Tangle in the Dark - Kassidor

from feeling cold. She could not detect a breath or aheartbeat.“Lie with your head next to his,” the woman said. “Thinkabout something that will keep you still and relaxed.”She thought of how she felt after a major orgasm like theone she had in ancient Knossos. She remained that way forthe remainder of eternity, or so it seemed. It was hard to stayfocused after a few hours. She could tell before she got inhere that they weren’t going to get her home by making herlie in a tank with a dead man. She wondered how long sheshould wait before giving up this silliness. She was quittingas soon as he started to stink.But as she lay there, drugged and dreaming, she graduallybegan to perceive the inside of Thom’s experimental chamber.It had no real imagery because no scene generator methodshad ever been coded for it. Her perception was closest toexamining it by feel, but it wasn’t really that either. She feltthe instruments reading the state changes in the condensatechamber as a gentle current drawing her in. She knew thatsensation was caused by the small fraction of the sensors thatwere still destructive and let the measured quantum staterevert to unknown.The safeguards she had put up were the worst. It was adata-only filter, built in the hardware layer with its controlson the far side of the wall. There was no way to gain controlof the destination of the data stream from here, so it was as ifit was falling gently into a black hole. In this state the code509