Lazar (3 page)

“Can’t you feel the atmosphere?” Jan shouted after him. “Can’t
you sense the spirit of the place – the souls of all those lepers who
prayed here all those centuries ago, hoping for a miracle to cure them?”

“Nope. That’s just your overheated imagination at work again,”
Hal called back over his shoulder. “All that’s here is a pile of stones. Come
on – give me a hand to measure it.”

“Measure it yourself,” retorted Jan. “I’m going to make some
sketches.”

“Get the proportions right, then, so I can feed them into the
computer.”

“They’re going to be pictures of how I see the place – artistic
impressions, not technical drawings.”

Jan stormed off toward the far end of the chapel. ‘Overheated
imagination’ – how dare he. It was more a case of his being totally
insensitive, she thought to herself as she reached the wall, along the bottom
of which ran an arcade of decorative arches. Could he really not feel the
atmosphere of this ancient place? ‘A pile of stones’ indeed! These stone had
soaked up half a millennium of prayer – had witnessed faith and suffering
way beyond the comprehension of a 21st-century nerd.

She reached out and ran her fingers over the patterns on the
wall. As she did so, she tried to put herself in the place of the medieval
stonemasons who had sculpted the decorations, back in the middle ages. What did
it feel like? What were they thinking as they chiselled with such painstaking
care? Were they pleased with what they had achieved? It must have looked
sensational.

Jan cast her eye along the arcade of intricately carved
arches. Unfortunately the impact of their dazzling complexity had been
diminished by the passage of time; the detail lost or damaged by weathering and
desecration. Jan squinted and tried very hard to use her imagination to fill
all the gaps, but it was impossible to restore it to its original splendour.

Grudgingly, she had to admit that Hal’s computer might have
some advantages over her imagination. It could at least give some impression of
the decorations as they might have first appeared. It could restore their line
and symmetry.

“Haven’t you started sketching yet?” Hal interrupted Jan’s
reverie. He was dragging the extended measuring tape behind him. “Hey, that’s
neat.”

“You mean the carvings on the arches?”

“Yeah – they’re really something.”

Jan stared at her cousin in surprise.

“You mean you actually appreciate the craftsmanship?”

“I don’t know about that – but I reckon once I’ve got
the coordinates and fed them into the computer that’ll look mind-blowing in
3D.”

“It’s already in 3D.”

“Not
real
3D.”

Jan was just about to react when she saw a slight smile at
the corners of Hal’s mouth. Instead, she turned her back on him and started
drawing.

“Where’s Hal?”

Jan was sitting at the dining room table with her uncle when
her aunt came in carrying a tray and asking the question.

“He’s still in his room.”

“I see,” Aunt Jill sighed. “I knew his wanting to get out of
his room and into the fresh air was too good to last.”

She placed the dinner on the table, then went out into the
hallway to call her son down to his evening meal. Uncle Bill smiled at Jan.

“Out into the fresh air, eh?” he said. “Where did you go?”

Jan described the visit to the churchyard and explained why
Hal was still busy upstairs feeding measurements into his computer.

“And you say he’s managed to interface the CAD and virtual
reality software?” Hal’s father sounded intrigued. “If he has, then I could try
it out on my clients – walk them round the houses I’ve designed for
them.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” dissuaded Jan. “It’s not that
impressive, really. OK, so it gives you some idea of the shape of the place,
but it doesn’t help you
feel
what it
would be like to be there.”

“You don’t seem to be particularly enthused by Hal’s project,
Jan,” Aunt Jill said as she joined them at the table.

“Not really. That’s why I left him up there to get on with it
on his own. It was my idea to start with but now it seems too sort of, well,
clinical
. When I was there I simply
wanted to relax and soak up the atmosphere, get a feel for the place, but all
Hal wanted to do was clamber over everything taking measurements. He spent over
an hour looking at the chapel through the theodolite, but he still hasn’t
really
seen
the place at all. He’s
got all its dimensions, but they don’t add up to the experience of actually
being there – its aura, its vibrations. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Aunt Jill nodded her
agreement. “Mere measurements can’t capture the chapel’s
genius loci –
the spirit of the place.”

“Talking of geniuses,” interrupted Uncle Bill, “here’s Hal,
looking very pleased with himself. Well, have you succeeded in interfacing the
CAD and virtual reality programs?”

Hal grimaced and answered his father’s question by holding
out his hand, spreading his fingers wide and waggling them slightly as if to
say “So, so”.

False modesty, thought Jan. She could tell by the shine in
his eyes that he was really excited about what he had achieved. “Damned if I’m
going to ask him anything about it,” she thought. “He can blooming well tell me
if he wants me to find out.”

Uncle Bill, though, persisted in his questioning.

“Not 100 per cent successful, then?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Hal responded indifferently, as
though the immediate task of eating his dinner was infinitely more interesting.

“What would you say, then?”

“I’d say 200 per cent successful!” Hal’s excitement finally
got the better of him and his face broke into a smile. “It’s brilliant, Dad,
absolutely brilliant. Once I’d worked out the algorithm…” He explained the
software engineering while his father tried to eat and pretend he understood
simultaneously.

Hal suddenly turned toward his cousin.

“Your drawings were great,” he enthused. “I managed to work
out the coordinates and feed in the parameters, no problem. They look
completely amazing. You must go up and see them.”

It was Jan’s turn to feign indifference.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Thank goodness, thought Jan as she entered Hal’s bedroom,
he’s left his computer on. She went over to the screen. Even better, the
virtual reality program was up and running. The image on the screen showed her
cousin’s attempt at recreating the medieval chapel in the churchyard. Its
proportions were exactly right; the arches, doors and windows, each precisely
in its place. Even the zigzag carvings were arithmetically accurate – every
line and every arc and every angle. But something was missing. Jan sat down and
looked more closely.

The sensation of three dimensions was totally convincing,
even she had to admit that. The computer software had filled in all the
surfaces and cast shadows at exactly the locations the laws of geometry
dictated. She lifted the head-mounted device; then gazed in amazement as a
million minute trigonometric changes in the image created the illusion of the
exact corresponding shift in perspective. It was absolutely perfect.

That was it – it was
too
perfect. There were no irregularities to relieve it of the
monotony of perfection; there were no flaws or foibles. Its lines had not been
softened by the weather, its surfaces worn down by wear and tear. The rigid
mapping of reality had made it unrealistic.

Even so, Jan put the helmet on.

Once inside the virtual world Jan’s reservations vanished in
an instant. The illusion of reality was overwhelming. Everywhere she looked the
floors spread out; the walls rose up; the ceiling spanned above her head. She
‘walked’ toward the far end of the chapel. Around the bottom of the wall ran
the row of decorated arches that Jan had sketched so painstakingly in the
churchyard. There they were, in every detail; immaculate and flawless. The
precision dazzled Jan into believing it was tangible, even though she knew it
had been plotted by a program, not carved by craftsmen. She instinctively
reached out to run her fingers over the patterns, but instead she hit the
corner of the desk.

Perhaps a cyber-glove isn’t so stupid an idea after all, she
thought. She turned to continue her inspection of the chapel. In front of her
stood the entrance that had been empty in the ruin but which was now filled by
a ‘wooden’ door. Jan smiled. It had a letterbox. Hal had obviously selected it
from the CAD database of standard doors. Its solid appearance and oaken grain
had been the best match for the chapel.

“Hell-o, Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch.”

Jan leapt up in her chair, and in the chapel. Her smile
vanished. She felt a breathless hollow where a heartbeat should have been. She
span round. Behind her stood a skeleton, hollow-boned and hardly visible. It
stared with eyeless sockets, it intoned through lipless jaws – “Hell-o,
Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch”; and every time it spoke another wraith
sprang up alongside, rising from the ground like dragons’ teeth. They were all
identical; their chant a dreadful unison – “Hell-o, Jan-net, well-come to
Wick-witch.”

Then, above the monotone, Jan heard a sudden peel of laugher,
bursting out from inside the chapel walls. It came from everywhere and nowhere;
shrieking on and on and on. Jan scrabbled at the headset. In an instant it was
off.

And there stood Hal, a broad grin on his face.

Jan stared at the screen, then at the headset, and then back
at her cousin.

“Oh, very funny – not.” she said sarcastically, trying
hard to disguise the urge to laugh herself – partly in reaction to the
fright she had just received, but mostly because she could see the funny side. But
Hal had made her jump out of her skin twice that day, so blowed if she was
going to let him know how smart she thought he was for having caught her out.

“Good, eh?” beamed Hal. “I got the skeletons from my computer
game.”

“You still haven’t sorted out the pronunciation,” Jan
responded tartly.

“No – but I’ve certainly recreated the
spirit
of the place, don’t you think?” He
started laughing again. Jan found herself laughing with him.

“OK, so it’s pretty impressive,” Jan conceded when the
hilarity finally subsided. She noticed her cousin’s chest swell with pride. “But,”
she added, “there’s not much skill involved.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” Hal reacted. “It took me the
best part of three hours to input all the parameters.”

“Yes, but it would have taken the original craftsmen a
lifetime’s experience and several years to carve it out of stone.”

“Exactly! That’s why virtual reality’s better than the real
thing.”

Hal pulled up a chair and sat next to his cousin. He reached
over and tapped some instructions on the keyboard. The image on the screen
changed to a hollow 3D outline of the chapel – thin lines drawn in
austere isolation at the centre of a plain white background.

“Not much to show for a day’s work,” he commented. “There
must be an easier way to get hold of the data.”