Josh frowned, remembering Jeff’s words of only a few moments ago. “But you said it was like a jail—”
“I was just giving Hildie a hard time. Come on.”
He led Josh to a room at the end of the hall. Opening the door, he stepped aside to let Josh go in first. “Ta- da!” he sang, flinging out an arm as if he were a magician who’d just amazed his audience. “The most excellent room in school, awarded to me because I’m a truly awesome person!”
Josh gazed around the large room. It was at least four times the size of the one he shared with his baby sister at home, and had windows on two sides. There was a desk covered with a scattering of books and papers, and an unmade bed with a jumble of dirty clothes at its end. But what grabbed Josh’s attention was an enormous aquarium that sat against the wall next to one of the windows. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before, and it was filled with fish he instantly recognized from pictures he’d seen in the Eden library’s collection of
“Jeez,” he whispered. “That’s saltwater, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” Jeff grunted. As Josh went over to look more closely at the aquarium, Jeff began rooting around in his desk in search of the money he kept hidden there.
“How do you keep it so clean?” Josh asked. “In school, we couldn’t even keep a little freshwater one balanced.”
“It’s computerized,” Jeff told him. “See?” He began showing Josh all the sensors in the tank, sensors that were attached to the computer that sat on his desk. “The computer’s always monitoring it, keeping the water aerated and checking all the filters. It even keeps track of the salinity, and tells me what I need to add.”
“Wow,” Josh breathed. “How long have you had it?”
Jeff shrugged. “A while. Since last year. But I’m getting kind of tired of it. I mean, fish don’t
“But it’s neat,” Josh protested. “If I had something like this—”
But Jeff wasn’t listening to him. “If you want to see something neat,” he interrupted, “you should see what my brother’s got”
“Your brother?” Josh asked. “Where is he?”
“Next door,” Jeff replied. “Come on.”
He led Josh to the room adjoining his own. Without bothering to knock, he pushed the door open and walked in. In contrast to the chaos in his own room, this room was neat and tidy, the bed made, all the clothes put away in the closet and dresser. The desktop was bare save for a computer, and all the books were neatly arranged on the shelves.
A boy sat at the computer terminal, his fingers flying over the keyboard, his eyes glued to the monitor. If he was aware he was no longer alone in the room, he gave no sign. Jeff nudged Josh, held his finger to his lips, then crept up behind the other boy. Abruptly, he grabbed his brother’s chair and spun him around. “My brother, the computer nerd,” he announced.
Josh’s eyes widened.
Sitting in the chair was a carbon copy of Jeff. He glanced from one face to the other, searching for differences.
There seemed to be none.
Each of the boys had the same black, curly hair, the same dark brown eyes, the same square jaw.
“This is Adam,” Jeff announced. “He’s my kid brother by ten whole minutes.”
Adam’s face flushed and he tried to push Jeff away, but Jeff held onto the chair and began pushing it toward Josh. “This is Josh MacCallum,” he told his twin. “He wants to see your virtual reality setup.”
“Can’t you knock?” Adam complained. “You’re not supposed to come into people’s rooms when their doors are closed. And I’m right in the middle of something.”
“You’re always in the middle of something,” Jeff told him. “And don’t be a creep — lighten up and have some fun. Get the helmet and glove, and show Josh how it works.”
For a moment Josh thought Adam was going to argue with Jeff. He watched in silence as the twin brothers stared at each other. In a few seconds, almost as if Jeff held some sort of power over him, the defiance drained out of Adam’s eyes. Though neither of the boys had spoken, Josh had the eerie feeling that they had nonetheless had some kind of argument, and that Jeff had clearly won it. Silently, Adam left his chair and went to the dresser.
Jeff grinned mischievously at Josh. “He’s a nerd, but he does what I tell him to. Wait’ll you try this. It’s really cool.”
A moment later Jeff was fitting a strange kind of helmet onto Josh’s head, along with a heavy glove that went on his right hand.
“I can’t see anything,” Josh protested as the front of the helmet dropped in front of his eyes.
“You’re not supposed to,” Jeff told him. “Just sit in the chair and wait a minute while Adam gets it hooked up.”
“We’re not supposed to—” Adam began, but Jeff cut him off.
“Just do it, Adam, okay? It’s not like this is some kind of big secret. Josh’ll probably have one himself by next week!”
Adam made no reply, and Josh let himself be guided into the chair, and waited to see what was going to happen.
A moment later the front of the helmet came to life. A picture appeared before his eyes, an image of the room he was in. It was so perfect in every detail that he would have sworn the helmet had somehow turned transparent.
“Turn your head,” Jeff instructed, the sound of his voice coming through speakers within the helmet itself.
Josh did, and the image of the room shifted.
“Get up and move around,” Jeff told him.
Josh hesitated, but finally stood up and took a tentative step forward. Again the image shifted, exactly matching the perspective he’d have had without the helmet.
“It’s all digitized,” Jeff explained. “If the cable was long enough, you could wander all over the house, and everything would show up in the helmet.”
“Wow,” Josh breathed. “Awesome!”
“You ever want to fly?” Jeff asked.
“Huh?”
“Watch.”
Within seconds the image changed, and Josh found himself in the cockpit of some kind of airplane, peering out the window at the scenery below. But he could also see the controls of the plane.
“See the joystick?” he heard Jeff ask. “Use your right hand to control it.”
“But — But it’s not real,” Josh objected.
“Just try it,” Jeff told him. “Use your right hand, and pretend you’re reaching for the stick.”
As he mimed the action with his right hand, which was still inserted into the bulky glove, he saw his hand on the screen of the helmet, moving toward the joystick.
As he “touched” it, something in the glove stimulated his hand, so that he imagined he could feel the object he appeared to be clutching.
“Now, fly,” Jeff told him.
Josh, entranced by what was happening, moved the joystick to the right, and the “plane” appeared to bank over, the horizon tipping, the view of the landscape below veering sharply. Almost instinctively he straightened the “plane” out.
“Wh-What happens if I crash?” he asked.
He heard Jeff laugh. “Maybe you die,” the other boy said. “Why don’t you try it?”
There was a mocking note to Jeff’s voice, a note that Josh had heard before, from the kids in Eden.
Certain that Jeff was laughing at him, he defiantly pushed forward on the joystick.
The “plane” plunged downward, and Josh felt dizzy as the image on the screen — a landscape of the coastline, with cliffs dropping away to the beach and the sea — raced up at him.
“Better pull it up,” Jeff teased.
Josh waited, certain that nothing was going to happen. But as the “plane” dove lower, and the sea itself
