressing several months or years into a one-week vacation package. The vacationer would select the more interesting aspects of the historical journey and string them together into one action-packed adventure complete with bathroom, meal, and sleep breaks. Time, of course, could not be compressed. In the temporal world mankind could move in all dimensions but time; the virtual world was not any different.
Skip’s hands dropped the reins and he lost balance. He clutched the horn of the saddle and steadied himself. His vision skewed and the landscape blurred, the mountains and desert swirling around him. He closed his virtual eyes to stop the vertigo. Death was near. His horse fared not much better.
In the desert, a horse could survive on about twelve gallons of water a day, while a man needed one gallon. Under the afternoon sun that figure grew to eighteen gallons for the horse and almost two gallons for the man. Skip had no water because his great-great-great-grandfather Flavius had no water on this leg of the journey.
But Skip started to doubt the legend. How could anyone survive this heat without water? Yet, the computer simulated conditions based on old records they had from the area. So, Flavius had faced the same situation. Only one answer remained. The more Skip thought about it the more he was convinced that his ancestor must have found water while crossing the desert, but where?
Skip’s eyes hurt. They were dry, crusted, and had almost swollen shut. He chuckled again at the stark contrast between his swollen eyes and lack of thirst. He debated whether or not to retrieve the reins—in his condition a life or death decision. Lifting his head, he tried to ascertain whether he was still on course. The Nexus fought his movement, but he managed to raise his head anyway.
The horse had followed the wash, though it moved slower now than before. Good. As long as the horse kept on this course, he could leave the reins where they were.
Vultures gathered a few hundred yards ahead. They rode the afternoon thermals created when the sun baked the desert floor. Hot air radiated off the quartz, and dust and rose in a hot updraft—a spiraling column of wind. The vultures would sail upward on these winds. With each circle in the sky, the vultures climbed higher.
The Nexus pushed down hard and Skip slumped over his saddle. In the back of his mind, a thought tugged at him just out of reach. What was it? It came to him. The vultures pointed to water.
The vultures circled some sort of dying animal. Very few desert creatures of any size could be more than a couple of miles away from water. Skip raised his head. The vultures were off to his right and away from the wash. To get there Skip w
ould have to retrieve the reins and steer the horse.
If he fell off now, he would be unable to get back in the saddle and the simulation would end. Of course, if he did not find water soon, the simulation would end anyway. Skip grunted. He grabbed the saddle horn and reached down with his free hand. He waved his hand back and forth and searched blindly for the reins. The Nexus fought him. It pushed him left and right. He stumbled and righted. After several tries, his fingers caught the rein. Using the reins, he maneuvered the horse toward the vultures. The horse had slowed and it took Skip fifteen minutes to reach the place where the vultures circled.
They circled above a mule laden with supplies that lay on its side. Skip positioned his horse alongside the mule. A canteen hung on the outside of the mule’s saddlebags. He tried to ease out of the saddle but found his arms were like Jell-O. Skip tumbled and landed hard. Shards of quartz cut into his palms, and a cloud of dust billowed up around him. He coughed.
Skip reached over and wrenched the canteen from the mule’s saddlebags. The mule stirred and stood up. He twisted the cap off the canteen and drank. As he drank, the Nexus released its resistance. His vision cleared. Too quickly. Another program glitch. His electrolytes should still be out of balance. In reality, it would have taken days to revive. Skip removed his hat and poured the remaining water into it. He allowed his horse to drink.
The mule grunted, and its eyes grew wide. It bolted. The mule had to carry more water. The beast held his only chance for survival. Skip reached up and slid his Winchester rifle out from among his provisions. He dropped to the ground and nestled his cheek into the stock of the rifle. Skip lined up the rifle’s sites and brought his breathing into cadence with his heartbeats. Between the beats, he fired. The mule spun around, hit on its flank. Skip reacquired the mule through the site and fired again. This time the top of the mule’s head disappeared. As the snap of the rifle died, the desert returned to its dead calm, languishing under the relentless gaze of the sun.
Why had the mule bolted? And whose mule was it anyway? This adventure had been designed for him alone, and there was no mule mentioned in his ancestor’s account. Skip rose to his feet and scanned the horizon. An attractive woman approached him. Nude, her tanned body glistened with sweat. Her long hair swept back like a black wind.
He dropped his gaze. “Uh, sorry about your mule, madam.”
She came up to him, slid a hand around his waist, and pressed her body against his. He pulled back. “What are you doing?”
Her chest heaved. Sweat glistened off her firm body.
Oh bollocks. He fought back his addiction. Betty would definitely not approve of this, not one bit. His wife was a computer whiz and had caught him just last month in a virtual nefarious affair. She was on the verge of dumping his virtual ass.
Why was this woman here?
She approached. Her exotic green eyes mesmerized him, etching vivid ideas into his mind. What the hell! He reached for her.
She darted aside and smiled. “Have you ever seen the sunsets on Hainan?”
“What?” He said between adrenaline-charged breaths.
She opened a portal behind him and leaned against him. A hard nipple brushed his arm as she passed him and stepped through the portal.
“No you don’t.” He leaped after her.
The portal dumped them onto a beach with a sunset blazing in the west. Skip stopped and took a deep breath. “Ah! This is much better.” The cool air felt good.
She brushed against him, her breasts pressing into his chest. With both hands, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him. Skip smashed his lips onto hers. Their tongues explored one another. His heart raced and his head grew warm with ecstasy.
Her hands were everywhere, under his shirt, running along his chest and back. He lifted his arms and she tore off his shirt. She tugged at his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and unzipped his fly.Skip’s pants dropped. He tripped over them and fell to the ground.She threw herself across him and straddled his waist between her strong thighs. He kicked his pants away and rolled over on top of her. She threw him over and reversed their positions. The woman raised her head and let out a cackle.
A bit creepy. He tried to roll on top of her but she was too strong. She had him pinned. Skip turned onto his stomach and tried to crawl away.
The woman clasped her hands around his waist.
He grabbed her arms. They were hairy. He glanced back.
The woman had transformed into a pale-complexioned man with dark hair but with the same green eyes. “I’m Syzygy,” he said.
“Get off of me, you freak!” Skip kicked but the virtual transvestite had him pinned. He almost wished this one had decided to undress afterwards.
The warmth in Skip’s head exploded into pain. How am I going to explain this to Betty? He didn’t think she would understand this time.
Everything went black.
26
From within VR, Austin glanced at the time: 2 p.m. He was running late. Stepping through the portal, he entered the Nexus Corporation lobby.
“Message for you, Austin,” Jan alerted him.
“Kindly display it for me.” Austin headed toward his office.
The message flashed before him.
FROM: Ed Davis, Assistant Secretary of Defense C4ISR
TO: Austin Wheeler, CEO Nexus Corporation
Austin,
I need the numbers on the cost of a recall ASAP. Do not contact me directly. Ms. Hwang or I will contact you.
Ed Davis
He stopped in his tracks and furrowed his brow. He reread the short message. Something felt wrong about the message. He could not place what it was.
“Jan, delete this letter.” He bounded through the door of his office and stopped. Steve sat behind his desk, hunched over a drawer as he rifled through Austin’s files. Spread across Austin’s desk was his other set of accounting books.
Steve sensed someone had entered Austin’s office and looked up.
“Son, what the hell are you doing in here?” Austin demanded. His eyes blazed.
“Don’t get self-righteous with me. We need to talk.”
Austin’s gaze surveyed the papers scattered across the desk. As co-owners of Nexus Corporation, they both shared the same security clearance. Austin, in his cocky way, had never reset the password on his files.
“This other set of books has some interesting deposits.” Steve pointed to a figure on one of the spreadsheets. “You tied up a lot of money in these obscure, offshore investments. This reference to Verwaltungen looks interesting. What is that for?”
“Don’t you remember? That’s your account, son.”
“Really? You have a couple of accounts there, and there’s this amount in the other account …” Steve paused while he sorted through the sheets on the desk and pulled up another list of figures.
“Now, I’m no accountant, but this looks like some sort of money laundering scheme between these two accounts. Does Ron know about this?”
Austin grimaced. “We went over this. One is for your payments, the other is for your expenses.”
“Austin, there are five accounts here! They are not all my accounts! And why is there over 7.2 million dollars tied up among them? I’m not that gullible. I know you stole this money.”
Austin sat down in the seat opposite the desk, leaned back, and raised his hands.
“Maybe I took some money, but look at what I gave you. I found the military centric Chinese companies, scrambling for contracts at the end of the war. I obtained DARPA’s approval. Son, I got the product out the door. Without me this dream of yours would be dead.”
Steve frowned. He remembered his daughter’s crying face. “Brooke is my dream, not the Nexus.”
Austin sighed. “Okay, you caught me with my knickers down. Tell me what you have in mind.”
“I want you to resign.”
Austin’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t believe it! After all I’ve done? I accomplished in four months what you couldn’t d
o in three years—sell a product!”
“You mean a death trap! Do you remember what you said to me? The Nexus just talks to the brain. What’s the harm in that? Well, Austin, you were wrong, and my daughter’s friend is dead because of you! I was a damn fool to listen to you.”
Austin’s eyes blazed.
“There’s plenty of money hidden within these books to pay for a recall, isn’t there?”
Austin studied the floor. A smile crept back onto his face.
“How is that project of yours coming along? You know, the one for Brooke? I’ve kept my end of the bargain, handling the day-to-day affairs so you’re free to play on the Nexus Healer. If I go, you’ll lose that freedom. Where would your daughter be then?”
Steve laughed. “You haven’t been paying attention! The beta release announcement is this Sunday.”
“So you mean it’s perfected and will never falter? Come on! You know there’s no such thing as finished in this business.”
“You’re right. You don’t have to resign. You’re fired.”
“Steve, be reasonable.”
“You can pack up later after I’m done figuring out what sort of mess you’ve left me with.”
Austin looked down.
“Leave. Now.”
Austin stood and stalked out of the room.
Steve let out a deep breath. That went easier than he thought. Things were looking up.
“What had come over Steve?” Austin thought as he walked down the hall. Everything Austin had built was unraveling. There were too many loose ends to manage. Too many elements were beyond his influence or control. Steve had fired him and was close to the truth. And god knows what Davis would direct Allison to do if Steve alerted the press.