the window and scrolling down the body of the message. “—reports of various service outages in newly-set up Microcosms. We want to assure our new Levelers that the system is being carefully examined to determine the cause of the outages and malfunctions so that we can make sure they don’t recur. We’d appreciate it if you’d contact us and describe in detail the problems you experienced with your ’cosm so that we can incorporate your data into a system-wide diagnostic matrix . . .”
Rik leaned back in his creaky chair and stretched, wondering whether the cheerful language actually meant that Microcosm Management didn’t know what was going on either. “In detail, huh,” he said. Well, they were going to get more than they bargained for from him, at least in the negative sense, because he was sure now of about eighty things that weren’t the problem—
A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the office door, lifted a hand to knock. “Come on in,” Rik said.
The door creaked open, the frosted glass in the door rattling a little as always. A second later Angela came strolling in, dressed in pale blue sweats and lightly dotted with grass clippings—she’d apparently been out in the backyard, gardening. She gazed around with mild interest. “This place could use a good cleaning,” she said. “Look at those windows!”
“It’s not Mrs. Busby’s week to come in,” Rik said, getting up and pushing the screen away.
“Week?” Angela said, looking at him a little cockeyed. “And just who is Mrs. Busby?”
“The cleaning lady,” Rik said. “This is 1945. Men don’t clean up after themselves in 1945. Especially hard-bitten detective types.”
The look Angela threw him was heavily ironic as she ran a finger over the top of the green-painted filing cabinet and brought up some serious dust. “Well,” she said, “you’ve got this part of the fantasy down pat.” She dusted her hands off. “But this wasn’t what you were going to show me.”
Rik shook his head, grinning. “No,” he said, and got up. “Check these out.”
He snapped his fingers. At the preprogrammed audio cue, the system dressed this virtual version of him in the new robes he’d picked up from Lal. Quilted velvet whispered and tissue-of-orichalc gleamed in the buzzing pink neon from the movie house across the street as Rik spun once so that Angela could take it all in—the divided surcoat, the fabulous embroidery bespelled to glow in the gloom or smoke of the battlefield, the tailoring. “Nice, huh?”
Angela smiled one of those sideways smiles at him, meant to suggest that she was thinking things she wasn’t going to say. “You don’t look as silly as I thought you would,” she said after a moment, “so I’ll stop teasing you about your robes. I thought they’d look like some kind of kaftan.”
“For the battlefield? Wouldn’t make much sense,” Rik said. “Anyway, come on, let’s take a look at the new real estate. Game access, please?” he said to the system.
His office blinked out and left them standing in the blue- lit twilight of Omnitopia’s outer login area. In the sky above them, the white-glowing Alpha and Omega of the company’s logo were endlessly fading in and out through each other. In the middle distance, more or less on the ground or floor, the famous service-marked phrase, Let’s go play!, stretched from horizon to horizon. “Good afternoon, Rik,” said the control voice. “Welcome home. Identify your guest, please?”
“Angela,” Rik said. “Audit ticket one.”
“Noted,” said the control voice. “ID and audit ticket associated. Angela, welcome to Omnitopia! Would you please say hello so that the game management system will recognize you if you need to ask for help?”
Angela threw Rik a look, then said, “Hello, Omnitopia.”
“Thank you! Have a good visit.”
Around them the sky dissolved into darkness, and the City faded in around them like a scene out of a film. Rik had asked the program to put them down over by the side street where he’d stood after the battle around the Ring of Elich. Angela looked around at everything—the people and creatures heading in and out of the plaza, the buildings, the Ring itself—saying nothing for the moment. Rik watched her closely, hoping for a positive reaction. She’d never been in here before.
After a moment she let out a breath: a sigh. “This is bizarre,” she said. “It looks real.”
Somehow this wasn’t quite the response Rik had been expecting. “It does?” he said.
Angela nodded. Her expression was perplexed. “I thought this would be more—I don’t