Wakefulness was slow in coming. There were intermittent flashes. Lights. A hospital smell. Odd sounds, everything bleary, twisted, like some kind of weird dance music, except there was no rhythmn.

The oddest sound was his own voice. A recording? It was quite distinct. No doubt it was him. Was he talking? Or was it something taken off a phone call? He couldn't tell for sure. Weird.

Then the darkness returned for a while.

Light again, more voices, a humming noise. Something twitched in his mind, something big, something heavy, and it moved, but not at his control.

Darkness, oblivion.

Was this death? Rook had never been a really religious person, but he knew there was supposed to be hell for sinners after death. Was this hell?

It didn't seem so hot.

Or cold.

But when he came to himself again, it was dark. Or almost. A green light winked on and off somewhere nearby, but out of view. His eyes were open. The green glow illuminated something that gleamed with a metallic finish overhead. Something hummed quietly in the dark and there was that smell of chemicals and polish.

Not hell then, but hospital.

Maybe.

He'd failed, he guessed. How else could you see it? He remembered the fight with invisible men, well, he assumed they were men. He'd done some damage. Grim smile. But they'd done him in the end. Except that he wasn't dead.

So where was this? And who had brought him here?

And why? Why hadn't they killed him?

Because he knew something that they wanted, of course.

Something to do with General Sangacha, it had to be.

An image of Plesur, ravishingly beautiful, yet heartbreakingly young, rose into his mind. He'd failed her.

And then voice of his daughter, "daddy! Don't..." Alas, too late. He hadn't listened to her. He couldn't. Impossible situation. How could he leave Plesur and Oakes behind? That wasn't him, he wouldn't have been able to live with himself.

He wanted to move, to sit up, but he had no strength. He was weak to the point of absolute exhaustion. No reason he could think of. Maybe he was dead. Maybe the afterlife took place in a huge hospital. Weird idea, but then maybe not so weird. Considering that most people died in hospitals, maybe they also woke up in them in the next life. Instead of demons there'd be nurses. He made a mental note. Check first nurse he saw for demon-like teeth. Sharpened to points. Or tail. Demons always had tails didn't they? A nurse sporting a pointy tail would give the game away.

Sleep again. Dreams. Alliss when they were young and in love. Buying the house. The smell of fresh paint. Sitting with Alliss in the newly painted living room, drinking from a bottle of sparkling wine, then making love right there on the drop cloth. Getting paint smears all over themselves and laughing the whole way through.

Things switched, or seemed to turn over, like a swimmer underwater. It was smooth, satisfying even, so close to being a physical sensation. Was this a dream or a memory? If it was a dream it was unusually crisp and clear.

And then it was a sunny day, from nearly twenty years before when they went to visit his parents. Everything was so clean and sparkling, it was like it was being replayed on some kind of machine. The car shone in the sun. They found a parking place on the block, just up from George and Jennifer's house. Unusual that, and a good omen for the visit. Alliss looked so beautiful. Rook felt proud and happy. He'd been promoted to Investigation Officer with rank of Lieutenant, the first step up the detectives' ladder. He was wearing the new jacket, the smart-fiber one, it fitted itself to the wearer, it was simply incredible, best fitting sportcoat he'd ever had by a mile. Mom answered the door, she was smiling. George was mixing cocktails out back. The scene was astonishingly real and so happy, so pregnant with promise and hope. Just as it had been on that day.

And it segued with horrifying smoothness to the terrible day when dad was killed in a botched holdup in the service accessway of the Shopalot at the old Valley Mall. Two dumb kids, they'd tried to prank the security cams, but of course they hadn't done anything right. George had refused to give them his wallet. One of them got mad and fired a single shot from an old, unlicensed handgun, a little lady's gun from the 20th century. One bullet, cut dad's aorta. He bled out before the ambulance got there. The place had a bad rep, people had warned George Venner many times, but he was attached to the Shopalot. No one knew why, until the funeral, when a stranger, a younger lady, with shoulder length blonde hair turned up by herself, weeping.

Life's many surprises, that's what George would have filed that revelation under.

And suddenly, just like that, it was a day in Rook's childhood. The house on Warwick Road, dad leaving every day for work, Rook going to school. Danny Giuliano was there, his best friend in 6th grade. Danny's open face, bright eyes full of laughter as together they set off firecrackers behind the barber shop on Flower Street. All the old guys in the shop standing out on the sidewalk scratching their heads, while Rook and Danny shook and shivered with suppressed laughter on the roof above them.

And then he was in his room at home. On the wall was the poster of Bobby Thompson in his rooky season with the Yanks. And he picked up his early model bio-virt, a Nintendo device that made games so real you felt you were there. His favorites were Dino-hunt and Barrel Rider.

And just like that he was playing Dino-hunt. It was amazingly real. Just like he remembered. With the big goggles on, --so primitive compared to modern day virt--, you were immersed in the game. Right there in the jungle, with the automatic .410 in your hands, feeling really nervous as you stalked a pack of Giganotosaurs. They went in groups, usually with a huge old female matriarch at the core, and as many as ten smaller ones, right down to nasty little fuckers the size of big dogs. One bite from any of them and you were lunch. Well, for Giganotosaurs, you were just a canape, gone in a second. The game was one of the first to inflict semi-authentic "pain" imagery to users, just to up the ante. When dinos bit into you, you "felt" it. It was one reason for the game's huge success.

He felt just as scared as he used to when he first played the game. The jungle seemed real, even if the colors were too bright, too pastel. Hey, what was that? Something was moving behind the vines on his right? He swung the gun to cover it. The vines moved aside and a harmless herbivore, some kind of sauropod, a smallish one emerged. It moaned softly and crossed the trail and vanished again.

He stepped off the trail, hiding in the bushes. You had to be careful of these bushes because some of them had thorns as long as your thumbs and with virt you felt those thorns if you screwed up. But you also had to be careful every time you saw a sauropod, because those were the ones the Giganotosaurs usually hunted. If you were careful, though, you could set yourself up for a good shot at a trophy animal.

Now came the wait. The game was well designed, you never knew how long you might wait. Another animal might appear, or it might not. Or it might sneak up on you from behind.

That thought made him turn, looking into the shadows of the forest. Was there something out there? Something like a five ton, adolescent Giganotosaurus?

Could be? Sweat was running down his back. The game was so real. A few moments in this Mesozoic jungle and you were ready to jump out of your skin at the twitch of a big fern leaf.

And then it was gone. Just like that. Burst like a bubble. Wiped clean. Replaced by another memory, and again this one had popped to the surface of his thoughts without any bidding from him.

The family at the beach. New Jersey shore, mother slathering on sunblock. His sister crying because she'd dropped her icecream cone into the sand. Dad snoozing on a towel under the beach umbrella. A happy day, a harmless day, a life that seemed a world away from whereever he was now.

And then he was eating a hot dog. The smell, taste, texture of the thing was overwhelmingly real. Mustard, relish, ketchup, everything, in the backyard at Warwick Road, dad at the grille cooking the burgers, mom with several friends drinking and laughing at the big table.

Okay, except that now the memory returned, and was proceeding very slowly. Just the hot dog bit, bite by bite, taste and smell ramped up, overwhelming everything else.

What was going on here?

He was awake. Or part of him was. While another part was riffing through memories, some of which he didn't even know about. This hot dog thing. It was really weird. Each big bite of the hot dog was slowed down and concentrated, like it was being played back in slow motion on an old DVD.

Like someone else was playing back his memories and studying them at their leisure.

And the conscious part of him, the bit that was really awake, felt a shuddering chill at that thought. They were peeling him open, layer by layer, searching for something, but what?

And then, just like that, everything turned off again.

When consciousness returned, things were different. It was well lit. He could see a blank, white wall, and ceiling, tiled, with an air vent in the corner. There were tubes going up his nose, but he was breathing easily. He felt no pain. He felt.... nothing, in fact.

He tried to wriggle his toes and move his hands, and couldn't.

But he could move his eyeballs and he looked as far to his right as he could and glimpsed a tower of machinery there. That was the source of the hum.

To the left was a chair, and in the chair a woman in a white jacket, her brown hair cut into a soft pageboy curl. She was absorbed in some complex task, issuing commands to a computer while working on a keyboard at the same time.

The words were medi-speak, her voice soft, but professional.

"Agnosia index, three point seven six. No detectable aphasis or anosmia. CNF normal, CSF normal. Okay, for the record, med-interventions. Input 5 mil dexamethasone, add 3 mil Mannitol for inflammational swelling suppression."

What was going on, he wanted to ask? Who was she? Where was this?

"Stereotact at vector 4, level 5."

Her fingers danced gracefully over a little keyboard. The hum on the other side changed subtly. For a moment her eyes glanced his way.

"Subject appears awake, fourteen hours, eight minutes, thirty-six seconds. Has ocular motor control."

She ignored him thereafter.

A door opened. He heard male voices, one of which exhibited a pronounced southern drawl.

"Y'all been hard at work here, I know. So what do we got?"

"Not the specific thing you wanted, I'm afraid." The woman sitting beside Rook replied. "Doesn't seem to be there."

"Has to be. What about the pleasure model?"

"Nothing specific. He left her and the others at Sangacha's apartment."

"That disgusting nest for fags," said the southern voice, sharp with anger.

"That really upsets you, homosexuals?" said another male voice.

"Carruthers, watch yourself," snapped the southerner.

"Hardly seems worth all this anger."

"We will drive that filth so far back into their closet they won't show themselves again for five hundred years. Crucifixion, Carruthers, that's my weapon."

"You're joking, yeah?"

"Nope. We'll do it on TV, be the most popular TV show in a hundred years. We'll take those pederasts, those sodomites, and we'll execute them in front of the cameras."

"You'll make them sympathetic to the ordinary people, you do that."

"Not after a good campaign of demonization. Once we've given the people the godawful details of their evil ways, the disgusting practises, the danger to our children. They'll cheer when we hang them."

"I see." Carruthers didn't sound as if he were really looking forward to the day.

The southern voice was aware of this lack of fidelity to the cause, too.

"Anyone who doesn't want to be part of the solution, you know."

"Look, I've given everything to our cause. I know we're right."

"Then you will have to accept this too. A nation founded in blood and hammered on the anvil of war, cannot be ruled by a simpering, homosexual elite. They must go, and their fate must be used to drive the people in the right direction."

It sounded like a political speech, but not the kind made in public. If Rook could've moved, he would have shivered.

"No memory of where she might be?"

"Can't pull up anything more specific than that late night spot, Nancy's. There's a mish-mash there. You know, when memories are clouded with certain kinds of emotion, then it's hard to get a clear reading."

"He has an emotional link to the pleasure model?" said the Carruthers voice.

"Possibly. Considering the previous events of the night there could be emotional storms on several levels."

"Damn," growled the southern accent. "We gotta find that little piece of ass, cloned ass. Keep working on that. What else we got from him?"

"He knows that the intervention team wore plasmonic wraps. He was given that information by the bodyguard."

"Okay. That will have to be wiped, then."

"We got plenty of personal life details. Addresses, that sort of thing."

"Good. His ex-wife and his daughter in LA.?"

"Oh, yes. He's very attached to the daughter. Good for leverage."

"We'll have to see."

Rook wanted very much to get off the bed then. To take something sharp and hard and shove it down this man's throat.

"We just got a strong emotional response," said the young woman tapping a screen in front of her.

"To be expected. He's a father. But he needn't worry. We have no serious interest in the daughter."

Rook seethed impotently, unable to move a muscle.

"How about the deep memories. Were you able to...?"

"Yes, we got quite a lot."

"Anything from our list?"

"Hot dog from the specified time period."

"The brand?"

"Double D, we caught the packaging on a table. Clear memory."

"Excellent. So we know what we're dealing with."

"We do?"

"Well, you don't, but I do. Need to know, Carruthers, the basic building block of any successful rebellion."

"Yes, sir."

"And who is the lovely young lady?"

"Uh, sorry, sir. May I introduce, Lisa Berryman. Lisa, this is Buck Marion."

"An honor, sir," said the soft, professional female voice.

"And a pleasure, young lady. You've produced a lot of data from this contraption of yours. I think there's a big future awaiting you."

"Thank you, sir. The technology has been around for a while, but nobody here, no one in America, thought of using it this way."

"Bet the fuckin' chinks do, though."

There was a short, embarrassed silence, then the woman spoke.

"The, ah, Chinese have taken the technology a lot further. They have a battlefield application now."

"Exactly, my point. You see what we're up against? We have a dead hand on the tiller, folks, running the ship onto the rocks. We have to wake this country up and we have to do it fast."

"Uh, yes, sir."

The man with the southern accent came into Rook's range of vision. He was robustly built, heavy belly, big shoulders, large head crowned by a shock of white hair worn unusually long for a man of his, obviously high, rank and position.

Beneath the white hair was a red face, dominated by angry blue eyes and large pink ears, like some anthropomorphised albino elephant. Thin lips curled in contempt beneath a long narrow nose, burnt red by golf course sun.

"Uh, he's awake, sir, at least partially."

"Doesn't matter. I'll be talking to him soon, anyway." The thin lips split in an unpleasant smile. "Poor bastard."

The red face withdrew. Rook tried to move his head, but was unable to shift it an iota. The woman leaned over him to adjust some piece of equipment on the far side. He read a name tag, Donawitz. J.

But she'd been introduced as Lisa Berryman. What was that about?

Buck Marion. That name again. And he remembered Freddy's anger about the "rogue elements."

Or was that rogue elephants?

And then, with no warning, he went back into the darkness as Doctor Berryman pressed her cursor to the appropriate command on the screen in front of her.