The Sensory Deception

by Ransom Stephens

  Farley believed in his ability to judge the honesty of others. Had Sy answered abruptly, had he avoided eye contact or looked away, Farley wouldn’t have made the decision that he did. Farley said, “I can do much better than that.”

  “With a virtual reality experience of my people? If it generates the value I desire, but I don’t think it will. Continue.”

  “We have state-of-the-art video equipment. We have a unique ability to share your experiences and predicament with the world. People are interested, and when they understand your situation, they will support you. They’ll pressure the United Nations.”

  “The UN?” Sy laughed. “We do not desire their attention. They break what is not broken. The UN supports the garbage scows and poachers.”

  “That will change when the citizens of the world see your world from your eyes.”

  Sy shook his head.

  Farley struggled to stay calm. Chopper could be dying belowdecks right now. “All right, we’ll find a way to pay your tariff. Can we please bring your doctor aboard?”

  Sy nodded slowly. “Something like that.” He stood. To Gaynes, he added, “Your ship will be released.” He left the galley.

  Farley had no appetite right now, but there was food and he needed to eat, so he did.

  Gaynes said, “Farley, we go way back—if it were anyone but you…Listen, it’s a bad idea to go ashore. The only way I could get the ship released was to offer you to Sy, but once he scares those maggots away, we can try to blow out of here.”

  “Can Sy get Chopper to a hospital?”

  “Sy will keep his word as far as he can. But this whole fucking coast is in a state of chaos. Between religious idiots and outright thugs, you won’t have a chance. Stay on my ship. I’ll get you out of here.”

  “Can you get Chopper to a hospital?”

  “Chopper doesn’t want to go to a hospital.”

  “Gaynes!”

  “It’ll take a couple of weeks, but he’s a tough guy. He can survive a few broken bones.”

  “I’m going to pay my debt to Sy. We can help him. At least give us antibiotics, painkillers, and antiseptic.”

  Farley walked into the sick bay and saw the medic taping ice packs to Chopper’s torso. Chopper appeared to be asleep. Tahir stood to the side with two bulging backpacks on the floor next to him. Farley had everything he needed to pay Sy’s duty for catching “the big fish.”

  Ann showed Farley the swollen bruises along Chopper’s torso. She pressed gently on a particularly purple patch of Chopper’s back. “This looks like a weak hemorrhage. It has to be sewn up in hours, not days.”

  “What do you know about the doctor in Sayyid Hassan’s camp?”

  “Abdi Osman is well educated and has rudimentary equipment,” she said. “I suppose the most relevant qualification is that he is the closest surgeon available.”

  Farley could feel the ship’s engines building up power. Chopper groaned. Tahir stepped forward. He spoke to Farley at low volume. “You are aware that Sayyid Hassan is well armed and violent?”

  “He’s a good man with a tough job to do. We can help him, and he can help us.”

  “Going ashore will put us in a situation that we are not prepared to handle.”

  “The reason you’re here is to help me with the culture. It turns out you were right; we’ll be spending some time ashore.” Farley added, “Get prepared.”

  Tahir raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll have Chopper and your equipment on deck in five minutes, everything is already packed.” Then, as Farley left the room, he added, “Africa is a beautiful continent, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  Ringo was goofing around with the graphics component of his Daredevil sonar-visualization routine. He had to test it with data he’d simulated by kludging together three-dimensional boxes and spheres.

  Then, on a monitor a few feet from where he sat—the one connected to the satellite-linked data acquisition computer—a window popped open and the headers of received data packets began scrolling past.

  Ringo jumped out of his chair and let out a hoot. The redundancy checks indicated an acceptable bit error ratio, and the backup system checked out. Data was flowing. He waited a few minutes for the first file to close, made sure that the second opened, and then connected a laptop to the disk array. The DAQ computer logged two more files—about an hour of data from each sensor. He skimmed the log files; there was no problems. He hadn’t expected any—after all, he had written and debugged the DAQ system himself.

  He transferred the audio data to his workstation and ran a few checks to make sure he hadn’t mucked up the format or the Daredevil-DAQ interface. It took an hour to configure a laptop to show the video feed in sync with the sonar-visualization graphics produced by his Daredevil program.

  He went in the kitchen and got a bottle of ale. It was a game he played. He couldn’t open the bottle until the code ran. It didn’t need to run perfectly, just run all the way through a few times before crashing. He took a breath and brought up the debugger. He set a few break points so that he could make sure the data wasn’t causing any problems. He clicked the green button and stepped through the initialization sequence. The Daredevil graphics monitor went black and the program stopped at the last break point. Next to that monitor, the video feed on the laptop was paused on a frame showing the whale’s blow.

  With Daredevil about to enter the heart of the sonar-visualization routine, Ringo took the ale in one hand—a Lagunitas IPA, the hoppiest of them all—and clicked the green button with his other hand. He leaned back and watched the two monitors. When the whale was above water, the sonar visualization didn’t do anything. He waited. As the video feed showed the whale submerging, the monitor flashed different colors but no obvious image, just mottled pixels. When the whale fully submerged, the video went dark and the sonar visualization sharpened. Dimly lit images far in the distance brightened as the whale accelerated toward the pod. There were dozens of other whales. At the edge of the image, he could see the ship’s hull, even make out the propellers.

  Sonar doesn’t detect the color of an object, but it does indicate an object’s rigidity. That is, the reflected sounds from which the images are recovered indicate properties of the object. The steel hull, for instance, returned sharp, ringing images, and the whales’ soft skin echoed more diffuse responses. Ringo had defined a color scheme to indicate the hardness of objects. He made the background—that is, the ocean water—grayish turquoise. He made rocks black and whales gray-green. To indicate the Doppler effect, objects moving toward the sensors left sky blue trails from their previous positions, and those moving away left misty red trails. The length of the trails indicated their speed.

  The images were sharper than Ringo had thought possible. He cracked open the bottle of ale. The volume of the whale’s sonar transmissions was louder than he’d expected, so he toned down the brightness. As the whale joined the pod, the monitor filled with sharp images of the cows and calves. The motion of the other whales’ flukes and bodies as they propelled themselves here and there lent a purple sheen to their green bodies against that grayish background.

  Ringo took one long, glorious gulp. He’d practiced this ritual since writing the first line of code for VirtExArts, and this was the first time he’d ever opened the bottle while the beer was still cold.

  He leaned back in his chair. So this is how Daredevil would see the world. Right now, watching this miracle on a monitor, seeing the world through a whale’s eyes, he felt like a software superhero.

  Gloria zipped through her to-do list. A quick call to the manufacturing plant, and Bernie McGuire confirmed that the production and test processes for helmets, gloves, and jumpsuits were ready to go and the plant was tooling up for the run. Check.

  Next, an e-mail from her commercial real estate agent said that an ideal VirtExReality Arcade location, south of the Santa Monica Pier on Ocean Park Boulevard and within walking distance of Venice Bea
ch, had just become available. She had to make a decision. If she signed the lease and it took much more than three months to get Moby-Dick ready, the rent would break them. If she waited, they could be ready with no place to play. She sent Farley an e-mail: “We have to make a decision. Please call on the satellite phone.”

  Gloria got the call while sitting at the table in her apartment with a glass of wine. Late evening in Silicon Valley was morning in Somalia. The background sounds indicated that Farley was standing on the ship’s deck.

  She said, “We need to decide about a lease—”

  “Chopper’s injured and I need to get him to a hospital in six days or less.”

  “What?”

  Farley described their adventures of the previous day. The mixture of joy and worry in his voice brought to mind an image of Farley and Chopper roughhousing; it’s all fun until someone gets hurt.

  She said, “What can I do from ten thousand miles away?”

  “I’m worried about him. The medic thinks it might have hemorrhaged, and if it has, Chopper can’t wait for surgery. The problems is that the captain of the ship is more concerned about a Norwegian whaler hunting fin and sei whales farther north, so that’s where this ship is headed.” Farley sighed and added, “Chopper agrees with the captain.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Is there any chance that you or Sand Hill can appeal to the State Department? The US Navy patrols the Seychelles Islands, about eight hundred miles from here. They’re the closest facilities.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Gloria?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know Chopper. He won’t admit to pain. There’s no way to tell how bad it is, and my only other option is a surgeon in the refugee camp.”

  “They have a surgeon?”

  “Yes, Oxford educated, same story as Sayyid Hassan. He returned from college to chaos and decided to stay.”

  “How’s my father?”

  “Amazing. Tahir has embedded himself in the crew. He’s either the biggest gossip in history or a one-man CIA—I love that guy. Thanks. Gloria, please get me another option.”

  “I’ll try. Have you gotten video of the refugee camp?”

  “No. We’ve been on the ship doing what we came here to do.”

  “But we need it to pay the tariff.”

  “One thing at a time, Gloria. Let’s get Chopper fixed up, and then we’ll get some video.”

  “If the navy comes into the picture, he’ll have to let you go.”

  “No, no. I gave him my word. We’re going to help Sy’s people.”

  “It would be safer,” she said. When he didn’t reply, she added, “Of course, Farley, I know you have to keep your word. I know. I know you.”

  “Thank you, Gloria. That means a lot to me. Maybe when we get back—”

  “Farley?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please be careful.”

  She hung up and drank the rest of her wine. Setting down the glass, she thought about all the pieces of these problems and concentrated on their connections. Then she focused on the concept of leveraging one solution to another.

  She picked up her laptop. The e-mail from the Santa Monica real estate agent was still on the monitor. She typed, “Get me the contract,” closed the e-mail, and brought up an Internet browser. The State Department web page had a long list of phone numbers, none of which would be answered at this time of night.

  She had to do something, so she called Ringo.

  “Yeah, Chopper sent me an e-mail,” he said. “Chopper’s fine. The good news is that we’re already getting Moby data. I’ll send you some pictures of the whale; he’s huge. Even compared with the ship, he’s giant. I mean, he’s a whale, so I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise.”

  “You think he’ll be okay?”

  “Chopper? Don’t waste time worrying about Chopper. His blood cells are probably self-healing. Separated shoulder. Come on.”

  “Farley’s pretty worried.”

  “The real bad news is that those guys won’t be back here for at least another month. I can’t work on the pods, finish debugging the database, and invent an entire sonar-visualization software package at once. Thank god you nixed the refugee VR.”

  “I’m signing a lease in Santa Monica for the arcade.”

  “Really? The arcade? It’s really going to happen. Sweet! And Glo? I kind of exaggerated. The database is in pretty good shape, and the pods—that’s just busywork. I’m way ahead on the sonar-visualization project and Daredevil.”

  The next morning, at 9:00 a.m. sharp Eastern time, Gloria called the State Department. Two hours later she spoke to an actual human who could answer actual questions, but the answers were all wrong.

  “His best option is the US Embassy in Nairobi. They can coordinate with the hospital.”

  “They can’t get to Nairobi,” Gloria said. Having repeated the situation a dozen times already, she wasn’t sure what she’d said to this particular bureaucrat. She struggled to remain calm and friendly. “Is there any way he could get some help from the navy? I understand that we have ships nearby in the Seychelles Islands.”

  The woman gave Gloria another phone number and, before connecting her, asked why the ship wouldn’t take Chopper to Kenya. She resisted the urge to explain that the injured man and the captain of the ship would rather protect a pod of whales than save the man’s life.

  The person who answered for the navy gave a much more direct and conclusive response: “No.”

  Having tried the pedestrian approach, she went down the hall and leaned into Bupin’s office. He said, “You have found people I do not know. This is Joel McKay’s rodeo.”

  She continued down the hall to the other corner office.

  McKay’s admin said that he wouldn’t be able to meet with her until the next day.

  Gloria said, “Well, this is one of those times that I have to take Mr. McKay up on his ‘open door’ policy.”

  The admin offered her a commiserating smile and went back to work.

  Gloria knocked on McKay’s door, heard a grunt, and walked in. McKay stepped from behind his desk, his golf cleats clicking against the tile floor.

  She explained the situation.

  “They went to the Indian Ocean?” He said. “Whose harebrained idea was that?”

  “Their only other option is a doctor in a Somali refugee camp.”

  “Somalia? Do you know what will happen to this firm if one of our businesses gets caught up in Somali politics?” He slumped into his chair. “I don’t need this, don’t have time or energy for this.”

  “If the navy will help them,” Gloria said, still standing at the door, “there won’t be any risk of their being involved with Somalia.”

  “Close the damn door and sit down. I’ll make a call.”

  McKay phoned an executive at Lockheed Martin. After exchanging pleasantries and updating each other on their golf handicaps, McKay said, “Who do I need to blow to get a little love from the navy? I’ve got a start-up doing some development off the Somali coast and they need medical help.” He wrote down a name and phone number, hung up, pushed the piece of paper across his desk, and said, “Call Admiral Bontas; tell him you’re Gene Winthrop’s niece. He’ll do whatever you want.”

  She did as told. She lied to the admiral but didn’t get what she wanted. She was still at the office when Farley called back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re in international waters traveling on a ship that’s been associated with terrorist activity—do you know what Randy Gaynes does to those whaling ships?”

  “He protects animals from high-powered artillery,” Farley said. “I don’t doubt that the Cetacean Avenger is on a bunch of undesirable lists. Since there are no objective witnesses on the high seas, every corporate fishing ship that he bothers probably reports made-up atrocities.”

  “Are you sure Chopper can’t wait?”

  “It’s swelling up pretty bad. Chop
per won’t admit to any pain, but he seems groggy and I don’t like the look on the medic’s face when she touches the wound.”

  Neither of them spoke for almost a minute, and then Farley said, “Sayyid Hassan is an honorable man in a tough position. He vouches for the doctor, says he’s an experienced surgeon.” He sounded tired. “The medic says that the dangerous parts of Chopper’s wounds should be easy to fix with scalpels and sutures. Gaynes can come back for us in a couple of weeks, maybe a month.” He exhaled into the phone. “I feel like I’m talking myself into it, but it’s the only reasonable option.”

  “I want you to come home.” It came out by accident. She added, “I mean, I want you and my father to come home.”

  “Gloria, I want to come back. I’ve had—”

  The delay in the satellite transmission caused Gloria to interrupt. “I wish we had—sorry, what were you saying?”

  “What?”

  “You first.”

  Farley cleared his throat. “I feel that many things between us have been unsaid and I’d like to say them.” Then he added, “But not on the phone.”

  “Farley,” Gloria said, “I want to hear them, too. I want you to come home. Please be careful. Please?”

  “Thank you, Gloria. I will.”

  “Listen to my father. He’ll protect you.”

  PART 4

  Tahir understood that Farley couldn’t see beyond his experience with the whale. He understood how excitement combined with success produces a sense of invulnerability. He also understood that Farley had to care for Chopper. It amounted to a basic tenet of civilization: the chief earns the trust of his tribe by demonstrating that the tribe exists to care for the individual.

  On the ride to shore, Farley held Chopper steady as the boat traversed the waves. Chopper’s entire body had swelled and stiffened. Farley was too engrossed in Chopper’s condition to notice that when the ship landed, the crews from the other boats fanned out to guard the walk to Sy’s camp. Tahir wasn’t sure that Farley would have recognized it if he’d been watching.