Superimposed on the other players on the court was the image of my own living room with the two men watching me. Over the smell of sweat of the basketball players came the odor of my apartment. Above the sensation of running, jumping and colliding with other players was the sensation of sitting in my favorite chair with a weight on my head.
In short, I was two people at one time.
Even the emotions of the basketball player—joy at making a basket, a flare of rage at a rough opponent, and the surge of hope that a teammate would come through—were clouded over with my own emotions of not completely accepting as right the whole concept of EL, coupled with the feeling that I didn't want to show any reaction in front of the EL men.
After a short time, Blik removed the Sim, and the basketball player's Life Experience faded away. The two EL men looked at me expectantly.
"Hmmm," I said, forcing myself to appear neutral. They did not seem to be disappointed by my reaction or lack of it.
"Quite an experience, wasn't it?" said Blik, putting the Sim down on the floor. "Of course you realize that you don't get the full effect because you actually have two primary sets of electric images going into the brain. We never have been able to overcome the subject's own real physical and mental sensation with a device that works outside the skull."
"But I'm sure Mr. Gaines gets the idea," said Long.
"I'm sure I do," I said. The damn thing was plenty intriguing, but somehow, despite all its good points, I wasn't really sold on it.
"Perhaps you'd be interested in the kind of thing we have programmed for our EL subscribers," said Long with a kindly smile. "If you are someone who likes active sports, we can give you an evening of that kind of thing. We don't program sports in the daytime or early evening because it interferes with the regular sports consumers, but it's nice to have later on in the evening if you like it."