Laura took a deep breath and held it. Moving quickly so as to trick the slower agencies at work in her brain, Laura stepped off the black surface. The tread beneath her feet moved.
Everything suddenly seemed disorienting as if she was on the slanted floor of a fun house. Laura flailed her arms to regain the balance she only imagined she'd lost. When her nerves settled, she straightened and looked around.
Laura was standing on the floor outside the chamber, looking back at where the walls should have been.
'This isn't happening,' she said, shaking her head again.
'You're really still standing inside the workstation,' Gray explained. 'The floor underneath you is a universal treadmill. It'll move to keep you roughly centered in the workstation just out of reach of the walls, so you've got to be careful. The actuators are very sensitive. They'll start and stop the tread with the slightest of cues. If you don't want to go anywhere, just stand still. If you want to move, start walking and the treadmill will roll automatically.'
Laura held one foot up to take a step, and nothing happened.
'Put both feet on the tread and push off,' Gray instructed. She followed his advice… and moved through the world as she saw it.
She walked slowly among the rows of black pedestals, hardly noticing the rolling treadmill amid the feast served up for her senses.
'But… but I'm still in the tube thing, right?' she asked as she wandered through the room, taking hesitant baby steps.
'It's a workstation. And yes, you're still inside it. I haven't perfected teleportation yet.'
Laura had to look at his face to see that he was kidding.
'Come on,' Gray said, and headed for the door. It slid into the wall just ahead of him. He paused there and waved for her to follow.
Laura took another step, and the pictures changed around her. There was no flicker or jerk of the images. The edges were razor-sharp. There were no artifacts or imperfections to hint that Laura was standing inside a 360 -degree high-definition television theater.
She took one more step, watching her three-dimensional perspective on the room change seamlessly.
'It's easier if you just start walking and don't think about it,' Gray advised.
Laura swallowed hard. She turned and aimed herself at the open door beside Gray. Taking a deep breath, she took off. It worked.
Laura was walking through cyberspace.
She rammed her left shoulder into the doorframe and let loose a startled grunt.
'You okay?' Gray asked.
'Yeah.' Her shoulder didn't really hurt, but she'd been surprised by the sharpness of the blow. The wall had felt hard, and her skin itched where the 'contact' with it had been. That impact had not been with the wall, she realized. It had been with pockets inside her skeleton, which had filled suddenly with air on the computer's perfectly timed cue. But however artificial the source of the experience, the effect on her senses was complete.
Laura looked clown at the black skeleton that covered her upper body. She rubbed her arm with her glove- covered hand. She felt the movement of her hand across the skeleton's sleeve. The skeleton inflated membranes in a coordinated pattern on the inside of the thick fabric as the glove passed over. They rippled across her skin, interpreting her caress and artificially mimicking the sensations.
Laura frowned. 'Why don't you make it so that people just walk through walls without getting bumped like that?' she asked Gray.
'It really hasn't been a very big problem,' he replied.
Laura made a face, and Gray laughed.
'Now how did you know I made a face?'
'There are tiny cameras the size of a needle embedded in the workstation's walls. They make a three- dimensional topographical map of your body's position with a resolution right down to facial expressions.' His lips moved perfectly in time with his speech.
Gray held his hand out through the open doorway. 'After you, Dr. Aldridge.'
Laura carefully edged her way between Gray and the wall and headed into the empty hallway outside.
She had left the room with the eight black pedestals.
'Come on,' Gray said.
'Wait a minute,' Laura replied, pausing to take another deep breath. 'Okay, now I'm still standing inside the workstation, right?'
Gray pursed his lips and nodded, looking back into the room which they had just exited.
Despite the fact that Laura got the answer she expected, she felt highly unsettled. It was easier just to believe that she was standing in the hall outside the room with the white cylinders. The confusion of her senses and her expectations left her totally disoriented.
She tried to remind herself it was just a trick of the eye and to imagine the curved walls, ceiling, and floor that surrounded her [missing]. She grew instantly lightheaded.
'Neat, huh?' Gray asked, smiling.
Laura flashed a brief smile in acknowledgment, fighting the queasy feeling in her stomach. She turned to look through the doorway at the pedestal from which she'd descended.
Her heart beat rapidly in her chest. 'Do I have to, like, get back into that chamber thing to return to reality?'
'It's a workstation, not a chamber. And no. There are all kinds of macros you can run with hand gestures that execute simple commands no matter where you are in the world model. I'll teach you one if it'll make you feel any better. Signal a time-out, like in football.'
Gray raised his black gloves and pressed the outstretched fingers of one hand toward the flat palm of the other, forming a T without quite bringing his hands together.
After hesitating a moment, Laura repeated Gray's gesture.
When her fingertips touched the palm of her glove, the hallway disappeared. It was replaced by the black screens and dim lights of the cylinder's interior lining, which crackled with static electricity.
Laura's head spun, and she almost lost her balance and fell.
She was standing again in the workstation. She had returned to reality — to the dark and lonely cell with its solid walls and hermetically sealed door.
'You want to come back?' Gray asked, invisible but sounding as if he still stood right beside her.
She hung suspended between the two worlds, her head swimming from the high-tech games being played with her senses.
'Okay, I guess. Yes.'
'Then, just signal time-out again,' Gray said.
Laura braced herself and raised her gloved hands to form a T. The walls again lit up with a crackle, and she was standing amid the bright lights of the hallway — Gray at her side where she'd left him.
The effect was stunning. She was overwhelmed by the radical change and had to close her eyes to battle the nausea. She bent over and grabbed her knees — a prickly, hot rush spreading down her arms and torso.
Gray spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. 'Time-outs are useful when you have to go to the bathroom and you want to pick up right where you left off. It's kind of like the pause button.' Laura kept her eyes shut, focusing on her breathing. 'But the transition back and forth between the virtual and real worlds does take a little getting used to.' Laura opened her eyes and stared at the floor. 'You're doing very well for your first time. A good number of trainees actually get ill. Some even drop out of the program after their first total immersion.'
With great force of will, Laura stood erect and looked at Gray.
He was beaming with pride over his machine.
Just then one of the doors at the far end of the hallway parted with a hiss. Through the opening emerged two people — a man and a woman — engaged in an animated conversation. Both had heads shaved right to the skin. But there was something else that was different about their appearance. Their forms weren't quite as vivid or distinct as everything else in the virtual world that surrounded them.
