Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) by Laura Remson Mitchell Page A

man
said.
    Wraggon and Tauber glanced at Barnard, then
at each other, and smiled indulgently.
    “Down with the robbies!” they chimed in as
they clinked glasses.
     

Chapter 7: Perceptions
      The
sudden “click” of the tape player’s automatic shutoff interrupted a
rush of disjointed thoughts that had begun competing for Rayna’s
attention as Al Frederick’s transcribed voice fell
silent.
    What was she to make of this?  Did Al
have what they used to call a “nervous breakdown”?  Did he
crack from overwork?  How could Al Frederick—an experienced
newspaperman whose job had both demanded and reinforced a healthy
dose of skepticism—have taken that Zorne mumbo-jumbo
seriously?  Poor Aunt Vickie!  No wonder they broke
up!
    As Rayna removed the tape from the machine,
she noticed Al’s letter, which she had tossed onto the coffee table
when she removed the cassettes from the permastore container. What
was it he had said?  Something about listening to all the
tapes?  She withdrew the letter from its envelope. Ah, yes.
Here it was:  “Please listen to all the tapes before you
draw any conclusions.”   Well, if Al was a little space
happy at the time he recorded those tapes, at least he seemed to
recognize the fact later on. He realized all this stuff would sound
crazy. Still, he wanted me to hear him out, she thought. I suppose
I owe him that much. He was always willing to listen to me.
    “Okay, Al,” she said aloud. “Let’s try
another one.”
    She leaned forward, picked up the next tape
in the sequence and examined it briefly before inserting it into
the machine. Glancing up, she found herself momentarily distracted
by sunlight dancing across the gently undulating water of her
holographic seascape. Soothed by the peaceful scene, she smiled,
pressed the “play” key, and settled back.
    “Today is Monday, Nov. 1, 1971,” Al’s voice began.
“It’s been quite awhile since my last log entry, but I’ll try to
bring things up to date. The thing is, I’ve been awfully busy. A
whole new world is opening up for me, and I just can’t seem to get
a handle on it. I spent my three-week vacation up north working
with Alec Zorne. Since then, I’ve been going to his place just
about every weekend. In fact, I just got back last night. With
Vickie in New York until late January, there isn’t much else I want
to do with my time anyway.
    “Zorne’s not at all what I expected a guy with his
public image to be. He’s very serious about his work. He’s either a
complete nut or else some kind of genius. Trouble is, his ideas are
so tough for me to follow that I’m not sure I can tell whether he’s
the one or the other. At least I have his book as some sort of kind
of written guideline. That helps a little.”
    A clicking sound indicated that Al had
stopped and then restarted the machine.
    “I’ve got to get myself a little more organized
here. There’s so much to tell, and I’m still not sure I have it
clear in my own mind. I suppose the best place to start is when I
first went to see Zorne in his lab at the Bryant Institute, the
experimental college where he teaches. Hard to believe that was
just a month and a half ago....”
     
    *    *    *
    “Not much of a laboratory, ” Al commented as Zorne ushered him into the room. “ I was expecting something more like the
pictures I ’ ve seen of labs at the big
universities. ”
    “I don ’ t know about
your expectations, but we operate pretty much on a
shoestring, ” Zorne said. “ We have the essentials here—” he gestured about the
room “ —but no frills. ”   He stopped walking and scratched his head, his
face wrinkled in reflection. “ Well-l-l-l,
come to think of it, there are some things we could use that are
more than just frills. Faster, more efficient computers, for
instance. But we manage. ”   He smiled. “ When we win that new grant money based on
the work we ’ re going to do together,
we ’ ll be able to expand