reach out and pick up another handful of sand. Ramzy does the same and says, ‘It’s … cold? Shouldn’t it be warmer from the sunshine?’
‘Hmph,’ she says, then there’s a rattling of the keyboard. ‘How is it now?’
Suddenly the sand is warmer. ‘Not too warm?’ she asks, and I shake my head, stunned into silence.
‘What the …?’ I look over to Ramzy and his face is contorted in pure terror. ‘Georgie! Behind you!’
I swing round and I scream. About five metres away, a scorpion the size of a coffee table is raising its huge pincers at me, its quivering tail arched over its back, and it’s advancing towards me.
I have only ever seen scorpions in pictures and on TV. They’re not – I’m very glad to say – native to the north-east coast of England. But I know this much: they’re no bigger than your hand, and they’re usually poisonous.
This one reminds me of a huge, shiny black lobster, tinged with red, with an extra-long jointed tail that curves over its back. There’s a dark orange bulb at the end with a long spike. Its claws are like a crab’s and they snap together menacingly as the scorpion scuttles forward and then sideways on its eight jointed legs. I can see slight imperfections at the scorpion’s edges: a bit of blurring in the movement, like when the barman waved at me before.
Unfortunately, knowing that it’s a virtual-reality scorpion doesn’t make it much less scary.
‘Dr Pretorius!’ I shout. ‘Ramzy!’
Ramzy is frozen to the spot in fear, and all I hear in my ear is Dr Pretorius muttering, ‘Oh, for cryin’ out loud: not him again.’
The creature takes two scuttling steps towards me and I aim a desperate kick at it. To my astonishment, my foot connects with its claw. I feel my foot kick it – but still it comes forward. Without thinking, I run up the beach, away from the scorpion, which has raised itself up on its legs. It doesn’t appear to have eyes: instead, there are raised mounds on top of its head like glistening black half-footballs, but still – they seem to be looking right at me.
I notice a strange sensation as I run: it’s not exactly like running on sand. More like running on a bed of tiny metal balls, which shift beneath my feet, although right now I’m more interested in putting distance between me and a massive black scorpion.
‘Dr Pretorius! What is that thing?’ I yell. Ramzy has picked up the deckchair and throws it. His aim is good, but the chair passes straight through the scorpion, as though it is a ghost.
‘Tsk. Don’t worry,’ says Dr Pretorius through my earpiece, sounding more frustrated than anxious. Then she says, ‘Why, you little …’ but I think she’s talking to the scorpion.
Together, Ramzy and I retreat further up the beach, but still the scorpion comes at us, scampering through the sand two or three little steps at a time.
Then, without warning, it opens its pincers, rises up on its jointed, hairy legs and starts to sprint towards me. I turn to run and stumble forward, landing with my face in the sand at the exact moment that the band above my eyes goes dark.
Everything is silent.
When the pin lights come on again in the Dome a few seconds later, I’m still in the centre of the studio, panting. Ramzy is kneeling next to the upturned deckchair on the black floor where the scorpion was. Dr Pretorius comes out of the computer-control room and walks towards us through the floor of tiny steel beads, beaming with delight as I blink and pant.
‘Welcome to MSVR – multi-sensory virtual reality, kiddos! And congratulations on being the first people in the world to experience it.’ She clasps her long hands together and shakes her head, her halo of white hair quivering. ‘Nearly there,’ she says. ‘Nearly there!’
I’m still breathless after my encounter with the huge scorpion. Dr Pretorius notices and adds, ‘Aw, hey, honey. Sorry about Buster! He’s kind of a bug in the system. I must do somethin’ about that. He wouldn’t have hurt ya.’ Then she adds, ‘I don’t think, anyhow, ha!’
Ramzy and I sit on the long desk in the control room while Dr Pretorius bashes violently at the multicoloured keyboard like she’s playing whack-a-mole. In front of us we each have a can of supermarket cola and biscuits from a packet. If Ramzy is disappointed – I had promised him home-made scones – he doesn’t show it as he crams another two biscuits in his mouth. At our feet, Mr Mash snuffles around for dropped crumbs.
Dr Pretorius doesn’t look at us while she speaks.
‘You – bash-bash-tap – just sit there – tap-tap-BASH – and I’ll be with you in a minute – tappity-tappity-BASH-BASH – darn you! No – not you. Ah, the heck with it: I’ll sort it out later.’ She whacks the keyboard one last time and turns to us in her swivel chair. ‘It’s that darned scorpion. He’s gettin’ ahead of himself. He shouldn’t even be there.’
Ramzy and I nod as though we understand everything she’s saying.
There’s a slightly awkward pause before Dr Pretorius says, ‘So how was the Disney World Surround-a-Room?’ She practically spits the words and turns back to her keyboard as if the answer doesn’t matter, although it obviously does.
‘It was awesome,’ I begin, and then decide to backtrack. ‘I mean, awesome is probably overstating it. It was good. Very good. Pretty good. I mean, there are probably better ones. That is …’ I’m gabbling and I’m not even sure why.
Ramzy rescues me. ‘Do you know Surround-a-Room?’ he asks Dr Pretorius, more conversationally.
‘Know it? A little.’ She’s pretending she doesn’t care.
Ramzy and I exchange looks. For some reason, I think she knows it more than a little, but I don’t know why.
‘I just wrote some of the code, that’s all,’ she says. ‘The program that created it? The visuals, the audibles … that sorta thing. The massive goggles you had to wear. The rainforest Surround-a-Room is … well, it was like a child to me. A child that never grew up.’
Dr Pretorius gets to her feet suddenly and her voice is louder, the words tumbling out. ‘Remember the sand you touched? Remember how you could feel it – even though there was nothing there?’ I nod. ‘And the scorpion – when you kicked it, your foot connected, yeah? You felt it. But when you –’ she points at Ramzy, who jumps – ‘threw the deckchair at Buster, and it went straight through him? Did you wonder about that?’
‘Yes?’ we both say, slowly. I mean, I did wonder about it, but it was just one bit of a load of wondering I’ve been doing in the last ten minutes.
Dr Pretorius picks up the bicycle helmet that I was wearing and turns it upside down. The inside surface is dotted with tiny metal bumps.
‘Everything we see and hear and touch is processed in the brain. Without our brain, there’s nothing. Are you with me?’
Ramzy and I glance at each other, unsure where this is going, but Dr Pretorius isn’t even looking.
‘But your brain can be tricked. Optical illusions, magic tricks, déjà vu – they’re all tricks of the mind. We’ve been doing it since we lived in caves. And now this!’
She holds the helmet aloft like a trophy, glaring at us.
‘This, my friends, is the greatest illusion of them all. Or will be. The projector here –’ she runs her finger round the curved metal band that sat above my forehead – ‘deceives