Craig felt stunned. With a virtual hand, he reached behind him to touch the hard, packed-dirt walls. He felt the cool earth, the rough texture. “This is incredible. It’s so realistic.”
Lesserec’s voice sounded smug. “We can even display a real-time computer calculation of what should happen during the explosion so the weapon designers have a one-to-one mapping of what is taking place.”
From the invisible speakers came the sound of papers rustling and hushed voices speaking, keyboards being rattled. Lesserec’s voice came again. “Mr. Kreident, we’ve been informed the Nevada Test Site is ready. Countdown for the test has been started. Everyone has gone to their workstations. You’ll experience a short period of darkness while we get in sync with the NTS sensors.”
Craig’s image craned his neck and took in the huge artificial cavern, the tunnels leading off into the distance behind the blast doors, and the monstrous bore hole extending straight up to the desert surface far overhead.
“How real is this simulation going to be, Mr. Lesserec?” Craig asked. Hell of a time to think of a question like that, he chided himself.
“Just close your eyes if you get frightened,” said Lesserec. “Remember, you’re in a VR chamber, not down a hole. It’s not real. I’m going to link you up with the test in a few seconds. You’ll lose contact with me, but we can still monitor you.”
The light suddenly blinked and Craig felt a momentary sense of disorientation. Oily blackness swallowed him, oppressive and thick. He knew he stood nearly a mile beneath the Earth, in the presence of five hundred tons of high explosive that was set to go off any minute now.
Faint lights came up again, enhanced by the VR sensors, and he could look at the canister of high explosive. It was going to explode in his face, and the computers would slow it down enough that he could enjoy every little phase of the detonation.
He should be able to see the detonation wave of the chemical explosion reach the metal casing, buckle it outward. He could stand there and watch as the blast wave rumbled down the tunnel.
Five hundred tons of high explosives. Again, he had trouble believing that so much chemical explosive could be packed into a volume that small. Craig stared at the canister. Five hundred tons.
It was hard to believe.
Craig frowned. “Hey, Lesserec, your distance scale must have changed as well!” he shouted at the dirt walls. “No way that casing holds five hundred tons.” He glanced around the artificial cavern. The rocky cave gave him no sense of proportion. The cavern could have been a mile across or ten feet — nothing gave him any sense of scale. But yet….
He glanced up at the tunnel above him. What was it Lesserec had said — that the tunnel was thirty feet in diameter? And if that was the case, then that weapon casing couldn’t be more than a few feet across.
Even filled with lead it would weigh two tons, max — hundreds of times less than what Lesserec had said it would weigh. What the hell was going on? Another one of Lesserec’s cute tricks?
“Lesserec?” called Craig. “Paige — what’s going on here? This isn’t a high explosive test.” No answer. “Can you hear me?”
Still nothing.
Craig muttered to himself. “All right, what’s up?” He started to get angry; there was no response from Lesserec, nor any indication that anyone could hear him.
Craig fumbled at the straps on his seat. He unbuckled and stood. “Lesserec, I want to know what you’re trying to pull. This is supposed to be a high-explosive test, and none of your handwaving is going to convince me this can holds anywhere near five hundred tons of TNT.” He rapped on the metal casing with his knuckles.
Craig heard only the soft, resonant hum of electrical sensors and diagnostic equipment around the cavern. He took a tentative step away from the invisible row of chairs in the VR chamber and walked out into the cavern.
The floor felt rocky beneath the soles of his leather shoes, just as it looked. Squatting, Craig touched the ground — he pulled his hand away at the damp, packed dirt, rubbing his fingers together. It even felt real! He brushed his hand on his slacks
He walked to the fat metal casing in the middle of the chamber. Light from down the tunnel lit his way. Thick strands of black cable ran in twisted pairs away from the device. It looked like a wide cigar with strings running out the end.
As he grew closer, Craig spotted a three-bladed magenta-on-yellow symbol painted on the side of the dull metal casing. The international radiation symbol. And then it hit him.
A nuclear weapon. A real warhead.
This wasn’t any test explosion — this was the real thing! It seemed as if the room had suddenly been thrust in a freezer; a trickle of sweat ran down his back and he shivered. His feet felt bolted to the floor, unable to move.
“Hey! Get me out of here!” he shouted, looking for the door to the chamber, but saw only the tunnels and the dirt wall.
“My God,” he whispered. He looked around the cavern in panic. Why would they substitute a real nuke in place of a high explosive test? Was someone trying to sabotage the International Verification Initiative? Was this the real reason Michaelson had died — did he discover something insidious about having a virtual reality watchdog on disarmament teams?
Or was it that Michaelson had discovered Lesserec exploiting this technology for his own private use? Perhaps the HF was just a ruse, something to throw them off the track? He wondered if he was in danger from the blast, if he would die the same way as Michaelson? More real than real.
Craig looked up at the tall borehole, impossibly far away. He knew the actual VR chamber wall should be only a few feet away, but the chamber tricked him, disorienting him. “Lesserec — let me out of here! Stop this, now!”
Craig didn’t wait for an answer. He strode over to the wall behind him, fully expecting to find the chamber door—
He bumped into a rocky wall. He rubbed his cheek, surprised to find blood on his hand. Real blood. “Lesserec!”
Clicking sounds came from the device in the center of the cavern. Time had slowed down. The light seemed different.
Craig wet his lips, swallowed in a dry throat from the events that cascaded around him. He remembered the briefings Paige had quickly covered on nuclear weapons when he had first showed up at Lawrence Livermore — the device must be going through some sort of arming procedure.
Craig whirled. The chairs! If nothing else, he could strap himself back into the VR chair and ride out this nightmare. Maybe that was how Michaelson had really died — maybe he had been disoriented, trapped in this chamber from hell, and Lesserec had sprayed him with acid, afterwards.
Craig rubbed his sweaty hands against his pants, then quickly brought them close to his eyes. Do I have HF on me now? In this simulation where everything seemed real, how would he ever know?
The VR chairs—
He looked wildly around… but they had disappeared, nowhere to be seen. “Damn it, Lesserec — get me out of here!”
Craig crouched low and swept his hands back and forth across the floor — the row of chairs had to be here. Somewhere.
A humming sound grew in intensity from the device. Craig straightened, sweat rolling from his face. His entire body felt drenched. “Oh, shit.”
He started running for the tunnel to his right, toward the thick steel blast door. But just as he turned, the entire room pulsed a brilliant white—