Leapholes (2006) by James Grippando

could. But stay with me on this, I'm trying to make a point here. There are all kinds of loopholes. And there are plenty of lawyers willing to argue about things a lot sillier than whether your mother meant five o'clock Eastern Time or five o'clock Pacific Time when she said be home by five o'clock."
    "There are?"
    "Yup. And it's all just a waste of everybody's time and money. That's why I close loopholes. And every time I close a loophole, the Society gives me another leaphole."
    "What Society?"
    "You'll learn more about that later," said Hezekiah. "First, let's just stick with leapholes."
    "Okay. So exactly what is a leaphole?"
    He smiled and said, "You're not going to believe it. So let me give you the other answer--the one you will believe."
    "Okay, shoot."
    Hezekiah took a seat on the stepladder. Ryan seated himself on a stack of books, facing Hezekiah. The old man leaned closer and said, "When I was a boy your age, I went into the library and I saw one thing. Books. Nothing but books. But if you go into the library these days, you also see . . . what?"
    "Computers?" said Ryan.
    "Exactly. All libraries are computerized nowadays, including law libraries. So I took it to the next level. I call them Virtual Legal Environments."
    "Which means what?"
    "I can bring the cases to life. Virtually speaking."
    "How does it work?"
    "It's a step beyond virtual reality. More like the legal extension of what NASA calls virtual environments. V-Es for short."
    "How do you get into these V-Es?"
    "They're presented through head-mounted computer-driven displays. Which is nothing more than a medium for man - machine interaction. This one is a bit more advanced, because it operates on a multi-modal interactive level."
    "Multi-what?"
    "Multi-modal. I know, it sounds like technical mumbo jumbo, but conceptually it's quite simple. The key is a computer that is powerful enough to capture the largest possible part of the human motor outflow. By 'motor outflow' I mean not just your arms and legs moving, but your eyesight, hearing, smell, taste, touch--all sensory perception. Then we need a staging area where human movements are constrained as little as possible. Here, the human receives from the computer a perceptual inflow, which will work only if the different available channels are firing to the max. Finally, the inflow and outflow are optimally tuned in relation to a specific task."
    "You're right. It does sound like mumbo jumbo."
    "But it works."
    Ryan glanced at the water dripping from Hezekiah's clothing. "Obviously. But one thing has me really confused."
    "What?"
    "If it's a virtual environment, that means it's not real, right?"
    "That's right. Feels real, but it's not."
    "Then why are you all wet?"
    He smiled and said, "That's the part that very few people understand. It's the part you're not ready to hear. Maybe one day you will be ready. But not now."
    "What are you saying? It's magic?"
    "Do you believe in magic?" asked Hezekiah.
    "Oh, yeah, sure. As a matter of fact, I just sawed some guy in half yesterday. Waved my magic wand and put him righ t b ack together. Didn't even need crazy glue. Good as new. Magic."
    "I see you're a skeptic."
    "Let's just say I'm skeptical. There's a difference, you know. Skeptics are skeptical about everything. I'm just skeptical about things that don't exist. Like magic."
    "It's all right. I was once skeptical myself. Then I learned."
    "What do you know about magic? You're a lawyer."
    "No better person to know about magic than a lawyer. Magic is rooted in laws."
    "Yeah, right."
    "It's true," said Hezekiah. "Magic is nothing more than the knowledge of some very special laws of nature. I'm talking about laws that scientists could never understand."
    "Why couldn't they?"
    "Because scientists are trained to think too rigidly. They want to be able to test the laws of magic the way they test the law of gravity. Well, I'm sorry, folks: If you want to understand magic, you can't just sit under a tree waiting for an