by G M Steenrod
“Gramps, you heard that?” Cassie asked, incredulous.
“How could I not? It was loud and annoying.”
“No, no one else has ever heard that,” she held a finger up in the air signaling a pause. “Alfie, did the terminal produce an audible noise or an emf emission outside of its parameters?”
Alfie responded, “No, Madam.”
“Hmmm. That's curious,” Mike said.
Impulsively, Cassie darted to her grandfather, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Gramps, it's not worth spending any more time on right now. I can fill you in later.” Mike nodded. He was excited to see what she had been working on. A bit of hum barely registered on his curiosity scale after yesterday.
“Alfie, bring up the sea scene,” Cassie said to the air.
A long, flat beach appeared around them. The sea seemed about 20 meters down from their position. Mike gasped. The lab was capable of an immersion that was exponentially better than he had seen elsewhere in the house. The tech in the lab and in the encounter room was the very edge of technology.
“You did this? All of this?” he asked, incredulous.
Cassie grabbed him by the triceps. “Yes.”
Mike looked around him, amazed by the span and the quality of the experience. The work of the new glyphs had deepened Cassie's work in many other areas. Of course, the current scene was heavily interlaced with emotive glyphs, some of them tuned with her new knowledge.
A fiddler crab emerged from the sand and scuttled a few feet from him.
“What do you think, Gramps?”
“This is absolutely remarkable...”
Cassie smiled reservedly. Gramps was a test of the technology. Scenes were in their infancy during his time.
“I could almost mistake it for the real thing,” he said, finishing his comment.
Cassie stiffened slightly. She could see the “look” in his eye. He was distinguishing from real on the limits of the experience he was having. Not on the fact that it didn't fit logically. Not because his other senses weren't fully engaged. It wasn't real. She had seen the look many times—on her face when she reviewed vids of her own interactions with the scenes.
“Did I offend you, Granddaughter?” he asked, half seriously. He could feel her stiffen through her grip.
“No, not really. You've said what I have been saying for awhile now. The reason I started the work that I've been working on,” she answered.
“It's very close. Most would be convinced by it. I smell and taste the salt in the air, but I bet there is no salt in the air. It's an extrapolation of my mind?”
Cassie nodded.
“Almost. What is it that you want? Because this is marvelous.”
Cassie paused for a moment. She had been exploring that as she worked on the project.
“I...want... it to be real. I don't want a clever simulation. I want it to be real. I want every part of you to respond to it like it were real. If it's real, everything will respond to it.”
“Why?” Mike asked, curious and blunt.
Cassie was at the top of her profession. She was wealthy. She was in a productive relationship. Why did she want it to be real?
“Gramps. It's in my nature. I feel compelled to follow it—as an outgrowth of my nature.” Mike nodded. She had learned introspection from her mother. She had pursued it out of desire to get some mastery of her extreme mood swings and bouts of instability.
“Alfie, bring the pipes online. Activate the glyph.”
“Yes, Madam.” In the deep workings of Cassie's dual quantum setup, Alfie directed the secured pipes into the great Ether, snaking them anonymously to secure the massive processing power she needed. He paused briefly to see if his activities had drawn any interest from the software that resided in the Ether. A set of small data pipes, filled with pornography and pseudo-private comms, sprouted out to feed data-miners. In this age, pornography was not forbidden fruit, but the images had a higher than average value. They also had an exemption in Earth's stringent privacy laws. They were digital feeding troughs.
5 seconds had elapsed during the setup.
The beach pulsed a brief yellow/red glow. It was a warning that the glyph would be brought online in another 5 seconds. Mike was startled by the change. He had subconsciously accepted that he was at the beach.
Before them, the new glyph appeared at what seemed to be a distance of 2 meters from them. It had adapted its shape in response to yesterday's changes, as Cassie's algorithm had demanded.
Cassie produced a calligraphy brush from her pouch and waved at it. It had been in a sleep state, another safety protocol put into place after the last instance. Panels seemed to drop from it, and the data flowed from the Ether pipes, through her data routines, and into clear panels on the glyph.
As it came awake, Mike could feel a sense of well-being and harmony flow over him. He had a great urge to walk the beach, and to bring a dog with him. He also found himself suddenly missing Mary.
“That feeling. It's wonderfully strong. Is that feeling the result of this thing here?” he asked pointing at the glyph.
“Yes. There are other glyphs built throughout this scene. This one amplifies their effects. Using its own. It's not where it needs to be.”
The greater intensity was a tremendous development. It had required computing power typically reserved for government class research to create. Even after it became stable, it would still take a level of computing power that would be prohibitive in most screen setups. It was a development that was of borderline value given the cost of operating it.
If she were to stop there, it would in time spawn new technologies.
Mike watched Cassie's face change as she worked. She was not guarded when she was absorbed in her labor. Her facial expression, which was coached to amplify her fetching appearance, instead revealed her inner processes. Unguarded, she was much like Mary. Mary projected her emotions with tremendous power through her appearance. It was interesting to him what attributes had passed through to his descendants from whom. Her father, Patrido, had contributed a grit to her that radiated deeply from her. It was that grit that had drawn a very young Ada to Patrido. It was also that grit that had earned Mike's reluctant respect for him.
He didn't understand the flow of gesture that went from brush to glyph, but it was automatic and beautiful, moving between grace and insistence. The connection between her mind, her hand, and the glyph was visually obvious. Cassie's performance reminded Mike of a sword master working cuts.
Cassie was finding something new. With each gesture, each flow shift in the data, she felt herself edging toward the result she wanted. She was more securely on the path than she had been at any prior time.
“It's because of him,” she thought in a matter of fact acknowledgment. It was a bubble at the fringe of her mind. Maybe it was just that she didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe it was because he was family—in the flesh. It could be that his miraculous arrival had jostled her thinking. Or some combination of factors. She made a note to consider it at more depth in the future.
Hours passed swiftly. The glyph was hypnotic, but Mike could feel Cassie on the prowl, and closing on her quarry. Rather than being tedious, he found it to be thrilling.
Her performance paused. Her body shuddered. “There!” she shouted. She drooped suddenly—the last of her energy seemingly wrung from her body like water twisted from a washcloth.
The glyph hovered before them. In appearance, it had become a sphere, broken into segments like a blastosphere. Cassie had changed the segments to a flat, dull black. Tendrils, dangling like the tendrils of a jellyfish sprouted from it and hung low. On close inspection, a constant flow of images and scenes were visible throughout the tendrils. They were representations of the data pipes that reached out into the Ether.
To Mike, it seemed that the surface would be cool. It also felt to be a strange melange of ancient and new born.
“What is it, Cass?” Mike asked.
“
It's the beginning. The experiential glyph. It has a long way to go, Gramps. All the parts are there,” Cassie answered. She was starting to recover. Her cheeks had regained some color. She was positioning herself subconsciously for her best appearance. A wisp of her curled hair drifted down across her face. She was a perfect image of effort and beauty.
“It's quite impressive,” Mike added. It was that. If it did nothing but stay there and hover, it would be a worthy addition to any museum collection.
“Does it do anything?” he asked, inflecting some naivete into his voice.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Cassie realized that she was working on an assumption that her recently appeared grandfather had a full knowledge of her work. In fact, this was the first glyph of any sort he had directly examined.
“You'll have to trigger it. Normally, a glyph is embedded into a scene discreetly so that it's invisible. It's then triggered as you interact with the scene,” Cassie said.
“That's not hiding anytime soon,” he replied.
“Gramps,” she said pushing him playfully, “it's a prototype.”
She realized that she had also assumed that Mike would understand the technical nature of her process, without any real reason to do so. She continued more slowly, “But...because of the amount of visual information, it would have to be bigger even when shrunk down. I'm hoping to overcome that too, in the future.”
“Okay, I guess I have no choice but to accept such shoddy work,” he said, giving her a mock eye rolling. Cassie laughed.
“You want to try it, Gramps? Oh, do you need glasses? I'm sure we can come up with a pair.”
“No, while primitive by today's standards, I got the correction myself. Thank you, though, you're very kind.”
Cassie had seen similar play between her mother and Mike in the vids. It warmed her to be part of it herself.
“So, if you want to try it, just reach out for it with your hand. It's just a test trigger. The glyph doesn't really fit the beach scene…but it's what came up.”
Mike nodded and reached out toward the black panel of the blastosphere. A panel appeared to open for him with the gesture. Beneath it there was an assemblage of glowing lights.
“It's calibrating...” Cassie started. Mike heard only the first two words. He was then hit by a surge of crystal clear memories about his apprenticeship as blacksmith. He remembered a hut on a cliff face a short distance from where they stood. He remembered the heft and feel of the hammer. The ringing of the metal on the anvil. The process of shaping the steel.
Mike physically staggered backwards, now aware of his granddaughter's presence.
“Gramps!” Cassie shouted alarmed.
Mike raised a hand, signaling that he was okay.
“I was back in my childhood. I was a blacksmith apprentice. Back at the beach shop.” Mike raised himself up and adjusted his jumpsuit. He pushed his hair back into position.
“That thing can trigger powerful memories,” Mike added.
“Gramps, that's not what it did,” Cassie said calmly.
Mike seemed to come out of daze.
“The glyph is designed to give the experience of having been a blacksmith,” explained Cassie. She was reasonably sure that her grandfather had never actually been a blacksmith. If he had, the likelihood that he had also been a blacksmith on the beach was pretty low. That experience had been completely concocted as part of the scenario.
Mike worked, tapping into his decades of meditative training, on reviewing his childhood memories. The blacksmithing memories were incongruent with others from the same time in his childhood. He would have had to have been in two places at once for them to be true. As he prodded them, they quickly took the feeling of being thin—almost like having watched a movie of them. He was sure though that, if he were pushed, he could hammer out basic objects at a forge.
He filled in Cassie about his experience with great detail. She was delighted to get the fine feedback. Her Gramps was a great asset as a tester. He was more sensitive to the impact of the glyph than she was.
“I would like you to do more testing with me, Gramps, if you would?” Cassie asked.
“Today?” Mike asked.
“No, it's time for dinner,” Cassie pointed at the wristband. The day had indeed passed in a few moments. “It's also taken me weeks to get to this new point. There's no telling when I'll be ready for another test.”
“So, you're planning on having me around for weeks?”
“Gramps! Yes, I mean unless you plan on disappearing. I'll take what I can get. If you want. You know,” Cassie was pulled off her controlled position for a moment, but recovered quickly.
Mike hugged her. She had achieved an impressive result. The glyph did convey experience—against any sensible reservation. He had no idea about what limited it or what moved it forward. He could feel a flow of both negative and positive possibilities coming from this moment. Whatever happened, it was the start of a revolution. One that could fundamentally change human experience.
“So, what are you cooking, Granddaughter? Or do you have some space food for us to eat?”
Prefabbed meals did exist, but they were only used regularly in low technology countries. An almost universal revulsion to prefabbed meals had emerged during the Troubles. Since they could last for years and under blackout conditions, they were consumed widely then. The result was that they had become associated with the struggle and hardship regardless of meal quality. As unrest subsided and farming in the new climate developed, a driven shift to fresh ingredients occurred.
Mike was fortunate in that his private garden, and Mary's green thumb, had provided the family with a regular supply of fresh vegetables during the Troubles. Other ingredients were prefabbed, however. That was the dietary regimen that he last remembered.
A kitchen bot, a half meter cylinder when at rest, sat on Cassie's counter, as did one on the counters of most houses in technology zones. It could provide a wide variety of competently prepared meals from fresh ingredients. A skilled chef, household or professional, outstripped their performance. Kitchen bots had emerged as a result of space travel, where it turns out that most pilots were poor cooks. In a way then, they did prepare space food.
“Gramps. I know my place is in the kitchen, but I'm a little tired,” she poked him playfully.
Mike rolled his eyes. “Half-measures, again, Cass! Right. Right. Right. I'll cook.”
Cassie seemed genuinely surprised at the offer. Gramps had a knack for the surprising.
“How about a pork lo mein? Bruscetta topped with grilled mushrooms, with a side of melon and peppers chutney? Do you want to find a wine pairing for that?” Mike asked.
Cassie's mouth watered at the thought. She could taste the flavors mixing in her mouth in anticipation.
“I took the liberty of checking your food stores. That's a handy addition to the household software,” said Mike. It was a result of a space travel too. The need to account for stored calories was vital to a long space mission. Some hydroponics were used to add freshness to the meals, but was not practical for anything but deep solar missions or the continuous duty ferries. As a result, what you stowed aboard was what you had to eat.
“Yes, I believe I could bear it, Grand Pa Pa,” Cassie responded, in her best faux Victorian, upper class speak.
Mike gave her a formal bow, spun his arms in a nonsense salute and stepped out in a fashion reminiscent of an early American vid production known as “The Three Stooges.” In the skin tight grip of a jumpsuit, it seemed faux erotic as well.
Cassie laughed loudly. “Gramps can move,” she thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hunger
Dinner had been a great success. It had replenished Cassie physically, and had restored her energy. There was a power to having someone else care for her that she hadn't known since her mother's death, although the Ada simulacrum had joined them for the meal.
Ada had recognized the dishes, and had added very convincing commenta
ry to the meal. From the conversation, it was apparent that Mike had started to regard her as real.
Cassie relaxed on her bed processing. She had a rendezvous in the next hour with Kumar, and wanted to be fresh for it. The glyph had created a stress for her that she was now only feeling after the completion of this step. With a functional experiential present, a corner had been turned. She could now define what it was that she was pursuing, and had accomplished that pursuit. She was relieved. In that relief, it was time to attend to her growing sexual needs. Gramps, whom she had not ever known in person, was obviously an alpha male. Now that the shock of his sudden appearance had worn off, his sexual appeal was becoming more apparent.