Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) by Laurence Dahners Read Free Book Online Page B

running shoes; looking like she was dancing though she was only walking, she, as always, took his breath away. Her beauty made him wistful for the time he’d loved her and had hoped she might love him in return. He glanced down the table at Emma, animatedly talking to Manuel, smiling, her curls bouncing. Roger truly loved Emma, and she loved him back. Life was good. Still, working around Ell created moments of nostalgia for the “might have beens.”
    Ell saw him and came his way, “What’s up?” he asked.
    “Are the AI implants ready for our folks yet?”
    “Yeah, we’ve got them made and can have a session to install them in the inner circle using single ended ports this weekend. One of the ENT residents from the University hospital has gotten permission to ‘moonlight,’ surgically implanting the others in any of the Portal Tech or ET personnel that want them.”
    “Surgically implanting? Sounds like a big procedure?”
    “No, just a tiny incision, slide it in and put a drop of skin glue over it. The trick is to know where to put it and doing it with good sterile technique.”
    “Sounds good. Any new developments?”
    Roger grinned, “This resident that’s going to do the implants for us?”
    “Yeah?”
    “This is kinda embarrassing, but he pointed out that the reason the sound from the implants is so bad is because of preferential absorption of some frequencies by the fat and other tissues between the implant and the ear. Compensating for loss of some frequencies is something that they do for hearing aids all the time. He’s adjusted the frequency response of mine until it sounds pretty much normal. Actually, all he had to do was tell my AI how to adjust the frequency response. The AI already had software to do the adjusting.”
    “Oh. D uh. I feel pretty stupid.”
    “You’re going to feel worse. We should be able to place a very small port inside your ear canal that can transmit sound right next to your eardrum. He expects nearly normal sound from that. No ear plugs hanging off your head band.”
    Ell put her palm to her forehead in dismay.
    “Another one glued to the back of a front tooth can be the microphone.”
    Ell closed her eyes and chuckled, “So I didn’t need this implant I’ve had stuck in my head?”
    “Well, as a kidnapping risk, I think you should keep it as backup and for the GPS that no one knows is in your neck. If they don’t know it’s there, they can’t find it.”
    Ell tilted her head considering, “OK, I don’t feel quite so dumb then.”
    “And I think we should st fowe shouill do implants for the inner circle and their families . Also, realize that we could go into the business of providing the audio part of what people’s AI headbands provide them. Then they could wear smaller devices, kind of like the ‘glasses’ people used to wear to correct their vision, just to provide the video part of their AI to them.”
    Ell grinned at him, “What, you aren’t proposing to implant a port in to peoples’ eyeballs to record and playback video?”
    Roger squirmed squeamishly, “That seems a little scary, even to me. But the glasses can be really light weight because the camera can be back home with your AI, just peeking through a tiny port on the glasses. All the projector equipment can also be back with the AI, just sending the beam through a focal point to reflect off your HUD screens. I know modern projectors and cameras are surprisingly tiny, but this would be way smaller and lighter than even they are.”
    “Wow Roger, that’s some cool stuff. You need your own division of D5R to work on this stuff.”
    He shrugged, “Yeah, Emma and I,” he glanced down the table at his girlfriend, “have been talking about setting up a biomedical arm of D5R.”
    As they both looked at Emma, Manuel got up from his conversation with her and headed off. She got up and came down to them, “What are you two conniving over?”
    Ell said, “Roger tells me you want to take him