Crossover Earth '98
Into the Out of
The Prelude
By
Scott F. Couchman
Cables, CDs, circuit boards and other cluttered the living room. Knowing that Mark/Dynamo was alright gave Cecilia energy to burn. The Virtual Reality prototype she needed to debug for the Company focussed all that energy into a flurry of building, splicing and soldering. Dressed in a tank top and jogging shorts, with wire cutters in one hand and a cable in the other, Cecilia was the picture of many electrical engineers’ wet dreams. She sat on the floor, long black hair pulled back into a sloppy pony tail, completely focused on her work.
After forty eight hours of building, testing, and cat naps, Cecilia finished. Before she dropped from exhaustion, she stopped to admire her work. A blue box, about twice the size of a Zip drive sat next to Finnagan, her home built computer. The blue box connected to a dedicated board in Finnagan through a thin optical cable. If simply used as a second processor, the blue box could more than double Finnegan’s performance. But the box was dedicated to another function.
Suddenly, no longer tired, Cecilia pulled on the IR gloves and helmet. "Time for phase one." She powered up Finnegan, lowered the visor on the helmet and flicked the switch on the blue box. The visor told her that the signals read from the gloves and the visor to the box without error.
"Please enter music CD for VR background aesthetics," wrote across her eyes.
Cecilia flipped up the visor and thought about what kind of music she wanted to debut her project. Chopin? Mozart, she thought. Naw, I want to feel this.
She plugged a CD into the computer and flipped the visor back in place. Strains of Temptation Waits by Garbage faintly filled the stereo headphones. Before her, a bright landscape played out, reaching to infinity. The landscape appeared to subtly interact with the music.
"Finnegan, give me local drive access," she said into the tiny mike protruding from the Virtual Reality Helmet. A series of windows appeared in a semicircle around Cecilia’s vision. Across the top of the windows, a bar filled with various icons. Cecilia reached with her gloved hands and tapped two icons.
"System diagnostics, engaged," a computer synthesized voice said. "Performance diagnostics engaged." A small floating graph appeared in the lower left of Cecilia’s vision. Multicolored lines wavered across the graph. When Cecilia touched one of the lines, the computer voice told her what it was monitoring, and its performance.
Cecilia focused her attention back to the windows. She tapped one, and it expanded to show her a list of documents. She tapped one and it’s contents unfolded in front of her.
"Finnegan, virtual keyboard, please."
A keyboard floated across the lower part of her vision. Cecilia tapped another icon on the top bar and began typing code with the virtual keyboard. The force feedback the gloves gave her, allowed just enough pressure to let her know she was hitting the keys. By the time Paranoid played in the background, Cecilia had finished the code.
"That linking should do it. Finnegan, engage voice transcription in open document."
"Engaged," said the computer voice.
"Initial testing appears to be sound." The document she opened previously, dutifully transcribed her spoken words to written ones. "The blue box is manipulating the data from the main computer and successfully overlaying a comfortable working environment for both sight and sound. There does not seem to me much of a data lag. The dedicated chipset runs in the nanosecond range and adjusts well to the music. Soothing, almost hypnotic.
"The general interface is pretty good, on the local system, phase two will test it in the internet. The tuned voice interface is excellent, but like most products today, a generic voice interface is marginal at best. The advantage here is that the chipset in the blue box has saved my voice patterns and scrubs out any inconsistencies before shooting it through to the main computer for interpretation. The result? Accuracy in the ninety nine percentile, and ninety seven percent when my voice is altered, like when I have a cold."
Cecilia tapped the dictated document with a virtual finger to pause the transcription and said, "Finnegan, save document and shut down system." And to herself, " I’ll start phase two after I get some decent sleep."
"Okay, Finnegan, connect to ISP." With a few hours of sleep in her, Cecilia was ready to tackle more of the Virtual Reality device’s testing.
"Connection achieved. Do you wish a displayed diagnostic of connection speeds," the computer said in a more human than synthesized voice. Before diving back in, Cecilia changed some settings.
"No, save the raw data to file for later inspection. Engage voice transcription in open document."
"Engaged."
Cecilia touched the virtual phone that would execute the VR browser. Centered, in front of her appeared a flat screen, her home page. In the upper right corner, a three dimensional star undulated. Tapping that would send her to the VR specific sites.
Cecilia paused a few minutes to listen to her background music. This time she chose Mozart. As the notes washed over her, she continued.
"Browser interface is pretty standard fare on initial inspection."
She tapped a link and almost instantly connected to the next website. Her perception focused on the link and the flat page melted and swirled around her before snapping flat on the new page. The transition made her feel like she was falling through the page or diving into it. Cecilia gasped.
"On second thought, it does a good job of entertaining the user while finishing a download of a linked page. Not for the squeamish or sufferers of motion sickness."
The web page she visited had many links. Before launching through another roller coaster ride, Cecilia grabbed a link and pulled it down like a window shade. After a second, a miniature picture of the linked page materialized on the blank "shade." Cecilia let go and the link snapped back into the page, again, like a window shade.
She pulled out another link, liked that one and tapped it. The diving/melting sensation took a while to get used to.
"The browser’s ‘browser’ feature is excellent. And the read ahead capability is decent. Though it probably would need to be disabled on anything less than an ISDN line."
The page she visited was a Mark Battle shrine. She stuck two fingers into one image she didn’t have and the computer told her the size, type and color depth.
"Not bad," she said. And the document transcribed it. Cecilia smiled, and with a finger crossed out the last two words on the document. She paused it by tapping it and said "Finnegan, open local save folder. Set it for fifty meg warning."
On her left appeared a large barrel. If she downloaded more than fifty megabytes of pictures and data, the computer would warn her.
"Time to go shopping," she smirked, and started grabbing all the new images of Battle in battle.
After a short time of personal pleasure and forty nine megabytes later, Cecilia unpaused the transcription.
"The download interface is very nice. Because the viewable area is virtually limitless, the user can ignore large downloads, since they are out of immediate sight. Turning to the save folder will show that they are still working, but the user is able to continue through the net with a full unmarred view. But enough for the testing of the normal sites. Time to test the limits of this baby. Entering the true VR sections."
Cecilia tapped the star in the upper right corner and the flat browser melted around her again. But instead of snapping back into a flat screen, the scene shifted into a small wooden room. In the center of the room stood a globe in relief. Cecilia touched the globe and felt mild resistance.
Somewhere deep in the dark corners of the net, something stirred.
"The sensation from the gloves is nice, if not good. Probably with the full suit, that I’ll test in phase three, the sensations will be much greater. The initial environment is very good. There is a lot of potential market for customized settings."
Something with intelligence moved through the sea of data, looking for the thing that could see it at its own level.
Cecilia moved to a bookshelf and opened a book. Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings played across the pages. Cecilia flipped back to the first page and it showed the website that hosted this volume.
She moved to the window and looked out over a cloudy sky with occasional lightning. Cecilia listened to the low music and realized the landscape mimicked the slow sad sounds of the classical music.
Something was curious about this supposed invader into its digital realm.
"Definitely have to check the parameters of the music to environment. We wouldn’t want someone going suicidal listening to and watching Pink Floyd’s ‘the Wall’ album."
Lightning struck close and the thunder boomed loud. The landscape shifted to chaotic static to match the noise assaulting Cecilia’s ears. She ripped the helmet from her head, wincing from the pain. As she regained her senses, she thought, there is more to the flesh world than my databases have let me believe.
Cecilia shook her head to get rid of the ringing in her ears. "What in the world was that?"
She logged out from the computer’s regular keyboard before stumbling to the bathroom in search of some aspirin.
[to be continued]