“But Amy—”
“Amy was a wonderful little girl,” Hildie said. “We all loved her, and none of us will ever forget her.” She hesitated just a moment, then looked deep into Josh’s eyes. “Have you called your mother yet?”
Josh shook his head.
“Wouldn’t you like to?” Hildie asked.
Josh took a deep breath. “I–I don’t know,” he stammered. “I’m afraid if I tell her what happened, she might make me go home.”
“And you don’t want to go home?”
Josh shook his head again. “I want to stay here,” he said. “I like it here.”
Hildie held her arms out. “And I like having you here,” she declared. “And I think maybe you could use a hug right now.” She smiled at him. “I certainly know I could, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have it from than you.”
Josh felt another icy chill of fear go through him.
She was lying.
There was something in her voice, or her eyes, that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
She didn’t want a hug at all. She just wanted him to think she did.
But why?
And then, in an instant, he knew. What she really wanted was to find out if he’d actually give her a hug, or if he was already so suspicious of her that he’d avoid it.
Forcing tears to come into his eyes, he made himself run to Hildie Kramer and throw his arms around her neck. As her own arms closed around him, a shudder ran through his body, but it wasn’t a shudder of grief for Amy Carlson at all.
It was a shudder of fear for what Hildie Kramer might have done to her.
And might do to him, too, if she knew what he suspected.
That night, long after he should have been asleep, Josh MacCallum was at his computer.
All evening he’d been thinking about the idea that had come to him in the minutes before Hildie suddenly appeared at his door. The more he thought about it, the more the idea grew in his mind.
If he was right, then somewhere, buried deep in the computers that were all over the campus, there would be files that were used to keep Adam’s brain — and Amy’s, too — alive, despite the fact that their bodies were dead.
All he had to do was find them.
But how?
His eyes fell on the virtual reality apparatus that had been issued to him when the new computer had been installed in his room the day he’d enrolled in the artificial intelligence seminar.
The same apparatus that Adam Aldrich had been so interested in.
Could he somehow use it to search the files of the computers?
He began setting it up, using his modem to tap into the large mainframe that was housed in the A. I. lab in the new wing next door. He called up the directories of the various virtual reality programs that were stored there, and studied the list.
The third one from the bottom caught his eye.
“Microchip.”
What could that be? Some kind of trip inside the computer?
Or maybe not a trip. Maybe a new way of operating the computer!
His pulse quickening, Josh began running the program, then put on the virtual reality mask, headphone, and glove.
A strange world opened before his eyes, a world composed of shimmering images of strange mazelike corridors. Josh felt as though he’d been dropped into the middle of the maze. Everywhere he looked, paths led away from him, paths that led into other paths, interconnecting, crisscrossing, twisting around each other in a pattern far too complex for him to understand.
He turned his head, and the illusion of changing his perspective within the maze was perfect. And yet in every direction there were only more paths, more turns of the maze.
He reached out with his gloved hand. On the screen, only inches from his eyes, another hand appeared, a hand that seemed to react as if it were his own. Now he could touch the walls of the maze.
He moved his hand close to one of the surfaces. As it approached the shimmering wall, he felt a tingling, as if a charge of electricity had run through him.
Something changed, and the pattern of pathways before him shifted.
He touched another wall, and everything shifted again.
Switches.
Everything he touched was a switch, and every switch he touched caused a series of changes to take place.
It was like the interior of a computer chip, where masses of information were stored in digital form, accessed, arranged, and rearranged by nothing more than millions and millions of electronic switches.
He began exploring the maze, touching his fingers first to one wall, then to another. With every touch, the pattern changed once again, but after a while Josh began to see a form to the pattern, began to find ways to make the patterns repeat themselves.
Then, from behind him, he heard a voice.
Jeff Aldrich’s voice.
Josh spun around, forgetting the mask in his shock at hearing Jeff’s voice, expecting to see Jeff standing at the door of his room.
But what he saw was more of the electronic maze that seemed to spread away to infinity all around him.
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 rattìesnake, 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 rattìesnake dissolved into another, this one of Adam himself.