Read Online Another Life by Peter Anghelides - Free Book Online Page B

Ouch!’
    Toshiko had rapped hard on the top of the helmet with her knuckles. ‘Pay attention, this is the science bit.’ As she spoke, Owen could tell exactly where she was in the room from the way her voice moved between the two speakers. ‘This is my early prototype. It should keep you happy while I try to sort out my stress test harness for the main implementation without the attached input devices.’
    ‘Sounds kinky.’
    ‘Software test harness, you perv.’ He could hear her typing away at his computer keyboard while she set things up. ‘The next stage will be to use projectors so that the user’s not encumbered by the headgear and gloves. A proper, 3-D immersive environment, with natural interaction gestures. So you’ll be able to touch objects, physically sculpt the world to make things.’
    Owen nodded, and the green grid nodded with him. ‘You mean I could make things happen by doing stuff, not just by describing stuff?’
    ‘Exactly. Hang on, nearly there. Yes, there you go. As it is, what you’re wearing there is a thousand times better than the commercially available version of Second Reality . I’ve debugged a lot of their stuff, so you’ll get fewer system crashes.’
    ‘Smartarse.’
    ‘And as you can see, with the processing power we’ve got available through the Hub, the user environment is more photo-realistic too.’
    Owen knew how Toshiko loved to talk technogeek. He was letting her chatter away without trying to understand it, but that last bit begged a question. ‘What do you mean, photo-realistic?’
    There was a pause. ‘Ah. Sorry. Let me plug your helmet into the grid.’
    Owen could hear her looking for a connection, scrabbling around between his knees. This looked promising…
    And then he didn’t need an explanation about this new system any more. He could see what she meant. He could experience it, right now. Because the world had come to life.
    He was in the Lunatic Fringe. Sitting in one of the barber’s chairs. Only they weren’t the blocky shapes in primary colours that he’d last seen on his flatscreen display. These looked like cracked red leather, the machine stitching clearly visible, some of it fraying on the arms where a thousand previous customers had levered themselves in and out of position for a haircut.
    The chipped linoleum floor was strewn with hair clippings, patches of black and brown, blond and ginger that bore witness to previous customers. One of the previous customers, Kvasir, was still there, also on the linoleum, his body and limbs spread out clumsily in the scattered hair. His severed head, still implausibly in its horned helmet, lay against the bottom of the panelled wall, with black blood coagulated around the base of the neck. ‘Change for a tenner,’ remembered Owen. The realism of the dead body in front of him somehow made the earlier fracas more embarrassing.
    He turned at the sound of horses clopping by the shop window. A neon sign flashed beside the entrance door, weirdly illuminating the armour of the passing pedestrians. Something alarmed a passing horse. The animal gave a shrill whinny, and it half-reared up. The mounted rider attempted to rein it in, but the horse’s nostrils flared and it reared again. A nearby maid in a mob cap shrieked in surprise – ‘Oh my Lord!’ – and dropped her bundle of provisions.
    ‘What do you think?’ asked Toshiko’s voice.
    He considered for a moment. ‘Nice tits. You look good in pink.’
    Penny Pasteur was standing in front of him, talking in Toshiko’s voice. She tutted and sighed. She held out her bare arms and waggled her fingers in the air. The bangles on her wrists jingled as she moved, but Owen could also hear keys clicking, as though she was using an invisible typewriter. Penny spun on her heel like dancing a pirouette, and was instantly transformed.
    Now she looked more like Toshiko Sato, down to the skin tone and short, black hair. Instead of a fluffy pink bikini she wore a smart