The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet Read Free Book Online Page B

morning of official experimentation with the new Brenton-Kobayashi Kinetic Interface.
    Because up until today, the subjects had been working with Dice’s Roboticus, learning to steer it smoothly about the lab. And while that was exciting to see, now they’d begin working within their own disciplines.
    One step closer.
    There were two arenas of experimentation set up in different sections of the large laboratory. One involved a powerful computer system that was outfitted with both Sara’s CAD software and Tim’s programming package; the other required a scale model of a backhoe that had been placed in a ten-by-ten-foot container, three feet deep in sand.
    Despite his being the rookie, the experiments started with Mike Yenotov, figuring that his discipline was closest in nature to driving Roboticus, which he had proved apt at. Sara was slated for the next day and Tim for the day after that.
    Mike’s first session went about as well as hoped. The kinetic converter functioned flawlessly, capturing his brain waves as he envisioned himself controlling the model backhoe and translating them into energy and force that Becky could use to manipulate the machine’s modified mechanisms.
    The backhoe was joystick operated, just like Roboticus, and after about a half hour of getting used to the model’s controls, Mike was almost making it dance as it dug a hole in the lab’s sandbox.
    â€œI gotta tell you,” he said, his voice betraying just a hint of New Jersey, “this is bonehead simple. I’m thinking one guy could operate a team of hoes and watch what each one is doing from the most useful POV. Viewpoint, I mean,” he added. “Think of it: if I don’t gotta be in the cab, I don’t need a spotter tellin’ me about depth and dimensions. I can be checkin’ that stuff myself.”
    Chuck did think of it, and the prospect excited him. It hadn’t occurred to him until just that moment that the most useful POV, as Mike had put it, wasn’t always the first-person one. Dice, meanwhile, was almost dancing at the prospect of combining the Forward Kinetics system with the VR piece—a virtual reality component he intended to meld with the neural net.
    â€œJust think of the possibilities,” he enthused at the end of theday as they assessed their work with Mike. “The construction guy or the firefighter or the security guard now has a choice—look at the environment from inside the remote mechanism or look at it from the external viewpoint. All at the speed of thought.”
    Chuck was thinking of the possibilities, even as he looked ahead to pairing Sara Crowell with her CAD software for the first time. Because although he was optimistic based on Mike’s performance, he couldn’t help but be cautious, too. There were bound to be differences between operating a purely mechanical device—even one with onboard computer assist, like Mike did—and operating software. One was solid, logical; it was obvious how the parts all moved and fit together. The other was ethereal, abstract. It relied on code to call it into existence. Chuck expected it would be a challenge to operate the intangible.
    He’d said as much aloud when he, Dice, and Matt were alone in the conference room at the end of the debriefing session. Matt looked at him in a way that made Chuck feel as if he’d somehow turned plain old English into something untranslatable. “I don’t foresee any problems, Chuck. You’re such a damn worrywart. Clearly if they’ve driven the robot, they can run other machinery.” He got up, took a last drink of soda, tossed the can into the recycle bin, and left the room.
    Dice raised his eyebrows then afforded Chuck a rueful grimace. “Sometimes I wonder what color the sky is in Matt World. He occasionally has trouble understanding that one equation does not fit all.”
    That’s not his only problem, Chuck thought.