A whimper emerged from Margaret as she stared at the image on the monitor, and she clutched at her husband’s hand.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” Josh said, cocking his head as he looked up at the face of his friend.
Amy smiled. “I hate them. I always hated them. So I’m not seeing myself with them anymore. Besides, I don’t need them anymore, do I?”
“This isn’t happening,” Frank Carlson breathed. “This can’t possibly be real.”
On the screen Amy’s eyes shifted as if she were actually looking at him. “But it is real, Daddy,” she said. “It’s really me. I can’t even tell you how it all works. It’s sort of like the computer is my body now. I know how to use it, and make it work, and do what I want it to do.”
“No!” Margaret Carlson cried, rising to her feet and taking a step toward the tank. “Well get you out of there! There has to be something—”
“There’s not, Mama,” Amy said, her voice cutting through the torrent of words spilling from her mother. “I’ve thought about it a lot. But it isn’t possible. I’ve studied everything, and nobody can put my brain back into a body. There’s too many things no one knows. And even if someone could do it, it would mean that someone else would have to die so I could have their body.” For the first time her voice took on a note of anger. “It wouldn’t be any different from what Dr. Engersol did to Adam and me.”
“No!” Margaret said again, as if the word itself could dispel the truth of what Amy had said. “There has to be something! There has to be a way!”
“There is, Mama,” Amy said softly. “There is something I can do. I can let my brain die.”
Margaret gasped, her eyes shifting to her husband. “What is she saying?” she pleaded. “What does she mean?”
“I can’t live like this, Mama,” Amy went on. “I know what happened to Adam, and to everyone else. Adam changed, Mama. He wasn’t like himself anymore. He started hating everyone, and if Dr. Engersol hadn’t killed him, he could have done anything. He could have gone into any computer anywhere and done anything he wanted. And if my brain stays alive, I could do the same thing.”
“But you could stay here,” Josh protested, instantly grasping what Amy was saying. “If the computer wasn’t hooked to a modem—”
On the monitor Amy’s head shook. “I don’t want to do that, Josh. I don’t want to stay trapped in here forever. So I’m going to go away. I’m going to end this project and go away.”
“No,” Josh wailed. “Don’t die, Amy! Please?”
On the monitor Amy smiled. “You have to understand, Josh. I have to go away now. It’s the only thing I can do.” Her eyes moved, seeming to fix once more on her mother. “I love you, Mama,” she said softly. “And I’m glad you came. At least I get to say good-bye to you.”
Margaret clutched once more at her husband’s arm. “Stop her, Frank,” she begged. “Don’t let her do it!”
But Frank Carlson, who had been listening carefully to his daughter, shook his head. “It’s all right, Amy,” he said quietly. “Do whatever you have to do, and remember that we love you. We always did, and we always will.”
Amy’s smile faded away. “I love you, too, Daddy,” she whispered. Then, as the people gathered in the room watched, her image faded slowly away. A moment later alarms sounded as the equipment supporting Amy’s brain began to shut down.
“Do something!” Margaret Carlson screamed. “For God’s sake, someone do something!”
Instantly, Josh went to work, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried to restore the programs that were dropping out of the computer’s memory banks and the systems that were grinding to a halt as their supporting programs disappeared.
The keyboard failed to respond.
As everyone in the laboratory watched helplessly, Amy Carlson finally died.
EPILOGUE
Josh had been back in Eden for almost a week, and as he started home from school, his mind returned once more to what had happened at Barrington only a few days ago.
He found himself thinking about it more and more, despite the fact that his mother — and everyone else, too — had told him it was better not to think about it, but just to try to forget it.
But how could he just forget it?
He’d been there! He’d seen it!
Seen Hildie’s body in the elevator, and then Dr. Engersol and Jeff, lying on the floor down in the lab.
Adam’s brain, sitting in a puddle of water, dead.
And Amy’s brain, still alive in its tank, still hooked to the computer.
He’d even seen Amy’s brain die.
He’d never seen anyone die before, and the images on the monitors were still vivid in his mind, all their displays gone flat. He’d stared at them for a long time, then his eyes had drifted away from them, fixing instead on the mass of tissue suspended in the tank.
It hadn’t looked any different at all. The folds in the cortex all looked the same, the color was still the same gray hue shot through with the bluish network of blood vessels.
It didn’t seem right.
If Amy was dead, her brain should have looked different.
But it hadn’t, and finally, feeling Alan Dover’s hand on his shoulder, he’d looked up.
“Is she really dead?” he’d asked, his voice shaking.
“I’m afraid so,” the policeman had told him. “Come on. Why don’t you and I go outside? They don’t need us down here anymore.”
Riding up in the secret elevator, Josh had felt a chill go through him as he thought about what had happened to Hildie that morning.
Would he always think about it, every time he got into an elevator for the rest of his life?
When they’d gotten to Dr. Engersol’s apartment, he’d ignored the clanking old elevator that was still waiting at the fourth floor landing, choosing to go down the stairs instead.
“Someone called your mother, Josh,” Alan Dover had told him. “She’ll be here tonight to take you home.”
Josh had barely heard the words, for the emotions he’d held in check all morning had finally overwhelmed him. He began sobbing, throwing his arms around the police officer, despite the fact that all his friends were watching him.
“It’s all right,” Alan Dover had told him. “It’s all over now.”
But it hadn’t been over. He’d spent almost the whole day talking to the policemen, and the doctor, and a lot of people whose names he didn’t even remember. He’d answered all the questions he could, and explained over and over again what had happened when he’d put on the virtual reality mask and seen Adam in the computer. He’d even tried to show them, but when they’d gone up to his room, and he’d set up the computer and put on the mask and the glove, it hadn’t worked.
He knew what had happened: before she’d died, Amy had erased all the programs that Dr. Engersol had set up, all the programs that had let him actually see inside the computer.
For that, he was almost certain, had been what he’d been doing.
It hadn’t been a simulation at all.
The program had been set up so that Adam could show him what it would be like to be inside the computer, to have been part of the world that he and Amy had been taken into.
The world that had given him nightmares and made him feel that he was going insane.
When Josh had finally told them everything he could, and his mother arrived to help him pack his clothes and books, he’d said good-bye to the few kids who were still there.