Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Read online

  Caine paused to let Hiroko have the first hug, laughter hiding in his voice. “My lord, Alice, did you discover the fountain we Foxes never found?”

  Alice grinned through her tears as she hugged Hiroko, the diminutive woman’s embrace as fierce as Meredith’s had been. “I missed you, Alice.”

  “I missed you, too, Hiroko.”

  “Here, here, my turn,” rumbled Caine, lifting Alice’s hands from Hiroko and spinning Alice into his arms. “Inuit time,” he declared, bending down.

  Alice laughed and rubbed noses with him, then said, “Seems to me, my good Doctor Easley, that if anyone had found the fountain of youth, ’twould be thee and not me.”

  “Bah,” Caine growled but grinned as he stepped back and ran a hand through his coppery-blond hair, “I just do a nip and tuck here and there . . . or suck the suet out of others—a lipovampire, I vaant your faaaat. But you, me loverly gel, you have no need of me sarvices.”

  “Come, sit down,” urged Hiroko, her black eyes dancing as she led Alice to a chair Eric held for her. “You must be famished, and we have sandwiches and fruit.”

  “And your coffee-milk half-and-half,” added Meredith, handing her a cup filled with creamy tan liquid.

  Alice gratefully accepted the cup. “You remembered.”

  “Hah!” Caine grinned. “Who could forget such tepidity? Alice, keep drinking that stuff and you’ll never grow hair on your chest.”

  “Thank all the gods,” said Eric, rolling his eyes heavenward.

  “Up the Black Foxes!” called out Hiroko, glee in her voice.

  Up the Black Foxes! they all responded, reaching for cups and glasses and cans, Alice grinning and sipping her drink after first holding it on high.

  “Look, I hate to interrupt this reunion,” came a peevish voice from one of the people Alice did not know, “but could we get on with the briefing? I mean, we’re already three hours late.” The speaker was a tall angular man in his early forties.

  “Come now, Doctor Stein, everything in its good time,” said a silver-haired, portly man, peering over a set of half-glasses. “Give the lady a chance to catch her breath.”

  The irritated man, evidently Doctor Stein, pursed his lips and seemed about to retort, but there came a rapping from the front of the room. And there, behind a lectern at the side of the stage, stood a slender woman, she, too, in her forties, though had she worn makeup she could have passed for someone ten years younger. Her hair fell to her shoulders and was that indeterminate color between dark blond and light brown, and her eyes shone pale blue.

  “Henry is quite right, John.” Her accent was definitely British. “We are indeed rather later than expected. Let us all be seated and begin.” As chairs were shuffled and people sat, the woman’s gaze turned to Alice and her friends. “Welcome, Black Foxes, to Coburn Limited. You’ve all met the members of our project team—except for you, Doctor Maxon, unavoidably delayed by our weather.” As if to underscore her words, a hard gust of rain momentarily pelted the window. “I am Doctor Toni Adkins, head of this project. My Ph.D. is in psychology; for the past eight years I have specialised in the psychology of AI.”

  AI? Artificial intelligence? Alice glanced at Eric. He nodded and mouthed, [That’s right: artificial intelligence]. Damn! Eric’s doing it again. Her attention veered back to the podium as Doctor Adkins continued.

  “At this end of the table on my left is Doctor Drew Meyer, Ph.D., physics.” Alice leaned forward to peer past Eric and saw a thin, balding man, perhaps in his late thirties, somewhat abstracted. He seemed to be doodling on a minicompad in hand. He glanced up at her and nodded, then returned to his doodling.

  “Across from him sits Doctor John Greyson, Ph.D., philosophy, specialising in ethics.” Alice smiled at the portly, silver-haired gentleman who had “defended” her. He pulled his half-glasses down to the end of his nose and peered over them and smiled back.

  “Next to John is Doctor Alya Ramanni, Ph.D., biochemistry.” A small, nut-brown East Indian woman of indeterminate age—perhaps in her fifties—nodded and smiled at Alice. Alice found that she could not help but grin back.

  In the distance lightning flared.

  “Across the table from you is Doctor Henry Stein, neurology.” His black hair combed straight back, Doctor Stein sat with his lips drawn thin, somehow managing to ignore Alice while looking straight at her.

  Alice nodded his way, but received no response. Cold bastard!

  Far-off thunder rumbled.

  “Next is our corporate solicitor, Mister Mark Perry.”

  “Lawyer,” corrected Mark, a slender dark-haired man in his forties. “Corporate lawyer, LL.B.”

  Good lord! Silk tie, gold diamond ring, a three-piece pin-stripe suit with briefcase, and a shark’s smile. Talk about your caricatures. Alice forced a brief nod.

  “Next to Mark is the owner of the corporation, Mister Arthur Coburn.”

  Alice would have recognized Coburn without the introduction, for she’d seen him countless times on the holovid—accepting awards, driving in charity races, heading up conferences, scuba diving, cutting ribbons, and other such. He was a small, wiry man in his late sixties, with sun-browned skin and a sun-creased face and burr-cut silver hair. Alice thought of rawhide as she nodded to him, receiving a like nod in return. Coburn cleared his throat. “I hope to join the Foxes in the adventure ahead.”

  “And lastly,” said Toni Adkins, “at the far end of the table sits Doctor Timothy Rendell, Ph.D., computer science. He is also our game expert, and the one responsible for choosing you and your comrades to be our alpha test team.” Timothy was a young man in his early thirties, with rust-red hair tied back in a ponytail. His red tee shirt bore the dictum Reality is for people who can’t handle fantasy.

  “Well actually you chose yourselves six years back,” said Timothy, “by the margin of your win in Milwaukee. And when I discovered that Eric lived nearby, well, what other choice was there? I mean, your VR team is legend.” He turned and saluted the banner. “Up the Black Foxes!”

  Again lightning sheared the darkness, close this time, thunder slapping after.

  “Up the Black Foxes,” murmured Alice, her voice lost in the reverberation.

  Timothy reached forward and took an orange from one of the baskets, as Doctor Adkins gestured about and said, “There are many others at work on this project: scientists, programmers, technicians, logicians, and the like. We here in this room merely head up the various departments. But together, all of us, we stand on the threshold of an exciting future, all made possible by one you have yet to meet.” She peered at the lectern and pressed a minicompad. The screen behind her flicked into life, and a vortex of color filled the glass, like the hues of a spectrum steadily and endlessly spiraling down into a bottomless abyss. An androgynous, measured, electronic voice emanated from the centerpoint of the slow-turning swirl: “Hello, Black Foxes. You may call me Avery, though my true name is AIVR. I am your AI.”

  Outside a thunderbolt seared the night, glaring light stabbed into the room, thunder whelmed at the windows, and rain hammered down.

  3

  Proposal

  (Coburn Facility)

  Good lord! A real AI? Again Alice glanced at Eric. He nodded. Dammit, Eric! Stop reading my thoughts!

  As Doctor Adkins started to speak, Mark Perry interjected, “Toni, before we go any further”—he unlocked his briefcase and extracted a sheaf of papers—”our guests need to sign these waivers.” He stepped ’round the table, handing out a document to each of the five. “What you will hear is top secret. There are several other companies who’d give their eye teeth to know what you are about to learn. This document is legally binding, and holds you responsible for keeping your knowledge to yourself and to those authorized to know, not allowing the information to fall into the wrong hands.”

  Alice glanced at her copy, swiftly reading down through the legalese.

  “Oy, wait!” exclaimed Caine. “This says that we agree to hold Coburn In
dustries blameless in case something should go wrong.”

  “Merely a standard malpractice line, Doctor Easley,” responded Perry. “Just like those you have your patients sign. No different.”

  “But in my profession, Mister Perry, there are risks to the patient: potential for unexpected allergic reactions to drugs; anesthetic shock; and other such. Too, there are unjust lawsuits to avoid—frivolous, fraudulent, and malign. What in god’s name do we have to be wary of here?”

  With a groan Doctor Stein rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and irritatedly began drumming his fingers on the conference table.

  Mark Perry shrugged. “Look, sign it now. After the briefing, if you wish, you can walk away from here free and clear, the agreement being that you simply will keep your mouth shut concerning anything you’ve heard. All right?” He smiled his toothy smile.

  Caine looked at the others and grinned, turning up his hands. “Why do I feel like chum cast upon shark-infested waters?” Then he wrenched a pen from his pocket and swiftly scribbled his name on the line.

  Alice sighed and reached for Caine’s pen.

  When all papers had been signed and dated, Perry passed the forms to other people at the table for them to ink their signatures as witnesses.

  Eric slid one of the sandwich trays to Alice. She chose egg salad; the bread was slightly crusted from exposure to the air. Even so, when she took a bite, it was delicious.

  As Perry tamped the documents on the table to square them up and then slipped them back into his briefcase, Doctor Adkins introduced Avery to each of the newcomers. Alice noted that a pair of motorized miniature vidcams above the stage tracked each introduction. Avery’s eyes? She felt somewhat foolish when her own turn came to nod and speak to the screen, murmuring “Avery” in response to his/her/its “Hello, Doctor Maxon.”

  “Now that we’ve all met one another, including our late arrival,” growled Doctor Stein, “could we get on with it?”

  Silver-haired Doctor Greyson peered over his half-glasses and gestured at the storm outside. “Henry, stop trying to blame this poor girl. We were delayed by an act of God.”

  “Bah,” came the response, “as if there were a god. Look, Greyson, I’ve told you before, we make our own opportunities, and—”

  At the podium Toni Adkins rapped the lectern for attention, breaking Stein’s incipient tirade before it could turn into a full-fledged diatribe.

  To her left the screen swirled in silence.

  “Let us proceed,” said Toni. And when she had everyone’s attention—”Black Foxes, you are here to test a new kind of virtual reality—not the old kind where you don a special visor and special gloves and enter upon an electronic stage to merely play the part of a character—to role-play as if your character were the real you. Oh no. Instead, when you enter this virtual reality, you will truly forget who you are, you will forget your life as biologists and authors, as artists and doctors, as bookstore owners and corporate executives; you will actually become whatever character you’ve chosen to be in a virtual reality indistinguishable from the real world.”

  “Good lord!” interrupted Caine. “You mean we’ll really be inside an adventure?”

  Toni smiled. “Much more than that, Doctor Easley. It will be as if there were no existence outside the virtual reality you’ve chosen to enter. In fact, this virtual reality will be your true world and the character you choose will be the true you. No more role-playing; instead, for you it will be true life.”

  Caine shook his head. “You mean I won’t be me? Caine Easley? But instead, if we go in as Black Foxes there will only be Kane, kick-ass warrior and gentle-handed healer?”

  “Exactly so,” said Toni.

  Caine turned to the others and grinned. “God, what an opportunity! To actually be Kane. . . .”

  “How do you accomplish this?” asked Alice.

  “We don’t,” answered Toni. She turned to the screen of moiling hues. “Avery is the one responsible.”

  “I can give you any reality you desire” came Avery’s androgynous voice, “adventure, romance, fantasy, pulp, science fiction, pornography—”

  Mark Perry broke in: “We expect this ultimately”—he smiled his oily smile—”to virtually replace all other forms of entertainment.”

  Alice shook her head in disbelief. “You mean you are using an honest-to-god artificial intelligence merely to run a game?”

  “Not a game, Miss Maxon,” replied Perry. “Not a game. Instead it is a whole new reality. A whole new existence. As Avery says, adventure, romance, the acting out of every desire, sating every lust. Hell, before long people will prefer those realities to this.”

  “My point exactly,” said Doctor Greyson, removing his half-glasses and running a hand through his silver hair. “The impact on society will be devastating, and—”

  “Faugh!” retorted Perry. “They said the same thing about art, about books, about radio, movies, television, vids, holos, whatever new comes down the line. Hell, the cavemen probably said it when someone started drawing on the walls.”

  Greyson held up a hand, as if to stop the flow of Perry’s words. “What you say is in a measure true. But, Mark, nothing before in mankind’s past has had the potential for such total damage. Why, its effect will be more devastating than that of the pandemic.”

  Doctor Stein’s cold voice broke in. “Worse than the pandemic? Bah!”

  A babble filled the room, and Toni rapped the lectern for silence. Reluctantly it came. “As I have said many times, those of us on this project, we will not settle this debate.”

  Arthur Coburn quietly cleared his throat. All eyes turned to the head of Coburn Industries. “Toni is quite right. It will be settled in Washington, and in London, in Paris and Berlin and Rome, and in other capitals of the world where there are viable governments, or in those cities where recovering countries will one day have governments.” He turned toward Alice. “Yet, Doctor Maxon, I understand your point . . . as well as the points made by John”—he nodded toward Greyson—”who is, after all, Avery’s guide in philosophy and ethics.”

  Again he turned his gaze on Alice. “You question whether running a virtual reality is Avery’s true calling, whether Avery is being misused. It is indeed a critical question, yet one to which I have my answer: this Avery and others like him will have many true callings, and entertainment is but one. Medicine, industry, biology, psychiatry—in fact, in all areas of art, science, and philosophy, Avery’s contributions to mankind will be virtually unlimited. The future will be enhanced beyond our wildest imaginings.

  “But listen, this future will not come to pass unless we have the means to make it a reality. You know what the pandemic, what the Ebola-Calcutta virus did when it got loose in the world—the decimation of the industrial countries, the devastation of the third world—”

  Alice shuddered, for she flashed back to her early teens, when she had seen victims of Ebola-Calcutta: screaming in agony, burning with fever, shuddering and twitching with seizures caused by literally thousands of internal blood clots, the pale remainder of their thin blood hemorrhaging from every orifice—eyes, nose, ears, mouth, nipples, anus, urethra, vagina—bleeding to death . . . somehow, of all these, the watery pinkness streaming from the eyes seemed the worst.

  The world had panicked, for, unlike Ebola-Zaire, the new virus was airborne and long-lived, and merely breathing the same air in a room with an exposed victim guaranteed infection—at least 90 percent fatal. Borders were closed, but the virus spread like wildfire regardless. People, terrified, isolated themselves from one another, barricaded themselves, shot anyone who dared set foot down nearby—strangers, neighbors, friends, relatives, family . . . it didn’t matter.

  Alice looked across at Arthur Coburn: this was the man responsible for the vaccine that stopped the spread of the disease. His biohazard team isolated the key mutation that had transformed Ebola-Zaire into Ebola-Calcutta, and they had modified the older vaccine into the newer form and had stopped the pand
emic cold in those places where it could be delivered in time.

  Now Alice glanced at Alya Ramanni and knew with a certainty that this small nut-brown woman had been a key member of that heroic biohazard team that had saved much of the world.

  All this came to Alice in a flash as Coburn spoke, but she pushed these thoughts aside to focus on his words:

  “—and how very long it has taken us to get back to what we now have.” Coburn paused, running his hand across his burr-cut silver hair. “Look, I won’t give you a discourse on economics. Let me just say that to go into production of a variety of Averys, we need to raise an extraordinary amount of capital—capital that neither governments nor industries are willing to risk . . . they are too strapped. Even if they had the funds, because we . . . because I want Coburn Industries to remain in complete control over the future of Avery and others like him, I will not invite disaster by allowing government, corporate, or even private investors to give us the needed creds. Avery is too important to allow stockholders or a government bureaucracy to have any measure of control. Yet the capital can be raised—from those who yet hold great private wealth, such as me, but only if we offer them something which they are willing to pay for. And I believe that they will pay handsomely, exorbitantly, to live out their dreams, their fantasies, whatever those fantasies may be. Hence, we have shaped Avery’s calling accordingly, for it is the calling that will give us the wealth—”

  “Megacreds,” whispered Mark Perry.

  “—to produce other Averys, to shape them for the great benefit of all mankind, and not just a privileged few.

  “And this test we are to do will be but one in a lengthy chain of tests which will prepare Avery for the task ahead . . . so that in the long run we can step into the future he and others like him will bring.”