“I’m a construction engineer. A jack-jock.”
“Oho! That explains it! You must be very good at it.”
He knew she was just teasing him along to distract him from her preparations, but he liked it anyway. It was easy to imagine being in bed with such a woman, as he half lay in this supremely comfortable recliner and felt her gentle touch on his skin. He didn’t even feel the prick of the needle when she set the IV. He just felt increasingly relaxed as the tube began its flow. He wasn’t aware of the nurse’s departure and didn’t care; he just seemed to float, perfectly relaxed.
A young man entered the chamber. He moved quickly, as if hyperactive. He was thin, with nondescript brown hair and rapidly darting gray eyes, reminding Quaid a bit of a foraging mouse. “Hello, Mr. Quaid,” he said. “I’m Ernie, your technical assistant. Dr. Lull will be with you in a moment. Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.” Indeed he was! Any more comfort, and he’d be asleep.
“I’ll just set the ‘space helmet’ here,” Ernie said with a jerky smile as he drew the device out on the end of a metal elbow arm. “Sort of a joke, that; you see, it resembles—”
“I get the joke,” Quaid said. They were treating him like a child. It was fun when a woman did it, but not when a gawky adolescent man did.
Ernie lowered the burnished metal bowl over Quaid’s head. “This your first trip?”
“Mm-hmm.” Actually, it was reminiscent of a space helmet, and he could easily imagine himself stepping out on the barren landscape of Mars with such a device on his head. But it was actually a brain wave scanner, he knew, used to read and modify that portion of his mental activity that related to memories. This helmet was probably worth thousands of credits.
Ernie carefully aligned the complex scientific instrument and locked it in place. Quaid scowled slightly as a strap chafed his head, too snug.
“Don’t worry,” Ernie said, adjusting the strap. “Things hardly ever fuck up.”
Just get on with it, twerp, Quaid thought. He was ready for Mars.
The door opened and a birdlike middle-aged woman entered. She wore a stylish pants suit that didn’t do enough for her. Her body was too skinny and her hair too red. This was an artificial woman in the bad sense: she was trying to make herself look competent and successful, and succeeding mainly in making herself look ungainly.
“Good evening, Mr…” She paused to check the video chart, obviously at a loss for his name. She found it. “Quaid, I’m Dr. Lull.” She spoke with a Swedish accent, and treated him with an impersonal conviviality that would have grated had he not been sedated.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said insincerely.
The amenities over, Dr. Lull donned a surgical smock, then flipped through Quaid’s computer chart.
“Ernie, patch in matrix 62b, 37, and—” She looked at Quaid. “Would you like to integrate some alien stuff?”
“Two-headed monsters?” he asked doubtfully.
She laughed with something approaching actual feeling. “Don’t you keep up with the news? We’re doing alien artifacts these days.”
Oh. “Sure. Why not?” The notion intrigued him. Maybe that was one reason he was so interested in Mars. He hoped to explore, to discover the remnants of some vast lost alien complex, superscience, stun the world with the discovery, bathe in the notoriety of his achievement…
Dr. Lull tossed the matrix to Ernie. That suggested what she thought of such notions: just a bit of fiction on a cartridge.
“You got it,” Ernie said.
As Ernie plugged in the proper cartridges, Dr. Lull fastened straps over Quaid’s arms, legs, and torso to hold the rest of him securely in place. This alarmed him slightly; did they think he was going to go into convulsions?
“Been married long, Mr. Quaid?” Dr. Lull inquired, actually seeming interested. Maybe a woman of her contours was attuned to the notion of being married, having trouble achieving it.
“Eight years.” That surprised him as he heard himself answer. Oh, it was true—but he realized that Lori still looked no older than twenty-five. She had aged hardly a whit; his mental picture of her on the day of their marriage was unchanged from his memory of her session with him this morning. Odd that he hadn’t noticed this before. Not that it bothered him; he’d be happy to have her keep her appearance for the next forty years.
Yet even so, that woman of his Mars dream—how old was she? Not out of her twenties, surely.
“Slipping away for a little hanky-panky?” Dr. Lull asked, licking her lips. She was definitely interested in the subject; her tone was positive rather than condemning.
Quaid realized that even unattractive middle-aged women had dreams. She was indulging in hers by playing a muted verbal footsie with him, perhaps picturing herself in bed with him just the way he pictured himself in bed with any young and sexy woman he encountered. For the first time he realized that this sort of fancy might be an imposition on the other party, even when unvoiced. At times he had bantered with a young woman, only to have her turn away as if affronted, when he hadn’t meant anything by it. Now, picturing himself as the object of Dr. Lull’s lust—himself strapped down in this chair while she slowly stripped off his clothes and handled him in whatever way might titillate her—he understood the woman’s side of it. He did not care to be victimized by her imagination. “Not really,” he replied shortly.
“All systems go,” Ernie said.
Dr. Lull was all business again. “Good. Then we’re all set.” She stepped on a lever, and the back of Quaid’s chair lowered to a fully reclining position. “Ready for dreamland?”
Quaid nodded. It suddenly occurred to him that the helmet might have been reading his thoughts all this time. Did she know what he had been thinking about her? He hoped not!
She reached to the tubing and opened the IV drip. Quaid was startled again; he had thought it was already on! Had all that relaxation been strictly imagination?
“I’ll be asking you a few questions, Mr. Quaid,” Dr. Lull continued, “so we can fine-tune the wish-fulfillment program. Please be completely honest.”
Not likely! But he was sure he could handle her questions, which wouldn’t approach his secret thoughts.
Now he really was beginning to feel the effect of the anesthetic. He wasn’t floating, he was sinking. His mental barriers were descending; he no longer cared if she knew his opinion of her.
Dr. Lull did not ask a question immediately. Instead she checked his vital signs. She was being careful with his health; that much he appreciated. That business about a poor sap getting lobotomized had bothered him; he didn’t want any such accident.
Now she was set. “Your sexual orientation?”
Easy! “Hetero.” She was just zeroing him in, making sure his reactions aligned with their indications.
She nodded. “Now take a look at this monitor.”
He gazed drowsily at a vague female outline on a computer screen he hadn’t noticed before.
“How do you prefer your women?” she asked. “Blonde, brunette, redhead, Negro, Oriental?”
“Brunette.” But Lori was a blonde. It was the Mars-woman who was brunette. Still, it was the truth—more than he hoped the doctor realized. There was no doubt that Lori was all that a man could ask for. Did his reservation about her stem solely from the color of her hair? He would have to think about that, when he had time to think without being spied on.
He heard soft typing to the side. That would be Ernie, putting the specs into the system. The schematic image adjusted to match Quaid’s taste: the woman became brunette, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a slightly olive skin. Not quite like the one in his dream, but he didn’t care to have that match perfectly. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just that some things were too private to be programmed. Maybe it was that he didn’t want his true dream woman distorted by an artificial memory. Let this be some other woman, similar, but not so close as to be confusing. The memory might not be as nice, but caution was best.