“Gee, I wonder if it could set up a Virtual Mode?” she said musingly.
“What is that?”
“Well, I told you how each new chip addressed a whole lot more memory. But that’s not the half of it. The 386 can extend that way beyond by making it seem that there’s a lot more memory. There’s not, really, but you can use it same as if it’s real. Fake memory, I call it.”
“Pretend memory? But surely that would be a fantasy!”
“No. Like when you have the disk drive, and it’s too small for what you want to do, but you have a whole lot of memory, so you make up a virtual drive out of memory, and it acts just like a real disk. Or the other way around, making memory out of extra storage on your hard disk. When you turn off the computer, it’s gone, but as long as you’re running it, it works. Virtual memory is real, it just isn’t quite what it seems. The 386 can make your memory act like sixty-four million megabytes, which is a lot. And it can set up a Virtual Mode too.”
“Tell me of modes.”
Colene had been privately convinced that he was crazy, but he now seemed more like an ignorant but smart person. Like someone who was from another reality. She began to doubt, and to believe, as she talked. “I don’t remember all the computer modes; it’s been a while since I had that class. I think there’s Native Mode, that’s sort of whatever the 386 chip would do if left to itself. Then there’s Real Mode, used to run the regular AT software; it’s limited, just sort of choking down the chip’s potential to make it seem like a simpler one.”
“Like one slice of mica,” he said.
“Yes. And Protected Mode, used for the Operating System Two multi-tasking. That’s like a three-dimensional chunk of mica. And Virtual Mode, that will take the chip as far as it will go; it can be set up any which way, and however it’s set up, it acts just as if it’s real.”
“With that we could institute a reality that included you with your science, and me with my magic, yet we would be together, neither giving up anything.”
“So it wouldn’t have to be one or the other!” she agreed. “I’d like that, Darius! Then I could just walk across to you, and if I couldn’t marry you, I’d just walk back to here.”
“A reality that consisted of a slanting place across the block of mica, permanently linking us,” he agreed. “Unfortunately that is not what brought me here. I am a mere intruder into your reality, with no permanence. When I take you with me, you will be an intruder into my reality.”
She shrugged. “So I guess there’s no way you can show me your reality, without my actually going there and not being able to return.” A journey into madness?
“I see I have not convinced you.”
“Right. That computer analogy is nice, but I never fooled myself that I can step into the picture on the screen. My reality is a lot uglier.”
“Ugly? But you are beautiful and cheerful!”
She sighed. “Something you better know about me, Darius, before you marry me. I’m not happy. I’m suicidal.”
He was astonished. “You seek to destroy yourself? I can not believe—”
“Believe it!” She began unwinding the bandage on her arm. “I slice my wrists and watch the blood. Someday I’ll get up the courage to go all the way, and then I’ll be free.” She showed the inner padding, soaked in blood. “See this? This is how I got your key back for you. I challenged the punk who had it to a bleeding contest. He thought I was bluffing, but I wasn’t. Freaked him out. So I won. If I had lost, I’d either be dead or as good as dead, paying off my bet.”
“You are depressed!” he exclaimed, horrified.
“You bet! I think the only time I’ve been happy this year is when I’ve been with you. So I guess I’m crazy too. It’s been fun dreaming of being in your world with its magic, and loving you, and I guess I do love you, but I don’t believe you. It’s my misfortune to be too firmly grounded in reality, and I don’t mean your kind.”
“Oh, Colene, this is terrible!” he cried.
“Why?”
“Because it means I can’t marry you.”
“Well, if you get treatment and get cured—”
“Not so. If I take you to my reality, where joy can be transferred, you would have no joy to give me. You have the opposite. That makes it impossible.”
“You’re changing your mind?” she asked. Her feelings were horribly mixed. She wanted to love him and have him love her, but she knew that marriage between them had always been an impossible dream. Now that he had his key, and his fantasy would soon be dashed, it was time to end it. But now she wished this sweet interlude could have been forever!
“Colene, I love you, and I want nothing more than to bring you home and marry you! But that would destroy us both! I was willing to take you as long as there was a reasonable chance of it being right, but now I know there is not. I blinded my mind to one of the major possibilities for your availability, and that was my folly. My mission has failed. The kindest thing I can do for you is to leave you behind.”
So he knew the key wouldn’t work, and was calling it off. That did make sense. It also meant he didn’t have to make the deal, and go to a mental hospital when he failed to go where he thought he was going. He was defaulting, just as Biff had. Getting set up to walk out of her life when his bubble of illusion was popped.
She felt the tears starting down her cheeks. “I guess you’re right. I guess you’d better use your key now. You know where I am, if you ever change your mind.” For now she did not have to disparage the fantasy; she could let him depart in his own way. It hurt terribly, but it was for the best.
“If there were any way—”
“If there were any way,” she agreed.
He came to her and kissed her, and it was excruciatingly sweet. It was like an old movie, with them parting at the train station, knowing they might never see each other again. Maybe that analogy wasn’t so far off.
“I can’t even leave you anything, to repay you for your great kindness to me,” he said. “It has been for nothing.”
“For nothing,” she agreed. “But I really liked being with you, Darius. I’m sorry I can’t believe in you. If I did, I’d go with you, even if you had to marry someone else.”
“I would not care to do that to you.” He lifted the key to his forehead. “Farewell, Colene.”
“Goodbye, Darius.”
He closed his eyes, seeming to concentrate.
Then he disappeared.
Colene blinked her tears out of the way. She stepped forward and swept her hand through the space where he had stood. There was nothing except the faint smell of him; he had not been able to wash up well here.
The door was closed. He had not walked out. He had just—gone. Exactly as he had said he would.
Now she knew that she should have believed. She should have gone with him to his magic reality. Her disbelief had cost her everything.
CHAPTER 4—VIRTUAL MODE
DARIUS looked around him. The familiar landscape of his home reality was newly unfamiliar, after his acclimation to the alternate reality. He gazed at it with a new appreciation.
He stood on a dais, the one addressed by the Chip. One hop distant—or about twenty feet, in Colene’s system—was the larger dais of the Cyng of Pwer. Between was the serrate wilderness: a land surface so jagged that it was not possible to walk on it. Only by pounding a temporary path through the crystals could it be made passable by foot, and that was pointless, because in days the crystals would regenerate, and their new, smaller spikes would be sharper than the old ones had been. Also, who would want to damage such prettiness? The original crystals were all the natural colors and some generated ones, shifting iridescently in the changing light of the sun.