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for staying with the body-suit and force-feedback methods that they were
familiar with proven technology from the virtual reality industry. Eric, on
the other hand, was convinced that a more fruitful future lay with perfecting
the partly solved direct neural approach. When the decision went against him,
he left and founded his own company, Neurodyne, to pursue his ideas
independently. Now, Ohira thought that DNC would be the key to opening up a
whole new market that the journal reviews and applications studies had missed
completely.
The space they descended to at the back of the house was a mix of workshop and
laboratory, with benches, tool racks, keyboards, screens, lumps of electronics
draped in tangles of colored wire the kind of thing that Michelle had come to
expect by now. The windows along the outer wall looked out over the grassy
slope leading down through trees to the inlet, where a boat dock was partly
visible beyond a fringe of rocky mounds and bushes hiding the shoreline.
A large table supported an artificial geography of wooden plateaus, steps, and
obstacles, which Michelle was now able to recognize as the miniature world of
a mec testing ground, complete with several inhabitants. Some of them were
bipedal, others more insect-like. In general, these were not as tiny as the
ones she had seen earlier at Neurodyne. She remembered
Eric saying that the models the boys worked with were older prototypes and
test batches precursors to the state-of-the-
art models in the company s laboratories.
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
She also identified DNC headsets and collars distinctly lab-lashup variety in
appearance, with connectors bolted to panels of hand-cut aluminum, and bundles
of wires secured with duct tape. Three chairs decked with more gadgetry and
wiring served as couplers. One was a regular lounge recliner with the footrest
removed and foam rubber pads where most of the upholstery was supposed to be;
the other two looked familiar in pattern, their associated electronics mounted
on hinge-down trays at the back. Michelle moved some cables aside to read a
half-hidden label attached to one of the seat backs:
USE SEAT CUSHION FOR FLOTATION DEVICE
. She frowned and looked at Kevin questioningly.
He shrugged and made an apologetic gesture, as if some justification were
called for. We got them from Boeing s clearance basement. Ten dollars each.
You can t beat that, Michelle said.
Eric grinned at her and patted the headrest of one of the two airliner seats.
Okay, Michelle, you know the drill by now.
Get yourself comfortable, and I ll connect you up.
I m going for another ride?
Sure. That s what you re here for.
Michelle turned and lowered herself down into the seat. It was not as restful
as the specially made model that she d tried earlier, but she had endured
hours in these on enough occasions. Kevin and Taki occupied the other two,
Kevin taking the modified lounge chair. They seemed to have the connections
and adjustments preset, slipping into the equipment without needing
assistance.
Unlike the headsets that she had seen at Neurodyne, this one included plug
earphones and a stem microphone. We added sound to the mecs that the boys use
here, Eric explained. It s not something that we need in the labs, as you
saw.
But for the kind of thing they do, it adds a whole new dimension.
There was another visual test pattern and checks of field motion correlating
with imagined head movements. Does everything look good? Eric asked. His
voice didn t sound close by her as before, coming through the phones this
time.
Can you hear me okay?
Everything feels just fine. . . .
She had expected to find herself somewhere in the miniature landscape of
straight lines and flat surfaces that she had seen on the tabletop. Instead,
she was in some kind of large room, dark inside but with light coming through
the wall facing her, made of what looked like frosted glass. A metal band that
had been clamped around her waist as a restraint sprung open on release of a
catch, freeing her. There was a warm, pleasant sensation in the middle of her
back, roughly where her shoulder blades would be if she d had any. She turned
to investigate. After her familiarization that afternoon, adapting to being in
a mechanical body again came more easily this time.
She had been standing in one of four vertical recesses in a block of whitish,
waxy-looking material that formed most of the near wall and extended to the
ceiling. Several rounded golden pads projected a few inches on the inside of
the recess, a little below shoulder height. Another mec, with a squat, angular
body and froglike, football-shaped head carrying eyes at
the extremities, was inactive in an adjacent recess, secured as she had been
by a metal band around the waist. It was painted yellow with black stripes,
like a tiger. The remaining two recesses were empty. Oddly curving pipes
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