As they were exiting the freeway, Mike checked his grocery list and added beer. The list was largely composed of items automatically added by the sensors in his refrigerator and pantry. Though in a hurry to the party, he decided to pick up a few other items beside the beer. Selecting the things he needed from his list, he did an instant price check among stores in the area. Mike examined their itemized lists, which included prices for various brand options. It showed that NumNums offered the best overall price for the items he wanted, even with one of the other stores offering a special on Mike's favorite peanut butter.If he only bought the specified items, he would always know the exact price beforehand, a big help for his budget.
He directed the car to NumNums. It parked in the space closest to the store. Mike took his cloth bags out of the trunk. The store had bags for sale, but most people remembered to bring their own. Customers generally bagged items as they put them into their carts. Mike donned a virtual fedora, threw his bags into a cart, and pushed it into the NumNums.
Out of courtesy to the other customers, Mike stopped playing his game while at the store, but for continuity of ambiance he gave the store a jungle motif. The game's variety of flowers, leaves and fungi hung from the ceiling and sprouted from the floor. Mike's cart pushed a vine aside as he ventured into the jungle/grocery.
Thomas hovered beside him, sitting cross-legged on a large cushion, his head level with Mike's. He set his proxy to stay to either side of Mike, depending on obstacles, so he didn't have to think about keeping up with him. T appeared on one of Mike's private virtual layers, using the cameras and sensors stylishly hidden in his clothing to paint T's virtual environment. Mike's high definition cameras appeared as small buttons in strategic locations all over his clothes, mostly in his jacket. The audio, scent, and other sensors were invisibly interwoven with the circuitry of his clothing, along with infrared lasers, camera, and a radar system which collectively determined distances and surface textures precisely enough for common use, such as painting convincing and detailed virtual environments for augmented reality functions and for visiting proxies to experience his location as if they were really there.
T also used the store's camera system to see parts of the store not in Mike's line-of-sight, although this feed edited out all of the people (with their carts and bags) for privacy reasons. Many stores provided these cameras as a service to aid their customers' augmented reality functions. A lack of public feed cams might also hamper the proxies which often accompanied customers.
Mike filtered away the in-store music and made it sound like the store was playing a live feed of a concert Crain Slain was giving at that moment.
Mike: The Crain Slain concert is Friday night and the film shoot is Saturday afternoon.Thomas: I have both a calender and an agent, you know.
Mike: I'm just saying that you shouldn't get too crazy at the concert. We're doing some of the most important scenes in the Battle For Neo-Kyoto. You need to be ready.
Thomas: I was there when it actually happened, remember. I can do it with a hangover.
Mike: Like last time?
Thomas: That was to aid my portrayal. Riful was obviously drunk that day.
Mike: That's probably true, but you are a terrible method actor.
Thomas: I am a terrible actor, period. That's why I say it doesn't matter. You're probably just going to redub me anyway.
Mike: Well, parts of you. But this will feature the critical moment of the entire war, so you need to be there and ready to rumble.
Thomas: Alrighty then, director.
Remembering that he was already late for the party, Mike brought his grocery list up. It included a map of the store which popped up when he looked at his right forearm. A window like this could also be set to appear in some fixed portion of a user's vision no matter where they look in relation to their environment or body. That can be useful for critical information like nearby game enemies, but might get annoying for a store map. The window, when eye tracking activated it, displayed a map of the store with the most efficient shopping path indicated by an arrowed line weaving through the aisles. His items were marked on the map with small blinking lights. Mike's guidance system was set to overlay hovering, unobtrusive arrows a few inches off of the ground in front of him, so he didn't have to constantly check the map.
Flowery vines swept aside as he turned down the next aisle. A blinking blue outline indicated his preferred peanut butter brand. He considered getting the cheaper generic brand, but upon querying it, his grocery program told him that he regretted getting that particular generic peanut butter the last time. He picked up the brand name peanut butter and put it in a bag. It was automatically marked as acquired on his list.
Floating beside Mike, Thomas grabbed a deep fried donut from thin air and chomped it down. It was a copy of a donut he had eaten at a county fair once, soon after he was first Planted. He had been lucky enough to be recording his senses when he ate it. It was the most delicious donut he had ever eaten, so he used the recorded smell, taste, and texture to create a virtual duplicate. Now he ate a shameful number of them everyday, with random variance in flavor, temperature and texture to lower habituation.
For T, it was a perfect experience. It didn't have calories and didn't even make a mess unless he wanted it to. Which he did, but the crumbs and grease vaporized into the ether soon after consumption. By themselves, virtual donuts weren't as satisfying as physical ones. That would have required simulating his stomach's reaction, creating a spike in blood sugar, and other tricky things. But full immersion proxy users found that having their physical bodies eat vegetables and other healthy food could "simulate" some of those things for them. While T's physical body almost always ate healthy, his mind, via proxy, delighted in donuts, pizza, chocolate cheesecake, and various forms of cheese.
Seeking an open space, T floated above the aisles and toward the produce section on the other side of the NumNums. Behind him stretched a darkening string which attached to Mike when T set his auto-follow on him. Proxies straying from their set object often used such strings to keep a tab on its direction and distance. A rhythmic pluck of the string retracted proxies back to their target. T didn't need it, so he cut it. He then set up a timing algorithm to determine how long he had until Mike finished his shopping route, to shape the scope of his escapades. It showed less than four minutes, but Mike had a way of getting distracted.
No longer needing his body, T changed his proxy to a floating green sphere the size of an orange. For a full view of his environment, he expanded his vision to completely surround him, 360 degrees in every direction, oriented centrally at the core of the sphere. This gave no sense of backwards or forwards, up or down, except for direction of movement while he moved through the store.
T's sphere proxy was almost completely audiovisual, with only a tactile sense of acceleration and deceleration to give feeling of motion, more for fun than anything. Even his sense of gravity had been removed. T's proxy had the appearance of a sphere for the benefit of others, but only as a reference point, an indicator of where T's senses were located. The ball was set to bounce off of surfaces, but people trying to touch it would phase through it like a hologram.
At this point, Thomas was no longer receiving tactile signals from his proxy for his brain to interpret as a body. His first experiences with being incorporeal years ago had been disorienting, but now he was used to it. Luckily, brains are wonderfully adaptive, able to "inhabit" an insubstantial orb and acclimate to drastically reduced tactile senses. But while they were reduced, there was still the faint background sense of his resting physical body, particularly his breathing. While receiving physical signals from a proxy, T wouldn't have been able to detect this faint outline unless something went wrong with his physical body. Even without a tactile proxy, the outline of his body rapidly disappeared from his consciousness, leaving him with the restricted sense input he desired.
*See "Tech Note 05: The Plant" for some ideas on full immersion capable brain implant systems.
T found removing the distractions of his body a great way to focus on getting things done. Like playing games. But first, T had to bounce. He turned his sphere invisible (or rather removed the proxy entirely) so it wouldn't bother anyone while he bounced crazily around the store. While the store's cameras didn't display the people there to him, his antics were being openly broadcast on a personal layer he had created of the store and himself, for those who might opt to see and interact with it. T had a high enough reputation score that many people's defaults opted into seeing and interacting with his virtual presence.
He accelerated at murderous speed toward the ceiling; bounced off it and into and around the dairy section; ricocheted off a customer near Mike; zigzagged down several aisles at up to 200 mph; smacked off another customer; and flew out of the exit and off of a car in the parking lot before returning inside. T savored the freedom and exhilaration of unrestrained movement. He could effortlessly and instantly be anywhere in the store, or most of the civilized world, without the hindrance of even a simulated form, excepting for some places which required a visual proxy with limited movement for security reasons.
Having settled into his new form, T shot over to the produce section. He could have teleported there, which probably wouldn't have been too disorienting. But even when blazing fast, contiguous movement establishes context of location, which helps enable compelling immersion in both real and wholly virtual environments. Arriving in the produce section, T found that someone there was publicly broadcasting their own environmental sensory feed, which allowed him to paint the people present into his virtual produce section, at least those who chose to be captured by the sensors. Mike often let his sensors paint everyone for T's amusement, but including people who didn't opt-in into a more public feed was considered rude. T hovered exactly 3 meters above the ground, giving him the perfect vantage point for his game and brought the game interface up.
Thomas started by setting up a new public layer for the game. Anyone with sufficient gear (which was basically everyone) could watch, or even participate in his game, although everyone looked too busy shopping. Their loss. He set the produce section's long refrigerated section and the orange pile near its end as the boundaries of the game. He set the oranges as the end goal and rearranged them (virtually, in his layer) to make the pile taller. Once the boundaries were set, the game randomly generated dozens of enemies based on the available space, obstacles, the time allotted, and T's previously displayed skill level. This time, the 2-inch tall enemy set was mostly small ogres, with some gelatinous cubes, winged skulls, pirates, and other critters for variety.
The game was called Hyper Grind. It was essentially an accelerated RPG. Instead of a health meter there was only a strength level. Getting close enough to one or more monsters initiated the player's character into a struggle with them, which it won if its strength was greater than the strength of the combined enemy force against it. Success made you stronger, but fighting a stronger opponent would result in your death and a reset of the level. Depending on the enemies in your area, you might be able to sneak by them, or you might have to fight several at once. The main strategy came in choosing the optimal path to collect enough strength to reach the goal alive. It had a nice flow to it, which T enjoyed.
In addition to engaging enemies directly, players could use their character's chain hook to grab objects and whip them at monsters. A successful hit temporarily lowered affected monsters' strength, allowing the player to defeat more powerful opponents. The winning condition was reaching the goal, but blocking the goal was the most powerful set of monsters. The game was scored largely based on the player's efficiency.
It was essentially a sophisticated, dynamic puzzle game. T had been practicing with the thought of maybe entering a Hyper Grind tournament. Not that he'd win. Top contenders were scary.
T named his character Strider and set about demolishing the monstrous hordes. Strider beat a few of the weaker enemies and then began maneuvering around a patch of stronger ogres. An ogre got too close, so T shot Strider's hook into a cucumber in the bins overhead and brought it smashing down on the monster, stunning it long enough to get by it.
Strider engaged with a pirate just below his level. He would win the struggle, but it would take 2 or 3 seconds. In the meantime, he was being surrounded by 5 lower level creatures. It would have been a problem, except for T's skill with the hook. In a fraction of a second, T hooked a jalapeño, whipped it into two ogres beneath Strider, knocking them back and temporarily lowering their strength level. In the same second he sent a bell pepper precisely between two killer squids coming from above, giving him the space he needed to begin working on one of the weaker ogres.
The produce section was rich with ammo; outside of tournament regulations in fact. It was good hook practice though. Aiming with the hook was not automatic under T's settings. It required exact precision and used a generally realistic physics engine to accurately simulate the throwing of various objects. T could have effectively used his proxy's hands to command the hook. In that case, his brain would send commands to his hands which would be intercepted by his spinal cord Plant and translated into hand movements in his virtual proxy. These movements could have further been processed into abstract instructions depending on context. For example, a mapping of finger movement to the 3D coordinates of the game.
Controlling an anthropic proxy with his natural body movements this way was the best way to control a proxy overall. It was the most natural, the brain was designed and trained for it, and it was the most immediately immersive way to do it. But for matters of precision and speed like Hyper Grind, T relied on his Universal Remote Control, or URC, a motor cortex implant with flexible and powerful controls for virtual environments or electronics. It bestowed incredibly intuitive and powerful controls directly from the brain. With T's experience, using it to paint or manipulate complex game spaces was effortless and second-nature. T focused on the larger strategy of the game as he flung veggie after veggie with laser precision into their tiny targets.
*See "Tech Note 06: Universal Remote Control" for more about the URC.
T had a minute of gaming bliss, and was a quarter of the way through the level, before he noticed that someone else was playing too, and rapidly catching up with him. Enemies respawned after 30 seconds to keep you moving, and the new player was going through them nearly twice as fast as Strider had. The player's handle was Rabid Weasel, and they had been given a large handicap to balance T's expert skill. Even considering the handicap, Rabid wasn't a bad player.
T played as fast as he could, but was losing ground. He scanned around for likely players. While he had a complete view of the area with his surround vision, he still had to pay attention to something for his brain to properly process its details. The player was easy to spot. It was a young girl, maybe six, with unnaturally red hair, watching her character thrashing some zombie geckos. She wore augmented reality glasses, what looked like a trainer set. At least that was the form his challenger had chosen when they began playing the game. Children were typically filtered out of all public feeds for obvious safety issues, but her parents might have allowed her settings to represent her accurately.
T set up a blinking blue light on his sphere in her direction to say hello. She noticed out of the corner of her eye and shot him a split second smile. For a few seconds, when her character was moving through a cleared path, her hands came up in front of her as if holding a basketball, and her fingers glided over it as if lightly pushing keys. She was using a beginner's keysphere visualization to guide her fingers while entering text.
*See "Tech Note 03: Augmented Reality Controls" for details on virtual keyspheres.
The girl finished typing with her keysphere, closed her right hand as if crushing a paper, and mimed tossing it at T's sphere, all while continuing to play the game. It was a text message.
Girl: [text to T] Nice set up. I respect your skill. You are going to die.T had no response to this, except to play harder. Soon Rabid Weasel had almost caught up with Strider. With T's settings, players couldn't directly attack each other, but they could throw things to hit enemies into other players, which is exactly what the Weasel started doing. She masterfully pulled tofu off of the highest shelf, hitting one of the dreaded poison skull walkers near Strider all using simple camera tracked hand commands as a virtual 3D mouse. The girl laughed as T was forced to retreat.
Mike was happily humming along to Crain Slain's live song, "Chainsaw Blizzard," and deciding if he really needed granola bars, when he felt his shirt gently grip his left forearm. Looking down he saw that he was being gripped by an adorable mechanical spider a little smaller than his fist. It was Tenchi, Mike's personal virtual agent. Having Mike's haptic sleeve simulate the spider's grip was Tenchi's inconspicuous way of getting attention.
Tenchi: [with a voice like distant wind chimes] Master, Kyu is online. You may wish to talk about your mutual project.Mike: Thanks, I'll take care of it.
Personal virtual agents were a popular interface for managing social contacts, getting help with program interfaces, security management, and generally automating their users' lives. The most advanced agents had what could be considered a very basic AI. While there existed some impressive examples of strong general AI, most AI at this point was not anthropomorphic, but devoted to specific purposes like creating realistic cg animation, doing science, emulating real time virtual world simulations, and helping people efficiently manage their affairs.
Mike activated his visual contact list to see who else was around. His bionic contacts made the world transparent so he could see where his friends were in relation to him geographically. This was to give a sense of orientation. He selected Kyu from the list and his attention was drawn by a thin line through the Earth to South Korea. He zoomed in through the Earth until an upside down Kyu came into view, about five feet below Mike's feet.
Mike waved at Kyu, who was walking down a street, either physical or virtual. From his perspective, Kyu looked down at an upside down Mike and waved back. Their mutual waving activated a proxy exchange. A Kyu proxy appeared on Mike's left, and a Mike proxy appeared on Kyu's right. This was the most convenient orientation for their situations. Mirroring could also be used to put both proxies on the left, or the right. Unless they performed a special change in orientation, they would appear in this relation to each other no matter how fast each walked or even if they spun around, so that they could more conveniently talk to each other.
The full body proxy of each was removed from its original context. Besides the glimpse of the other's environment when they waved at each other, which was readily faked anyway, each could have been in a strip club, a concert, or a carnival for all the other knew. They could, of course, enter more immersively into their proxy and move around freely in the other's environment, but this was the most efficient way to have a quick chat without interrupting their other activities.
The set up could be awkward in places like grocery stores, where Kyu would clip into people and shelving. In such instances the objects, deemed less significant than Kyu, would be made transparent around Kyu so the conversation could continue. Kyu and Mike's proxies each inhabited private layers, so they didn't exist to anyone else who lacked permission to add that layer. People could see Mike communicating with some invisible entity, but that wasn't exactly unusual. The potential annoyance of overhearing one-sided speech was mitigated by the use of subvocal communication.
Mike's ear insert provided high quality sound and optimized his aural surroundings, but also picked up subtle vibrations from the muscles in his throat that operated his vocal cords. It wasn't perfect, but it enabled him to speak to Kyu without any visible or audible sign of talking to anyone else. There were tiny neck implants that could detect subvocalization almost perfectly, and there were several ways of speaking with the Plant, including intercepting motor signals for speech and translating them into proxy speech, but Mike's subvocal-enabled ear inserts worked well enough for him.
Kyu and Mike hugged. Mike had no implants, and Kyu only had a URC, but the squeeze of the hug was simulated, with reasonable success, by the synthetic "muscles" of their haptic clothing.
Kyu: So, I'm pretty much done with the overlay of Neo-Kyoto and the background carnage.Mike: That's awesome. You really didn't have to go to all that trouble.
Kyu: It's better if the graphics match. They had realistic textures, but they didn't quite "pop" as much as current graphics. No reason for it not to be perfect.
Mike: What music are you using?
Kyu brought up a display for Mike showing an overhead view of the city along with the music. Mike stopped and watched the battle raging across Neo-Kyoto, exactly as it had occurred 7 years before inside the game Ataraxia, but now with more striking visuals. If nothing else, Kyu's graphic overlay made it easier to sort out the hundreds of giant robots and powered suits clashing all over the city, fighting desperately for strategic points. Mike imagined updating the graphics had required quite an effort.
He expanded the display and the city sprawled out below him in all directions. He had forgotten how big Neo-Kyoto was. The netizens of Ataraxia sure knew how to overdo things. His contacts made the store, and even his body, transparent for the battle's full vista. He clutched at his shopping cart for balance. It was almost overwhelming how much was going on at once. It was no wonder that no one had properly dramatized this battle. Just picking where to start was problematic. There were so many key players. Still, it was odd that no one had covered the events surrounding the fortuitously named Zero Daisaku's story. Focusing on that part of the story opened up the conflict for examination in an accessible way. He forwarded the feed to watch Zero's escape. He shrank the video back to a window, which hovered in front of him.
Mike: Very nice. The only thing is that I don't think you should start the music swelling until Zero escapes. Can you synchronize the oomph with Blaze's entry into the fray?Kyu had his agent adjust the music and played the relevant section back again. It only took a few seconds.
Mike: Awesome. We can use it just like that.Mike "grabbed" the window displaying Kyu's video from the area, collapsed it into a ball. With a flick of his fingers, a box labeled "Neo-Kyoto," popped up before him. Mike tossed the ball into the box, and the box disappeared back into thin air. During this, Tenchi, noting a short lull in the conversation, sent Mike a text saying he had, at Sam's request, added "detox pills" to Mike's grocery list and that the shopping path had been rerouted.
Mike: We're all set up for Saturday then. Unless Miguel gets sidetracked again.Kyu: We can always shoot around him. Although that would be tricky, since he's Zero. Hey, whatever happened to you asking him out?
Mike: I only said that because I was drunk. Miguel's cute and all, but he lives in Mexico.
Kyu: Oh yeah. I don't know why I always think you're Planted.
Mike: Probably association with T. Wait, where is he...
Mike turned the aisles transparent to find T. He zoomed his vision to see T and the game he was playing, and watched it for a moment before noticing a miniature Sam hovering beside T's sphere.
Mike: T is currently fighting to the death at Hyper Grind with some strange little girl in the produce section.Kyu: When you say it like that, it sounds concerning.
Mike: T's Hyper Grind addiction is the least concerning thing about him. Two words: Rainbow Run. He survived a session last month.
Kyu: Jesus Christ.
Mike: That was my reaction. He'll give you the recording if you ask.
Kyu: I have so many backlogged recs... but that might be interesting. How do you survive Rainbow Run?
Mike: You probably don't want to know. Being a bastard mostly.
Mike's haptic-gloved fingers nimbly tapped away in the air for a few seconds as he pushed the cart with his palms, sending a text to T asking permission to share his RR expedition. T nearly instantly shot back a message with a link to an "improved" copy and encouraging him to send it to his complete contact list. Mike grabbed the text from the air in front of him and it turned into a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, which he threw at Kyu's proxy, giving him the link. There were subtler ways to share messages, but they were less fun and immediate.
Kyu: Enhanced?Mike: I really don't know. Commentary maybe. Dang it, I'm even later now! See you Saturday.
Kyu: Have fun!
Mike patted Kyu on the shoulder just before he disappeared. He brushed past some overgrown palm leaves as he moved to the next aisle.
Halfway through Mike and Kyu's talk, Sam called Mike. Tenchi responded.
Tenchi: Hey Sam! Mike's talking to someone. Would you like to leave a message?Sam: Hey Ten. Just: detox pills.
Tenchi: Expecting some hangovers?
Sam: Not if Mike comes through. Ja ne!
Sam then called Thomas. T's chinchilla agent Villain responded.
Villain: [with a luxurious Spanish accent] Hello beautiful! How may I please you?Sam: Aren't you just too cute to live? Can I talk to T?
Villain: He is struggling for his very life. Why do you want to talk to him, anyway?
Sam: Just get me an audience.
A moment later, a miniature Sam appeared hovering in the air next to T's sphere, on the opposite side from the game so as not to obstruct his view. Miniature Sam wore baggy jeans and a t-shirt that cycled every 8 seconds through a different design-- commemorating the Mars manned landing; a Crain Slain album cover; the 15th Doctor; a Nintendo cast ensemble; the Techno-Pantheist emblem; text: But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus and they laughed at Einstein,. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan; etc...
Thomas: I am killing things right now. And stuff.Sam: We're going diving Saturday night.
Thomas: Sure. Omni?
Sam: We could try somewhere else. I hear good things about Raindrip. But the spiral will be the same. We could try a different spiral....
Thomas: But our pit is so nicely set up. And the abyss is a different spiral every time. Every single minute, really.
Sam: Oh, Meg's here. [spinning around to show surprise] She got a spinal Plant two months ago and didn't tell anyone! She's really getting the hang of it too.
Thomas: You're thinking she might be ready for a dive? She could come with us.
Sam: She says she's done it before.
Thomas: [smiley face on his sphere] Everyone does it before they get a full Plant. Then they really do it.
Sam: [tapping her forehead thoughtfully] You talk to her about it, you're better friends.
Thomas: We're such good friends that she didn't tell me about completing the Plant. But yeah, I will. Listen, I have to kill these things now.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Almost forgot, can you make sure Mike gets those pills?
Thomas brought up Mike's list and saw the pills listed there. He added "human brains" to the list. It wasn't the first time.
Thomas: It's on there.Sam: Thanks!
Rabid Weasel was now ahead by a good two feet. The little girl was also skillfully shoving the nastier enemies at Thomas, slowing him down. Her handicap was large, but to T, the way she leveraged it was just beautiful. He thought that it might be good for her self esteem (or something) if she won. But he wasn't going to just let her win. He opened a space and knocked a strong ogre into Strider and killed it. Then he did another.
Chaining was a risky strategy. By stringing out surrounding monsters and fighting the strongest opponents you could quickly gain power. But it meant that the addition of even a very weak monster into the fight could be disastrous. He was walking the razor's edge, something not considered wise for ranked play. But T had little time and wasn't about to be beaten by a 6 year old girl. At least, not outside of a tournament. T felt lucky as Strider took down a belligerent dwarf, a poisoned skull, a pirate king, and finally a crude caricature of the current president.
Rabid Weasel's player marveled at the skillful way T continuously scattered weaker monsters with his hookshots. It was a feat that was impossible without a URC. Soon Strider smashed his way ahead of Rabid Weasel and victory seemed certain. But then the girl managed to toss an ogre onto Strider, slowing him down enough for surrounding monsters to converge on him. Facing imminent destruction, Strider engaged several powerful monsters near him and then ran at Rabid Weasel in a suicide monstering that resulted in both their deaths.
Girl: [sticking her tongue out at T] Cheat! I told you you'd die!Thomas: [text across his sphere] If I had more time, I'd really challenge you. Practice hard and we may meet again.
The girl grinned, pleased with herself. And then T flew away.
T returned to Mike's side as he entered the cereal aisle, and switched from the phantom sphere to his regular proxy, phasing in his tactile sensations again.
Mike: You made a serious mess of the produce section.Thomas: Not that anyone even noticed. Too busy groping fruit to watch an epic struggle. And it was mostly that girl's fault anyway.
Mike: I got the battle rec from Kyu, it looks good. What did Sam want?
Thomas: Official dive business. This Saturday night.
T dipped a donut in chocolate pudding and gulped it down. Then he grabbed a box of sugared cereal off of the shelf and pulled a few handfuls of cereal out of the top. Cereal boxes frequently came with links to product samples for those with appropriate enhancements.
Thomas: This cereal is pretty good.Mike's eye tracking selected the box and pulled its nutritional information up for his display.
Mike: But it's horrible for you. Who the hell would let their kid eat this?Thomas: [shaking the contents of the box into his mouth] It's not horrible for me.
The boxes also came with a tag that displayed augmented reality animated content over the box. If you didn't filter out ad tags, the cereal section was a glowing mess of frantically competing commercials. No individual box was too obnoxious. They had learned that 3d animation sticking out of the boxes into the aisle resulted in irritated consumers. Obnoxious ads on TV were one thing, because they might cement brand recognition. But in the aisle, customers were less likely to pick up boxes that were actively annoying them at that moment. It was only the collected ads over the entire aisle that was too much.
Still, people generally didn't filter the ads that displayed when they looked directly at an item. Being present for a several second ad would often create digital coupons for products from the item's company. Mike, however, wouldn't trade his dignity for such small savings, so he just filtered all of them.
*See "Tech Note 04: Eye Tracking".
Mike remembered the new item that T had added to the list. He pulled a crazy straw out of his palm, jammed it into T's head and began noisily sucking his brains out.
Thomas: What the hell, man?The straw made a final slurping sound and T's head deflated.
Mike: Is that all? I guess it will have to do.T stuck his thumb in his mouth and inflated his head. Mike could see the boxes of cornflakes glowing blue through T. T was automatically made transparent when Mike's eye tracking system indicated he was actually looking for something and not just looking at T. He reached through T and grabbed a box of cornflakes. His grocery list program informed him that the price of that brand had gone up 5% in area stores on average since the last time he bought it. An old woman stopped in T's space, so he pulled her head off and turned it into an apple-sized blackberry, which he then consumed. The woman remained oblivious.
Using the store cameras, Mike made the aisles transparent and zoomed into the fruit section to check out the bananas. They looked ripe enough, but he didn't know about leaving them in the car overnight if he decided to crash at Sam's place, so he marked them off of the active grocery list. The list indicated just detox pills and beer left, in that order. The beer was listed last so it would be coldest for the party.
Mike got the last items and headed for the exit. Along the way, store sensors scanned his cart and gave him a list of its items with their prices, applicable coupons, and the final checkout price. He glanced at the list as he walked. T threw a few dollars in for the beer and Mike confirmed the purchase. A second later he received a notice from his bank asking for confirmation of payment to the store at the agreed price. He confirmed it. He didn't bother with bank confirmations for some regular, scheduled payments, but he kept a tight rein on all other transactions.
Mike threw everything in the trunk, he and T got in, and he directed the car to head to the party. As they were driving away, wind chimes echoed in the distance. It was Tenchi, alerting Mike that his friend Dexter was calling.
Mike: It's Dex. I'm gonna take this. See you at the party!A lever popped out of the right side of Mike's seat. He pulled it and T's seat flew out of the roof, propelled by a giant spring. T landed hard on the road and was promptly run over by a number of cars. T wondered if Mike knew that T's settings, designed for realism, could result in enough pain for that to suck. He would have to teach Mike a lesson of some kind. T jumped over the next car, and while in the air popped a jetpack out of his back and made for the party with an acceleration that would have killed a physical person. And he only crashed into 2 buildings on the way.
-See Technology Notes for more details on how the technology in this story might be implemented.
-See Related Tech Links for tons of fun stuff.
That kind of simulation would be a good way to resolve armed conflicts. So long as the rules were obeyed well, one could concieve of a satisfying war without bloodshed.
ReplyDeleteGood that you are interspersing action into the whole thing. Keeps the pacing alive. What I'm still not seeing yet is a main undercurrent or conflict. I suspect that it has something to do with the NeoKyoto simulation and Zero's story, but I'll have to wait and see for that. I'm kind of waiting for a twist or something. Then again, I'm used to reading metric tons of trashy pulp novels, so my preference is clear.