The Administration Series Read Online Free PDF

Toreth said clearly.
    "That was fine. If you do disconnect, you'll find it's possible to slip out of the straps without waiting for the technician to come back. Now, we'll be able to do about half an hour. Longer is perfectly safe, but a first time can have some disorienting side effects, so it's best to stick to thirty minutes or so. Are you ready?"
    "Yes."
    There was a long pause.
    "You have to open your eyes," Warrick said, a touch impatiently.
    Toreth did so. Then he blinked and a few seconds later realised his mouth was hanging open. Warrick looked thoroughly delighted by his reaction.
    The other man stood a few feet away from him, and Toreth simply couldn't believe he wasn't real. That everything around them wasn't real. He'd seen the pictures at Warrick's lecture but dismissed them at the time as creative exaggeration.
    Toreth was sitting in a low chair, in much the same attitude as the sim couch he had been in only moments before. Tentatively, he rose to his feet, the movement so natural that he felt convinced there had to be a trick involved. This
couldn't
be the sim. He looked round the small room: white walls and floor, no carpet, a few chairs scattered around a square table, a desk underneath a window. Through the window he could see the university campus, autumn sun shining.
    He been expecting something slightly disconnected, something obviously computer generated, but this was nothing like that. Wonderingly, he reached out and touched the back of a chair. Cool metal felt slick under his fingertips.
    "Fucking
hell
," he said.
    Warrick grinned. "Not bad, is it? This is a simple test room — a copy of a real room on this floor, in fact."
    He opened the door, revealing a familiar corridor. "If you went out there, you could walk back to the sim suite. But you've seen that already."
    He walked over to a console set into the desktop and pressed a few buttons. The scene around them blurred and then sharpened into a larger room, something like an old-fashioned private club room, with dark red walls and large comfortable-looking armchairs. Shelves of leather-bound books filled one wall, and there were carpets Toreth could scuff with his shoe, tables with glowing reading lamps, and an old library smell. Warrick stood by the controls, now set into a panel on the wall.
    Still reeling from the impossible reality of the sim, Toreth tried to think of something to say which sounded even vaguely intelligent. "Is that always there?" he asked, pointing at the control panel.
    "In a way, yes. But it doesn't have to be visible if it spoils the look of the thing." Warrick waved his hand over the panel and it faded away into the red wallpaper. He snapped his fingers and it returned.
    Spotting a mirror on the wall, Toreth went over. Half expecting some strange effect, he saw only himself, imperfectly reflected in the antique mottled glass: short blond hair waved back from his forehead, well-defined cheekbones, blue eyes he'd always thought of as one of his best features — currently appearing rather wide — narrowish chin, and lips he'd prefer to be a little fuller. The usual slight shock of realising that, despite studious use of moisturiser, he was thirty-two, not nineteen.
    He frowned at the reflection, trying to look a little less overawed by the sim.
    Warrick appeared behind him in the mirror.
    "It's just like me," Toreth said, then thought how stupid it sounded. Warrick, however, nodded seriously.
    "Indeed it is. I had them take a detailed scan. Of course, it's possible to look like anyone in the sim. And be mistaken for them, if one is a good enough mimic." His voice dipped, darkening. "I spend a good deal of time in other people's bodies." Then, as Toreth looked round, he smiled. "Please, take a seat."
    Toreth sat down carefully, feeling the springs give slightly beneath his weight, and ran his hands over the fabric of the arms. "I can't believe it," he said, almost involuntarily.
    Judging by the widening smile, his reaction