"Can I try one now?"
Beth, her hand still on Ben's shoulder, answered for her husband. "Of course. Meg and I will get dinner ready while you're downstairs."
Meg, coming in from outside, protested. "That's unfair! Why can't I join them?"
Hal laughed. "Well . . . Ben might be a bit embarrassed."
"What do you mean?" Meg asked, cuddling the struggling kitten under her chin.
"Just that it's a full-body experience. Ben has to be naked in the harness."
Meg laughed. "Is that all?" She turned away slightly, a faint color in her cheeks. "He was practically naked when he was working with the morph."
Hal looked at his son, narrowing his eyes. "You've been using the morph, Ben? What for?"
"I'll tell you," Ben said, watching Meg a moment, surprised by her sudden rebelliousness. "But later. After I've tried the pai pi."
the cellars beneath the cottage had been added in his great-greatgrandfather's time, but it was only in the last decade that his father had set up a studio in one of the large, low-ceilinged rooms. Beneath stark artificial lighting, electronic equipment filled two-thirds of the floor space, a narrow corridor between the freestanding racks leading to a cluttered desk by the far wall. To the left of the desk a curtain had been drawn across, concealing the open space beyond.
Ben went through. The eight pai pi lay on the desk, the small, dark, rectangular cases small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. He picked them up, one at a time, surprised by the weight of them. They looked like lozenges or like the "chops" executives used to seal official documents, each one imprinted with the logo of the manufacturing company. Pai pi—the name meant, literally, "a hundred pens"— provided full-body experiences, a medium that had blossomed briefly in the earliest days of the City as an entertainment for the very rich. The cassettes themselves were only the software, the operational instructions; the hardware stood off to one side.
Hal pulled back a curtain. "There! What do you think?" The couch was a work of art in itself, its curved, boatlike sides inlaid in pearl and ivory, the dark, see-through hood shaped like the lid of an ancient sarcophagus. At present the hood was pulled back, like a giant insect's wing, exposing the padded interior. Dark blue silks—the same blue-black the sky takes on before the dark— masked the internal workings of the machine, while depressed into the padded silk was a crude human shape. Like the instruments of some delicious mechanism of torture, fine filaments extended from all parts of the depression, the threadlike wires clustered particularly thickly about the head. These were the "hundred pens" from which the art form derived its name, though there were only eighty-one in actuality. When the machine was operational, these input points fed information to all the major loci of nerves in the recipient's body.
"It's beautiful," said Ben, going close and examining the couch with his fingers. He bent and sniffed at the slightly musty innards. "I wonder if he used it much?"
It was a deceptively simple device. A tiny, one-man dream palace. You laid down and were connected up; then, when the hood was lowered, you began to dream. Dreams that were supposed to be as real as waking.
He turned, facing his father again. "Have you tried it out?"
"One of the technicians did. With permission, of course."
"And?"
Hal smiled. "Why don't you get in? Try it for yourself."
He hesitated, then began to strip off, barely conscious of his father watching, the fascination of the machine casting a spell over him. Naked, he turned, facing his father. "What now?"
Hal came up beside him, his movements slower, heavier, than Ben remembered, then bent down beside the machine and unfolded a set of steps.
"Climb inside, Ben. I'll wire you up."
Fifteen minutes later he was ready, the filaments attached, the hood lowered. With an unexpected abruptness it began.
He was walking in a park, the solid shapes of trees and buildings surrounding him on every side. Overhead the sky seemed odd. Then he realized he was inside the City and the sky was a ceiling fifty ch'i above him. He was aware of the ghostly sense of movement in his arms and legs, of the nebulous presence of other people about him, but nothing clear. Everything seemed schematic, imprecise. Even so, the overall illusion of walking in a park was very strong.
A figure approached him, growing clearer as it came closer, as if forming ghostlike from a mist of nothingness. A surly-looking youth, holding a knife.
The youth's mouth moved. Words came to Ben, echoing across the space between them.
"Hand over your money or I'll cut you!"
He felt his body tense, his mouth move and form words. They drifted out from him, unconnected to anything he was thinking.
"Try and get it, scumbag!"
Time seemed to slow. He felt himself move backward as the youth lunged with the knife. Turning, he grabbed the youth's arm and twisted, making the knife fall from his hand. He felt a tingle of excitement pass through him. The moment had seemed so real, the arm so solid and actual. Then the youth was falling away from him, stumbling on the ground, and he was following up, his leg kicking out, straight and hard, catching the youth in the side.
He felt the two ribs break under the impact of his kick, the sound—exaggerated for effect—seeming to fill the park. He moved away—back to normal time now— hearing the youth moan, then hawk up blood, the gobbet richly, garishly red.
He felt the urge to kick again, but his body was moving back, turning away, a wash of artificial satisfaction passing through him.
Then, as abruptly as it began, it ended.
Through the darkened glass of the hood he saw the dark shape of his father lean across and take the cassette from the slot. A moment later the catches that held down the hood were released with a hiss of air and the canopy began to lift.
"Well? What do you think?"
"I don't know," Ben answered thoughtfully. "In some ways it's quite powerful. For a moment or two the illusion really had me in its grasp. But it was only for a moment."
"What's wrong with it, then?"
Ben tried to sit up but found himself restrained.
"Here, let me do that."
He lay back, relaxing as his father freed the tiny suction pads from the flesh at the back of his scalp and neck.
"Well. . ." Ben began, then laughed. "For a start it's much too crude."
Hal laughed with him. "What did you expect, Ben? Perfection? It was a complex medium. Think of the disciplines involved."
"I have been. And that's what I mean. It lacks all subtlety. What's more, it ends at the flesh."
"How do you mean?"
"These . . ." He pulled one of the tiny suckers from his arm. "They provide only the vaguest sensation of movement. Only the shadow of the actuality. If they were somehow connected directly to the nerves, the muscles, then the illusion would be more complete. Likewise the connections at the head. Why not input them direct into the brain?"
"It was tried, Ben. They found that it caused all kind of problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"Muscular atrophy. Seizures. Catalepsy."
Ben frowned. "I don't see why. You're hardly in there longer than three minutes."
"In that case, yes. But there were longer tapes. Some as long as half an hour. Continual use of them brought on the symptoms."
"I still don't see why. It's only the sensation of movement, after all."
"One of the reasons they were banned was because they were so addictive. Especially the more garish productions, the sex and violence stims, for instance. After a while, you see, the body begins to respond to the illusion: the lips form the words, the muscles make the movements. It's that unconscious mimicry that did the damage. It led to loss of control over motor activity and, in a few cases, to death."
Ben peeled the remaining filaments from his body and climbed out.