rear view her backside looked considerably larger than she had realized. When asked if she wanted access to the entire video, or to enter the scenario itself, she declined.
With her own information still on the screen, Teresa tried to establish hyperlinks first with Elsa Durdle, then with Shandy, but at both attempts the program curtly informed her: No hyperlinks established from this site.
CHAPTER 30
Teresa travelled up to London by train. She wanted to be a tourist, take a few photographs and buy some presents to take home to her friends. She knew her visit to England was Coming to an end. One day soon she would have to return to her job; although her section chief had granted her ,extended' compassionate leave, with no firm date by which she had to report back, she knew that the Bureau did not allow indefinite leave to anyone. Her time was almost up.
The train took her to Charing Cross Station in the heart of London. From there it was a short walk to Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, the Houses of Parliament and, eventually, Buckingham Palace. After an hour or two of dutiful trudging around, Teresa had had enough of playing tourist. She took a taxi to Piccadilly Circus, and went in search of Shandy.
She walked along Coventry Street as far as the point where it became a pedestrian precinct, then walked back again on the other side of the road. While it remained recognizably the same street, many of the details seemed to have changed. Could this be explained by the fact that Shandy's scenario was set back in 1990, and there had been rebuilding since? Or by the fact that what she had seen was simply a computer emulation of the real place, full of approximations? She wished she had been able to take more notice of her surroundings while there, but as so often happened while inside a scenario, the sheer sensory impact had been extremely distracting.
She found Shaver's Place, a short, narrow alleyway leading off to the south, but there was nowhere along it that looked as if it could be used as a studio for making skinflicks. On the other side of the road, Rupert Street led north towards Shaftesbury Avenue. Halfway along Rupert Street on one side there was, exactly as she recalled, a pub called the Plume of Feathers. Teresa walked in, but as soon as she was inside she knew it was not the same place.
Everything about it was different. She looked all around, but there was no one there who looked remotely like Shandy, or even what Shandy might look like after the passage of a few years.
She retraced her steps, remembering the day she had walked along this street, or one like it, feeling the sexy tightness of Shandy's thighconstricting miniskirt, talking about Arizona and Finland. They had left Willem waiting in the pub, and for a while walked to and fro along Coventry Street. Teresa walked as far as the statue of Eros, then went down the steps of one of the station entrances and found that where the virtual London had ended in a brick wall was now the bustling concourse of a busy Underground station.
She returned to street level, then went back to Rupert Street. Suppressing the temptation to look inside the Plume of Feathers once again, Teresa walked up to the intersection with Shaftesbury Avenue and crossed over, following Rupert Street into Soho.
The streets here were much narrower. After a few hundred yards she noticed a doorway ornamented on each side by tall illuminated pink plastic panels, obviously portable, into each of which was set a large photograph of several naked and near-naked women. A man, whose face was masked by a clumsy virtualreality headset, was drawn groping lasciviously towards them. A handlettered sign said:
A doorman stood just inside the entrance: he was a youth with short spiky hair and tattooed tears angling down from the corner of one eye, and was incongruously wearing a dark suit With collar and tie.
Teresa, realizing that this place was selling a version of ExEx, was brought up short by a shocking thought. She knew what was available in ExEx, so it was likely that at least a few of Shandy's scenarios would be available somewhere in this dive ... maybe they even had the cowgirl scenario where Teresa had first found her.
Teresa's thoughts instantly raced off towards the edge of reality: she imagined herself venturing into the cellar below this unprepossessing doorway, paying over a sum of money to the youth, entering the scenario in which Shandy played a cowgirl who was enthusiastically screwing a Dutchaccented cowboy, then afterwards leaving again with Shandy, occupying her body and mind, feeling the sexy constraints of her don'tcare clothes, heading out of the studio into these streets around Piccadilly and Leicester Square, then walking north across Shaftesbury Avenue to this spot, to the entrance to this ExEx club, where she and Shandy would venture inside, enter the extremes of unreality ...
'What you want, lady? You want inside?'
'No,' said Teresa, startled by his sudden voice.
'Good prices for ladies. Big discount. Come, I show you.'
'No ... I don't want in. Did you ever hear of a girl called Shandy?'
For a moment the youth looked disconcerted, a look that was exaggerated by the needledrawn tears, but then he reached into the back pocket of his pants and produced a small wad of business cards.
' Yeah, Shandy. She here. You want Shandy, you have her OK. We got plenty Shandy. What you want, you like
girlgirl with Shandy, or you wanna watch?'
'Do you know who 1 mean?' Teresa said. 'Her real name's Jennifer. She works around here, in joints like this.'
'Yeah, yeah.' He held the business cards in surprisingly long and delicate fingers, and with a clean fingernail peeled back the top one. Teresa thought he was about to pass the card to her, with no doubt detailed but unwanted information inscribed, but he gripped it lightly between his thumb and forefinger and scraped at the gap between two of his yellowed front teeth.
'Shandy. She give big discount for girlgirl. We have plenty Shandy.'
'OK, 1 get the picture.'
Teresa turned away, irritated with herself for letting the boy drag her into the exchange, and still preoccupied by what she had been thinking about when he spoke to her.
What would happen? Inside a scenario, suppose she found a GunHo facility or a dive bar or somewhere else with ExEx equipment, then used it to enter a second scenario?
