Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) (4 page)

“What do you have there?” he asked after a
moment’s pause. Rayna was inspecting an envelope bearing her name,
inscribed in a shaky hand.

 “
Maybe there’s some sort of
explanation in here,” she said. “That’s Al’s
handwriting.”

She opened the envelope in silence. The
letter’s salutation and first paragraph were written out in an
unsteady longhand, but the rest had been printed using a
voice-activated Dictawriter. Rayna was mildly surprised. Al’s
romantic soul always demanded the touch of a human hand for
personal messages. His handwriting was never very legible, however,
and it had grown worse in the past year or so. Rayna was grateful
that he had switched to the Dictawriter at last.

“Dear Rayna
,”
she began reading aloud
.
“I can’t leave this
world without telling you how much I care about you and begging
your forgiveness. I never meant to hurt Vickie or your mother or
you. But I had to do what I did. Please understand. Maybe these
tapes will help explain.”

Rayna paused, her face twisted into a puzzled
expression.

“What did he do to you and your mother and
your aunt?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know. Oh—well, in the case of Aunt
Vickie, it might have something to do with their breaking up. But
as far as my mother and I are concerned....”   She 
finished the sentence with a shrug, then returned her attention to
the letter.

“I miss Vickie so much,”
she
read.
“I always loved her, you know. All these years. It
was hard, seeing her married to another man. I think I could have
handled it if she’d been happy, but we both know she wasn’t. When
she died last year, it tore me apart. I could have helped her when
she started to choke on that piece of meat. I could have saved her
if I’d been there. But I wasn’t there, and Ted had gone off in one
of his huffs after an argument.” 
Rayna
paused again, her mouth suddenly dry.

“This year would have been our 50th wedding
anniversary. Did you know that?  We never did set a specific
date, but we were going to be married in 1971. I keep thinking I’d
do things differently if I could live those years over again, but
I’m not really sure it’s true. At the time, it didn’t seem as if I
had many choices. I saw it as a question of love versus duty.
Though maybe it was really love versus power. I’ll let other people
analyze my motives. That’s a lot easier to do when you don’t have
all the facts, of course. Complexity is—well, too complex. It
doesn’t fit neatly into tidy theories.

“Anyway, instead of celebrating a wedding
anniversary, I find myself commemorating the anniversary of
Vickie’s death. I feel disconnected from the world. Except for
you.”

Lowering the letter to the table before her,
Rayna stared straight ahead as she tried to fight off the lump
forming in her throat.

“What is it, Ray?” Keith asked. “Is this
getting to you?”

Rayna nodded slowly. “I guess so. Damn! 
I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen.”

Keith stroked her arm soothingly. “Happens to
the best of us sometimes,” he said.

She sat pensively for a moment, then picked
up the letter. But her unfocused eyes gazed past the paper to
memories of long talks and shared feelings—of all the things that
had made up a unique friendship.

“There was something very special about Al,”
she said quietly. “He always made me feel good—about myself, my
life, even about the whole cockeyed world. Whenever I was down, I
knew that if I just talked to Al, everything would be all right.
Even if we didn’t talk about anything in particular. God!  I’m
going to miss him!”

Keith fidgeted in the ensuing silence, his
eyes darting around the room nervously. Finally, he put his arms
around Rayna and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“How about if I read it?” he suggested.

Rayna nodded appreciatively and handed him
the letter. She settled back on the couch, absently hugging herself
as she stared blankly in the direction of a window-sized
holographic seascape on the wall across the room.

“In some ways, you remind me of the way I was many
years ago,”
Keith read.
“I used to
have big ideas—vague dreams of a wonderful world, dreams most
people told me to forget. Back then, most people figured you had to
do so much just to survive that there was no point in worrying
about larger issues. Sure, there was poverty, hunger, war,
repression .   But you weren’t supposed to worry about
that. It’s not that people were cruel—well, not most of them,
anyway. They just considered it foolish to dream about things as
they could be when you still had to cope with life just as it
was.

“Dreams were out of fashion, you see. But no
dreams meant no hope, and no hope meant despair. With despair,
things just got worse and worse.” 
Keith
paused briefly to rub the back of his neck.
“That’s how
the world was 50 years ago. But my dreams were stubborn. They hung
on. They drove me. They became the central motivating force of my
life. And in the process, I lost Vickie.

“You’re a dreamer, too. You may not realize it yet,
but I recognize the symptoms. You’re a dreamer. That can be a
strength, but it can be a danger, too. Don’t make my mistakes,
Princess. Learn from them.

“The tapes in this box add up to a journal of sorts,
beginning around 1971. You may find a lot of it hard to believe. I
find it hard to believe myself. But please, listen to all the tapes
before you draw any conclusions. Then you can decide what to make
of it.

“In any case, I hope you won’t judge me too harshly.
I loved Vickie Kingman dearly, and I love you. If I had a single
wish that could survive my death, it would be for you  to be
all you’re capable of being and, most of all, for you to be
happy.

“Goodbye. Al.”

Keith lowered the letter, a puzzled
expression on his face. Rayna glanced at him, then looked away,
fixing her moist eyes once more on the holopainting across the
room.

“You know, honey,” Keith said cautiously,
“this letter sounds almost like a suicide note.”

“No!” Rayna exploded, surprising herself with
the intensity of her response. “He wouldn’t kill himself!”

She took a moment to calm herself, then
frowned and shook her head uncertainly, eyes downcast. “Oh, I don’t
know. Maybe, in a way, he did. They were never able to tell me the
exact cause of death. It seems as if he just...stopped living.”

A soft, rhythmic buzz from Rayna’s
CompuNews/telefax system interrupted her thoughts and began calling
insistently for attention. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Here we go
again.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Keith.

Rayna wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I guess
I’ve just had it with bad news lately. The bulletins seem so much
more negative the last few weeks.”

“Oh?”

 
She nodded. “Like the other day
when that guy went berserk over in the Valley and started a fight
with somebody over priority for using a Trans-Mat booth. Or that
incident at the hospital downtown when they almost refused to admit
an emergency patient because he couldn’t find his MediNet
card.”  She shook her head sadly. “First Al dies, and now
everybody seems to be going nuts.”

“I think you’ve been reading too many news
bulletins,” Keith said. “I keep telling you that you don’t need
24-hour world-watch service. Local daily coverage and holovision
news should be enough current events for any normal person.”

Rayna smiled. This argument was familiar
ground. “Come on, Keith. You know how I feel about that.
World-watch is very useful to me as a teacher. You may be right
about the bulletins, though. At least I can take the system off
alert status.”  She shrugged her shoulders. “Look, it’s
probably just my mood. Nothing seems quite the same since Al
died.”

Keith studied her for a moment as the alarm
continued to sound. “Well, we might as well take a look,” he said,
walking to the nook where the CompuNews terminal and telefax
receiver stood.

“Hmmmph,” he snorted as he concentrated on
the screen.

“What is it?”   Rayna tried
unsuccessfully to maneuver her way around Keith in order to get a
clear view of the screen, but her 5-foot, 4-inch frame was no match
for his much bigger body.

“No big deal. Some Middle East problem,” he
said.

“The Middle East?   You can’t be
serious. There hasn’t been any real trouble there since the Six-Day
War in 1967. Just a few rumbles around 1970 or ’71.”

“See for yourself,” he said, stepping
aside.

The word “URGENT” flashed on and off in the
upper left corner of the screen as Rayna read the story’s lead
paragraph:

WHAT BEGAN AS A MILD DISAGREEMENT OVER A SITE
NOW THREATENS PLANS FOR A UNITED NATIONS CELEBRATION COMMEMORATING
THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WORLD BODY’S FIRST MAJOR PEACE-KEEPING
SUCCESS—THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Rayna pressed the “Acknowledge” key on the
terminal console to shut off the alert buzzer, then pressed another
key that instructed the computer to display the remainder of the
story.

THE DISPUTE—BETWEEN ISRAELI U.N. AMBASSADOR
MOSHE BEN-ARI AND AMBASSADOR MUHAMMAD BAWAZIER OF THE PAN-ARAB
LEAGUE—GREW SO BITTER THAT IT APPARENTLY PREVENTED THE UNITED
NATIONS COMMITTEE ON WHICH BOTH MEN SERVE FROM AGREEING ON ANY SITE
AT ALL.

OLD—AND PRESUMABLY LONG-HEALED—INTERNATIONAL
WOUNDS WERE REOPENED AS BEN-ARI AND BAWAZIER LOUDLY ARGUED THEIR
POINTS BEFORE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. BEN ARI WANTED THE CELEBRATION
TO TAKE PLACE IN JERUSALEM, WHICH WAS RECOGNIZED AS THE ISRAELI
CAPITAL AS PART OF THE HISTORIC AGREEMENT THAT RETURNED CAPTURED
ARAB LANDS TO THEIR FORMER OWNERS IN 1971. BAWAZIER, HOWEVER,
CLAIMED THAT THE HONOR OF HOSTING THE CELEBRATION SHOULD GO TO ONE
OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES.

ONLY THE SECRETARY-GENERAL’S INSISTENT GAVEL,
SUPPORTED BY OTHER DELEGATES WITH COOLER HEADS, WAS ABLE TO PREVENT
THE DISPUTE FROM ESCALATING OUT OF CONTROL. EVEN THEN, THE HEATED
EXCHANGE TRANSFORMED WHAT HAD BEEN BILLED AS A ROUTINE COMMITTEE
REPORT ON PLANS FOR THE PEACE CELEBRATION. SOME DELEGATES CLAIMED
THE TWO AMBASSADORS WOULD HAVE COME TO BLOWS IF THEY HAD BEEN
PHYSICALLY CLOSER TO ONE ANOTHER.

Rayna stopped reading and shook her head
sadly. “Well, I guess you can add another one to my list.”

“They’ll work it out,” said Keith. “They
always do.”

Rayna wasn’t so certain, but Keith insisted.
“Come on, now, honey. You’re making too much of this. I mean, all
they’re really talking about here is some fancy international
dinner where a bunch of dignitaries get stuck eating indigestible
food and listening to a lot of boring speeches.”

Rayna cocked her head to one side and raised
her eyebrows. “I guess you’re right, Keith, only....”

“Only what?”

She shook her head doubtfully. “Only I...I
have this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s not just the
Mideast thing. There’s more to it.”  She hesitated, not quite
sure what to say next. “Something seems very wrong.”

 
Charles J. Wraggon was disgusted. He didn’t
much care for the pale, tired-looking face that stared back at him
from his bathroom mirror.

No, he thought, that’s not true. It wasn’t
his face that disgusted him. It was what they were doing to it. He
was only 28 years old, but he felt like an old man. And his face
showed it. It wasn’t fair.

Wraggon rubbed his hand across the stubble
that was beginning to turn his chin and cheeks to blue-gray. Damn!
he thought. He kept forgetting to buy more beard retardant. And he
was out of his special depilatory cream, too—the one he could find
only at that little shop near the plant. All the other depilatories
made his skin break out. Now he’d have to shave, and he
hated
that sonic shaver. It got rid of the beard, all right,
but it set his teeth on edge.

Two bell-like tones announced an incoming
call. He reached over to the wall and punched the “audio only”
button.

“It is 9:37 and 26 seconds, Mr. Wraggon,”
said a simulated masculine voice. “You are late for this morning’s
review meeting. When will you arrive?”

“Why don’t you go melt your circuits,”
Wraggon responded.

“It is 9:37 and 40 seconds, Mr. Wraggon. You
are late for this morning’s review meeting. When will you
arrive?”

Angrily, Wraggon broke contact.

“Rustbrain,” he muttered, reaching unhappily
for the sonic shaver. “I got a bunch of rustbrains telling me what
to do!”

Taking a deep breath, Wraggon braced himself
for the shaver’s nerve-wracking tingle. He nudged the switch on the
handle to “medium-close,” and....  Nothing. He jiggled the
switch back and forth. Still nothing.

“Damn!” he yelled, grinding his teeth. “Where
the shit’s the recharger?”  He hunted in vain through bathroom
drawers cluttered with scores of items that had been tossed in at
random during his year and a half of residence. In a sudden surge
of frustration, he yanked at a drawer, angrily hoping to tear it
from its cabinet. His attempt was rewarded only with a wrenching in
his elbow and shoulder as the anti-spill guard clamped onto the
drawer’s sides.

Once again, the communicator chimed. Wraggon
grabbed the shaver and heaved it at the control panel, which
responded with a shower of sparks.

“I need a drink,” he told himself, walking to
the main communicator console in the living room. He punched up a
bar menu, selected a bottle of Spacefarer’s whiskey, and hit the
“transmit” button. Nothing happened.

Stifling an impulse to put his fist through
the screen, he carefully checked the receiving pod and the settings
on  the communicator. Everything was in order. He tried again.
Still no response.