Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (2 page)

One more test
, thought Michaelson.
 
He purposely hadn’t drawn attention to the next phase, working on his own and hoping not to arouse suspicions from Lesserec or the technicians.
 
They didn’t need to know his real plans for the Virtual Reality technology.

He cleared his throat.
 
“Hey, Gary, do you still have access to those outside test sensors you installed at the Lab pool?”

Gary Lesserec’s voice rang over the wind and faint droning of the jets below.
 
“Piece of cake.
 
We’ve got the feed if you’re ready.
 
It’ll be a letdown after this sexy stuff, though.”

“Indulge me.”

“Always do, don’t we?” Lesserec quipped back, just this side of sarcasm.

Again, the universe around Michaelson flickered and bounced, a TV changing channels.
 
This time his vantage placed him standing just above an expanse of too-blue water with black depth lines painted down and coming up the other side of the Olympic-sized swimming pool.
 
He hovered there, invisible to the crowds below, as the sensors piped in a three-dimensional, tactile, realtime simulation.
 
Like Jesus walking on the water
, Michaelson thought.
 
It must be my day for delusions of grandeur.

From behind and below him he heard the sound of children squealing, playing a riotous game of Marco Polo.
 
Turning, he watched a slender young woman bounce off of a diving board, arc gracefully into the air, and slice directly through him on her way to the pool.
 
Sparkling droplets splattered in the air around his image, falling back into the water.
 
The children continued to shout, their voices flattened by the water.

The outdoor swimming pool was crowded with employees of the Livermore Lab and their families enjoying a lunchtime swim.
 
Unnoticed and hanging in midair, he stared at where the walls of the Virtual Reality chamber should have been, but saw no break in the image.

“I give up,” said Michaelson.
 
“Where did you hide the sensors?
 
Is this a live feed?”

“We put up six of them.”
 
Lesserec’s voice came to him strangely disembodied in the air around the Lab’s pool.
 
“One at each corner of the pool area mounted on the fence above, one anchored to the bottom of the pool, and the last on a wire strung out twenty meters over the water.
 
They’re so small nobody notices them.
 
The six sensors give more than enough overlap, and we’re getting near real-time smoothing from the computers.”

“Okay, this is perfect.
 
Shut down.”

Before the images sparkled into nothingness, Michaelson groped his way to the door of the chamber, reaching his hand through two sunbathers to find the right spot.
 
The heavy vault door split from the wall, disrupting the entire illusion as Michaelson left the chamber.

Sterile white fluorescent lights gave the boring cubicles and computer workstations
 
of the T Program trailer complex a washed-out, unreal quality.
 
Michaelson allowed himself a smile, wondering how the catch-phrase would go over in Washington.
 
‘More real than reality.’
 
Everyone would compare it to the Star Trek Holodeck, perhaps even be disappointed because they had seen so much flashier stuff done with special effects in science fiction stories.
 
But this was real, done with real technology, the most perfect remote-sensing surveillance system ever developed.

Sunlight from a clear California day splashed through the miniblinds on the trailer windows.
 
The VR chamber’s control room was no more than a large common area of large-screened workstations walled off by low, fabric-covered partitions that a man of Michaelson’s height could peer over easily.
 
He always thought of the movable fabric partitions as “illegitimate walls,” but they were inexpensive and changeable as programmatic needs shifted—and they fostered a closer teamwork atmosphere among the programmers.

A half dozen men and women stood at various workstations in the common area, dressed in blue jeans, unusual t-shirts, and garish Hawaiian shirts, as if in an effort to prove they were all oddballs, which ironically made them all look the same.
 
Everyone wore a bright green Lawrence Livermore laminated badge, complete with obligatory photo and a bright yellow stripe bearing his or her name.
 
Clipped beside each green badge was a homegrown blue badge, also with photo, made by Tansy Beaumont, the administrative assistant down the hall in Michaelson’s main office.

The green badge indicated the employee had a security clearance and allowed access through the guard gate into the Livermore Lab itself; but you needed the special blue badge for access to T Program behind its additional security fences.
 
Not many people had blue badges, and even though it wasn’t immediately obvious why the additional security was needed for a mere image-processing project, Michaelson had convinced the right people.
 
The additional access security allowed him greater freedom for handling classified material and software in the programmatic trailers.
 
Hal Michaelson could be very persuasive when he needed to be.

Gary Lesserec looked up, stepping away from a high-resolution monitor and smiling like a real butt-kisser.
 
Michaelson held a hand to his eyes in the bright fluorescent light, which seemed much harsher than the outside sunlight he had just seen around the employee swimming pool.

Dressed in shorts and a Spiderman t-shirt, Lesserec contrasted with Michaelson’s more formal attire of dress pants and long-sleeve shirt.
 
Lesserec’s chubby body looked soft and white from not being out in the sun; his skin had toothbrush-paint spatters of freckles.
 
His dark, brownish-red hair framed a face with muddy green eyes and an insincere grin, even when he meant it.

“So, are you a believer now, Hal?”
 
Lesserec looked smug.

“It certainly works,” Michaelson admitted.

“And damn fine, too,” chuckled one of the programmers.
 
Katie something-or-other, Michaelson thought her name was.
 
He could never remember all the underlings and simply read their badges when he had to.
 
Katie turned and gave a high-five slap to the person next to her.
 
“That swimming pool is so real, it’s refreshing just to look at it.”

Though the pool scene seemed lighthearted and ordinary, Michaelson knew it was the most indicative, the most realistic use of the VR surveillance technology that had so interested the President and the Defense community.

But the scene he remembered most was the vision of himself standing up in the clouds, like a titan looming over the world.
 
He actually longed to be back in the chamber, controlling everything that happened, tweaking reality with a twitch of his fingertips.

With the deep importance of the moment, it disappointed Michaelson that he couldn’t switch off Lesserec’s catty grin.
 
Things had been much better in the old days when he had been surrounded with other hard-driving physicists, rather than Yuppie computer whiz-kids who were smart far beyond their social abilities.
 
Of course, some people might have said the same about physicists—but Michaelson worked with the best raw material his budget would allow, and he wrung out results far beyond anyone’s expectations.

Michaelson pulled himself up to his full height so that he loomed over everyone there.
 
He stepped around the fabric cubicle partitions into the control room.
 
Every station seemed to have at least one can of Diet Coke resting uneasily in an open spot among the papers and software manuals, as if it were some sort of official team drink.

“Congratulations—but we’ve celebrated enough.
 
The Pentagon will be slobbering to buy these chambers to replace their current inventory of airplane simulators.
 
That’s an easy sell, so we’ll dismiss it for now.”
 
He waved his hand.
 
“That’s not where I want this project to be heading.”

Lesserec rocked forward in his chair, looking wary.
 
His grin flickered once, then died.
 
“You’re not going to change our milestones again, are you Hal?
 
The DoD sponsored the research behind the VR chamber.
 
I thought they were
expecting
new simulator technologies.”

Michaelson frowned disapprovingly at Lesserec’s Spiderman t-shirt, but the kid never seemed to catch subtleties.
 
“Don’t worry, the Pentagon will earn their investment back tenfold, but not the way they imagined.”

Lesserec leaned back in his burnt-orange swivel chair.
 
He rubbed his freckled hands together.
 
“So we’ll still have a job even after we’re through with the project?”
 
He picked up one of the pens the Livermore supply mavens had deemed to be the popular pen of the month, a Pentel ballpoint with rubberized grip, and flipped it end over end, clacking it on the table.
 
“Give us a hint about this mysterious new direction?”

Michaelson watched his young assistant for a moment before answering.
 
Lesserec should have known to ask that question behind a closed office door, not in this zoo with every member of the project watching.
 
Michaelson didn’t like to burden his technical team with too many details, but lately Lesserec had been pressing him for information he should not have had to worry about.

Michaelson had kept his upcoming announcement on a “close hold” basis for long enough.
 
It was part of his automatic habit of secrecy carried over from the way business had been conducted at the Livermore Lab throughout Michaelson’s career.
 
He had spent his career establishing the fusion-power Laser Implosion Fusion Facility, then moved to a stint as an on-site disarmament inspector in the former Soviet Union, to the formation of T Program for virtual reality surveillance.

Even now, more than half a century since the first atomic blast out in the New Mexico desert, the detailed knowledge of the design and manufacture of nukes was highly classified.
 
The entire Livermore Lab infrastructure, and its overlord the Department of Energy, had been predicated upon producing nuclear weapons and keeping that knowledge away from upstart nations.
 
The poltical bosses were still warming up from the Cold War, not sure what to do with their mittens.

“You’ll need to move your sensors to a new location.
 
That’s the only hint you get, Gary.”

Gary’s eyes widened.
 
“Didn’t like the swimming pool?
 
I could move the sensors to the women’s locker room if you want.”

Michaelson ignored Lesserec’s statement.
 
“Our plutonium processing facility will give a more realistic test of how the VR chamber is ultimately going to be used.
 
The Pentagon will want statistics on VR surveillance, reliability, and resolution.
 
Just plan to have another demo up and running within the next few weeks.

“I’m leaving for Washington this afternoon, but I’ve already worked it out for you to have access to install the test sensors in Building 332.
 
Our Associate Director promises his ‘fullest cooperation.’“
 
With a change in the tone of his voice he emphasized the last two words.

Even Lesserec snorted, and Michaelson resisted a smile at his deputy’s reaction.
 
Everyone in T program knew how much Michaelson despised his de facto boss, Associate Director for Tech-Transfer/Defense Conversion, José Aragon.

Lesserec caught the rubber-grip pen he had been flipping and looked up with his muddy eyes.
 
“I still think those Pentagon dudes would rather fly the jet simulator any day.
 
What’s the rush?”

Michaelson crossed his arms over his broad chest, feeling like a schoolteacher in front of the group.
 
Why couldn’t Lesserec just shut up and do what he was told?

“If you haven’t noticed, we are no longer in the bomb business.
 
Defense conversion.
 
Technology transfer.”
 
He lowered his voice.
 
“Scrambling like panicked chickens to find something important to do before the budget goes away entirely.
 
Somebody’s got to look ahead.
 
We’ve got to respond to market conditions now.”
 
He focused on Lesserec, ignoring the others in the common area and knowing that was the best way to get them all to pay the most attention.

“Look, I’ve got the President’s ear on this.
 
I’m not at liberty to say exactly what we’re going to be involved with, but it’ll make your little airplane simulator look like a piddly Nintendo game.”

Lesserec tossed the pen across his desk where it clattered against an empty Diet Coke can.
 
He flashed his insincere smile again.
 
“Don’t sell the videogame business short, Hal.
 
The entertainment market is growing bigger than the weapons business.
 
Maybe it’s already bigger.”