Trading Reality (49 page)

‘Get this thing off me!’ he screamed.

He tried to stand up, but couldn’t. The mechanical arm attached to the helmet only allowed a small degree of movement. He pulled at the straps round his chin, but Keith had fastened them tight. He writhed and kicked but to no avail. He couldn’t get out of the virtual world.

He was locked in.

I looked around the real room in Glenrothes. Willie, Karen and my father were all sitting completely still. My father’s lower jaw hung open. The part of his face that I could see beneath the helmet was pale. This must be rough for him. And it was going to get worse. But there was nothing I could do about that now.

I flipped back into Sorenson’s world. Richard was smiling at him. The moonlight illuminated the familiar features, and shone yellow off his hair. Richard’s face and whole body had been extensively body-mapped nine months before. All his actions were controlled by Rachel, hunched in deep concentration at her computer.

‘Walter, you can’t escape. Let’s talk.’ Richard’s tone was calm, reasonable, comforting. ‘Talk to me.’

‘I won’t talk to you,’ said Sorenson.

‘I want to show you a few things. Come with me.’

He turned and walked down some steps into the ground from where he had come. Once again the view bucked as Sorenson tried not to follow. But there was nothing he could do; his controls had been overruled. Together we were pushed down into the grave.

There were steps down to a door. Richard opened it, and beckoned to us to follow. We did.

We were in Richard’s office. The pictures of the old VR machines adorned the walls, and we could see the Firth of Forth through his electronic window. Richard was sitting behind his desk.

‘Hello, Walter. Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘I’ve found something very disturbing I’d like to show you.

‘As you know, I’ve been worried about the way our shares have been trading since February. I’ve talked to the SEC in America, and they informed me that a man called Frank Hartman has been building up a sizeable position in our stock. They also believe that Wagner Phillips has been manipulating the stock price to make it easier for Hartman to build up his stake at low levels. Do you know Frank Hartman, Walter?’

No answer.

‘Well, the SEC has kindly sent me a list of companies that they know Hartman has been involved in over the last few years. They suspect he traded on inside information in each case. Here is the list.’

He handed a sheet of paper to us. We had no choice but to look at it.

‘Do you recognise any of those names, Walter?’

Once again, silence.

‘And then there’s this.’ Richard handed over another sheet of paper. It was a page of the documentation for the public offering of FairSystems shares, and listed Sorenson’s past directorships. Five of the eight companies that were on the SEC’s list were also on this second list. Sorenson’s virtual hands held both lists together for easy comparison, and there was nothing the real Sorenson could do to stop them.

Richard continued. ‘This is evidence that you’ve been providing Frank Hartman with inside information on these five companies. As a director, you would hear about future takeovers or new product launches before they were announced. You told Hartman, who bought shares through nominee accounts, probably buying some for you at the same time.’

‘That’s bullshit!’ said Sorenson.

‘It looks convincing, Walter. One list comes from the SEC, and the other from FairSystems’ offering documents. You can’t deny the similarity. There’s only one obvious conclusion, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ protested Sorenson.

‘Here, look at this graph.’ Richard handed us another piece of paper, this one showing the prices and volume of trading in FairSystems shares since the company had gone public in November.

‘You can see that volume picked up sharply in FairSystems shares on the twenty-first of February. That’s one week after I told you about Project Platform. You told Hartman, and Hartman started buying shares. With some help from Scott Wagner, no doubt.’

If Wagner protested at this, we couldn’t hear him. Only Sorenson’s words were picked up. Rachel and I didn’t want exclamations from the others ruining the effect.

‘Now, I’ve drafted this letter to the SEC explaining everything,’ said Richard, handing a sheet of paper to us. ‘But I won’t send it right away. I’ll give you a week to decide what you want to do.’

‘OK, Rachel, this has gone far enough. You’ve had your fun. Let’s quit now,’ said Sorenson.

‘OK, let’s go,’ said Richard. We stood up, and followed him out of the room. We walked down a featureless corridor while Richard talked. ‘We have a problem, don’t we Walter?’ he said in the same reasonable tone. ‘If this information gets out, then it’ll be very difficult to raise the money we need to complete Project Platform.

‘Of course, your problem is much worse than that, isn’t it? If this comes to light, then you’ll be prosecuted for insider trading. That will be followed by a couple of years in jail. But a tough guy like you could probably handle that.

‘The real problem for you will be your reputation. No longer will you be known as Silicon Valley’s wonder coach. You’ll be just a sad little criminal who ripped off all those young entrepreneurs he was supposed to be helping. It will be humiliating.’

Sorenson didn’t say anything.

We were still walking. The corridor seemed to go on for ever.

‘But, before we consider what the future holds, why don’t we have a look at the past? Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I was murdered.’ Richard held up his hand. ‘Before you protest, I know it wasn’t you. You were in Chicago giving a speech at the time. We’ll come back to that later.

‘I was dead, but there was still that letter. You weren’t safe as long as that letter to the SEC was in existence. But you knew where I kept those sort of papers. In the boathouse. So you burned it down.

‘You thought the letter was destroyed. What you didn’t know was that a copy of it was still on the hard disk of my computer which Mark rescued from the fire. That wouldn’t have mattered until Doogie broke into the factory, and looked through my machine, which was now in Rachel’s office. He couldn’t believe his luck! Let’s talk to him about it shall we?’

Richard turned sharp right through a narrow door. We followed. We were suddenly in Doogie’s flat in Edinburgh. Doogie himself was sitting on the sofa, holding the letter.

He smiled at us as we came in. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Who’s been a naughty boy, then?’ It wasn’t actually Doogie; it was Keith trying to sound like Doogie. To my ears that was obvious, but we had hoped it would be less clear to Sorenson who wasn’t very familiar with either voice. The image of Doogie was pretty good, as he had been extensively body-mapped when he had worked at FairSystems.

‘Now. Let’s make a deal,’ he said. ‘I destroy this letter and forget I ever saw it. You make sure FairSystems doesn’t last the summer.’ I had no idea if this was the deal Doogie had offered, but it sounded plausible.

‘But you didn’t want to make a deal, did you, Walter?’ said Richard.

We moved nearer to Doogie. His scornful smile disappeared. Two large hands pulled him to his feet, and encircled his neck. Doogie tried to knock the hands loose, but they stayed firmly locked around his throat. He struggled for air. His eyes bulged.

Everything went black.

For five seconds there was nothing. Then we were suddenly driving a car in the dark along a narrow lane. Headlights picked out scrappy hedges. As we rounded a bend, we saw the shimmering grey of the sea in the moonlight.

‘Look behind you, Walter.’ We turned round. In the back seat sat Richard, with Doogie lying on his lap. His face was pale, and his eyes were staring blankly up to the car ceiling. Sorenson quickly turned towards the road in front. Richard’s voice continued, insistent, from behind our head. ‘Let’s stop here, shall we?’

We were driving along a rough track. It opened out into a makeshift parking spot, empty at this time of night. The car stopped, and we got out. Richard opened the car door to get out too. Below us we could hear the sea dashing against the rocks. We found our face a foot away from the back of the car, as our virtual hands pushed it towards the edge. With a final heave, it tipped up, and plunged into the dark water twenty feet below. We stared down at the agitated sea, churning against the rocks. There was no sign of the car.

Sorenson was breathing heavily, I could hear it in my earphones, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Very neat, Walter,’ Richard said. ‘Let’s take a look down there, shall we?’

We ran to the edge of the cliff and dived. As the dark water rushed up to meet us, I involuntarily held my breath. We were underwater. I could just make out the shape of the car, lying on the sea-bed on rocks and sand. Richard took our sleeve and pulled us over to the driver’s seat. There was Doogie, strapped into the front seat, eyes bulging, his white T-shirt flapping in the current.

I felt an attack of claustrophobic panic. The terror of those minutes spent submerged in the BMW came flooding back. I flipped the glasses up, and slumped back in my chair. I could feel the sweat cold around my body. I took some deep breaths. I looked over to Rachel. ‘Bloody hell. That was just too real.’

She smiled grimly back. ‘You wait for the next scene,’ she said. The underwater image danced on her computer screen. It didn’t look nearly as bad in two dimensions as it had done when I’d been immersed in the virtual deathtrap.

I looked over to the others. Willie, Karen and my father were all motionless. None of them would have been able to take their headsets off, even if they had wanted to. If they had tried to say anything, we wouldn’t have heard it in the virtual world. I glanced at the TV screen. There was the same stunned stillness in Palo Alto.

I took a deep breath, and flipped the glasses down. To my relief, we were back in the corridor, following Richard again.

‘So, Doogie was silenced, but your troubles weren’t over. My brother was on your trail. You tried to scare him off by hitting him over the head and sending him that warning e-mail. But it didn’t work. When the SEC gave Mark and Rachel the list it had sent me, you knew it would only be a matter of time before they discovered the link with your directorships. So you quickly organised two gorillas to get rid of them permanently.’

Rachel and I had decided not to include our experience in the loch. The last thing we wanted to do was live through that again.

‘Let’s go back to my murder. I know you weren’t there then, but I thought you might like to see what it was like. This way.’

He opened another door off the corridor, and suddenly we were in Richard’s boathouse. I saw the familiar jumble of computer equipment. It was dark, but I could hear the rhythm of the waves just outside.

Richard was standing in front of us. ‘Someone came to see me that night. I let them in to the house and talked to them. Perhaps it was someone I knew. Perhaps it was more than one person. Perhaps they said they had a message from you.

‘Then I took them outside to the boathouse to show them something.’ He moved over to the spot near the door where I had found his body. He stood still for an age. ‘Come closer,’ he said. Slowly, ever so slowly, we came closer, until Richard’s face was only a foot away from our own.

‘Now, Walter. We die. Together this time.’

Suddenly the image changed. There was a face in front of us, a face with no features. The face of the mysterious killer.

The killer bent down slowly and picked up an axe. He raised it up above us, and held it there. We focused on the blade, grey but sharp with tiny wood chips clinging to its edge. Then it swung down right above our eyes. I flinched as virtual contact was made. I heard a scream from Sorenson. The axe was raised, blood dripping from the blade this time, and brought down again. Another scream.

I flipped up the glasses and looked at the TV screen. Sorenson was clasping his headset and screaming. It jolted violently at regular intervals. We had rigged up a piston-like device which rammed into Sorenson’s forehead at every bang in the virtual world. We had set it at a level hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to knock him unconscious. It was scaring the life out of him.

‘He’s closed his eyes,’ said Rachel. She had installed sensors in the headset that monitored Sorenson’s eye movements. Obviously, the virtual reality effect would be lost if he kept his eyes shut.

‘Blast him!’ I said.

‘OK,’ said Rachel. I’ll turn everyone else’s earphones off. Here we go!’

A bloodcurdling screech came from the speakers beside Rachel’s computer.

‘That’s on low volume,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s orders of magnitude louder in his headset.’

The sound was the product of FairSystems’ research over the years into what noises should be avoided to prevent distress in virtual reality users. It was difficult to describe. It was high-pitched, a mixture of a baby’s yell and fingernails dragged across a blackboard.

It went on for ten seconds and then there was silence. In Sorenson’s world, Richard would be whispering, ‘Open your eyes.’

‘They’re still shut. We’ll try some more,’ said Rachel, and the awful noise started again.

The ten seconds were nearly up, and my own nerves were fraying badly, when Rachel exclaimed, ‘They’re open.’

I flipped down the glasses again. Back into Sorenson’s world.

Richard was standing before him, blood pouring down from a gaping hole in his forehead. ‘Now tell me Walter. Who killed me?’

Sorenson was panting heavily. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’

‘Let’s die again, Walter.’

Again the blade was raised above us, and again it fell. I forced myself to watch.

‘I’m going to increase the pressure on the piston, and turn on the sound,’ said Rachel to me. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t hear it.’