The soles of Li Jin』s pumps hit the floor much earlier than he』d anticipated and he felt the muscles in his sinewy legs absorb the impact with room to spare. He paused for a few seds allowing his heartbeat to slow. Then he switched on the small flashlight ahe tiny beam dance around the room. It was a small enclosure, not much bigger than his dormitory room at Tsinghua. He sighed. He would probably never ever see that dormitain. Then the beam danced over something that had his heart rag all ain.
There was a gurney in the ter of the room. On closer iion, Li Jin realized that it was more like an elaborate dental chair with the backrest pushed way back to allow the oct to assume a reing positioo the dentist chair was what looked like some sort of lamp/heater hybrid. They were on in Beijing, inexpensive lamps that provided a modest amount of heating at the same time by redireg the heat from the filament outwards into the room. He felt along its stem and switched it on. The room was illuminated in a harsh yellow glow and a bla of dry heat started to crawl outwards, slowly warming the room. Li Jin switched off his flashlight and looked around the room. The walls were made of gray brick, dripping with humidity. The floor was covered with some kind of laminate desigo approximate a wooden floor.
Li Jin studied the traption in the ter of the room. The dentist chair was rigged with a couple of plasma monitors sitting oal arms that curved over the chair like the tail of an agitated scorpion. A pair of cyberspace gloves and goggles hung to one side o a metal arm with several hooks. The chair itself was covered in a silver mesh fabric stretched tight h-density pound memory foam and sat on an hlass-shaped metal base. o the chair was a silver trolley stacked with medical equipment. There were intravenous catheters and tubes, some kind of pump and multiple packs taining various forms of medical hydration and nutrition, the kind hospitals fed to patients in a a.
Li Jin sed the packs quickly, his heart rag in anticipation. It ainfully obvious. These were mediutrition packs desigo keep you under while jacked into cyberspace. This was the professor』s backd. The UPS below the rig and the heating panels firmed his suspis. The professor had been spendiended periods of time on the new work and had set up this elaborate rig for the purpose of staying jacked in for very long periods of time.
Li Jihe dangers of this kind of setup very well. At one end of one of the intravenous catheters was a needle, which you placed in a promi vein under your skin. The catheter was used to administer fluids to prevent dehydration. The professor was also using nasogastric tubes which were fed down the nose and throat into the stomach. The g-tube, which was ied just below the collar bone, allowed for much more extended periods of intravenous feeding. The puter-trollable pump ehat nutrition from the packs could be regularly administered directly into the digestive system. The risks the professor had been taking were substantial. Liquid could ehe lungs, tubes could bee clogged and a dislodged needle, while you were ihroes of some cyberspace episode, could result in serious tissue ination. This stuff should only be doh someone, preferably a qualified medical professional, periodically watg over the subject. Yet, the professor had found it necessary to take these risks. Why?
Li Jin noticed that cables from the monitors, the goggles, the gloves and the i