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“The scanners are for body representation.
    “Body representation?”
    “Yeah. Now, if you're walking down the Corridor with somebody else, you can turn and look at them and you'l see them. Because the scanners are capturing a three-dimensional texture map in real time: they read body and expression, and draw the virtual face of the virtual person standing beside you in the virtual room.

    You can't see the person's eyes, of course, because they're hidden by the headset they're wearing. But the system generates a face from the stored texture map. Pretty slick, huh?”
    “You mean you can see other users?”
    “That's right. See their faces, see their expressions. And that's not al . If other users in the system aren't wearing a headset, you can stil see them, too. The program identifies other users, pul s their photo out of the personnel file, and pastes it onto a virtual body image. A little kludgey, but not bad.” Cherry waved his hand in the air. “And that's not al . We've also built in virtual help.”
    “Virtual help?”
    “Sure, users always need online help. So we've made an angel to help you.
    Floats alongside you, answers your questions.” Cherry was grinning. “We thought of making it a blue fairy, but we didn't want to offend anybody.”
    Sanders stared thoughtful y at the room. Cherry was tel ing him about his successes. But something else was happening here: it was impossible to miss the tension, the frantic energy of the people as they worked.
    “Hey, Don,” one of the programmers shouted. “What's the Z-count supposed to be?”
    “Over five,” Cherry said.
    “I got it to four-three.”
    “Four-three sucks. Get it above five, or you're fired.” He turned to Sanders.
    “You've got to encourage the troops.”
    Sanders looked at Cherry. “Al right,” he said final y. “Now what's the real problem?”
    Cherry shrugged. “Nothing. I told you: fine-tuning.”
    “Don.”
    Cherry sighed. “Wel , when we jumped the refresh rate, we trashed the builder module. You see, the room is being built in real time by the box. With a faster refresh off the sensors, we have to build objects much faster. Otherwise the room seems to lag behind you. You feel like you're drunk. You move your head, and the room swooshes behind you, catching up.”
    “And?”
    “And, it makes the users throw up.”
    Sanders sighed. “Great.”
    “We had to take the walker pads apart because Teddy barfed al over everything.”
    “Great, Don.”
    “What's the matter? It's no big deal. It cleans up.” Ile shook his head. “Although I do wish Teddy hadn't eaten huevos rancheros for breakfast. That was unfortunate. Little bits of tortil a everywhere in the bearings.”
    “You know we have a demo tomorrow for the C-W people.”
    “No problem. We'l be ready.”
    “Don, I can't have their top executives throwing up.”
    “Trust me,” Cherry said. “We'l be ready. They're going to love it. Whatever problems this company has, the Corridor is not one of them.”
    “That's a promise?”
    “That,” Cherry said, “is a guarantee.”
    Sanders was back in his office by ten-twenty, and was seated at his desk when Gary Bosak came in. Bosak was a tal man in his twenties, wearing jeans, running shoes, and a Terminator T-shirt. He carried a large fold-over leather briefcase, the kind that trial attorneys used.
    “You look pale,” Bosak said. “But everybody in the building is pale today. It's tense as hel around here, you know that?”
    “I've noticed.”
    “Yeah, I bet. Okay to start?”

    “Sure.”
    “Cindy? Mr. Sanders is going to be unavailable for a few minutes.”
    Bosak closed the office door and locked it. Whistling cheerful y, he unplugged Sanders's desk phone, and the phone beside the couch in the corner. From there, he went to the window and closed the blinds. There was a smal television in the corner; he turned it on. He snapped the latches on his briefcase, took out a smal plastic box, and flipped the switch on