enough room: white-painted walls, plastic-tiled floor, and furnished with just an examination couch, a control panel with a few monitors set in it and a chair for the use of the Professor.
The Professor smiled, displaying a set of brilliantly white teeth standing like tombstones behind his thin lips, ushered Ella onto a couch, clipped an electrode to the lobe of her ear and began. ‘If you will just lean back and relax, Miss Thomas. I am going to place a drop of liquid in your right eye. Don’t worry, it’s a totally painless procedure.’ It was such an innocuous request and Ella was still so distracted by matters legal…
Putting the money in trust for Billy was definitely the right thing to have done. That way he couldn’t try to spend it all in a single week.
… that before she quite realised what she was doing, she had complied.
‘What was that for?’ she asked a little belatedly as she dabbed a tear from her cheek.
‘Contained in that drop was a miracle of cyber-science developed by my team of cyber-engineers at ParaDigm: a miracle known as PINC…’
One more acronym and murder will be done.
‘… or Personal Implanted nanoComputer. Four years ago we were tasked by the US Military to find a means of radically reducing training times and of more efficiently inculcating troops with the specific knowledge sets needed to make them more effective when operating in AWEs – a quick and easy way of teaching them things like foreign languages and giving them an understanding of idiosyncratic patterns of religious and social behaviour. What we developed were Memory Supplements: nano-sized memory chips that are biologically compatible with the human brain. Once in contact with the brain these PINC chips fuse with the organic tissue of the brain and are able to graft information – painlessly and seamlessly – onto a person’s memory bank.’
Using one of his bony fingers he tapped one of the monitors on the control panel. ‘Excellent! You, Miss Thomas, are now the proud possessor of a PINC, a microbe-size computer which contains all the information you could ever require regarding the Demi-Monde, including fluency in all the major languages. But as you are the first player we have sent into the Demi-Monde who is fully au fait with the Real World, PINC will also give you an ability to know everything about everybody in the DemiMonde. This will optimise your Dupe-to-Dupe effectiveness.’ The Professor nodded towards a female nurse who was hovering at the side of the room. ‘If you would follow Nurse Green, she will equip you with your Total Immersion Shroud.’
‘Do I really wanna know what a Total Immersion Shroud is?’
He ignored her. ‘The TIS ensures full and all-pervasive player-simulation meshing. The TIS has three main purposes. First, it blocks out all external, Real World, stimuli. Second, it allows ABBA to receive feedback along a neurobahn from the player’s body as it reacts to events in the Demi-Monde, which in turn enables ABBA to mimic these reactions in the player’s Dupe. This raises the player’s perception of the reality of the Demi-Monde. Third, the TIS protects the player. The safety of our players is of prime importance…’
Ella had the distinct feeling she was now in Bullshit Central, but then five million bucks bought a whole heap of Bullshit Tolerance.
‘… so not only does a player’s TIS help sustain the player’s bodily functions – body temperature, blood pressure and so on – and give our medical staff real-time feedback of the player’s vital signs, but it also maintains the player’s body. Whilst in the Demi-Monde the player will be, here in the Real World, comatose. The TIS manipulates the player’s body to obviate the development of pressure sores, the contraction of ligaments, the attenuation of muscles and all the other ailments a bedridden body is prey to.’
To Ella this sounded less than appetising: bedsores and attenuated muscles had not been mentioned in the promotional brochure.
‘At the end of his or her sojourn in the Demi-Monde, the player is as healthy and fit as he or she has ever been.’
‘Unless they can’t get out of the place,’ observed Ella wryly.
‘Well… let us hope for the best in that regard.’
Yeah, right.
‘Now, Miss Thomas, Nurse Green will prepare you for entry to the Demi-Monde.’
The nurse led Ella through to a large room swathed in stainless steel and equipped with a couch, yet another control panel, a shower unit tucked in one corner and, oddly, a large black circle inscribed on the floor.
‘If you would strip yourself naked, Miss Thomas, and remove all body ornamentation,’ the nurse asked in what Ella thought was an excessively casual manner.
‘Naked?’
‘Why, yes: in order for the TIS to do its job correctly it must be directly in contact with your skin – all of your skin. And anyway, we need access to your orifices. We have to place evacuation ducts into certain… places to eliminate waste products. We won’t be able to interrupt you in the Demi-Monde to allow you to take a comfort break, now will we?’
Silly me.
‘We will, of course, feed and nourish you through a drip. But don’t worry: all these connections – both for nutrients and for waste products – will be made once you are in the Demi-Monde. This will minimise discomfort and embarrassment.’
Terrific.
‘So if you would undress, then I will shave you.’
‘Shave me?’
‘Of course. Hair prevents TIS making a true connection in two very important parts of your body: your head and your…’
‘I get the picture.’
The nurse shaved her. When a shorn Ella looked at herself in the mirror she decided that it was a look that suited her. Even the sight of all her beautiful long black hair lying discarded on the floor didn’t upset her as much as she thought it might.
‘If you will shower thoroughly, Miss Thomas’ – the nurse nodded towards a shower cubicle in the corner – ‘then we can start. You can remove your glasses. You won’t need them in the Demi-Monde: ABBA will ensure that your Dupe has 20/20 vision.’
Ella did as she was asked and then, showered and dried, came to stand in the middle of the room. ‘Now, Miss Thomas, please step onto the black disc.’ She pointed to the shiny black circle on the floor. It seemed to be just a disc of thin black plastic, perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, that had been absent-mindedly tossed onto the floor.
‘This disc is the compressed TIS. When you are standing on the disc and I put an electrical current through it, the TIS will rise up over your body to form a wafer-thin body-encasing film. I am told that the sensation is strange but not unpleasant. The word most commonly used to describe it is “ticklish”.’ Ella stepped onto the black disc. ‘Now if you will stand perfectly still, I will begin on the count of three. One, two, three…’
The nurse threw a switch. Ella felt a trembling under the soles of her feet as the shiny blackness of the disc began to crawl slowly up over her. It was akin to being gradually dipped in a vat of lukewarm black treacle. The TIS crept over her feet, up along her calves, around her thighs, past her mid-section…
Now that did tickle!
… over her torso and her chest, to halt its progress just below her chin. Now when Ella gazed down at herself it seemed that she had been recreated in shiny black perspex.
The nurse circled Ella, searching, she presumed, for flaws in the TIS covering. ‘Excellent. Now, Miss Thomas, please pop yourself up on the couch and place your bottom over the hole in the middle and the back of your head over the one at the top.’
As Ella climbed onto the couch she was surprised to find that her TIS had dried: to all intents and purposes now she had a second skin. When she was comfortable the nurse tethered a steel band across her forehead. ‘The band is simply to hold your head steady when we make the hook-up to ABBA. Now I’ll activate your TIS.’
Ella felt the TIS begin to vibrate over her body.
Oh, my. If the porno industry ever gets their hands on this they’ll make a fortune.
It was at this moment that the Professor entered the room. After running an appreciative eye over Ella’s TIS-covered body…
Pervert.
… he made a thorough check of the readings shown on the control panel monitors. ‘Excellent. You may
