“No shit. I heard all about you in my classes.”
“How’d you wind up in the Army?”
She sat at the desk and stretched, sprawling on her chair with an unself-conscious sensuality.
“Family biz. My father was career Army, my grandfather, great-grandfather, like that. I didn’t have any brothers, so it was up to me.”
Jay nodded absently. “Nice gear.” He waved.
“I know one of the guys at Raptor—he keeps me up-to-date. Helps to know people.”
She paused. “So how are things in crime these days?” She smiled and leaned forward. The top button on her uniform was undone and the gap, although small, was eye-catching.
Hello? Jay was surprised to find himself wanting to look. He’d had colleagues flirt with him before, and it usually took more than a pretty smile or nice hooters to call to him. Lewis was attractive, no question. A chemical thing, that was all.
“Exciting, Captain—a lot more than school.”
“No need for formality here, Jay. Call me Rachel.”
Hey, he was married now, with a son. No harm, no foul.
“Okay, Rachel.” He paused. “Actually, I’m here—”
“Wait, wait—let me guess. You’re here about the lost data.” Had Ellis told her?
“You know?”
“You’re not the only player in the game. One, I run a top-security network. Two, you are the top VR guy for Net Force, and your jurisdiction has recently changed to include the military. You could have come here to compliment me on a job well done, except, three, you don’t look happy to be here, and—”
She leaned forward again.
“Four, I’ve been going over my security logs cross-checking traffic—and I noticed some extra packet requests from one of our nodes. It’s a zero-sum dead end, a shuck. So we have a leak. I don’t know how or who, but it’s there.”
“You already found it?” Well, well. Point for Lewis. Might be a little late, but at least she knew it before he told her. Competence had always been more attractive to him than just hot looks. Though those didn’t hurt.
Yeah? You’re married now, so it doesn’t matter how much more attractive this makes her, now does it? Back away, goat-boy.
There was nothing wrong with looking, was there? Plus it was part of his job—he hadn’t sought her out.
So why did he feel this little stab of guilt?
She reached down and pulled a second pair of Raptor goggles out of a drawer.
“I wanted to investigate it more fully myself before calling it in, but since you’re here—feel up to a stroll?”
Jay didn’t hesitate.
“Sure, let’s go.”
Who did she think she was talking to here? Did he feel up to it? He definitely felt up to it. Be good to get into VR anyway. No question who the better detective was here, after all, was there? As she’d soon find out.
Jay took the goggles.
It would be fun, showing her just how good he was.
Jay slipped the VR shades on his head, adjusting them so that the extra weight of the other gear—olfactory unit and tiny Harmon Kardon sound inserts—were balanced. Then Lewis handed him a small silver box with a strap attached.
“One of my new toys,” she said, “Tactile Feedback Unit. Uses an inducer to stimulate basic skin sensation. They’re not too good yet, but it adds.”
Jay had heard about the units, but hadn’t seen one yet. The basic principle was electric induction via magnetic fields. Unlike a full feelie suit, which used electrodes and localized temperature control to give sensation in VR and covered the entire body, TFUs were designed to do the same thing—without the suit. Nerve pathways were stimulated with magnetic fields and induced to create sensation. He’d heard they were being developed at the MIT media lab—apparently she’d kept close ties with the old school.
“It pays to support your alma mater,” she said, grinning.
Despite the fact that he didn’t want to be, he was impressed that she had the unit—units, plural.
She handed him a set of VR gloves and he finished suiting up.
He started to say something about his VR analogue, but decided to see what she’d come up with. Entering the Pentagon to see a computer specialist meant surrendering all data containers, and a close search of anything going out, so he’d had to leave his virgil and his data watch at the front desk. He carried copies of his usual VR avatars in them, along with his VR settings. Going into her scenario without them put him at a slight disadvantage, but it also meant she had to come up with something for him to wear in VR.
It would be interesting to see what she did.
“Ready?”
He gave her a thumbs-up, and activated his gear.
He was on a beach. The sun was nearly straight overhead, which put him closer to the equator, and it was hot. Apparently, the little TFUs worked fairly well. He could feel the sun’s rays warming him, and it felt right. Impressive. A slight onshore breeze tickled his skin, cooling him—everywhere.
Everywhere? He looked down.
Naked as the proverbial, well, bad pun, jaybird.
He looked back up and to his right, and there was Rachel Lewis, also naked, walking in front of him. Her skin was slightly more tanned than she’d been in RW, but other than that, she looked exactly the same. Her figure, as seen from behind, more than delivered what her clothes had promised.
Whoa!
Most VR programmers tended to incorporate some aspect of fantasy in their avatars, particularly for a given scenario. When he played big-game hunter or 1930s pulp hero, Jay would amalgamate his own body’s features onto other bodies, becoming someone else, rather than just himself.
The fact that she apparently didn’t meant something. What, he didn’t know, but it was interesting. Very interesting.
She turned and laughed.
“Oh, sorry, Jay,” she said. “I’d forgotten the naked part—I usually run this one by myself.”
Her front was just as spectacular as her back. Tanned skin, kissed lightly by the sun, had resulted in a beautiful spatter of freckles that topped, um, a bunch of other, um, most attractive attributes he probably ought not to be thinking about.
Jay was struck yet again by how much she looked like her RW counterpart. No enhancements that he could see. As far as he could tell, this was her for real.
He swallowed, feeling even warmer. Cool off, Jay.
“No problem,” he said. “My wife Saji and I spent some time in Europe on a couple of clothing-optional beaches.”
Managed to work Saji’s name in there pretty good.
Still, he could feel himself starting to, ah, react to the sight of her, the surprise of it. Any second his avatar might begin registering his interest in a visible way.
Shit. Got to stop that.
She motioned for him to follow her, and turned, showing him her backside again as she started to walk.
Yes, that’s it. Keep looking the other way.
“I’ve found that this works pretty good for tracking data packets.”
He listened with half an ear as he reached up and tapped the side of his head. It felt slightly wrong, since he was not wearing VR goggles in the scenario, and he slid his hand along the earpiece to what he knew was the box under it. He felt the catch open and felt for the tiny dip switches inside. Back in college he’d played VR chicken with other students. It was a game of sensory overloads—who could last the longest listening to things like fingernails on blackboards, swimming in containers of beetles, or the like. Whoever showed the most reaction in the scenario would lose. He’d sometimes beat the system by learning how to disable the RW sensory interface while in VR.