CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The familiar feeling of warmth and relaxation closed around her as she eased back into the recliner and VISAR’s intangible fingers took control of her senses.

“Tell me again how these Thurien protocols on privacy work,” she said in her mind to the machine. “What’s to stop you going deeper than just accessing sensory data, and extracting anything you want out of my head?”

“Programming rules built into the system,” VISAR answered. “They confine my operations to processing and communicating only what users consciously direct.”

“So you don’t read minds?”

“No.”

“But you could?”

“Technically, yes.”

“I don’t think I like that. Doesn’t the thought of it bother the Thuriens?”

“I can’t see why it should, any more than the thought of a surgeon seeing your insides organically.”

“No? But then I guess you wouldn’t. You were designed by them, so you think the way they do.”

“Possibly so.”

“Can the rules be broken?”

“It would require a specific authorization from the user for me to override the directive. So the user is always in control. Anyway, what could someone have to hide?”

Gina could not contain a laugh. “Don’t the humans ever have thoughts or a side of their nature deep down that they try to hide even from themselves?”

“How could I know? If they do, then by definition they don’t reveal it.”

Really? Gina thought. Ganymean minds might be capable of such commendable self-discipline, but she doubted if a typical human one would. “Were the Jevlenese as sensible and restrained in the way they used JEVEX?” she asked.

“I suspect not,” VISAR answered.

“So, what can you do, VISAR? I want to know what this system is capable of.”

“I can take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere among thousands of Thurien worlds, natural and artificial, scattered across tens of light-years.”

“How about Thurien itself, then?”

This time there were no preliminary sensory disturbances. Gina found herself at the edge of a terraced water garden near the summit of an enormous tower. The view below was of a cascade of levels and ramparts, falling away and unfolding for what must have been miles to blend with a mind-defying fusion of structures stretching to the fringe of a distant ocean. There were numerous figures around her, all Ganymean, walking and talking, others sitting around and doing nothing. She felt a faint breeze, and she could smell the blossoms by the pools and waterfalls. There were flying machines in the sky.

“Vranix,” VISAR informed her. “One of Thuriens older cities.”

The sudden transition made Gina feel dwarfed by the scale of everything. It took her a few seconds to adjust. “This is the way it actually is, right now?” she said. “These people are really there?”

“They are,” VISAR confirmed. “But since they’re not neurally coupled into the system, you can’t interact with them. You’re simply perceiving what actually is. This is called Actual Mode.”

“What else is there?”

“Interactive Mode. You’re in the same setting, but superposed on your perception of it are visual representations of other users physically in couplers located elsewhere. The images are activated by voluntary signals picked up from the speech and motor centers of their brains, so they act as they would choose to. The converse is just as true, of course; i.e., they see you in the same way. Hence the illusion of actually being there and interacting is total. It’s the usual way of setting up social and business meetings.”

“Switch to that, then,” Gina said.

The scenery stayed the same, but the distribution of figures changed. Most vanished, and others appeared where none had been before The overall number seemed to be fewer.

“Those other people that I saw a moment ago, they’re still there really?” Gina asked.

“They are. I’ve simply edited them out of the datastream into your visual cortex.”

“So who are these people that I’m seeing now? Where are they?”

“Here, there, in different places. They’re simply people who happen to have chosen this venue at the moment, for whatever their purpose is.”

The flying machines were still there, Gina noticed. She wondered how VISAR decided the boundary between edited foreground and authentic background.

Then a Ganymean couple who had been sitting on a nearby seat got up and approached. “I hope we’re not being presumptuous, but we’ve never seen a Terran this closely before,” the male said.

Gina noticed that several of the other figures were looking across at them discreetly, and trying not to make it too obvious. “No that’s fine,” Gina replied falteringly.

“Permit us to introduce ourselves. My name is Morgo Yishal. This is my daughter, Jasene. We like to meet here from time to time. Our family lived in Vranix when Jasene was young. This was one of her favorite places.”

“Where are you now-if it’s not a rude question?” Gina asked, still off-balance from the strangeness of it all.

“Oh, I’m teaching on the other side of Thurien now,” the man replied.

“I’m on a vessel that’s orbiting a world nearer to Earth than Thurien,” Jasene said. “Maybe I could show you it sometime. It’s quite an interesting place. And you?”

“Me? Oh, on one of your starships, traveling from Earth to Jevlen.”

“What brings you to Vranix?” Morgo inquired. “Seeing a Terran alone like this is most unusual.”

“Nothing special. I’m just experimenting with the system, really.”

“Of course, I can superpose Actual and Interactive modes,” VISAR’s voice interjected. The figures that had been present initially reappeared, mixing the “real” ones with VISAR’s virtual creations, and in moments Gina had lost track of which were which.

“Er, would you excuse me?” Gina stammered to the two Ganymeans. “I need time to absorb this. I’m still getting used to it.”

“But of course,” the man answered.

“VISAR, it’s too crowded. Get me away from people.” Gina glanced at Jasene. “I’ll get back to you about that visit… And thanks. I assume VISAR has your number?” Jasene inclined her head in what Gina hoped was an understanding nod.

Then Gina was standing on a barren, rocky ridge, looking down into a huge crater of molten magma, dull red and turgid, bubbling sullenly below yellow vapor and oily smoke. She could feel the heat on her face, and a choking, sulfurous odor seared her throat. The far rim was invisible through the haze, and behind her a tortured landscape of jagged peaks and bottomless fissures vanished into banks of dark, stormy cloud.

“I can take you where you couldn’t survive physically,” VISAR’s voice said. “Here’s a new world being born. The heat and fumes that you feel are just to give the flavor. In reality you’d be asphyxiated instantly, roasted in seconds, and flattened under two tons of body weight.”

“This doesn’t make sense. Do the Thuriens actually put sensors in places like this? It’s crazy. How many visits does it get in a thousand years?”

“Actually, this is largely simulation-interpolated from data being captured long-range from orbit.”

“Too hot and stuffy,” Gina pronounced.

Then she was in a sea of fantastic, mountain-size sculptures of shining white, rising and curving into delicate pinnacles against a sky of pale azure, fading into pink lower down in every direction. “A wind-carved ocean of frozen methane, not much above absolute zero in temperature,” VISAR said. “Again, interpolated reconstruction by instruments in orbit. Cool enough?”

“Too much. My bones feel cold, looking at it. But you don’t have to use sensor data at all, do you? It could all be pure simulation?”

“Sure-I can make you a world. Any world.”

“Let’s go home, then. How about Scotland? I’ve always wanted to go there but never have. I imagine it with mountains and lochs, and little villages tucked away in glens.”