Target of Opportunity td-98 Page 3

  "Do not forget your weapon. You'll find it in the glove box."

  The driver turned his insectlike head. The glove compartment popped open and revealed a revolver clipped to the panel. He picked it up. It felt real. Probably was.

  "This is only a dinky little .38," he said in disappointment.

  "Stuffed with Devastator bullets. Perfect for your mission."

  "You could have at least included a laser targeting system."

  "Make sure you write that on the survey questionnaire when the simulation is over."

  "You bet," said the driver, stepping out of the car. He began walking, tentatively at first and with greater confidence as the computer-generated surroundings responded to his presence.

  As seen through the eyephone goggles, everything about the game was incredibly real. Oh, there were electronic glitches here and there, but on the whole the fidelity was excellent. Even the close air of the "garage" smelled stuffy. You couldn't beat it for realism.

  Except with reality itself.

  And who cared about reality when by simply donning a senses-blocking head-mounted display, you could become whoever you wanted, do whatever you wanted and conquer any challenge-if you made the right decisions.

  IN HIS THIRTY-ODD YEARS on earth, Bud Coggins had hardly ever made the correct decision. Not in school, not in work and certainly not in his personal life. As a consequence, he had gotten his fill of reality. He was too short, too fat, too balding and too poor to make reality work for him.

  Games he could work. Standing behind an arcade video game, Coggins beat the youngest kid at Sonic Hedgehog II six times out of seven. A dozen years of playing every video game known to man had developed in Bud Coggins the lightning reflexes of a fifteen-year-old. The games had come and gone over the years. In the arcades and in home systems. Atari. Intellivision. Nintendo. Sega Genesis. Trio CD-ROM. There was no game he hadn't played, from Pong to Myst. Mortal Kombat to Lovecraft Is Missing. Give him a joystick, trakball or lightgun, and Bud Coggins could hit the target each and every time.

  When the first virtual-reality systems came in, Bud got very excited. He soon fell into a deep depression because tending bar for eight-fifty an hour didn't pile up the money fast enough to pay for a ten-thousand-dollar personal VR game system.

  But there were still ways. Trade shows. Public demonstrations. Anyplace Bud Coggins could score a free ride, he did. And because he adapted to virtual reality better than mundane actuality, the invitations kept coming in the mail.

  Right now the game was called Ruby. And Bud had been selected by computer to be the first person in the history of the universe to play it. That was what the four-color invitational brochure had said. Bud Coggins had only to call a number and make an appointment.

  A soft voice on the telephone had told him to come to an office park in South Boston, the site of the testing lab of Jaunt Systems, inventors of the only seventy-five-million-polygon totally immersive virtualreality gaming system on earth.

  Bud had felt like an F-22 Stealth fighter pilot when they strapped him into a white Ford Aerostar van that was sitting off the concrete floor on big rubber rollers. That was so the tires would roll freely when he hit the gas, they had explained.

  Once he was strapped in, they set the VR helmet on his grinning head and all went black.

  When the eyephones came to life, Bud was looking at the same concrete warehouse interior he had entered. It was just as dingy, just as ill lit, and the three VR technicians were just as shadowy. All wore sunglasses, just like real life.

  "Nothing's changed," he complained.

  "You are not looking at reality, " a soft voice in his VR helmet had informed him. "You are looking at Ruby."

  "Ruby?"

  "The Mortal Kombat of VR game simulations. It will look, taste, sound and feel absolutely real. And in order to properly evaluate this experimental system, you must drive as if you are driving in Boston traffic."

  "Good challenge," said Bud Coggins, who drove in Boston traffic every day. It was said when Parisian taxi drivers congregated to swap stories about the worst drivers in the world, they invariably threw up their hands at the mention of Boston drivers.

  "Got it," says Bud Coggins, clutching the steering wheel and wondering if the new-car smell in his lungs was from the Aerostar upholstery or VR generated.

  "We will see everything you see via our remote console. Do you have any questions?"

  "Great. Why is the game called Ruby?"

  "That will become clear as the game scenario progresses. You may start your engine now."

  Bud Coggins had fired up the engine. The car simulator revved up nicely, vibrating comfortably when he left it in neutral.

  "You may exit the warehouse."

  Coggins released the brake, pumping the gas. There was a bump, and the warehouse surroundings fell behind the van, which seemed to be actually moving.

  "That was one hell of a bump," he said aloud. "It felt like I came off the rollers."

  "Sorry. Must be a bug in the software controlling the multiaccess motion-simulator seat. Is the helmet still functioning?"

  "Yep. Good thing it's padded. Think I banged it on the roof."

  "You are going to Dorchester."

  Bud turned left onto Morrissey Boulevard, and the soft voice inside the VR helmet kept him busy with questions while impressing upon him the need to avoid jostling the delicate VR gear packed in the back of the van.

  "Drive as if the cars around you are real, Bud. Avoid reckless driving. Do not call attention to yourself. "

  "Gotcha. "

  Bud Coggins enjoyed the high-adrenaline sensations of driving through virtual Boston traffic. The other drivers were honking and cursing at him without any justifiable reason, just as they would in real life.

  "People kept staring at me," he remarked at one point.

  "Ignore them. Trust no one. "

  "Is that important to the game?"

  "People stare at other drivers. It's simply part of the natural feel we've given Ruby."

  At one point Coggins lowered his window and stuck his hand out. The cold air blew through his fingers just as it would in true expressway traffic.

  "Amazing," he had said over and over again. "I am fully, totally, absolutely immersed in virtual reality."

  BUD COGGINS was still thinking that as he crept through the simulated underground parking garage of the University of Massachusetts, stalking a Presidential assassin who could be anybody with only a .38 revolver.

  "Bud, the concrete posts are color coded. You are looking for the yellow-orange section."

  "It's just ahead," said Bud, voice tightening in anticipation.

  An elevator door slid open, and Coggins whirled in time to see the too-obvious figure of a Secret Service agent carrying a MAC-11.

  The agent saw him, but was too slow. Coggins lifted, sighted and fired once. The agent went down, his weapon unfired.

  "I got him. I got him!"

  "Don't shout. It will attract others. Remember all real-world scenarios have been programmed in."

  "Right, right," said Bud Coggins, stepping over the body and marveling at the metallic scent of blood that tickled his nostrils.

  "Take his belt radio, " the voice in the helmet instructed.

  "That will help me track the renegade Secret Service guys, right?"

  "Their quarry is your quarry. It is important that you find the assassin before they do."

  Kneeling, Coggins stripped the corpse of the radio set and put it on, following the instructions of the helmet voice. There was a port in the helmet for the Secret Service earphone jack. It fit perfectly. The body felt so real Bud wondered if one of the technicians hadn't lain down on the warehouse floor to play dead Secret Service agent.

  When he arose, Bud could hear realistic-sounding radio conversation.

  "Suspect spotted on roof of Science Center."

  "Roger. Seal off all entrances and exits."

  "Did you hear that?" Coggins asked the v
oice.

  "Yes. Go to the Science Center," the VR-helmet voice said.

  Coggins searched the signs until he found one that pointed the way. He rode the elevator up two floors and got off.

  And stepped right into an ambush.

  There were two Secret Service agents crouching before double doors signaling to one another as if about to kick in the doors.

  They heard the sound of the elevator door open, started turning-and Bud Coggins got off two shots a fraction of a second apart.

  Both agents went down, painting the door with their blood.

  "Looks like they had the suspect cornered behind those doors," Bud muttered. There was a sign that said Herbert Lipke Auditorium.

  "It's an auditorium. Shit. I have only three shots left and I have to track the suspect in a theater."

  "You are allowed to acquire any weapons you find along the way," the helmet voice instructed.

  "Good," said Coggins, picking up a fallen Delta Elite automatic. With a weapon in each hand, he eased one of the double doors open.

  The theater was dark. The seats appeared empty. Three bays of red-covered seats sloped down toward the stage at a steep angle, backed by a horseshoe-shaped pinewood backstop.

  Hunkering low, Bud Coggins began to move down one aisle, sweeping his pistol muzzles from side to side. If anything moved in these deep shadows, he was going to get it before it got him.

  The curving ranks of seats fell behind with every step. All were empty. He was holding in his breath so that if he had to fire he could exhale with the shot, the way the pros did it. Coggins had picked up a lot of pointers over his stellar career of playing electronic games.

  The voice in his helmet was quiet now. He could hear tense breathing, and knowing it wasn't his own, realized that the control technician was just as excited as he was.

  This was a great game. Still couldn't figure out why it was called Ruby. Then again, he never understood why Tetris was called Tetris.

  The doors on either side of the stage blew open under the hard shoulders of sunglassed men with guns.

  Flashlights blazed and a voice cried, "Freeze! Don't move! Secret Service! Don't move!"

  Coggins dropped to one knee, waiting. Had they seen him?

  And the agents converged on a man who had been sitting in the front row, waiting in sinister silence.

  The man stood up. His back was to the seat rows. He was short and slight and might have been some harmless professor of astronomy waiting to expound on the top quark.

  The Secret Service agents treated him like a coiled asp.

  "Keep your hands where they are!"

  "I'm not resisting!" the man shouted suddenly. "I'm not resisting arrest!"

  A human wave, they converged on him, threw him to the floor and cuffed him. He submitted without a struggle.

  "You are under arrest for attempting to assassinate the President of the United States," an out-of-breath Secret Service agent said.

  "I didn't assassinate anybody," the man said in a nervous voice. "I'm a patsy."

  When they hauled him to his feet again, someone hit the lights. Everybody got a good look at the assassin then. Except Bud.

  "Holy shit!" an agent exploded. "He's wearing one of our countersniper windbreakers."

  "I don't recognize him," another said.

  "He's not from the Boston office," said a third.

  "Still, this guy looks vaguely familiar," a fourth agent said.

  "We'll sort it out later. Let's get him out of here."

  They spun the handcuffed prisoner around and marched him roughly up the aisle.

  Bud Coggins ducked behind the pine barrier and watched the knot of men approach, their captive stumbling before them, his pasty face sweaty and drained of blood.

  "Did I fail?" he whispered into his helmet.

  "No. Do you see the man's face?"

  "Yes."

  "Does he look familiar to you?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, he does! But I can't place him."

  "Then here is a clue. The name of the game is Ruby. You are Ruby, Bud Coggins. Do you understand now? You are Ruby."

  And Bud Coggins understood perfectly. He came out from behind the pinewood barrier in a marksman's crouch and shouted, "Oswald! You killed my President!" He then emptied the contents of both guns into the handcuffed prisoner. The man gave out a groan, twisted on his feet and sprawled on the carpeted aisle.

  A storm of return fire tore into Bud Coggins's wildly pounding heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver and most importantly, his '7R helmet. It cracked open like an Easter egg.

  As he lay broken and bleeding in the cavernous auditorium, looking at the real world through real eyes, Bud Coggins smiled through his pain.

  This Ruby is a great game, he thought. He felt totally, absolutely, scarily immersed in the experience of dying.

  And then he did die. Happily. He had been the first human being to play Ruby and he had won first time out.

  Chapter 4

  Remo Williams cruised past the entrance to Sam Beasley World.

  It looked exactly the way he remembered it. Before it had fallen into the biggest sinkhole in Florida history, that is. Pennants chattered in the wind, and colorful bunting everywhere proclaimed Have a Beasley Christmas.

  Two years ago an armed invasion of Cuba had brought Remo to the Cuban-exile community of Miami on the trail of the mastermind attempting to destabilize the island nation. The trail led, of all places, to Sam Beasley World, where Remo had discovered an underground installation in which preparations were under way for a second assault using animatronic soldiers under the command of the legendary animator and theme-park operator, Uncle Sam Beasley.

  It was hard to judge which was more fantastic: that the Sam Beasley Corporation, with theme parks in several nations, would try to overthrow the Castro government in order to establish a tax-free world headquarters and theme park in the Caribbean; or that the mastermind was none other than Uncle Sam himself, who was supposed to have died in the mid-1960s.

  Eventually Remo and his mentor, Chiun, had gone to Cuba to head off the second invasion. In the process they had captured Uncle Sam alive. Normally disposing of a problem like Uncle Sam would have been easy. Remo was sanctioned to kill in the name of national security. Except that Remo had grown up watching "The Marvelous World of Sam Beasley" and had been a huge fan. The Master of Sinanju, too, had a soft spot for the defrosted animation genius.

  So they had spirited him to Folcroft Sanitarium, the CURE cover installation, where Uncle Sam was stripped of his hydraulic hand and cybernetic eyeball. Then he'd been installed in a rubber room to live out the rest of his natural life, which, considering that he had been given an animatronic heart in addition to the other cyborg parts, could mean a hundred years or so.

  Uncle Sam had recently escaped, and for three months Dr. Smith had been trying to track him down. No luck. The CURE computers were down, leaving the organization virtually blind except for human intelligence.

  So every few weeks Remo would infiltrate a part of the Sam Beasley empire looking for him. Now that it was completely rebuilt, it was time to hit Sam Beasley World in Furioso, Florida, once again. It was no fun, but it beat putting up with the snotty French at Euro Beasley.

  Remo parked in the lot and bought a ticket at the entrance. He walked down Main Street, which was bedecked with silvery tinsel and other Christmassy decorations, eyes and ears alert for signs of trouble. The last time he was here, the cartoony greeters had been put on alert and issued weapons. They had been told they were repelling terrorists.

  Instead, Remo and Chiun had gone through them like buzz saws. Back then, the entire park had been honeycombed with snares and booby-trapped attractions. Remo had no reason to think the rebuilt attractions were any different.

  As he melted through the crowds, Remo pretended not to notice the greeters whispering into their snouts and fuzzy paws.

  "He's here," whispered Gumpy Dog into his paw.

  "The one with the th
ick wrists," added Missy Mouse.

  "He's headed toward Horrible House," said Mucky Moose into his drooping foam antlers.

  Remo overheard them tracking him. No response seemed to come back. Maybe Beasley was here, maybe he wasn't. If he was, there was only one place he would be. Utiliduck.

  Casually Remo sauntered over to a great plastic hippopotamus with a yawning mouth. A sign hung on the hippo's lower tusks. It said Trash.

  As people passed by, they tossed their empty soda cans and candy wrappers into the hippo's mouth. When the hippo's belly got full, it shut its mouth and, with a whoosh, emptied its trashy guts into a pipe that led from its fat gray rump to somewhere underground.

  Remo watched the hippo's mouth reopen. So did a greeter dressed as Mongo Mouse. He was pretending to ignore the curious questions of a little ponytailed girl while trying to act nonchalant.

  Instead, he looked like a human radar dish with those ridiculous ears zeroing in on Remo Williams.

  Remo ignored him and waited for the mechanical pink mouth to yawn its fullest. When the little girl with the ponytail tugging on his spun-glass tail succeeded in distracting Mongo for a moment, Remo dived into the hippo's mouth.

  The hippo, stomach counterweights responding to Remo's lean one hundred fifty-five pounds, promptly shut its happy jaws.

  Mongo Mouse looked up and muttered, "Shit."

  "Don't say bad words, Mongo," the little girl cautioned. "Uncle Sam might be listening."

  "Get lost," Mongo Mouse growled, striding toward the hippo and whispering into his snout mike, "I lost him. Anybody see where he went?"

  "Not me," reported Screwball Squirrel.

  "Not me," said Gumpy Dog.

  Remo heard all this through the hippo's gray polystyrene shell. Then the pneumatic pipe at his feet irised open, and with a whoosh he was sucked down.

  The pipe was narrow, its sides slick Teflon. Remo just went with the flow, legs straight, arms flat to his sides as he was drawn into the massive trash-moving ductwork of Utiliduck, the underground complex that housed the dark underbelly of Sam Beasley World, the place where the refuse was processed, power and electronics were generated, and the other systems needed to keep the park operating year-round were hidden.