I wake to glaring light and a nurse pushing up my
eyelid. "Lucinda! Lucinda!" someone repeats. Then I hear
my mother. "Oh, sweetie," she says, choked up. I feel her
hands on me and smell her lily-of-the-valley perfume that she wears
all year, even in winter.
"Honey, you're going to be all right!' she cries as she squeezes
my arms, drips hot tears on my neck as she kisses me with her chapped
lips. "Insulin shock, honey. Your glucose was down to 22." Then
she gets that stern look in her eyes. "You went too long without
eating enough, then took that long walk in the hot sun. Lucinda, you
are fourteen and old enough to know better."
I understand everything that she doesn’t, and if she did - oh,
if she did, she wouldn't waste time talking about such pointless matters. "Where's
Groove? I have to talk to him."
She looks hurt but softens. "He went down to the cafeteria for
coffee. He'll be back."
"I love you, Mom," I say because I know this is what she
wants to hear and because I mean it. Her face is beautiful. It's the
first time I've ever seen it this way.
She is somewhat shocked.
It's not possible for me to stop smiling. I can't relax until I tell
Groove all about it
***
My mother named me Lucinda because it means "brilliant," she
said. Not a perfect fit because my grades are rather average. She also
said that "Luc" means light and that I would be a bringer
of light. I thought she was engaging in major wishful thinking. Every
mother likes to believe her child is the Second Coming, but I was far
from it. I spent twenty-four hours a day irritated at everything and
made it my mission in life to piss my mother off.
Groove, who is my half-brother from my dad's first marriage and fifteen
years older than me, says I'm the only person he feels he can talk
to in the family about his work. His real name is Grover Stanton Wyncoff
and he loves my mother like she's his own, even though she and our
father are now divorced. Groove comes over Friday nights for dinner,
and every time drags me out to the porch or somewhere we can be alone
to yap about what he does in the lab at Princeton. He graduated form
MIT with a degree in computer science and a Masters in biotechnology.
The Department of Defense is funding his research into virtual reality
for training simulation. I assume that means they own his soul whether
he knows it or not.
So last week, he and I were sitting on the porch steps. The side porch
is this kind of falling apart thing that my mother would get someone
to either fix or tear down if she could afford it. Since my father
left, the old house is too much for her, but even though she talks
a good story about our having to move out, we're still here after two
and a half years. Groove calls the porch "the rat trap," but
he likes it as much as I do, although I'd never give my mother the
satisfaction of admitting that I liked anything. If I said something
complimentary about the porch, she'd instantly find the money to "spruce
it up" and before long, it would be pale blue and shiny white
and look like one of Martha Stewart's creations. That look is so establishmentarian,
so WASPy upper-class. That's why I painted my room black and midnight
blue. I need darkness to unwind in.
Groove shuffled his long legs around, then leaned back on his hands. "Well,
Luce, I have reached a high point in my research. Are you ready for
what happened this week?"
Not really, I was thinking, but I humored him. He's quite the geek
loner even though he makes the attempt to form normal relationships
and is always dragging different women to our house. Only they always
end up in the kitchen complaining to Mom while he and I talk. No one
woman lasts longer than three weeks. "What's up?"
He works in this huge room full of computers with five or six other
guys who all look the part of computer geeks. You know the types -
lanky and stooped over with greasy ponytails or fat with half-inch
thick glasses and the buttons on the shirts popping off. Groove, however,
is actually quite attractive on the outside. He has intense brown eyes
and black hair that flops over them, though as soon as he opens his
mouth, you know he wouldn't know what sexy was if you had a gun to
his head.
Before he began, he felt it necessary to say, "You're turning
into a pretty girl, Light Woman. A long tall drink of water. Although
why you insist on trying to ruin your looks is beyond me."
I sighed loudly. Why do adults feel it necessary to make this comment?
Why do they expect us to want to look exactly like they did at our
age? Like those frightening outfits from the eighties didn't scare
their own parents? Gigantic hair, robot shoulders, clownish eye make-up?
How about the sixties? The fringed pants dragging in the dirt, Jesus
hair, eyes vacant on LSD? Puleeze.
"I’m not trying to ruin my looks," I said, bored already. "A
lot of kids happen to like my appearance!" I added, although I
had no evidence to back that up. "People your age want everyone
to look like they're in the Girl Scouts!"
"Hardly," he said. "I mean, why do you dye your gorgeous
auburn hair jet black and why do you wear black clothes all the time
and those sinister tattoos and blue lipstick? All that makes you look
like a heroin addict with AIDS. Either that or a vampire."
I guess he doesn't realize the tattoos are stick-ons. I'm not allowed
real ones or piercings by my doctor. "A diabetic doesn't invite
infection. You don't even want to go there," she told me. "It's
a political statement," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Well, anyway," he said, shifting his legs and leaning forward.
Finally getting to the point, now that I was thoroughly pissed. "As
you know, Verge and I have the VR suit well up and running. We've all
spent hours inside it, at least those of us who fit. Chris is out,
being that he checks in at two hundred eighty pounds. It's a pity he
can't experience it, but well, all those hoagies and chocolate donuts
- what can I say? I'm going to get you into the lab sometime in the
near future, Luce, so you can try it on yourself. It's a matter of
waiting until the best time to sneak you in."
He said this every time and I had still not visited the lab. But I
didn't hold it against him; I could certainly think of better places
to go, although putting on that suit did sound temping. "Tell
me more about this suit," I said.
He pushed his glasses up his nose. "It's made of this stretchy
material, part Lycra, part poly and other assorted things. We sewed
sensors all over it and I do mean all over." He blushed. Of course
I knew what he meant, but I pretended to be stupid. Why embarrass him
more? "On the fingertips, there are a lot. The suit covers the
face too, leaving nose holes open, but there are tiny tubes that squirt
minute amounts of scent molecules into them."
"What about the eyes?" I asked.
"They're covered by goggles. Your entire self is encased except
for the breathing holes. You can open your mouth inside the face covering.
The material lets some air pass through."
"Are there sensors where your hair would be?"
"Some, yeah. We tried to space them out according to actual sensory
clusters on the human body. Where the cluster population is thick,
so are the sensors. A bald person would feel the most, of course," he
paused. "I should check my blood sugar after eating that dessert.
It's been two hours, right?"
My brother is a Type I diabetic just like me, only he started later
in life. He's got some pancreatic action while mine is minimal. Getting
my blood sugar stabilized was often touch and go. They were talking
about implanting a pump in me, while Groove does fine on two insulin
shots a day. To be honest, I was about ready for the pump. The way
things were, it was becoming hard to live a normal life. Who am I kidding?
There was no hope of ever living a normal life. No one I knew at school
had the remotest grasp of this. To Groove, I said, "No problem
with the dessert. It was made from sugar-free yogurt."
"Oh," he said. "It tasted delicious. I concluded it
had to be dangerous."
"Go on about the suit," I said.
"Well, when you put it on and turn on the controls, baby, you
are in the virtual world! As far as we know, no one else has got it
down to this degree. An article is coming out in Scientific American
and another in Virtual. This is the top of the line as far as the virtual
community goes. When you put on that suit, you are in that world. This
is no juvenile video game, Luce. No waxy looking characters with the
coloring of painted photographs from the 1940's. No, no, I am talking
actual blades of grass, hairs on knuckles, dogs that move like dogs,
flags that flap in actual wind. That wind is on your face and you can
smell that dog. You're in there and suddenly you are not sure what's
going on and there's a moment of real existential confusion. Someone
watching sees this dodo in a funny skin suit lurching about, grabbing
the air and talking to himself, but inside that suit the person is
dealing with Reality, with a capital 'R.' The fun part is that we get
to play with that reality, make things that shouldn't fly fly, things
that shouldn't talk talk. Disneyland for grownups if you know what
I mean."
I did. "You're sort of God in there."
He nodded very seriously. "Yes. God." For a moment, he was
silent. Then, "The suit is only the start, though. But there is
where I run into problems."
I was starting to get a pretty bad headache, but suddenly wanted to
last longer in this conversation. I should have tested my own blood
sugar an hour ago. But sometimes I just wanted to pretend that things
were normal and that I didn't have to stab my finger every friggin'
hour. I had hardly eaten at dinner since I was sick to death of pizza
and hated that yogurt dessert, which Mom made about once a week. "Which
are?" I asked.
"The problem is interface. In the suit-"
I interrupt him. "What's interface?"
"Oh, I should have explained that. The interface is where the
body or mind connects to the sensory input from the virtual world.
The University of Michigan Direct Brain Interface Project hasn't even
come close to what we've achieved and what we have in mind."
"Groove, I need some sugar."
He immediately produced from his shirt pocket a tube of mints. I crunched
my way through a few. Neither of us noticed that they were sugar free.
When he was on a roll, he seemed to forget how bad I could get, but
he's that kind of person - very obsessed and excited about things.
"Wait till they read our articles," he said.
"So what's the problem?" I asked, expecting to feel faintly
better shortly.
"The thing is, wearing this suit, even though it may be the only
one of its kind in the entire world, is still clumsy and primitive.
Real interface would be directly between the brain and the virtual
world."
"You mean like in the Matrix? Like in The Thirteenth Floor?" My
brother had taken me to see Matrix and shown me the video of The Thirteenth
Floor.
His eyes were shining. "Yes, exactly. That is what I'm aiming
for. And, I'm only telling you this; you are the only person outside
of my colleagues who will know this right now. We've accomplished one
tiny bit of what we're aiming for. Yesterday, Miles sent an impulse
directly into his optic nerve and for a split second saw a portion
of our virtual world. Directly, do you understand, Luce, not with the
virtual suit!"
At times, I was aware that this brother of mine who came for pizza
could be remembered in the future like Einstein is now.
"The optic nerve?" I said, but I was not feeling so hot.
I knew I should go to my mom and have her help me get some serious
food down. A big glass of OJ, then some slower carbs and some protein,
nuts maybe.
He was silent though. It was a starry night and he looked up at the
sky. "I am going to tell you something I haven't told anyone else," he
said. He looked around like a person in an old gangster movie. "I'm
starting to suspect something. You know how it was in the Matrix? How
the whole world was really virtual reality and machines were running
it all?"
"Yeah," I said.
"And in The Thirteenth Floor, they were all in a virtual world
and didn't know it, either?"
"I know where you're going," I said.
"Do you?" His face was very serious in what was left of
the light outside. His eyes were dark points under those glasses.
"You think we're in one, too. Is that it?"
He inhaled so sharply it sounded painful. "Yeah, Luce, I suspect
that we are. It occurs to me over and over as we work." He stood
up and waved his arms. "All this, the trees and birds and fence
posts and grass blades - everything. Everything could be, very likely
is, a fantastic, huge virtual reality program running. And we - who
knows what we are? Are we just characters in a set on a Star Trek holodeck
who only imagine that we're alive? Or are we something else outside
of all this that interfaces, somehow interfaces, with this world?"
He was worked up and I caught his emotion. Not real good for me, considering
how I was feeling, but for a moment it lifted me up. I stood up beside
him and looked out into the yard.
"I haven't seen your new virtual world, so it's kind of hard
for me to imagine that everything here is just a virtual reality program." I
bent down to pick up a stone. "Like this feels hard and smooth
and cold. It feels very real, not like something in a big video game." My
hand was shaking.
I had never seen him so serious.
"Lucinda, it's the early twenty-first century and a mere advanced
ape like myself has created a semi-decent virtual scene with a primitive
but fun interface suit. Technology is evolving at breakneck speed.
Ten years form now it may be a thousand times what it is today. Mere
ape men, Luce. Now, supposing we have a Creator and he/she/it is infinitesimally
more intelligent than we are - coming up with a believable virtual
world for the virtual inhabitants to sense as real would be a walk
in the park for said Creator, wouldn't it?"
I didn't know how to answer him and I wasn't sure I liked the idea
of just being a character in a video game, even if it was a really
big, fancy one.
"But what's the point? You mean God playing around? Like if He
gets bored, He might just switch it off?"
He was looking off into space. "I don't think God or whatever
you want to call it has the mind of a bored teenage boy, no. Why it
would have this virtual reality program running is beyond my scope.
The thing is, see, I need to know if we're just figments in the game
or if there is an interface."
"Interface again."
"Yeah, like if there is something intelligent interfacing with
his program. If it is indeed a program. Does every human character
in this program have something from a higher reality interfacing with
it or are some just fill-in characters to make the story interesting?
And if everyone does have something interfacing with it, how exactly
is that done? We would be crossing into the area of spirituality here.
The soul interfacing with the body? But how, exactly? Possibly through
the left temporal lobe? Some fringe scientists have been speculating
about that serving as the receptor of sorts." He was so excited
that he was blithering.
"Groove," I said as forcefully as I could, "I don't
feel so good."
And that's the last thing I remember.
***
While we wait for my brother to come back from the hospital cafeteria,
my mother is sitting by the bed continually rubbing my arm or touching
my hair with an expression on her face that is a total mix of things.
I can see all the parts in it, as if I'm looking at a bouquet of
flowers and picking out the roses and carnations and daisies and
ferns. Before I couldn't do this, but now it's so evident. By one
of the parts, I see that she is terrified I might slip away again.
By another, that she is totally relieved and can't believe her
good luck to have me still with her. In another, I can read her
loneliness at being without my father, at having to go through
this by herself. She doesn't have an inkling how not alone she
really is! She's completely blind to the helpers all around her,
something I was amazed to discover! And last but not least, she's
afraid that I might not grow up unless they get this under control.
It's all written across her face as clearly as printing on a billboard.
Groove walks into the room unaware that I'm awake, but as soon as
he sees, he shouts, "Light of my life!" and plants a wet
one on my forehead.
"Groove," I say, looking past my mother's anxious face and
only at him. "I found out what you need to know."
It's like I can read minds now. "Has she lost her marbles?" he's
thinking. "The insulin shock did some serious brain damage." Although
he actually says nothing.
"No, my brain is fine, better than ever. I know about the interface," I
tell him.
He gets a wild look on his face. I see immediately that he's embarrassed
for Mom to hear whatever it is I might be about to blurt out. But I
would like her to hear it, too. "I found out," I say.
Not here, his eyes yell, but after where I've been, secrecy means
nothing to me.
"I was technically dead for a while, wasn't I?"
My mother's face blanches and I can tell that she's preparing her
lie.
"Mom, don't bother. I know anyway."
She bursts into tears.
"How long was it?"
"They said seven minutes," she admits.
I look to Groove with triumph. His face is as white as printer paper. "See?" I
tell him "I'm a position to know. You can just speculate but I
know."
"Don't let yourself get too excited," warns Mom, but I am
feeling better by the second. I hoist myself up to crook my finger
at my brother. He can't help himself; he moves closer.
"You see," I tell him, "I was out of the program! I
was out, down the tunnel! A tunnel of whirling black stars and people
waiting at the end! But the thing is, the thing is, when I came back,
it was like slamming into my body and are you ready for this? I was
upside down!"
"What do you mean?" he whispers.
"I was upside down inside my body! My body was on its back but
I was face down! And it was hard to turn around! I had to struggle
and struggle, but eventually I made it and then hooked in!"
"Hooked in?"
"Well, fit back in. I had to slide back into the right position,
you see."
He tilts his head to the right like he always does when absorbing
information.
I want to smack him, he is being so dense. "You know, the INTERFACE.
I had to hook up into the INTERFACE."
He staggers backwards until he meets up with that ugly vinyl chair
they have in every hospital room, where he slams down looking shocked.
And, I see, scared out of his wits.
***
When I completely recover, which doesn't take long, Groove and I
are once again sitting on the porch steps, only now there's a sudden
cold spell and our butts are ice cubes. But if we stay in the house,
my mother and the current girlfriend will overhear.
His face is like an eight year old's. Big brown eyes, eyebrows up,
but mouth tight like it's waiting for something scary.
"Okay, give it to me," he says. "Are we living in a
hologram?"
"A hologram," I try to explain, "is merely a minute
understanding of the whole. As Einstein's Relativity theory will be
entirely outmoded in a bit more time, so will the holographic theory.
The Whole is the Whole, a manifestation of Light. Am I making sense
to you?" Clearly not. He is looking at me blankly.
"However you fathom it presently, we will see it differently
in fifty years. Fifty more years, and the idea will expand again. We
will grow in ability to grasp the Whole as long as we keep interfacing
with this world. Maybe some day in the far future, we will no longer
need to learn. Understanding will be instant."
"But," he insists, "yes or no. Is this a hologram?"
"Who cares?" I almost yell. "Yes! But don't stop there!
Keep going!"
In his confusion, he looks more beautiful to me than anything I have
ever seen. And so does that poor cold moth buzzing in a circle on the
porch floor and so does that dried up leaf hanging on that geranium.
I am well aware that it is only a matter of time before I slip back
into my teenage world and forget all that I have glimpsed, forget the
Whole. But for the moment, I remember.
