Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  “I’m sorry,” I told Julie, wiping sweat from my eyebrows as I handed the goggles back to her. “I don’t think I can help you with this.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Julie said. “This isn’t my prototype. It’s just to give you an idea—”

  “It isn’t like what you described—like what I thought you described. And it isn’t anything like the house. The house isn’t real, but it seems real. This, though…it’s not even a good toy.”

  “I know it’s not. But the VR system my partners are working on is much better, much more state-of-the-art…” She grew thoughtful: “Seems real, you said. How real?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You said the house seems real, even though it isn’t. I want to know more about the quality of the experience. When you’re in the house, you still have all five senses, right?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “So it’s like a perfect hallucination.”

  I frowned. “Hallucination is the wrong word for it, I think.”

  “What’s the right word?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if there is one.”

  “What about a dream?” Julie asked. “Is it like dreaming?”

  “No. It’s like what I thought you said virtual reality was like: like being wide awake in an imaginary place, with other people. But”—I pointed at the goggles—“it’s nothing like that, so now I’m not sure how to describe it.”

  But Julie, not the least bit discouraged, said: “You should let me introduce you to my partners.”

  Despite growing up in the bush, the Manciple brothers were no strangers to high technology. Their parents’ homestead was powered by a solar array during the summer months, and there had been a computer in the house as far back as 1975, when Dennis and Irwin’s father had ordered a build-it-yourself Altair kit through the mail. The brothers grew up with the Altair and the series of ever more sophisticated personal computers that came after it, and passed a lot of long winter nights programming—or sometimes, in Irwin’s case, tinkering with the innards of the older machines. Then in 1993, a shareware adventure game called The Stone Ship that the brothers had coauthored (Irwin came up with the story, while Dennis wrote most of the actual code) earned enough money to convince them to turn professional. They left Alaska and came south to seek their fortunes in the software industry, choosing Seattle over Silicon Valley out of fear that California would be too warm.

  Julie met them through her job at the physical therapist’s, where Dennis came for help with his back problems. By that point, late 1994, the brothers had been in Seattle for over a year with nothing to show for it. In spite of The Stone Ship’s success, they’d been unable to interest any of the established software houses in their ambitious follow-up project, and having spent most of their money, they were starting to think about quitting and going home. But Julie, who was having her own career difficulties (she and the physical therapist had been dating for a while, and now they weren’t, and she was about to be fired and evicted in the bargain), talked them into founding the Reality Factory instead, taking her on as business manager, chief fund-raiser, and unofficial CEO.

  The brothers’ virtual-reality system was called Eidolon. Like Metropolis of Doom, it used a set of 3-D goggles, although, having been custom-designed by Irwin, the Eidolon goggles were more comfortable to wear and didn’t fog up so quickly. There was also a “data glove” that told the Eidolon software what your right hand was doing, whether you were pointing or waving or grabbing.

  It was better than Metropolis of Doom. The graphics were full-color, with solid, textured shapes rather than wireframe outlines. Instead of riding on a conveyor belt, you had complete freedom of movement—you could spin around, float up and down, slide backwards and forwards and sideways, all by gesturing with the data glove. And nobody was shooting at you: instead of a war-torn city, the world in the Eidolon goggles was a sort of playroom with toys, like a bouncing ball you could toss or bat around, and a magic mushroom that, if you poked at it, made violets and dandelions sprout up out of the floor.

  It still wasn’t anything like the house, though. The graphics were better but still more cartoon-like than real, and though you could see things, you couldn’t really touch them: poking the magic mushroom was like poking air. You couldn’t smell the flowers, or taste the water in the rubber-duck pond. The first time I tried Eidolon, you couldn’t even hear the ball bouncing—the goggles had stereo earphones built in, but Irwin hadn’t got them working yet. And the “free” movement could still be annoyingly sluggish or jerky, especially if you tired out the computer by making it draw too many dandelions.

  Also, I wasn’t exactly sure what the point of the whole thing was.

  “The point is whatever the end-user wants the point to be,” Julie told me. “That’s the point.”

  “Well, but…not that it isn’t neat, and all, but do you really think people will pay money just to play an imaginary game of catch?”

  “You don’t get it, Andrew,” Julie said. “Eidolon isn’t the playroom.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. Eidolon is what built the playroom.” She went on to explain that Eidolon was actually a “software engine,” a sort of programming language and interpreter. “The playroom is just a sample application. A demo. But you can use the engine to design any sort of geography you want, for any reason you want. So maybe you’re a real-estate developer who wants to take someone on a walk through a building that only exists as a blueprint; Eidolon will let you do that. Or maybe you do want to play an imaginary game of catch, but using your own laws of physics; Eidolon will let you do that, too.”

  “Hmm.” I didn’t say so out loud, but these examples still didn’t sound very interesting. But Julie sensed my lack of enthusiasm, and quickly came up with an application that did interest me.

  “Or,” she said, “maybe you’ve been hurt.”

  “Hurt? Hurt how?”

  “In an accident, say. Let’s suppose you’ve had a spinal injury that leaves you partially paralyzed, with no feeling in your legs. You might be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But with this”—she tapped the back of the data glove—“you can still get up and dance any time you want to.”

  “The engine would let you do that?”

  “Sure.” She smiled. “So you see, it’s not just an expensive toy. With the right application, it can be a tool for living a fuller life.”

  A tool for living a fuller life…I liked that phrase. “It sounds good,” I said. “But who would actually program that application? I mean—”

  “The end-user,” Julie said.

  “The person in the wheelchair?”

  Julie nodded. “The finished version of the programming interface will be very intuitive, very easy to use. You’ll be able to define and create whole new geographies using just the headset and the glove.”

  That got my attention. Inside Andy Gage’s head, only my father was allowed to make changes to the house and the grounds; but here was an opportunity to wield a similar power myself.

  “Can you show me how that works?” I went to pick up the goggles and the data glove again, but Julie stopped me: “The finished version, I said. It’s not finished yet.”

  “Oh…you mean there’s not even a test version I could try?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Dennis is still working on the core Eidolon engine, so for now, applications have to be coded individually. The simplified geography editor—we call it Landscaper—is still a ways down the road yet.”

  “How far down the road?” I had a sudden nagging suspicion. “When is Eidolon supposed to be finished?”

  “When it’s done,” said Julie.

  Every few months Dennis would cobble together a new demo program, showcasing the latest version of the still-unfinished Eidolon engine, as a lure for potential investors. These demos were the closest thing the Reality Factory had to an actual product. They were also my only real chance to play consultant: before Dennis started
coding, Julie would sit me down with him and have me offer suggestions about what the demo should include. But these brainstorming sessions never lasted very long, and most of my suggestions were things that Dennis couldn’t possibly implement. “This is not the holodeck on the starship Enterprise!” he would end up shouting at me, his patience exhausted. “I can’t program it to let you smell things!”

  So I ended up spending most of my time doing nonconsulting work: helping Irwin assemble and disassemble hardware, entering data strings for Dennis, running errands for Julie, patching the shed roof, and handling other maintenance chores around the Factory—like emptying the Honey Bucket—that Julie and the Manciples couldn’t be bothered with. Generally I kept busy enough to feel I was earning my six-dollar-an-hour salary. But there weren’t that many spare chores, and I couldn’t see what a fifth employee would do.

  “Supposedly she knows something about interface design,” Dennis said now, as I continued to question him.

  “Interface design? You mean she’s a programmer?”

  “The High Commander seems to think so.”

  “So she’ll be working with you?”

  “Or with you,” said Dennis. “It depends on whether I think she’s a programmer.”

  “Does this mean you’re finally going to implement Landscaper?”

  “Could be.” Then he thought the question over a little more seriously, and added: “Better be. It’s not like I need help with the engine itself.”

  “No, of course not,” Adam chimed in from the pulpit. “He’s only been working on the thing for four years, why would anyone think he needed help?”

  “Be quiet.”

  Dennis swiveled his chair around to face me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Comments from the peanut gallery?”

  “Just Adam mouthing off.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dennis knew about the house, but I’m not sure he ever completely believed in it; whenever he overheard me talking to Adam or my father, he reacted as if I were displaying signs of mental illness.

  Penny Driver arrived at the Factory about fifteen minutes later. I’d gone back to my own tent and made a few more unsuccessful attempts to connect to the Internet; I was coming back out to look for Irwin when I saw her.

  Penny had let herself in through the shed’s side door. (The shed had a front door, too, a garage-style door big enough to drive a Mack truck through, but the one time we got it open it took us two days to close it again, so now we pretended it was a wall.) She stood just inside the doorway, one hand behind her still holding onto the knob, looking ready to duck out again in a hurry. I guess Julie hadn’t told her what to expect.

  “You’re in the right place,” I called to her.

  She literally jumped at the sound of my voice: took a little hop off the floor, and let out a sharp squeak. Her free hand came up and pressed itself against her chest in the heart-attack gesture.

  “Sorry,” I said. I walked up to her slowly, as if she were Jake. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. But this is the Reality Factory, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  I held out my hand, but she didn’t take it. All at once she didn’t seem startled anymore, just puzzled; she stared at me the way you’d stare at a can of beans that you didn’t remember putting in your grocery cart. Not sure what else to do, I stared back.

  She was physically a very small person, just over five feet tall, and slight. She wore a faded gray sweater that hung almost to her knees, and a wrinkled pair of blue jeans. Her close-cropped hair was mussed, as if she’d just rolled out of bed after a long sleep, but her eyes were bloodshot and there were dark circles under them.

  Suddenly she let go of the doorknob and crossed her arms in front of her. She took three quick strides forward, moving so swiftly that I had to jump aside to get out of her way. Ignoring me, she panned her head around, surveying the length of the shed: taking in the tents, the stained roof planks, the drip buckets, the rusting bits of leftover scrap piled in the far corners, the snaking cables wrapped in waterproof insulation. Her lip curled.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” she said. “What a motherfucking shithole.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You heard her,” said Adam, sounding amused. “What word is giving you trouble, ‘shithole’ or ‘motherfucking’?”

  Penny uncrossed her arms. She blinked and turned to me again, seeming freshly alarmed to find me standing right next to her. This time she didn’t jump or squeak; but she stepped back as abruptly as she had come forward. Her back once more to the door, she raised her hand in a timid wave hello.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said back.

  “Hello,” said Adam. “Did anybody just see a parade go by?”

  Julie appeared from between two tents, with a glum-faced Irwin trailing after her. “Hi, Penny!” she called, adding, with a nod to me: “I see you two have met.”

  “Kind of,” I said. It was a morning for peculiar behavior, apparently: as Julie approached us, I could have sworn I saw something funny in her expression—a hint of smugness in her smile, some private amusement in her eyes—but then I shrugged it off, thinking it must have something to do with the fight she’d had with Irwin. Adam might have told me differently, but he was still focused on Penny.

  “So,” said Julie, coming to stand beside us, “I guess formal introductions are in order. Andrew Gage, this is Penny Driver. Penny, this is Andrew.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Penny,” I said, and once again offered my hand. This time she shook it, though I could see she didn’t want to. I pumped her arm once, gently, and let it go.

  “Actually,” said Julie, “she likes to be called Mouse.”

  “No she doesn’t,” observed Adam from the pulpit. “Did you see the way she flinched just then? She hates being called Mouse.”

  “Adam,” I asked, being careful not to speak the words aloud, “does Julie seem weird to you this morning? She’s got this look on her face, like—”

  “Hi, Mouse!” Dennis Manciple’s voice boomed out. He came out of his tent with his top three shirt buttons unbuttoned, drawing an instant scowl from Julie. “Dennis!” she snapped, pinching the lapels of her own blouse together.

  Dennis ignored the signal. His chest hair exposed to the world, he marched up to Penny and grabbed her hand so roughly he nearly yanked her off her feet. “Nice to meet you, Mouse!”

  “He likes her,” Adam snickered. “He thinks she’s sexy…but she thinks he’s a big fat disgusting pig boy.”

  I thought that last bit might be a projection on Adam’s part—although it’s true that as Dennis shook her hand, Penny looked as though she’d stuck her fingers in something nasty. “But what about Julie, Adam?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said. “She’s always a little weird anyway, so it could be nothing. Or maybe she’s got some half-assed idea about getting the two of you together.”

  “The two of us—you mean me and Penny? Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” More snickering. “‘Like boyfriend and girlfriend.’ That could be it…or maybe she’s seen the parade, too.”

  “What parade? What are you talking about?”

  “Just pay attention,” said Adam. “You’ll see it.”

  Dennis was still shaking Penny’s hand; he seemed prepared to go on shaking it all day. “Enough, already!” Julie said. She stepped between them and flicked her hand impatiently at Dennis’s open shirtfront. “What did I tell you about this?”

  “A thousand pardons, O Great One,” said Dennis. He rebuttoned himself, but he took his time doing it.

  “Asshole.” Julie turned and flashed an apologetic smile at Penny. “Sorry,” Julie said. “As you can see, we’re pretty informal here—a little too informal, sometimes. This nudist is Dennis Manciple. And Mr. Pouty over there is his brother Irwin.”

  Irwin, still standing a good ten paces back from the rest of us, didn’t try to shake Penny’s ha
nd or even nod hello. He was sulking.

  “Now that you’ve met everybody,” Julie continued, “why don’t we all go back to the Big Tent and show you the system? You can try out one of our demos to get a better idea of what you’ll be working on.”

  “OK,” Penny agreed. She said it like it was actually the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but she let Julie take her elbow and lead her just the same, with only one last wistful glance back at the door she’d come in by.

  The Big Tent, as its name suggested, was the largest tent in the Factory. It was set up in the shed’s south end, oriented diagonally to the shed walls—the only way it would fit between the support pillars. Originally it was an army mess tent, but we had painted it to look like a circus big top (or actually, I had painted it, after Julie and Irwin made a halfhearted start; red and white stripes get boring pretty quickly). It housed the majority of the Factory’s equipment, including a bank of networked computer-graphics workstations that Julie’s uncle had picked up off the street after they’d fallen from the back of a truck.

  The Big Tent was as cluttered as my bedroom and as messy as the shed itself had once been. But there were levels of disorder, and as we came in I thought I saw the reason for Julie’s spat with Irwin: overnight, one of the workstations had been gutted, its parts spread out across a worktable. This happened all the time—Irwin was constantly taking one or another of the computers offline, taking it apart and reconfiguring it to squeeze out an extra ounce of performance—but having one of the machines down could cause problems with the rest of the network, especially when we were running a demo. So either Julie had forgotten to tell Irwin she’d be needing the full system today, or, more likely, he hadn’t listened.