Virtuality Page 5

  “But that was seven years ago. You look so—uh, I mean it’s hot, so I ordered you an iced, triple-grande, nonfat, vanilla latte.”

  “Thanks, Vince.” After she broke into a sweat in her run down here, she didn't need three shots of hot espresso poured into her. And, at twenty-five, almost twenty-six, mochas took a lot more exercise to burn off than at seventeen.

  “Our order’s up. I'll get it.” Vince left the table.

  Jess took a deep breath and sighed, long and loud, letting her lips vibrate.

  A three-year-old boy with a moo-stache on his upper lip eyed her from the next table. “Dat’s cool. Could ya show me how ya do dat?”

  She gave him some semblance of a smile. “Sure. You just act like an idiot until you're embarrassed, then sigh really hard to make it all go away.”

  The boy frowned for a moment, then raised the vanilla steamer to his mouth, adding to his moo-stache.

  Vince set her cup on the table and took his seat. “You sure stirred things up in here when—”

  “Don’t we have something more important to discuss than …” Than what? She wasn't going to say it, though Vince’s eyes said he clearly knew it. Sliding into those skorts was a stupid, juvenile thing to do.

  But wasn’t juvenile right where she and Vince were picking up their teenage relationship, the one that had ended more than seven years ago with the equivalent of a one-sided, no-fault, teenage divorce?

  Something had hurt Vince and he had left, but he’d never explained why.

  Now, his eyes shifted to a look she knew well from the times that trouble had come their way.

  “Vince, I think it's time for you to tell me what Paul said. And then I've got a story you need to hear.”

  * * *

  Vince couldn't remember Paul's exact words, but what he had communicated pushed Vince to high alert, DEFCON 3, maybe DEFCON 2. Jess needed to hear it too, since she might also be in danger.

  He looked across the table at the beautiful woman with glowing cheeks, the one who had caught everyone's eye when she came in dressed like, and looking like, a supermodel.

  Jess had embarrassed herself. Her clothes were out of character and her lips appeared to have a touch of lipstick, something she seldom used. Her pink cheeks would have been a cute reaction, but nothing about Jessica Jamison could be called cute. She was a stunning beauty and—

  “Come on. It was just yesterday afternoon. You couldn't have already forgotten what he told you.”

  Her normally soft, alto voice had hardened. It ended Vince’s musings, drawing his focus back to Jess's pale blue eyes.

  “Jess, I—” How had he ever left her? Jess was his childhood soulmate, beautiful inside and out. And Vince van Gordon was a fool. He should have gone head-to-head with Paul for this woman. And for not doing so, maybe he should cut off an ear.

  Yeah, dude. Starting right below it … right on your jugular.

  Jess’s dark eyebrows nearly touched. “I don't like suspense, unless it's in a book or a movie. Are you going to tell me, or—”

  “I'm sorry.” He blew out a breath and tried to organize his thoughts. “Some of this sounds crazy, and I'm not sure what it means.”

  “Just tell me, unless Paul told you not to.” Her gaze dropped to the tabletop.

  “No. He didn’t say that.” Vince paused. “He said it was time for him to go home, then something about not existing in his brain—that a brain is only an interface to the real person.”

  “That's what Paul believed about the nature of human beings, a sort of dualism, body and spirit. He thought that God created us with a real self that existed in the spirit, apart from the physical body. He said it was a biblical view. But I'm not sure why Paul mentioned it while he was dying, unless it has something to do with the nature of his work.”

  “You worked with him. Wouldn't you know that?”

  Jess's frown and the questioning look in her eyes surprised him.

  “I only worked for Paul for three months. Then a day here and there to squash bugs in the software. And even then, I didn't have much interaction with him. Vince, I don't think you understand how it was with …” She paused and shook her head. “Besides, I don't have a security clearance. I can tell you about that later. But surely Paul told you more.”

  Little interaction with Paul? They certainly didn’t sound like a couple. Had distancing himself from Jess been Paul’s way of handling his illness, or did it reflect Jess’s lack of feelings for Paul?

  Regardless, what Jess had revealed opened the door a crack for Vince to come back into her life. But he had been mistaken about Jess once before, and he wouldn't put himself through that agony again.

  “Yeah, he told me more. He told me that everything he left behind was mine. Then he made me promise not to sell the company, not to Patrick nor anyone else. I don't know anything about Paul's software business. The truth is, I don't know anything about software, except that I want it to run right when I'm using it on my laptop. Why would he want me to keep the business? Any ideas?”

  “Maybe. But what else did Paul say?”

  “It got a little spooky at that point. I think Paul suddenly realized life was leaving his body and …” Vince swallowed hard. “He hurried, trying to tell me about somebody spying on him and about some kind of danger that threatened me and possibly you, Jess.”

  “Me? That is spooky.”

  “Got any idea what he was referring to?”

  “It would only be speculation. And it's rather far-fetched. What else did he say?”

  “He didn't have any time left. He …” Vince’s throat constricted, choking off his words.

  “No. He didn't have much time.” Jess laid her hand on his. “We made it here with hardly two minutes to spare.”

  “He was hanging on for me, Jess. I think Paul would've refused to die until we got there.”

  “You're probably right.” She rubbed Vince’s hand.

  He took hers gently, allowing Jess to opt out.

  She didn't.

  Hopefully, she wouldn't prod further. He didn't know how to approach the sensitive issue of Vince and Jess’s broken relationship, an issue that seemed to be on Paul's mind only seconds before he died. His last thoughts on earth were about Vince and Jess. What had Paul been doing? Giving Jess to Vince?

  Jess studied his eyes and squeezed his hand. “He told you more, didn't he?”

  Vince opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out but a dry hack.

  Jess waited, watching him.

  What if he was wrong about Paul’s reference to Jess? What if Vince had misunderstood? His heart picked up its tempo to allegro, and the coffee shop suddenly felt like a sauna.

  Just say it, dude. Jess needs to hear it.

  Vince cleared his throat and broke eye contact with her. “Paul said … you could help me and …”

  “And?”

  “And that I should help you, because … you needed me.” There. He had said it. Well, half of it. Vince lifted his gaze back to Jess's face.

  Her lower lip quivered, and her eyes welled, nearly overflowing.

  Jess pulled her hand free, looked away, and wiped her eyes. “I guess it's my turn now.”

  Her short, pained reaction would be the only feedback Vince got, for now. That was Jess, an INTJ, a personality type rare in the feminine world, a brilliant combination of logic and intuition. People like her were loyal to a fault and, generally, not inclined to show a lot of emotion, except to the close friends they acquired, friends that could usually be counted using a person’s thumbs.

  Evidently, Vince still owned one of her thumbs.

  “I don't have a security clearance, so I've never been inside Virtuality's lab. I've used their configuration management tool to push software to the lab from a server in the office, but that's as close as I've gotten to the lab and the work being done there.”

  “But you knew what your software did. That had to tell you something about the project.”

  “It told m
e that Paul's sophisticated algorithms, which I coded from his specs, were used for lossless compression of human nerve impulse data—analog data, digitized and compressed after being recorded from human nerves located in various parts of the body, while that body performed certain activities about which I can only speculate.”

  This was more than weird. “What are we talking about here, Jess? Making androids or something?”

  “No. Paul's company, Virtuality Incorporated, is making highly realistic simulations of certain kinds of human activity while people interact with their environment. The specific application was classified Top Secret, so I never knew how the technology would be used by the military. I assumed it was for combat training.”

  Sometime during her explanation, Jess had taken his hand.

  Vince looked at their clasped hands and almost lost his train of thought. “Why combat training?”

  “Paul and Patrick had contracted with a military organization that oversees advanced Army combat training. I think the goal was to give our soldiers a leg up on the enemy by preparing them for warfare using highly realistic combat simulations. The simulations are created using virtual reality amped up by stimulating the human body with recorded nerve impulses.”

  “Stimulating the human body? You mean they can actually play the nerve data back into—”

  “Yes … well, I think they can. You know, like a CD player, where digitized music is converted back to analog and played through a stereo system.”

  “But the stereo system we’re talking about here is the human body. So what are they creating? A virtual Frankenstein?”

  “I told you what I think, Vince. I don't know for sure. And there’s still a lot of magic that would have to occur to mimic a real combat situation using nerve data, virtual reality, and millions of lines of application code to make it all work together in some meaningful way.”

  Jess kneaded his hand and her eyes took on that calculating look Vince had learned to recognize as a kid. “You know, you can tell the brain lies through the nerves for only so long. The human brain will discover the truth and start compensating for the lies … unless something stimulates the brain, directly?”

  Direct brain stimulation? “That’s science fiction. Forget the virtual Frankenstein. That’s one step closer to a real monster.” It was too much for Vince to wrap his mind around, let alone think of an application that might endanger Jess and him.

  “Vince, did you know that Patrick was a medical student for a while and has a biology degree? After that, he got his MS in computer science, like me.”

  Like Jess? No matter how bright Patrick was, he was not like Jess. As far back as Vince could remember, Jess could outthink anyone she was pitted against. To the best of his knowledge, she had never lost a chess game. “My head is spinning just trying to put this in a meaningful context, something like a novel plot.”

  Jess smiled warmly at him. “That’s a great idea. Pretend this technology is driving a technothriller that you’re writing. What might the plot look like? You know, something that would make it dangerous.”

  Vince leaned back in his chair rubbing his chin. “That technology might help soldiers kill more effectively, but I don’t think that's the kind of danger Paul was talking about. And the spying he mentioned—maybe that was because of the project’s classification. Classified projects often become targets for espionage.”

  Paul’s eyes had looked intense, maybe even frightened as he spoke about the danger. But with Paul that close to death, Vince shouldn’t read too much into Paul’s expression.

  “I agree,” Jess said. “But he could have meant something that would endanger Americans—kids, families, maybe something criminals would use. But we shouldn’t rule out foreign spies. After all, this project is Top Secret.”

  “And Paul never mentioned being in danger, himself?”

  Jess shook her head. “If the danger was physical, I'm guessing it arose after he got really sick.”

  “If that's true, Paul was worried about more than the technology and its application. Something must've happened recently that changed everything, something that factored danger into the equation. I think it's time for us to have a talk with Patrick.”

  Jess took a sip of her coffee then set her cup on the table. “You know, he may not let you in his office. If he does, he'll stonewall you with security issues. You don’t have a clearance so, just like he did with me, he’ll say that he's not authorized to—”

  “Not if I ask the right questions. When we talk to Patrick, wanna play good cop, bad cop with me?”

  She laughed. “I wouldn't be any help. I can't act. You should know that.”

  “Then I guess I'll just have to play Columbo.”

  Chapter 6

  Time for the coach to reveal his game plan.

  Trent shoved open the conference room door.

  The other six members of the MMI board sat around the large table engaged in conversation as they waited for their tardy chairman.

  The murmuring in the room stopped when Trent stepped into the room.

  He scanned their faces and wondered who would be left at the end of the day. One does not make the sweeping changes required to turn a struggling corporation into a powerful global enterprise without ruffling a few feathers and putting uncooperative heads on the chopping block.

  Trent strode to the head of the long table, flipped on the display device and slipped the USB drive holding his PowerPoint presentation into the USB port.

  When the big monitor on the wall flashed the opening visual, the faces of the other six tilted up to the screen.

  Say goodbye to old MMI.

  We're moving to Vegas!

  Trent waited while they read it and then surveyed their faces for initial reactions.

  Marco Acosta's intelligent, inquisitive brown eyes focused on Trent. “What are you up to, Del Valle? Hope you're not gonna upset our applecart.”

  “I’m not going to upset it, Marco. But the cart’s too small. If you'll all bear with me for a few moments, I'll show you a much bigger cart filled with a thousand times more apples.”

  He paused to let them ruminate on his words. The buzz in the room started again and grew louder by the second.

  “I said, if you'll please bear with me.”

  Trent waited until all attention returned to him. “Here is the current, sorry state of our industry, gentlemen … and Ms. Gray.”

  Regina Gray, the aging porn star, turned business executive, gave him her patented smile. “I can handle a move to Vegas … if there's profit in it.”

  “There's a tax break in it, for sure, Regina. The profit—I'll get to that in a moment. First, can anyone tell me why the adult movie business is floundering?”

  “That’s easy. Not enough sales and too much competition.” Jack Dalton leaned forward on his elbows and gave Trent a blank stare.

  “Yes. And that's because people don't want to pay for the same old content they've always gotten, when somebody on the Internet will give it to them for nothing. Well, nothing but exposure to some annoying advertising. That's all we’re making money on with our websites … the advertising. And we have to beat the bushes for it, because not every business is comfortable with placing ads on our X-rated web sites. The net effect, our profit margin is thinner than a Slim Jim, but it’s not unlocking any doors for us.”

  Trent forwarded to the next visual. “Look at the numbers. Thirty-seven percent of worldwide Internet traffic is pornography, but we aren't making diddly from it. To top it all off, some of the social media sites are secretly horning in on what little is left of our business.”

  Trent paused to let them digest the first round of information. “And, meanwhile, what are our competitors doing?”

  Regina slipped into her amateurish British accent. “Like Playboy, they're turning respectable.”

  “Exactly. And, though it’s ten percent of their revenue, some of the big hotel chains are dropping adult videos, while the state of California
passes laws that make it more difficult to shoot our movies,” Trent said.

  “Are you trying to tell us were going broke, Trenton?” Al Compton’s bushy eyebrows pinched together.

  “It doesn’t have to play out that way, Al. Not if we do two things.” Trent moved to the next image in his presentation. “First, we appear to go respectable too. We change our name when we move.” He pointed to the name and new logo on the screen. “MMI becomes Custom Adventures Incorporated. You'll understand the name if you'll bear with me.”

  “Trent, just what does ‘go respectable’ mean? I’m not sure we know how to do that.” Regina gave him a palms-up shrug. But her crooked smile said she was on board. And she made a good ally. Regina was sharp and boardroom wise.

  But everyone needed to hear the answer to her question, because appearing respectable would soon become their life and their lifeline for the foreseeable future. “It means we climb in bed with all the tech companies. We attend their trade shows, schmooze with their CEOs and with their senior technical staff. We make them feel comfortable with our presence. They see that we’re ordinary folks, just like them. Then we give them some business. Contracts to build sophisticated apps for streaming our content to handheld devices—cell phones, pads, tablets.”

  Trent changed to the next visual in his presentation. “Second, we slowly leave the video world and enter the brave new world of next-generation, virtual reality. And, just as we have for the last twenty years, the adult entertainment industry will drive the technology with our investments. We’ve got to make sure we’re at the leading—no, the bleeding edge of personal entertainment technology. I'm talking fully interactive VR, where the customer becomes a character in his own story, his own fantasy world, a world so real you can't tell the virtual from reality. If we’re first to market with these next-generation VR products, we will be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams.”

  Tony’s eyes had lit up on the words, wildest dreams. “Have you done the math, Del Valle? What does the market for VR look like?”

  Trent focused on Tony. “If we’re first in, the rewards are staggering. Twenty billion dollars in year one. That matches the annual U.S. video game sales. Eighty billion in year two. And, if this technology delivers like I believe it will, we could become the first trillion-dollar-a-year business not far down the road.”