UNDERCOVER on the TITANIC (book 1)

Part 44 - Virtual Reality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGT_EbHleDs

I have never been so happy to see the illuminated EXIT sign over the loading dock doors and a tall, thin Asian man with a long beard emerging from the smoke.     We were home.

Denny gasped with relief. 'Lee Zhang. Am I ever blooming glad to see you'. 

'Ah-um, you were extremely lucky,' Dr Zhang said grimly. 

'I got a call from a man who said he was Agent Onderdonk of the Time Agency or something like that. He insisted I check my equipment. He claimed you had been kidnapped, by persons unknown, using my apparatus at Silverwood School.'

'Ah-um. I don't believe everything he said but I was amazed how much he knew about me. When I got to the office, I found Oppy trying to re-establish a nexus for 1912. She told me the four of you had disappeared on a moving object that she could not track. How did you manage to get back?'

'Triple Oh, Onderdonk, fixed it,' I said. My euphoria wore off quickly as I looked around frantically. 'Where is he?!'

 'Fire!' Denny shouted. 'Get out of here quickly. The electric bookcase is on fire.'

Dr Zhang yelled, 'Denny, ah-um, do not call 911! I'll never be able to explain this to the fire chief. Use the fire extinguishers and don't forget the breathing apparatus.'

We left Denny smothering the smoke in a cloud of inert gas as Dr Zhang quickly hustled Licia, Miguel and me down the corridor to his office. 

 Suddenly, I remembered. 'Pacman! We forgot Pacman!' I yelled.'

No, we didn't,' Licia said. 'He's still asleep inside my parka hood.'

'How about Triple Oh? Did anyone see what happened to. . . Ondy?' she asked.

'I didn't see him leave with us,' Miguel said. 'Maybe he went back for Uncle Dunc.'

We rescued our Halloween loot bags on the way out. Fire or no fire, we needed chocolate.

'May I use your phone?' Licia asked Dr Zhang. 'My cell phone is dead and my mother will be worried.'

'You needn't call her, he replied quickly. 'She won't have missed you yet. Ah-um, it's only nine o'clock on Saturday.' I looked at my watch as the numbers changed from 21:05 to 21:06. Almost no time had passed during our adventure on the Titanic and it was still Saturday. 'We've been away for hours.' I swallowed to clear my dry throat. How can that be?' 'Ah-um, that is an artifact of virtual reality,' he said smoothly as we squeezed into his tiny room. I'll explain in a moment. See if you can find somewhere to sit.' 

I sat on an up-ended garbage bin and Licia and Miguel perched on the edge of a table munching a chocolate bar while Dr Zhang rummaged around in a cupboard. Several electronic printed circuit cards fell out before he found a box of fortune cookies and passed it around. He saw me looking at a poster of a bearded Asian man wearing ancient Chinese robes and carrying a huge halberd. 'That's Lord Guan,' he explained, 'a famous Chinese hero.'

'Is he a relative?' I asked facetiously as I stuffed cookies into my mouth and pockets.

He chuckled. 'Very distantly.' He poured himself tea from a vacuum flask. 

Licia showed me her fortune cookie slips. 'You will travel far with friends.'

I laughed. 'That one's a little late.'

'Ah-um, where shall I begin?' Dr Zhang asked. 

'You said something about virtual reality,' I prompted. 

'No way was that virtual,' Licia interjected. 'We must have been on the Titanic. It was so realistic. You know, I never saw even one person wearing a hoodie. Nor did I see anything made of plastic.'

'The food tasted awesome,' Miguel added as he passed around a loot bag. 'And it was freezing on deck.'

'And Mr McIntyre and Isambard were real,' I added. 'Weren't they?'

'Ah-um, it is not what you think,' Dr Zhang protested. 'It was all virtual. Computer generated.'

'How do you computer generate touch and smell?' Licia asked innocently.

'But how?' I asked. 'It was so realistic. And, we were there for several hours and almost no time had passed when we got back.' 

 'Ah-um.' Zhang stroked his mustache. 'Perhaps I can explain virtual time with an analogy. Before the telegraph, letters travelled at the speed of a horse. Then, suddenly messages moved at the speed of light. Today, no one thinks watching a live baseball game, played in Japan, is miraculous, even if very few people really understand how satellite TV works. Virtual time is like watching a baseball game on TV except that we are in the game. 

'The virtual reality was really real,' Miguel pointed out.

'Ah-um, an astute observation, Miguel.' Licia agreed sardonically. 'I burned my hand in Boiler Room Three.' 

'How does it work?' I asked, feeling slightly exasperated with his explanation. 

'Ah-um,' Dr Zhang chuckled, 'I invented Oppy, a computer, to do all the hard work.'

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