Hogan, James P - Realtime Interrupt

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Realtime Interrupt

by James P. Hogan

Fout! Onbekende schakeloptie-instructie.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-57884-7

Cover art by Patrick Turner

First Baen printing, August 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Brilliant Press

Printed in the United States of America

To Maurine Dorris

Acknowledgments

The help and advice of the following is greatly appreciated:

Joseph Bates and Mark Kantrowitz, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Liam Cullinane, First National Building Society, Ireland

Beverly Freed, for background on real reality

Brenda Laurel, for background on virtual reality

Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, and Thinking Machines Corporation

John Moody and the staff of Holland’s Lounge, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

Brent Warner, NASA, Goddard Spaceflight Center, Maryland

Patricia Warwick, University of Wisconsin

Joe Corrigan looked at the monitor screen, which now read:

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU ARE NOW IN COMMAND

OF THE SYSTEM PRIMARY COMMAND EXECUTIVE.

(COMMAND EXEC ANSWERS TO “ROGER”)

Tyron strode into the room ahead of the others. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he barked.

Corrigan ignored him and spoke quickly to the computer. “Roger, operand class by name: Corrigan, Essell. Zero -

reaction coefficients of M-sub-M, M-sub-P, and delete spacial conflict restrictions.”

“Get away from that. . . . What the? . . .” Tyron grabbed at Joe’s shoulder, but his hand met no resistance and went

straight through. Corrigan had in effect turned himself and Lilly into ghosts.

“You don’t have control anymore,” Corrigan said. “I do.”

“That’s impossible,” Tyron declared. He stepped forward, moving through Corrigan’s body, but struck his knee on the

edge of the chair, causing him to curse. Corrigan smirked and waved a hand invitingly toward the touchpad. Tyron stabbed

savagely at several keys and saw that it was ineffective.

“Roger, reset k-sub-g to twenty percent,” said Corrigan. Papers in the office suddenly lifted and began blowing around

in currents from the air-conditioning. Velluci, walking into the room, came loose from the floor in mid-step, in a strange,

floating leap that carried him toward the wall. Corrigan had reduced gravity to a fifth of normal.

“Roger, reset all mu-f to zero.” Which reduced all mechanical friction to nothing. Velluci had been hauling himself back

up, but went down again as his feet shot out from under him, as if the floor had turned into slick ice. Tyron managed to stay

upright, but his spectacles slid off.

“Roger, rotate k-sub-g vector field ten degrees northward.” And gravity was no longer vertical, and all the horizontal

surfaces were now sloping. Tyron tried pulling himself up the tiled floor, but his hands slid futilely.

“You’ll regret it, Corrigan,” he screeched as a tide of books, folders, furnishings swept him down again. . . .

BOOKS by James P. Hogan

Inherit the Stars

The Genesis Machine

The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

The Two Faces of Tomorrow

Thrice Upon a Time

Giants’ Star

Voyage From Yesteryear

Code of the Lifemaker

The Proteus Operation

Endgame Enigma

Mirror Maze

The Infinity Gambit

Entoverse

The Multiplex Man

Realtime Interrupt

Minds, Machines & Evolution

The Immortality Option

Paths to Otherwhere

Bug Park

Star Child

Rockets, Redheads & Revolution

Cradle of Saturn

Prologue

Faces, places, formless spaces. Blurred thoughts, smeared thoughts. Images dissolving away under swirling water.

Words tumbling in dislocated time. Then, clearness emerging suddenly, like a momentary calming of the wind in a

storm.

There was a small, plain room with a bed, a closet, and a window with closed slats. He was sitting on the edge of

the bed, wearing a heavy plaid robe. Where this was or how he came to be there, he didn’t know. It could have been

a hospital. He had a strange feeling of unreality about everything, as if the walls around him were all there was: stage

props brought together in a void, with nothing behind.

He rose and moved to the window. The motion felt remote and disconnected, as if he were watching it from a

vantage point that was distant yet still strangely within. Beyond the glass was a city with tall buildings and a river

spanned by steel bridges. It felt familiar, but he was unable to name it. He searched his memories but found only

faded and scattered fragments from long ago. Of his recent past—anything that might have some connection with

where he was and why—there was nothing.

He turned as he heard the door behind him open. A man entered, dressed in a physician’s smock. “Good morning,

Joe. How are you feeling today?” the man said.

So his name was Joe? He made no answer.

The physician closed the door behind him and crossed the room. He had a square jaw and brow, smooth, pink

features, wavy blond hair, and heavy-rimmed spectacles: a physician caricature, the generic of a type, giving the

fleeting feeling of possessing no more substance than the room.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked. Joe shook his head. “I’m Dr. Arnold. We’ve known each other for quite

some time now.”

“Oh,” Joe said.

Arnold peered at him closely. “Do you know who you are?”

“I’m Joe,” Joe told him.

The physician frowned and seemed momentarily perplexed. “Well, of course you’d know that. I just told you,” he

said.

“It was a joke,” Joe explained.

“That was funny?”

Joe shrugged. “Not in a way that you’d split your sides over. But kind of, I guess.”

“Why was it funny?”

Joe was beginning to find this a strange conversation. “Well, if you don’t know, I don’t know how to tell you,” he

replied.

“Then tell me why you think it’s funny,” Arnold said.

“Look, you don’t need to lose any sleep over it. It’s not that big a thing. Why are we making such a deal out of

this?”

Arnold stared at him intently. “But I need to know. It’s important that I know everything that goes on inside your

head. It’s been pretty messed up, I’m afraid. You’ve been a very sick man, Joe.”

Joe didn’t feel as if he had been sick. Not just at that moment, anyway. He did feel that Arnold was a strange kind

of person to be telling him that he had been. But then the coherence that had momentarily given clarity to his

thoughts fell apart again, and what happened next dissolved back into confusion.

“It’s great that you’re up and about, Joe. We can show you the place, and you can start meeting some of the other

patients. That will do you a lot of good.”

The nurse’s name was Katie. They walked slowly along a wide corridor with windows on one side, looking out at

the river and the bridges. Moving felt more natural, but he still had occasional attacks of giddiness—especially when

he changed his direction of vision too suddenly. Sometimes everything would go completely blank for a moment.

Arnold said it was because different parts of his nervous system were out of synchronization and needed time to

accommodate to sudden changes of input.

“What city is this?” Joe asked.

“That’s good: you’re getting curious about things. This is Pittsburgh,” Katie said.

Somehow it did not come as a complete surprise. He had a vague recollection of coming to work here. But the

clearer details of his still-blurred memories were from another city of high buildings with a river.

“How long ago did I come to Pittsburgh?” he asked.

“The second-largest city in Pennsylvania, with a population of over two million, once known as the Gateway to

the West,” Katie recited, ignoring his question. She went on, sounding like a talking commentary at a museum

exhibit whose button had been pushed. “In the eighteenth century it was a scene of intense rivalry between the

British and the French, which caused five forts to be built here. It was a major producer of armaments for the Union

during the Civil War, and subsequently grew to become the center of the steel industry through the 1960s.”

Joe shook his head. “No, I was asking about me. How long have I been here? What did I come here for?”

“I think you’d better talk to Dr. Arnold about that,” Katie replied.

Joe sighed. In his scattered moments of clearer perception, he was getting used to this kind of thing. Arnold said it

was because his mind wandered off into its own internalizations and lost logical continuity. “Are you a history major

or something?” he asked as they resumed walking.

“No. I’m a nurse. Why?”

“Do all nurses talk like that?”

“Why shouldn’t they? Don’t most people take an interest in such things?”

“Hardly.”

“What kind of things would you expect me to be interested in?”

It was such a peculiar question that Joe didn’t know how to answer. When he looked at her, her eyes, although

fixed on him, seemed to have an emptiness that gave him the feeling of talking to a shell.

“What do you think when you look at me like that?” she asked.

“That everyone I meet here is strange.”

But it could be because of the way he was seeing things, he told himself. Maybe people never had been the way

he thought he remembered.

He remembered being with a group of young people, laughing and teasing each other as they walked along a road

by a shore, where waves broke over rocks below. It was an old town somewhere, of imposing, high-fronted houses

built in terraces around squares with green lawns. Ships sailed out of a harbor, past a lighthouse at the end of a long

stone pier.

“You were involved in some unconventional experiments involving processes deep in the brain, which have

affected your mind and altered the way you see the world,” Dr. Arnold told him.

“I seem to remember I worked with computers. I came to this country to work with them from somewhere else.”

“Ah, excellent! You’re getting better every day. Now I want you to meet Simon, who’s going to be your regular

counselor. Simon, this is the man we want you to help. His name is Joe. Do you remember your full name, Joe?”

“Corrigan. . . . Joe Corrigan. Pleased to meet you, Simon.”

One Saturday night there was a dance for the patients to get to know each other and begin rediscovering long-

unused social skills. Corrigan felt as if he had been caught up in a charade of walking character clichés.

“How are you finding it, Joe?” Dr. Arnold inquired, rubbing his hands together like an anxious headmaster

showing his face at the annual high-school ball.

“Tell me these people aren’t real,” Corrigan answered.

Arnold seemed unsurprised but interested. “Why? What’s wrong with them?”

“I feel as if I’m in an old, corny movie.”

“The parts of your memory are starting to come together again. Not as much of what you think you see is really

out there. Your mind is filling the gaps by projecting its own, stored stereotypes from long ago. Don’t worry. It’s a

healthy sign.”

* * *

There came a day when Corrigan grew tired of being restricted. He wanted to get out in the air and work with his

hands. In a shed in the rear grounds of the hospital he found some garden tools, and decided on impulse that he

would plant a vegetable patch. There was no need to seek approval—one of the advantages of being deemed unstable

was that nobody was surprised at anything one did. In any case, asking would simply be an invitation to be told no. A

phrase came to mind from somewhere in his past and made him smile: “Contrition is easier than permission.”

The world was coming more together now, and although he hadn’t said so, inwardly he considered himself to be

virtually back to normal. But when he turned over the first fork of soil, there was nothing underneath—just

blackness. He stared, confused, then closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again, nothing was

amiss: he saw earth, roots, a shard of pottery, and a few rocks.

“You see, you’re not as well as you imagine yet,” Arnold told him when Corrigan described the experience.

“Your perceptions can still be disrupted by sudden changes of mood or intent. That is why it is important for you to

get into the habit of thinking smoothly. Avoid discontinuities. . . . But wanting to get out and about again, I can

understand. It’s perfectly natural.”

“Maybe I could visit my old company?” Corrigan suggested. He could remember a little now about the

organization that he used to be with, and his work there. It had involved supercomputers and other advanced

hardware.

“That project was abandoned a long time ago now, Joe,” Arnold replied. “And I’m not sure that digging up those

ghosts would really be for the best. But I agree that we should begin broadening your experiences as a start to getting

you on the road back to a normal life.”

“How long have I been here?” Corrigan asked.

“It’s getting close to three years now,” Arnold said.

“Don’t I have any family? Why does nobody come and visit?”

“They did, in the early days. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“You didn’t respond well. It set off a regression that threw us back months.”

“I’m better now. Can’t we try again?”

“Sure. But it would be best if not for a while just yet. All in good time, Joe. All in good time. . . .”

He remembered courts of cobblestones and lawns, closed in by tall buildings with frontages of old stone. An

archway led through to a busy street with green, double-decked buses. There was a pub by a river, filled with

talkative youths in heavy-knit sweaters and pretty girls who wore black stockings. They danced and sang to music in

the back room.

“You have to get rid of Simon,” Corrigan said. “I can’t get along with him. It’s not working.”

“What’s the problem?” Arnold asked.

“There isn’t any communication. I feel like I’m talking to a sponge.”

“Are you sure the problem is with him and not you?”

“I didn’t say it was him.”

“What’s the biggest problem area?”

“He doesn’t understand jokes.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“It means he isn’t human. To be effective, a counselor really ought to come from one’s own species.”

Arnold considered the statement. “I’m not so sure of your conclusion,” he replied finally. “I believe there are

traits among certain animals that some researchers have tentatively identified as indicative of humor.” To Corrigan’s

amazement, Arnold showed every appearance of being perfectly serious.

“That was a joke,” Corrigan said wearily.

They gave him an apartment of his own—still under supervision, but at least it was a start toward regaining

independence.

“I had a wife,” he said to Arnold one day.

“Things weren’t so good between you, though, were they?” That was true. Corrigan could recall more now of the

conflicts of those final months—both professional and domestic.

“What happened to her?” Corrigan asked.

“She got a divorce on the grounds of your incapacitation,” Arnold said. “I think she’s abroad somewhere now.”

“Now that I’m out again, maybe we could track down some of the people I used to work with. There must be

some of them still around. Maybe I could even get some kind of a job there again.”

Arnold didn’t seem overenthusiastic. “Maybe, in time. But we feel that reviving those associations too soon could

trigger another relapse. Let’s see how well you rehabilitate in the short term first.”

“Joe, this is Sarah Bewley. She’s going to be your new counselor. We’ve been talking about you to a company

that does a lot of work in your field, and they’re willing to give you a try at a job. Isn’t that great? It will also be

farewell from me pretty soon. I’m moving on.”

Sarah elaborated. “It’s a Japanese corporation called Himomatsu, who are concentrating on virtual, self-modifying

environments. That is the kind of thing that you used to do, isn’t it? Naturally, it won’t be as senior a position as you

had before, but we have to start somewhere. I’ve arranged an interview for you with their local general manager on

Monday—his name is Rawlings. If they do decide to take you on, you’ll be going on a familiarization trip to Tokyo.”

“You’ve been busy,” Corrigan complimented.

“We just want to see you functioning again, Joe.”

“Sarah,” Joe said, “is the world going crazy, or am I not as well as I feel?”

“Didn’t you like Japan?”

“It was all the bad tour guides you’ve ever seen, come to life. They do everything in regiments over there.

Somebody’s churning them out of a clone factory.”

“It’s a different culture. You have to make allowances,” Sarah said.

“They drill their employees on parade grounds. I thought I was joining a company, not the Marine Corps,”

Corrigan protested.

Sarah smiled patronizingly. “That’s just a new idea that they’re trying out. Employee motivation is important.

You can’t learn if you don’t experiment.”

“They’ve got dude-ranch-style fantasy farms, where you can act out daydreams. Later, the scripts get incorporated

into VR scenarios. Unreality is getting more real than reality.”

“People probably felt the same way about movies once.”

“They’ve got education being dispensed by actors posing as media characters, actresses endorsing scientific

theories, and ads in everything you look at—even grade-school political messages on cereal boxes. And it’s getting

more like that here every day. If this is where it leads, I’m not sure I want the job anymore.”

“Give it a try,” Sarah urged. “It will get you out again, and among people. Think of it as purely therapeutic.”

Graham Rawlings didn’t look happy as he perused the annual review from Corrigan’s file. “It says that you

haven’t enrolled in the golfing tuition program,” he observed.

“That’s right,” Corrigan agreed.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to play golf.” (Wasn’t it obvious?)

“But all our executives play golf,” Rawlings said. “It’s part of the accepted corporate image. Don’t you want to

share in the feeling of strength and security that comes from uniformity of outlook, shared ideals, and a common

purpose?”

“No.”

Rawlings seemed taken aback. “Surely you seek promotion and reward, recognition and success? Everybody

needs to proclaim to the world what he is.”

“But you’re trying to make me exactly what I’m not.”

Rawlings looked worried. “Maybe you’re more ill than we realize. Possibly you should see a counselor.”

“I’ve already got one.”

“The corporation can provide a comprehensive package of counseling, regular physical checks, drugs as required,

and remedial therapy.”

“No, thanks.”

“At the company’s expense.”

“But I feel just fine.”

Rawlings sat back, shaking his head, as if that one remark revealed all. “That proves you’re sick,” he said gravely.

Sarah was prim about it when Corrigan stopped by her office to announce that he was quitting. “Well, I’m sorry it

didn’t work out, but I tried my best,” she said. “So what do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure. Just be myself, I suppose.”

“And what, exactly, is that?”

“Ask the people who are always telling me. They seem to know. I’m still trying to find out.”

“Have you talked it over with Muriel?”

“She thinks I should do my own thing in my own way—try to find myself again.”

“She sounds very supportive,” Sarah conceded.

“If that’s the right word. Lately she’s been dropping hints about as subtle as a tax demand that we ought to get

married.”

Sarah sat back at her desk and regarded him thoughtfully, as if the world had just shifted on its axis and presented

itself in a new perspective. “You know, Joe, that mightn’t be such a bad idea,” she said at last. “You’ve been on the

program for nine years now. That kind of stabilizing influence could be just what you need. Then we could let the

two of you find a place of your own independently. I can’t think of a better road back to complete normality than

that.”

Muriel and Joe married early the following year. However, when they had talked about individualism and being

himself, Muriel thought he was describing his determination to pursue a career vigorously within the corporation.

When he quit, explaining that what he’d meant was that he was going to chuck all of it, and announced that he’d

taken a job as a checkout clerk at a discount store, it put a different complexion on things.

And, predictably, life continued on a downhill course from there. . . .

Chapter One

Few things, Corrigan thought irritably as he lay washed up on the pebbly shore of wakefulness from the warm,

carefree ocean of sleep, could be more maddening first thing in the morning than a chatty house-computer—

especially one afflicted with the kind of advanced neurosis that he usually associated with swooning aunts or

psychiatric rehabilitation counselors.

“It’s almost nine o’clock, Joe,” it babbled again in the fussing English accent that projected Muriel’s conception

of professional conscientiousness with a touch of social style. “As a rule, this is your absolute latest for getting up on

a Saturday.”

Corrigan thought that it sounded gay. He pictured it as lean and limp-wristed, with a receding hairline, mincing

about the room and throwing its hands up in agitation.

“Oh. . . . Hmm.” Corrigan yawned, stretched, and opened his eyes to the homey disarray of the apartment’s

bedroom. “Is it Saturday?”

“Well, of course it is, Joe. Why would I have said so if it weren’t?”

Horace. What kind of a woman gave the computer a name like Horace? Corrigan allowed wakefulness to perco-

late through his body gradually. She had gotten the name, and its emulated persona, from Horace Greal, the equally

insufferable confidant and financial adviser to the playgirl-adventuress star of the series Fast-Lane Lady, which

depicted high society, fast sex, and mega-money in a bright-lights, big-city setting. Muriel, apparently like most

people these days, was able to relate to such roles totally, elevating experience by dissolving the barriers between

fantasy and actuality, and letting “is” merge effortlessly into “could be.” Corrigan couldn’t. The two categories

remained obstinately unfused in his mind. That, he was told, constituted the principal cause of the inner alienation,

insecurity, and resentments that the experts assured him he felt. The only thing wrong was, he didn’t.

Saturday. That meant that he wasn’t due at work until the evening. He rolled over and contemplated the ceiling.

As he began thinking what needed doing today, a disharmony of clashing chords tied together by an ungainly,

clickety-clack rhythm started up from the apartment’s sound system. Muriel’s kind of music. He wondered if the

choice presaged the role that she had decided to adopt for herself today. Would it be luminescent, green spiked hair,

purple jumpsuit, and “Astra, Queen of the Mountains” (who also promoted Vaylon cosmetics and the Salon Faubert

fashion styles), or imitation combat fatigues, calf boots, and . . . And then the last shreds of sleep fell away from his

mind, and he remembered.

He rolled sideways and looked across the room. Muriel’s bed was empty, unslept in. Yes, of course: she was away

for the weekend, gone to see her crazy sister in Philadelphia. That brightened up the prospects for the day consider-

ably. A feeling of relief softened the line of his mouth and caused him to exhale the unconsciously accumulated

tension in the way he used to as a boy when he braced himself for the day ahead at school, then realized that it was

Sunday.

A low whining sound came from the doorway as the twenty-inch display waddled through from the living room

on its stumpy, rocker-footed legs. “There are a couple of news items that might interest you,” Horace’s voice an-

nounced. “A California court has ruled a firm guilty of discriminating against employees on the grounds of compe-

tence. Europe’s prime minister is threatening to resign. Ireland’s soccer team has qualified for the World Cup

semifinals in St. Petersburg in August.”

Corrigan got up, went through to the bathroom, and pointed at the shower. The water turned itself on. “No, save it,

Horace. I’m not interested in the mad, mad world. Today is strictly vacation. And while you’re at it, will you spare

me from that row that you’re playing. I thought that a decent house-manager was supposed to know its residents’

tastes. That’s herself’s, and she isn’t here this morning, as you well know.”

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RealtimeInterruptbyJamesP.HoganFout!Onbekendeschakeloptie-instructie.Thisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©1995byJamesP.HoganAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportions...

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