Defying Reality

by David M. Ewalt

  Still, despite all the hype and promise, VR hasn’t changed the world, and it’s not likely to very soon. The industry and the technology are still in their infancy. The success of companies like Oculus and Magic Leap could be cut short for countless reasons—anything from shareholders demanding better returns to the global economy sinking into a depression. And some of the most influential tech companies in the business—Apple, most notably—still haven’t really entered the market.

  But I can’t ignore a dinosaur in a hotel room. Those moments have altered my perception of reality, convinced me it’s bigger and weirder than ever before. It’s like I’ve discovered another plane of existence, stepped through a wardrobe to find a world where animals talk and magic is real. I can’t imagine that people won’t want to explore that, can’t believe this technology is a fad that is going to go away. It’s too big, too profound; it’s going to allow us to experience things that used to be impossible, unreachable, or unthinkable. For better or worse.

  So yeah, VR hasn’t changed the world yet. But I can imagine how it will.

  * * *

  —

  Henry Dorsett hated the sound of his alarm, but the high-pitched screech was the only thing that could wake him up in the morning. Even on a good morning he’d slumber straight through anything short of a siren, and this wasn’t a good morning. He’d stayed up way too late playing poker with a couple of fascinating guys who worked for a solar power start-up in Liaoning Province—and that was after staying up late the night before that in order to attend a concert at the Acropolis.

  He squeezed his pillow tight over his head to drown out the noise, but eventually the alarm won and Henry reached over to silence it. His glasses were on the bedside table, so he sat up, put them on, and focused his bleary eyes on the bright yellow words that had appeared out of nowhere, floating above the foot of the bed.

  Good morning! they read, next to a smiling emoji. Below them, there was a smaller line of text: Monday, January 5 | Sunny, 12°C.

  Henry groaned when he climbed out of bed, and as he walked out of the bedroom, the message remained stationary until it passed out of his peripheral vision and blinked out of existence.

  Down the hall and into the kitchen for breakfast. “News,” he said, his voice still thick with sleep. A nine-inch-tall cartoon fairy—the currently selected appearance for Miri, his personal digital assistant—popped into the room in a flash of light and hovered over the countertop.

  “There was a magnitude 6.1 earthquake in the Gulf of California this morning,” she said in an Irish accent. “No fatalities have been reported and your mother’s house was not damaged.” The sound was projected from a conductive speaker in the temple of his glasses, but stereo audio tricks made it seem to emanate from the fairy, even as Henry puttered around the kitchen making his breakfast.

  “The Jets lost to the Patriots, thirteen to twenty-seven,” Miri continued. “Would you like to experience the highlights?”

  Henry flicked his hand at the fairy, and it vanished in a burst of glitter.

  * * *

  —

  While virtual reality has been getting most of the attention, augmented reality may turn out to be far more commonplace and a much bigger market. As companies like Magic Leap perfect and shrink their products, AR glasses will combine the functionality of smartphones and computers, seamlessly inserting digital information all around us. They’ll replace physical screens—no more monitor-hogging space on your desk, just a virtual desktop floating in air that you can dismiss with a gesture. And they’ll enable smart personal assistants that know your habits and interests and interact with you like they were real people. Analysts say the AR market could approach 3.5 billion installed devices and $90 billion in revenue by 2020.

  * * *

  —

  After breakfast, Henry showered and then put on his work clothes—a Yomiuri Giants T-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants. As he was tying his shoes, Miri blinked back into existence, her little wings beating furiously as she flew a tight circle around the inside of his closet.

  “Your prototyping meeting is scheduled to begin in five minutes,” she said, “but Alice and Bob have already logged on from Raleigh and Antwerp, respectively.” Henry nodded and walked down the hall to his office.

  The room was mostly empty, decorated with posters and pictures on the walls, but the only furniture was a small table and a single chair. Henry took off his glasses, put them on the table, and picked up a pair of fabric gloves embedded with small tubes and sensors. He pulled them on and then picked up his VR headset—a sleek glass-and-plastic contraption, like a pair of ski goggles, that fit snugly over his eyes and ears, blocking outside sensory input.

  He stood in darkness for a moment before the interface started up, and Miri appeared, hovering in the void a few feet away from him.

  “Would you like to enter the meeting now?” she asked him.

  “Yes, please.”

  * * *

  —

  The first-generation Rift and Vive virtual reality headsets already produce surprisingly realistic and immersive simulations, and the next few iterations are only going to get better. Whatever device we’re using in five, ten, or twenty years, it’s likely to be lightweight, comfortable, and utterly convincing. Input devices will evolve along with them. While hand tracking and voice recognition will allow us to do most of our work without actually using any physical controllers, I suspect we’ll sometimes wear data gloves in order to provide the most accurate tracking and tactile feedback. Imagine a glove that could stiffen and push back against your fingers to actually make it feel like you’re holding a virtual object.

  * * *

  —

  Miri snapped her tiny fingers, and in an instant Henry was standing in the middle of an open city square, surrounded by marble buildings decorated with Romanesque carvings. A few feet away, a man in a dapper gray suit was chatting with a woman in a navy double-breasted jacket and trousers. They turned toward him, and the woman waved and smiled.

  “Hi, Alice. Hi, Bob,” Henry said.

  * * *

  —

  Virtual reality frees its users from the constraints of physical presence. This technology will connect people who live and work in different places better than any video chat or telephone conference call. VR chat-room software can already track its users’ movements and replicate them in a virtual space. Future versions of the technology will capture the most minute details of their expressions and gaze, creating lifelike simulacra that actually look, act, and feel like the people they represent. That means virtual meetings where you can look in your coworkers’ eyes, see if they’re smiling or paying attention, follow their gestures, and better understand their intent.

  And since it’s not restricted by the boundaries of geography, VR will allow us to use any environment as a meeting place. Maybe a formal business meeting calls for a corporate boardroom, but social events could take place on a beach, on the surface of Mars, or in a picturesque city square. A sufficiently advanced simulation could even use live data from video cameras to create real-time replicas of an actual place. Just imagine if city engineers studying traffic patterns could stand in the middle of the Beijing–Hong Kong–Macau Expressway during a severe traffic jam.

  * * *

  —

  Henry glanced around the plaza. “You moved the meeting to Venice, huh?” he said. “And you’re wearing suits. I feel like I’m underdressed.” Glancing down, he gestured at the designer jeans and white button-down shirt he’d assigned to his standard workday avatar.

  “Just for fun,” Alice said with a shrug. “And I like your outfit. Is that a new hairstyle too?”

  Henry reached up and tousled his avatar’s shaggy red curls. “Sure is,” he said. “When you’re bald in real life, it’s always nice to pretend.”

  * * *

  —

 
; Simulating locations will allow us to go anywhere, and simulating people will allow us to be anyone. Virtual reality untethers people from their bodies, allowing them to change their appearance at will. This can be used for minor cosmetic changes—like changing clothes or the style of your hair—or bigger flights of fancy, like giving yourself wings, tentacles, or whatever you can imagine. Or it can lead to something far more profound. VR users can change their real appearance to reflect their ideal identity, to avoid persecution or prejudice, or simply to stay anonymous. As VR chat software becomes commonplace, it may drive a thriving market in selling avatar clothing, accessories, and designs; micropayments will buy access to countless upgrades from both independent and world-renowned designers.

  * * *

  —

  Henry touched his thumb to his index finger, and a small menu, like an artist’s palette, sprung into existence in his hand. “Should we get to work?” he asked. He touched an icon on the menu with his right index finger, and a 3-D model of a small machine appeared in front of him, floating in the air.

  “This is the latest render of the design,” he said, reaching out and grasping the object with his fists on both sides. “It’s much better, but if you look at the cooling unit, there are still problems.” Henry spread his arms, pulling the 3-D model apart so that its components were all visible, like an exploded-view drawing. Then he released his grip, reached into the cloud, and grabbed one particular part. Grasping it on either side with two fingers, he pulled and expanded the model until the component was large enough to examine in detail.

  * * *

  —

  Because virtual reality allows us to model anything—from microscopic machine parts to entire buildings—it’s going to be an invaluable business tool. Even now, companies around the world are using VR headsets at work. Engineers in Ford’s Virtual Reality Immersion Lab use the Oculus Rift to examine 3-D models of new car designs. Consumer products manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corporation uses VR to create virtual retail spaces, allowing them to test advertising and merchandising concepts without having to send anything to brick-and-mortar stores. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is using the technology to create relaxation programs that help burn patients manage their pain. Like computers did in the twentieth century, AR and VR will spread into every industry, and change the way the world works.

  * * *

  —

  After the team finished examining the virtual prototype and came up with a list of changes to design into the next model, Henry swiped at the virtual components with the back of his hand, and they faded away, leaving the three of them standing alone again in the Venetian plaza.

  “We’re in good shape, then. I’ll pass these notes along to engineering,” Henry said. “Let’s meet again same time on Monday. Have a good weekend, guys.”

  “You too,” Alice said. “Any interesting plans?”

  * * *

  —

  Since video game enthusiasts were largely responsible for designing, funding, and purchasing the first modern wave of VR headsets—and because hard-core PC gamers are among the few people who own computers powerful enough to support them—VR will make its first appearance in most people’s homes as a high-end gaming machine.

  And even now, the games people play are surprisingly great. I’m particularly enamored of a multiplayer game called Star Trek Bridge Crew, which allows a group of players to take roles on the bridge of a starship and pilot it through various combats and crises. It’s exciting and fun and draws you into its fictional world like few other video games can do.

  And personally, I can’t wait to play virtual reality tabletop games, to sit down at a common table with friends in places all over the country, face-to-face, for a night of Scrabble or Monopoly or Dungeons & Dragons. Imagine the animated interactive experiences—like a game of Risk where the board has weather patterns and all the battles are animated out in 3-D glory.

  And the possibilities for leisure go far beyond gaming. It’s already possible to watch live sports and concerts in virtual reality. Someday soon VR chat rooms could join bars and nightclubs as a fashionable place to hang out and socialize.

  Virtual reality can be used for self-improvement time too. I want a VR coach to teach me how to fence. Or a simulated Bruce Lee to teach me Jeet Kune Do.

  * * *

  —

  Henry spent his weekend hiking in the mountains—the real mountains, out in the wilderness, not a simulated version. He tried to get out of the house and into nature as often as possible, since he knew his VR rig made it all too easy to never leave home. Virtual shut-ins were common these days, and “going native” in VR was increasingly accepted as a normal way to live your life; since 24-7 users could still socialize, work, and explore the world, most folks figured there was no harm done.

  But Henry was old enough to remember when spending all your time online was considered a real problem. And besides, he thought, there were some things that virtual reality just couldn’t reproduce—the feeling of the wind on your face, the smell of fresh flowers, the serendipitous moments of beauty that could never fit into a program.

  * * *

  —

  In these early days of virtual reality, some people remain cynical about the technology, and rightly so. There are real dangers of society becoming alienated, of VR users choosing an attractive fantasy over the messy details of real life. We’ll have to learn how to moderate our exposure, and how to help those who disappear into VR to the detriment of their physical and mental health.

  For now, maybe we should keep VR away from children. Psychologists say that kids under eight lack the faculties to understand the difference between what’s real and what’s not, and even teenagers have trouble regulating their emotions when confronted with an imaginary or simulated problem. We should take care not to overexpose them until we fully understand how VR affects developing minds.

  But even though I acknowledge the dangers, I still think the benefits of virtual worlds will outweigh the problems. Besides, many cynics have the luxury of privilege: they might not worry about becoming a shut-in if they were disabled and looking at VR as a way to explore the world; or they wouldn’t fret about protecting children if they were an impoverished kid in a developing country eager to learn in a virtual schoolroom. (Of course, this supposes that we’re able to get the currently way-too-expensive VR hardware into the hands of those people who might need it most—another problem that we’ll have to overcome.)

  And then there are the critics who say VR is hollow, that it never lives up to the real world. For now, that’s absolutely true. I might be able to pop on a headset and experience what it’s like in the stands of a live sporting event, but I know I won’t have as much fun as if I were there in person. We use all our senses, not just sight and hearing, and right now that’s all that VR can convincingly produce.

  That will change. Today we use headsets to access virtual reality; tomorrow we might use high-tech contact lenses or even ocular implants; someday, we may create direct brain-to-computer interfaces that render the virtual absolutely indistinguishable from the real world.

  * * *

  —

  Virtual and augmented reality haven’t changed the world yet. We’re still on a gentle upward slope of the technology adoption life cycle, the time when people who buy a new product are innovators and early adopters. It’s a lot like the late 1970s, when personal computers were still a cutting-edge product: back then, when people thought about computers, most of them pictured the expensive mainframes used by businesses and militaries—mysterious high-tech towers that filled up a room and were used to calculate inscrutable mathematical problems. Personal computers were a hobbyist thing. Just a geeky toy.

  But a generation of inventors and innovators changed that. They created computers that people wanted on a desk in their home, designed software that made them easy to use, and built applicati
ons that made them indispensable. And today computers are everywhere—not just in homes and businesses but on our wrists and in our pockets. They’re so commonplace that we don’t even think about them. They’re just part of the environment.

  VR will undergo a similar transformation. Today, most people have read about it, talked about it, heard it’s really exciting, said they want to try it. But they don’t own a VR rig yet. That’s a hobbyist thing. Just a geeky toy.

  But before long, this exotic technology will be mundane. We’ll spend time in virtual worlds just as casually as we play video games or surf the Internet. The day is coming, and when it arrives, reality will never be the same again.

  Acknowledgments

  I am thankful for the help of the following people:

  Brant Rumble edited this book for Blue Rider Press. Brant Rumble is a steely-eyed missileman. Brant Rumble is patient and kind. Brant Rumble knows no fear. Brant Rumble is a giant among men. Brant Rumble deserves lots of money, much love, and a stiff drink.

  Brent Howard completed the book for Dutton, and I am immensely grateful to him for taking on the project and seeing it to completion.

  Chris Parris-Lamb is my agent, and one of the smartest people in the business. I am lucky to know him and I am grateful for his insight and support. Thanks as well to everyone at the Gernert Company for all their hard work.

  Thank you to everyone at Penguin Random House, including Christine Ball, John Parsley, Susan Schwartz, Joel Breuklander, Amanda Walker, Beth Parker, Carrie Swetonic, and Cassidy Sachs. And thank you to the Blue Rider crew, including David Rosenthal, Aileen Boyle, Jason Booher, Kayleigh George, Gwyneth Stansfield, Terezia Cicelova, and Linda Cowen.