tech synthetic, but its design reminded Laura of an animal's hide complete with a web of veins wrapped over hidden bones and sinews.
'What's that thing?'
'It's called a 'skeleton,'' Gray said simply.
Laura laughed nervously, loath even to touch what Gray held so casually in his hands. 'That figures,' she mumbled.
'It's short for 'exoskeleton.' Stick your head in here, and your arms through the sleeves.'
Gray lowered the contraption onto Laura's head as he explained his even newer toy. 'Our latest workstation — the version 4C — requires that you remove all your clothes and get fairly aggressive with a razor. It's a full head- to-toe skeleton, instead of an upper-body only.'
Laura could see nothing from inside the dark shoulder pads. 'The good thing about the 4C, though,' Gray said, his voice muffled, 'is that it's a full-size room. Some people get a little claustrophobic in these old 3Hs.'
'Well, you know…' Laura began, but couldn't find the words to express how nervous she was. The thing settled to her shoulders, and her head slipped through the elastic turtleneck, finally free of the black skeleton. Laura struggled to find the sleeves while Gray supported the device's weight. 'Maybe…' she began again, 'maybe you could just, like, describe virtual reality to me.'
She pressed her hands into the gloves.
'Relax,' Gray said in a reassuring tone. 'Almost everyone alive has experienced cyberspace, they just don't know it.' He pulled hard to adjust the jacket's fit. 'The telephone was the first virtual reality device. You pick it up and talk to someone like they were in the room right beside you. You can't see them or touch them, but the audio quality is good enough that the experience is comparable to a face-to-face conversation. You forget all about the wire that runs from their house to yours carrying electrons. In your mind, the two of you meet — not in real space, but in cyberspace.'
'But that's just an illusion,' Laura objected. 'Cyberspace doesn't really exist. It's just a fiction.'
'You're right,' Gray said. He closed large Velcro straps at her sides, sealing the jacket tight around her torso. 'But then so is reality. It's just a show in the theater of your mind.'
The conversation was not doing much to calm Laura. Nor was the skeleton. It wasn't heavy, but she felt its presence. It had fat black canisters that formed a belt of sorts around her waist.
'I've used the telephone before, you know,' Laura said. She held her arms up — the black gloves missing only metal spikes to complete the picture. 'I don't see how the two experiences are at all comparable.'
There was a quiver in her voice she'd not expected to hear.
'Dr. Aldridge,' Gray said calmly, 'trust me. The only difference is that we've added feedback for your other senses, that's all.'
Laura was growing more and more unsettled the nearer the time came to enter the cylinder. This was not at all what she had expected when she'd agreed to follow Gray into cyberspace. She hadn't really even agreed, technically speaking, but she had followed.
'Uhm, Mr. Gray…?' she began, the voice from her dry throat an octave too high. He arched his brow as he fiddled with her suit, pressing buttons that dinged lightly. 'Mr. Gray, I'm not really all that sure I want to—' There was a loud whoosh of air, and Laura's entire skeleton inflated like an air bag… but on the inside. In an instant, the suit had grown totally rigid all across her upper body.
The flat bladders and meandering channels had puffed full of air. It was tight from her waist up her chest to her shoulders and down her arms to the tips of her fingers. She jerked her arms against the stiff sleeves in panic, barely bending the inflated bones just under the surface. The board-stiff straitjacket jammed into her back or sides with every hard push of her arms.
'Is that uncomfortable?' Gray asked.
'Get this thing off me!'
He laughed. 'Now you see why it's called a skeleton,' Gray said as if that somehow excused her entrapment. A high-pitched ring and the sound of rushing air preceded a rapid loosening of the suit. Her arms were freed, and in seconds she could move about without encumbrance.
'There,' Gray said as if the matter had been put to rest, and he climbed into his own suit.
Laura mustered all the composure she could manage for the effort of sounding reasonable. 'Mr. Gray, I don't think I want to do this.'
'Dr. Aldridge…'
'No, I've made up my mind.'
'But you're a scientist. Surely you're curious.' He pulled his head through his own turtleneck. 'Look, the skeleton does three things. It provides pressure and temperature sensations to the nerve endings on your skin to simulate the sense of touch. It has pneumatic 'bones' that lock up to create the impression of rigidity. And the exterior of the fabric,' he said, holding his gloves up and turning them from side to side, 'is a flexible, rear- projection, high-definition screen.'
Laura raised the thick gloves she wore to study the faintly visible ridges on the surface. 'You mean I'm wearing a television?'
Gray chuckled. A burst of air suddenly filled the bladders of his suit. 'This is just a systems check,' he said quickly — trussed up inside and waiting patiently until the tone sounded and the suit deflated. 'The interior of the workstation,' he continued, now able to point at the white cylinder, 'provides pictures and sound just like TV and stereo.' He ushered her toward the open door. 'There's absolutely nothing weird about any of this.'
'I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Gray, but everything about this is weird.'
Gray knelt and unlaced her running shoes. When he slipped them off, he sat back on his heels and said, 'You have really big feet.'
'What?' Laura replied in alarm and looked down. She heaved a loud sigh of frustration. 'I'm wearing three pairs of socks.'
He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged as if to accept her eccentricity. She stepped into the black slippers he held, which were made of the same material as the skeleton.
'You know, because that office is cold,' Laura offered in further explanation. The black shoes she wore momentarily inflated before loosening with a faint hiss.
Gray gently guided Laura to the door of the dark chamber. She stopped just outside.
'This isn't going to turn me into a fly or anything, is it?' she asked.
Gray laughed. 'You'd be surprised how rarely that happens.'
She stepped onto the raised black floor, standing just inside the open door. It seemed quieter in the enclosed chamber — the sounds deadened by the solid walls and ceiling that surrounded her.
'Have fun,' Gray said before leaving.
She looked around at the dark walls, turning back just in time to see the door close in her face. A metallic latching sound sealed her in.
She pounded on the grill with both hands. 'Mr. Gray!' The walls were at least a foot thick. He couldn't possibly have heard her.
She was locked in the chamber now, and she tried to calm herself as best she could — to get a grip on reality before venturing into its alternative. The lights in the compartment were dim and diffuse, and she couldn't detect their source. They seemed to come evenly from the walls, ceiling, and floor.
She took a deep and ragged breath.
'Hello?' she asked after waiting as long as she could. Her voice shook, and there was no answer. There was no sound of any kind.
Laura wrapped her arms across her chest but obtained little comfort from the alien touch of the skeleton. 'Hello? Mr. Gray?' she called out again.
'I'm here,' he said from just behind her.
Laura spun around and stared at the curved black wall.
'Where?'
'Right here.' The sound was amazingly clear. It was as if he was standing right beside her — pinpointed in space.
'Where?'
