Shadows

And in one of the strange, shimmering corridors, was suspended a face.

The face of Adam Aldrich.

Frozen, Josh MacCallum stared at the face of the boy who was supposed to have died more than a week ago.

Adam smiled at him, a strange grimace that sent a chill through Josh.

“You figured it out,” Adam said.

Without thinking, Josh found himself replying to Adam’s voice out loud.

“Adam?”

“Yes. I wondered if anyone in the class would figure out where I went.”

“H-How can you hear me?” he stammered.

Adam smiled again. “There’s a mike in the V.R. mask. The computer digitizes it and sends it to me.”

“B-But your body’s dead,” Josh breathed.

A chuckling sound came through the headphones, then died away. “Is it?” Adam asked. “You see me, don’t you?”

“B-But it’s not real!” Josh protested.

“Of course not,” Adam agreed. “It’s just an image on the screen. I figured it would be easier for you if you could see me instead of just talk to me. So I generated an image. It wasn’t any big deal.”

Josh felt himself sweating now, and tried to swallow the lump of fear that had formed in his throat. “Th-This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?” he pleaded, knowing even as he uttered the words that it wasn’t.

“It’s not a trick at all,” Adam replied. “It’s where I live now. I’m part of the computer.”

Josh felt his heart sink as he realized that in spite of his certainty that he’d figured out what they’d done to Adam and Amy, part of him had still hoped he was wrong. “I–I don’t believe you,” he stammered, his voice quavering.

Adam’s smile broadened. “You want to see?”

“See what?” Josh’s heart was racing now, his mind spinning. Part of him wanted to take off the mask, rip the glove from his hand, and run as far away from whatever was happening as he could get. But another part of him wanted to keep going, wanted to find out what actually was happening.

“Anything you want, Josh,” Adam told him, his voice dropping slightly, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “Everything is in the computers, Josh. Everything in the world. And I can show it to you. What do you want to see?”

“I–I don’t know,” Josh whispered.

“Snakes. What if I show you snakes?” Instantly, everything around Josh changed. In front of him a large cobra suddenly raised its head, its tongue darting in and out. Gasping, Josh instinctively turned away, only to find himself facing a coiled rattiesnake, whose vibrating tail buzzed menacingly in his ears.

“No!” he screamed. “Stop it!”

The buzzing died away, and he heard the sound of Adam’s laughter as the image of the rattiesnake dissolved into another, this one of Adam himself.

“It’s even better if you’re here,” Adam whispered. “From where I am now, it isn’t just an image, Josh. It’s real. It happens inside your brain instead of on a screen in front of your eyes, and it’s as real as if it were actually happening. You don’t need eyes and ears, Josh. You don’t need any thing. Everything you want is right there, and all you have to do is think it to make it real.”

“H-How?” Josh breathed. “How does it work?”

Adam smiled at him again. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “The only way to know is to do it yourself. And you can do it, Josh. You can come here, too.”

Josh’s heart was pounding. It was all impossible. Everything he was hearing and seeing was impossible.

And yet it was happening. Adam was there, an image of him so perfect that Josh felt as if he could actually touch him.

His gloved hand went up, and the image of his hand on the screen rose with it. He reached out, but just as he was about to brush his fingers against Adam Aldrich’s face, he froze as another voice came through the headphones that covered his ears.

“Help me, someone help me …”

Josh’s blood ran cold as he recognized Amy Carlson’s voice. He tore the mask from his face and jerked the glove from his hand. But as he reached out with his trembling fingers to turn off the computer, he knew without a doubt that what he had heard had been real.

Amy was still alive somewhere.

But whom could he tell?

Who would believe him?

23

Hildie Kramer came awake to the insistent electronic beeping of the phone by her bed. She groped in the darkness, found the receiver and put it against her ear, her eyes still closed. When she heard George Engersol’s voice, her eyes snapped open and she sat straight up in bed.

“You’d better come down here right away. We have a problem.”

She didn’t have to ask where he was — the single word “down” told her he was in the lab beneath the mansion’s basement. The last vestiges of sleep dropping away, she heaved herself out of bed, dressed quickly, and left her apartment, slipping quietly up the stairs to the fourth floor instead of using the noisy antique elevator. Letting herself into Engersol’s apartment, she summoned the second elevator that was hidden behind the bookshelves. Descending into the depths of the sub-basement, she wondered what could have happened to make Engersol summon her after midnight.

The elevator doors slid open, and Hildie stepped out into the tiled hall, turning toward the primary laboratory at the end of the short corridor. As she entered the room she stopped short, staring at the monitor that hung on the wall above the tank containing Amy Carlson’s brain.

On the monitor an image was flickering. At first Hildie couldn’t figure out what it was, for it seemed to be almost fluid, shimmering and breaking up like a reflection on the surface of a rippling pool. Then, for a moment, the image steadied.

The pale face of a young girl, framed by curling tresses of red hair.

Amy Carlson’s face.

And yet, not Amy’s face.

The image held for a few seconds, then began to waver, dissolving for an instant, then reforming, but slightly differently from the way it had appeared before.

“What is it?” Hildie breathed, instinctively knowing that this was what Engersol had summoned her to see.

Engersol, who had been standing with his back to Hildie, his eyes fixed on the monitor, spoke without turning around. “It’s Amy. She’s already learned how to handle the graphics program.”

“But it can’t be,” Hildie replied. “It took Adam five days before he discovered how to manipulate it at all. And Amy’s only been awake for—”

“Twelve hours,” Engersol finished.

“Can she hear us?” Hildie asked.

Engersol shook his head. “I’ve turned the sound system off. But I’ve been watching her all evening, and I’m not sure what to do. She’s learning much faster than Adam did.”

He handed Hildie a stack of computer printouts, which Hildie quickly scanned, although most of the numbers and graphs meant little to her. On the last page she saw a comparison graph showing the learning curves of the two brains in the tanks.

Adam Aldrich’s brain had remained quiescent for the first two days after it had been put into the tank, and it