with a taste for trysting teenagers…
Then, abruptly, the nightmares were dispelled. Life began to return.
And with new life came new dreams.
The rooftop stretched to a convincingly distant horizon, a concrete flat etched with pools and gardens, shadowed with California stucco. Newly installed sensors scanned sun-bronzed tennis enthusiasts as they swished their rackets about.
Monitors translated sounds of thudding feet and gasping lungs, waste-heat silhouettes, and cheerfully exhausted visages into multisensory data for the security banks. Like glowing ghosts, guests roamed through three minimalls, lounged in tiny parks and arboretums, or chased golf balls through the flames of purgatory and the gilded clouds of paradise in Dante's, the best miniature golf course in the state.
A swimming pool glittered in the sun, like a pond touched by King Midas. Here its border was a white sand beach; there a rippling frictionless slide with a vertical loop; elsewhere were black basalt cliffs for diving. A hidden wave generator sent seven white crests rippling across the surface every minute. Here was an expanse of cattails sculpted of bronze; there, swimming in a programmed curve, was a weed-and-palm-covered island. Explorers would find it to be a huge lethargic flatfish with feelers the size of hawsers writhing about its mouth. In the center of the pool rose an island shaded by an artificial banyan tree, beneath which a grass-roofed tavern tinkled with laughter and the clink of glasses. One could swim to that tavern, or stroll a glass pathway hidden beneath the artificial waves.
Four hundred Dream Park employees were partying hard: swimming, minigolfing, playing dominance games, drinking.
Sixteen stories beneath them in level three, Tony McWhirter licked his lips. A drink? Later. He focused on the work at hand, his fingers and thumbs dancing in the holographic display of a keyboard.
He was an intense man in his middle thirties. Light red hair ran thin above a lean face with chocolate eyes. His fingers were long and almost delicate, his forearms still wiry from years of college wrestling and gymnastics. Muscles bunched and corded as he typed. A window jumped into place, superimposed on the projection of the roof. It focused on a view of the bar beneath the island.
Tony knew the man and woman busily mixing drinks: Elmo and Doris Whitman. Both were white-haired, pink with sun and as oval and solid as potatoes. They meshed like well-worn gears.
Tony made adjustments. His viewpoint floated in closer, as if his camera were mounted on a skimmer. He was staring into El's face. Capped teeth and sun-peeled lips filled the visual field at point-blank range.
Sound: the computer picked out El's voice from the surrounding gibberish, matched it to his lip movements, filtered, and compensated.
'…part-time for eight years. Never really thought about being full-time until…'
Doris glided onscreen. She was chunky but esthetically firm and rounded. Her legs looked damn good beneath the barmaid's skirt.
'Tequilla-'
The computer made a fast adjustment, backed itself up, and now she was a vocal pattern, locked into the bank. '-Sunrise for table six. '
Doris Whitman's face was pink with sun, pleasantly plump, and invariably glowing with some private amusement. She plopped her tray down on the counter and kissed El behind the ear as he juggled bottles and glasses. She said, 'We met at drama school, Metro N.Y., did a lot of summer theater, a little off-Broadway. I guess we never quite made it big, but we always ate, which is more than most can say. Anyway, we gave it up maybe six years ago when an old buddy offered good jobs at a restaurant at Kennedy International. Lugbot jockeys, off-duty stews, mostly. They went automated, we grabbed our savings and got out. El, I said, what would we rather do than anything in the world?'
Tony pulled farther back as another voice came in, highpitched and lightly accented. 'I know your answer. '
Chi-Chi Lopez was the prettier half of the world's most famous team of Game Masters. Her cheekbones were high and angular, but softened by ringlets of shoulder-length, jet-black hair. Her eyes were just as dark and sparkled with mischief.
'Richard and I used three of your DreamTime routines before you even went pro, Doris.'
'Tribute from a master,' Elmo said, putting two drinks on Doris's tray.
'Later. Our room.' Doris arched her eyebrows. 'Tribute from a mistress?'
'Rrrrr!' He swatted her affectionately. She dimpled, sashaying away.
Barmaid's walk, Tony mused. Efficient, no-nonsense sex appeal. She was old enough to be his mother, but she'd been a private fantasy for months. Was the Whitman marriage lock-stepped?
Chi-Chi watched them and then turned her attention to her husband, Richard. Tony remembered the wan little man. More specifically, he remembered playing the South Seas Treasure Game, designed and executed by the Lopezes. Their reputation had been well earned: lethal, unpredictable, but basically fair.
Richard spoke, and the computer automatically adjusted for decreased volume and pitch change: Richard had lost a lung four years back.
A small dark man with introspective black eyes and a pencil-thin mustache, he always hesitated over his words, as if writing them on a mental slate before speaking. 'This is the Game I always wanted to conduct,' he said. 'I am happy to have you with me, El. Doris. This one will be remembered.'
Hell, yes. It would be argued about, debated, and replayed for years.
And even after costs, and dividing up almost seven million dollars in guarantees among the players, the Park would still profit mightily. Worldwide pay-per-view, virtual simulations, theatrical re-creations, and licensing rights would reap over thirty million dollars.
Damned little of which would find its way into Tony McWhirter's hands.
Richard and Chi-Chi huddled silently against the bar. How long had it been since Tony had seen them? Eight years? Chi-Chi was tall and slender even when seated, the elegant curve of her back accentuated by a fluff-fringed yellow dress that clung like body paint. If anything, she looked younger and more alive. Richard, smaller and darker, seemed shrunken. Could his health be a liability in the coming Game?
No. Richard Lopez never gave less than one hundred percent. Never. It was what made him great.
They were all great, in their individual ways-the Lopezes with their holograms and overall Game design, the Whitmans with their choreography of Virtual mimes and Non-Player Characters.
Four Game Masters. And Tony made five. A junior member he might be, but, by God, a member.
Tony's fingers tapped again. A window zoomed on the shoreline, framing schools of bathers. All those Dream Park employees tended to cluster, leaving lots of empty space. The roof was too big for them, dauntingly large.
The water was green, covered with lily pads and shoals of moss. Pure artifice, it looked as if half a thousand years of neglect had allowed a real swamp to take over Meacham's toy bayou. But that was Game reality. In truth there hadn't been water in the rooftop lake since the Quake of '95, when the tilt of the roof changed and the lake emptied into the desert.
There had been several levels to the roof, even before the Quake. Now it sagged to the west, and the whole western edge had collapsed. Twelve thousand gallons a minute flowed from the swimming pool through a safety grid and over the edge, plummeting two hundred feet to a fountain below. What was the rate of evaporation? It boggled his mind-only the power of the Cowles fusion distillery in Long Beach could have furnished sufficient cheap water to make the lake viable.
Tony zoomed in on the roof party: some of the celebrants were almost at the edge, near the vine- camouflaged barricades. Narrow focus: he watched them enjoy the view. Meacham's architects had never planned that waterfall, either!
'Barsoom Project' was the designation for the projected terraforming of Mars. The dead planet would gain a breathable atmosphere, arable land, and enough water for an expanding human population. The Barsoom Project would take decades, and would involve the natural, industrial, and scientific resources of almost every nation on Earth, but MIMIC would house the beginnings. The vast spaces within Meacham's arcology, and the spaceport now being built nearby, would be the Mars terraforming project for decades to come… unless thirty Gamers and four hundred Non-Player Characters, under the supervisionof Tony McWhirter and four senior Game Masters, tore the building apart during the
