EIGHT
The third time that he shot himself through the head, Owen began to suspect something was not quite right. He would find his way to the snooker hall, sit down with the three other people, and play Russian roulette. The outcome was always identical, no matter what he did – using a different route to the hall, sitting in a different seat, firing with his left hand, not raising the final stake. The others survived or died in the same sequence. And he always copped it after Walter Pendulum abandoned the contest.
This version of Second Reality was more realistic in many ways, but that was only on the surface – the quality of the graphics, the fidelity of the sound, his total immersion in the sensory experience. In the most important way it was less real. Because the whole thing seemed predetermined. The other players had the same backgrounds and experience every time they played. They were just programmed, they didn’t seem to learn. It was so unlike the Internet-connected version, where the advantage of playing with real people was their unpredictability, and the opportunity to riff off their ideas as they participated.
Owen struggled with the clasp on his helmet and managed to unlatch it and free himself. The Torchwood Hub reappeared around him. He discovered that he’d twisted his chair around several times during his game-play, and now needed to disentangle himself from the wires attached to the helmet.
Once he’d carefully peeled off the data-gloves, he located his old-fashioned keyboard and typed in a search request. The computer revealed where the locator in Toshiko’s mobile placed her at the moment.
‘Did you have fun?’ she asked him when he walked in to find her in the R&R area. Toshiko was lounging on the far side by the 1980s Asteroids machine. A couple of other figures played pinball just behind her. Owen hadn’t been expecting them to come back in this evening.
‘Quite impressive,’ Owen admitted. ‘Hi guys. I thought you’d all gone home for the night?’
As he stepped through the door into the area, he was aware of a shimmering effect around him. He rotated his hands in front of him, examining the front and back of each. He wore a pair of backless gloves in pale deerskin. Glendower Broadsword’s gloves. And now he came to look, he was also clothed in Glendower’s black leather jerkin.
He backed out of the room, and the clothes faded silently out of existence. Stepped back into the room, and they soundlessly reappeared on him. He saw the deerskin gloves again, but when he rubbed his palms together he could not feel them.
‘I got the projectors working,’ Toshiko explained. ‘So now I have a 3-D rendering of the Second Reality characters in here.’ She stood up and twirled around to reveal she was wearing Penny Pasteur’s smart Nehru jacket again.
‘Now that’s even more impressive,’ he admitted. They both appeared in character clothing, but the R&R area was the same familiar jumble of play consoles, arcade terminals and trip-hazard wiring.
Toshiko smiled proudly. ‘It works out positional information for the characters, but it doesn’t have to paint in the backgrounds any more, so everything is displayed much faster. If I wanted to, I could create a virtual Hub, using the construction data in our systems.’
‘What would be the point, Tosh? We can already walk around the real thing.’ He strode into the room to demonstrate his point.
She pouted. ‘I’ve introduced new characters. Recognise anyone?’
The two people in the corner turned to look at Owen. They were not Jack or Gwen, as he had originally assumed. Immediately behind Toshiko was Cap’n Ian Sharkchum, who doffed his pirate hat in a sweeping gesture and called out ‘Ahoy, matey!’ Next to him, Walter Pendulum straightened up from playing the pinball machine. He fluttered his long eyelashes and blew Owen a kiss, or at least he made the best effort that a giraffe-headed man can afford. Pendulum cast a last lingering glance over his shoulder before swinging his long neck back to his pinball game.
‘The point is,’ Toshiko said, oblivious to all this, ‘we could use this set-up for training purposes. Imagine being able to practise patterns and moves, only without the danger of doing it out in the field for the first time. I’ve been experimenting with projectors here to demonstrate that you can interact with generated images within a 3-D space. Next stage is to create a virtual Cardiff. There’s all sorts of data sources I can use. Positional data from US military satellites, Google Earth, the Land Registry, Public Private Partnership databases, various engineering companies…’
‘Interesting,’ admitted Owen. He took a slightly nervous look at Walter Pendulum, but that giraffe neck was still arched over the pinball game. Owen sat down next to Toshiko, smiling. ‘Do you remember the training sessions we had with Jack? God, the bruises and the blood, every day! I thought I’d seen plenty of brutal stuff from my days in A&E. But that was something else.’
‘I remember the exercise we did on that freezing day out in the Gower,’ shivered Toshiko. ‘Treasure hunt, he said it was!’
‘Treasure hunt, my arse!’ The memory made Owen laugh out loud. ‘Still, it wasn’t as bad as that couple of nights in the Rhondda. I’ve seen frostbite before, but I thought at the end that I’d be carrying my toes home in a box.’
‘And Operation Goldenrod,’ recalled Toshiko quietly.
Owen’s laughter faltered. ‘I saw Jack in a whole different light after that one.’
Toshiko nodded. Her expression suggested she couldn’t decide whether to relish or regret the whole training experience. ‘That all seems ages ago, and yet…’ Her voice trailed off wistfully.
Owen watched her eyes. They seemed to be focused on something a long distance away. ‘Before I came here,’ she said eventually, ‘I’d never killed anyone before. Never even thought about it. Oh, I mean, I got angry with people.’
‘I’d pay money to see you get angry, Tosh.’
‘No, the sort of thing you just say and don’t mean. “I’ll kill that guy if I get my hands on him,” you know. But I’d never even used a gun before. Not a real one.’ Another long pause.
Abruptly, behind them, the pirate captain loudly cheered on the giraffe-man in his pinball game. ‘Avast behind!’ yelled Sharkchum.
‘I think he’s talking about you, Tosh.’ Owen nudged her conspiratorially, and added in an undertone: ‘Can these guys overhear us? I mean, does Cap’n Birdseye understand what we’re talking about?’
‘No, he’s just an avatar generated by the game.’ She rattled off a few keystrokes on the console in front of her, and the pirate captain dissolved in a shower of white noise, like a TV being detuned and switched off. The giraffe man continued with the final pull of his pinball game, apparently unconcerned by his noisy friend’s abrupt disappearance.
‘Something I noticed in the Second Reality, when I was wearing that helmet thing. It was a big disappointment… Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic achievement, Tosh,’ Owen added hurriedly as he watched her eyebrows rise. ‘But it was obvious that the other avatars were just running through a script. Responding to pre-programmed computer instructions. They weren’t real people.’
‘In fleshspace, you mean.’
Her sarcasm irritated him, but he persevered anyway. ‘Yeah. You know, unreliable, erratic. Unpredictable. With the usual foibles and weaknesses that human beings have and robots don’t.’ He pondered this assertion for a moment. ‘Apart from that robot we trashed in Pontypridd, obviously.’
‘Too bad,’ said Toshiko firmly. ‘It’s more secure that way. If you’re that disappointed, I can download a larger amount of game-play data from the server and that will show more options.’
‘No, I’m saying I had the same thought that you did, Tosh. Second Reality tests real people’s potential. The more you play it, the better you get, because you start to understand the conventions of the game. So alien monsters in a virtual world won’t freak game-players out like in real life.’
She was still looking at him blankly. Regular exposure to Toshiko’s non-verbal repertoire had made Owen immune to such obviously faked incomprehension.
‘You said it yourself, Torchwood could use this for training. Go that next step, Tosh. Why not use Second Reality for recruitment too? Connect it to the gaming community on the Internet! Find out who’s good at this kind of thing, and approach them to join when they’ve shown enough aptitude? Test out their real-life skills against the kinds of situations we face in our daily lives but that they never would – until one day when it’s too late for them?’
‘No, no, no,’ insisted Toshiko.
Owen was getting into his stride now. Why couldn’t Toshiko accept this? Why was she even working on these enhancements if she didn’t see the potential? ‘Come on! There are all sorts of people we’d never contact normally. Loads of people play Second Reality. Bright kids, CEOs, programmers, surfers, accountants, soldiers, stay-at-home mums… You wouldn’t believe the imagination that everyday people have. There’s one guy who’s created a game that the avatars inside Second Reality play, and it’s so popular he’s licensed it to a publisher. In the real world. They’re gonna release it on video game-players and mobile phones. There was a fashion show using the design sketches and model avatars for the catwalk event in a virtual Paris. Last week I saw a competition to design a new mousetrap, where the mice were the size of donkeys. Where else can you find such a range of skills and abilities and aptitude all in one place? It’s a scouting trip to die for. But only if you plug it in.’
‘Not if you value your personal fleshspace,’ warned Toshiko. Her manner was adamant. ‘I won’t hear of this version being connected outside the Torchwood firewall, under any circumstances. And I will chop off your scabbard if I find you trying to.’
Owen threw up his hands, fake gloves and all, in a gesture of frustration and despair.
‘Look,’ she continued. She was doing that earnest voice of hers, the one that she used when she wanted to sound so reasonable that you couldn’t then go and bite her head off. ‘There’s another head-mounted display helmet available, and you could manage with just one data-glove. So if you want some unpredictable interaction with a real human being, give the other glove and the spare helmet to Ianto, and play with him.’
‘Ianto?’ Owen blew out a great long exasperated sigh. ‘Unpredictable? I suppose we could make virtual coffee together.’
‘I heard that,’ said Ianto, ‘and I think I may resent it.’
Owen’s heart sank a little. Ianto’s voice was coming from near the pinball machine. Like Owen and Toshiko, he was wearing a virtual costume. Owen hadn’t recognised him inside the giraffe’s head.
Walter Pendulum eased his portly frame around the pinball machine and retrieved a tray containing empty cups and a cafetière. ‘Unfortunate timing, I accept,’ said the giraffe with Ianto’s voice. ‘But don’t let the coincidence of me doing this suggest otherwise.’
Walter waddled off across the games area. As he left the room, his shimmering image transformed back into Ianto. The last thing to vanish as he departed through the doorway was his little giraffe’s tail.
Owen slumped into his seat, now embarrassed and dejected at the same time. ‘Don’t you ever take a risk, Tosh?’
‘When it comes to system security,’ she told him primly, ‘I’m conservative. With a small “c”.’
‘Chicken starts with a small “c” too, you know.’
‘Don’t be an idiot with a big “i”.’
‘That Cyclops we found in Pontprennau last month. Now, he was an idiot with a big “i”.’
Toshiko stood up and loomed over him. She fixed him to his chair with her scowl. ‘Owen. I gave up my social evening to get this thing finished tonight, and all I get is abuse from you? Look at the time. I’m going to go home.’
‘Social evening?’ That didn’t sound much like the Toshiko Sato he knew. Dr Sato the programming whizz-kid, first into the office and last to leave every day. This had potential. He grinned at her. ‘You mean… you had a date? What would keep you here if you had a date?’
She stopped staring at him. Looked away. Blushed a little. ‘If you must know, I’ve joined a chess club. We meet on Saturday evenings.’ She was shutting down the computer system. Owen’s leather jerkin, gloves and boots all glittered and faded. Toshiko was wearing her usual black top and trousers again.
Owen watched her leave the R&R area.
Chess, he thought. Right. Ideal for Toshiko. The only pairing where she was ever likely to make the first move.
He listened to her footsteps disappearing into the distance. Then he just sat for several minutes and let the night-time sounds of the Hub echo around him. The 50 hertz hum of the machinery. The tick-splash sound of a drip. The occasional creak of a board somewhere in the older fittings.
There was no sign of Toshiko returning. He went out to the main area, and satisfied himself that Ianto had also left for the evening. The helmet-mounted display and data-gloves were at his desk where he’d left them.
Owen powered up the computer again, and began to type. His logon screen appeared, and he tapped in his user id: [email protected], followed by his password.
‘This is Second Reality,’ the screen told him. ‘Connect to the Internet? Y/N’
He slipped on the data-gloves, flexing his fingers and feeling the touch-sensitive pads against his skin. He carefully strapped on the helmet. The screen image was already displayed on the stereoscopic screens, and the text seemed to leap out at him in three dimensions.
He reached out his right hand and pushed against the Y.
‘Second Reality,’ said the mellow voice of the game, all around him. ‘Welcome back, Glendower Broadsword.’