"Trying to look inconspicuous?" Helen offered. Dr. Mellings glared at her apparation. "Look, it's not that different from the prosthetic link we were working on earlier. It's way simpler, if anything."
He waved her off, leaning over to look his grad student in the eye. "Kriti, if this bad bad lady has hypnotized you, or blackmailed you, or is exerting any sort of mind control on you, just blink twice. I promise we'll take her far, far away where she can never hurt you again."
Kriti shook her head. "No. I chose this. I wanted this."
"You have a data port sticking out of your left arm. I could plug my thumb drive into you and copy your brain right now." Kriti giggled. "No, you don't get to laugh. I get to laugh. Because when I'm laughing, I'm not thinking about how I'm running Dr. Frankenstein's lab!"
Kriti's nervousness switched to anger. "Do you not wish to see what it does?" she demanded.
Dr. Mellings deflated. "You have ten minutes, or until I'm fired for letting this happen on my watch, whichever comes first. Then we're ripping the thing out."
As Kriti plugged a cable into the port in her arm, Helen said, "Let's start with inhibition." She played with her own interface. "The transponder is now blocking her sensation entirely. You could light her hand on fire right now, and she wouldn't notice. Try pinching her."
Dr. Mellings pinched her, hard. Kriti didn't respond. "But," Helen said, "the nerves distal to her arm were still sending the signals. The doodad didn't just block the signals, it also recorded them, possibly for playback at a later time. Like now."
"Ouch!" Kriti yelped.
"Or now."
"Ouch! Would you please sto-OUCH! Damn it, Helen! Quit that! Ouch!"
"You've made your point, Helen."
"Of course I have. But she's so cute when she yelps like that. Here's the kicker: the stimuli don't have to come from the physical world." Helen disappeared from the lab's holoprojector and reappeared back in Altworld, where she was visible in one of the lab's monitors.
Kriti explained. "Using cameras, which allow my partner to haunt our lab, we now create my hand inside the Altworld." On screen, a disembodied arm floated in front of Helen. She clasped Kriti's hand and gave it a firm shake.
"I can feel her, and she can feel me." Something about Dr. Mellings' expression softened. He must be impressed, Helen thought. A little, at least. "She can also feel this." A pitcher of ice water appeared, and dumped itself on the hand.
Kriti yelped again. "Kutiyaa!"1 she shouted at the screen.
"I take it that wasn't part of the demonstration," William said to Kriti.
"Helen always leads me to trouble," she complained.
"Okay, for the next demonstration, Kriti will find the pencil in this box of junk, guided only by a simulated sense of touch. Notice that her actual hand isn't moving. Right now, she couldn't move it if she wanted to." Kriti found the pencil easily, even with her eyes closed, and handed it to Helen. "Thank you, Thing," she said. Then Dr. Mellings had to explain The Addams Family to Kriti. That brief attempt at pop-cultural education used up the remainder of the allotted ten minutes, and only left Kriti more confused. But Dr. Mellings no longer seemed to be watching the clock.
The demonstration continued. Kriti played catch with Helen, played a simple tune on a piano, honked Helen's nose, and brushed her hair.
"So, how convincing does it all feel?" Dr. Mellings asked Kriti.
"It is a good start. There is much to be done. Playback of real stimuli is wonderful and perfect. But only Helen has ever had need for an Altworld model with such detail of the tactile. They are still wrong."
"Great. So what's your vision for this thing?"
Helen grinned. "It started off as a better way to connect the brain to bionic limbs. But now we're thinking it could do so much more. You could link into all the major routes to the brain. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose. You could give someone pretty much any sensory experience they wanted. You could record experiences and play them back again. You could even play back someone else's experiences, though you'd have to account for physiological differences between sender and recipient."
"So instead of posting about what you had for breakfast, you'd just let other people eat it with you."
"I think it has broader application than that," Kriti shot back, seeming annoyed.
"He was joking," Helen told her, petting her disembodied hand. "He knows that what we really have here is a fundamental breakthrough in the field of celebrity sex tapes."
After returning Kriti's limb to its owner, the three talked for hours. This technology could singlehandedly obsolete everything from telepresence gear to surgical anesthetic to top of the line home entertainment equipment. It could eventually make Altworld impossible to distinguish from the real world, as experiences transferred seamlessly from one to the other.
"But before we uncork the champagne," Dr. Mellings said, "we need to conduct a second proof of concept. Full body."
"Oh, no," Kriti said. "I will not wish her to pour chill water over my everything."
William nodded. "You're right, we mustn't allow that. I'll have to be the one to do it."
"Why you?" Helen asked.
"There are liability issues. Plus, Kriti has a long and promising career ahead of her, while I have a long and promising career mostly behind me. Plus plus, you girls have put me in a pioneering mood. Plus plus plus, if anything happens to me, you're the ones who'll have to teach all my classes. So the risk is pretty evenly spread."
"What about me?" Helen asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense to go all Frankenstein on my ass?"
"Eventually. But nobody's going to be impressed until we've demonstrated this on an actual... what do you call us?"
"Meatbags," Helen reminded him.
"An actual meatbag." Helen could see the wheels turning in his mind.
* * *
1 Hindi for "bitch", if the Internet is to be believed. Mind you, this is the same Internet that first told me about our shapeshifting reptillian overlords.
////////////////////////////////////
// SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS GOES BOINK //
////////////////////////////////////
Date: March 18, 2036
Their little team had practically lived in the lab for the last three months, and everyone was getting a little stir-crazy. They would often find Kriti konked out on her workbench, and any attempts to rouse her were met with slurred Hindi curses. William woke one morning to find that he had -- despite having no memory of it -- sent a message to the Requisitions Department demanding ten thousand gallons of sleep (73% concentrate, with acetic acid stabilizer). The request had been rejected, but someone from Requisitions sent back a blanket and a pillow.
One day, Kriti went off to pick up the latest revision of their design. She hand carried the device from the university fabrications lab, skipping and singing the whole way. "It came! It finally came!" she shouted as she burst through the door.
Helen grumbled, "You'd think the first four failures would dampen your enthusiasm. You'd think wrong."
Kriti shushed her. "Now is the time for hopey, not cranky. We shall summon the cranky if Dr. Mellings' modifications fail. Then we shall blame the old man. Oh how we shall blame him."
They went to William's office, where they found him asleep at his desk. "Omigosh," Helen whispered. "That's not a puddle of drool. That's a sea!"
Kriti giggled, and the professor awoke. "Did somebody say some..." He looked down. "Ew, gross." He fumbled for a tissue, scattering a dozen pens. "What can I do for you two?"
"Try these on," Kriti said, opening a box that was about the right size for a wedding ring. Inside were five flat, metallic rectangles.
The installation took hours, as usual. The five rectangles were laid along the back of his neck, glued down with a gelatinous goo full of specially programmed microbes which immediately began digging down towards William's spinal column, stringing nanowire behind them as they went. Once they reached their targets, they set up shop, converting th
emselves into the machinery that could detect and block neurochemical signals.
Individually, the intrusions would have gone unnoticed. But with millions of them going at the same time, William was gritting his teeth, and his neck would be black and blue in a few hours. "You're very brave," Helen whispered, wishing she could hold his hand. "When you get done, I'm taking you to the best restaurant in Altworld."
"You buying?" he asked, then swore as one of the microbes tripped an especially sensitive nerve.
"You think I'm made of money? The lab's buying. Time for an injection." Helen nodded to Kriti, who attacked the professor with a syringe full of gold nanoparticles.
A ping emanated from the system as the first connection took hold. A minute later, there came a second ping, then a cluster of three. Before long it sounded like a slot machine going off.
Once the connections were made, Helen and Kriti spent hours mapping each connection to the corresponding region of the professor's body. In practice, this meant jabbing him with needles, blinding him with different patterns of light, subjecting him to auditory and olfactory tortures, and applying microbursts of often objectionable substances to his tongue.
Finally, it was time to start migrating him to Altworld. She fretted that the installation had gone horribly wrong. The last time they had tried jacking him into Altworld, William had been engulfed in static. The time before, he had screamed in agony as he felt his whole body liquefy. She thought they had ironed out all the problems. But you could never be sure.
"Okay, I'm going to flash you in for two seconds," she said. Wincing, she keyed in the command. "Anything?" she asked when the allotted time had passed.
William smiled. "I think we're onto something."
"All right. Now for a ten-count." She entered another command.
"Can you hear me?" she asked.
"Watson, come here. I need you. This is one small step for--" and then he was back.
"Your big five?" she asked.
"Let's see. The Mona Lisa, the sound of a violin, the smell of bananas, and the feel of cold sand on my feet. Not getting any taste."
"Four of five, not bad. Give me just a few minutes." A few minutes became an hour, but she finally solved it. "Okay, one more time. Now, tell me what you see."
"I see the lab. It's where I keep my books. For unfathomable reasons, the University pays me to be here." He scratched his head. "It's not working. Something's wrong."
Helen's hologram only smiled. "Grab that data pad, would you?"
"This one?" He picked it up, looking it over. "Why?"
"Never mind. Put it away." He put it back down. She walked up to him and leaned in to inspect the implants. "Not sure. Could be hardware. Could be software. Could be," she said, slipping her hand into his, "you're not where you think you are." She gave it a squeeze. "You're in my world now, meatbag."
The lab crumbled around them, revealing a windswept mountaintop. A rough layer of clouds spread out below them, dark and heavy, punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning.
They laughed out loud, then William swept her up into a big bear hug, pounding her back. "We did it!" he shouted. "Woohooo! In your face, Mister Dalrymple! In! Your! Face!"
"Who?"
"Eighth grade math teacher," he explained. "Said I'd never amount to anything. Dead these last twenty years."
Helen laughed. "Let's gloat about that too!"
/*****/
They celebrated at Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It could be difficult to find, since the proprietor hadn't paid the Douglas Adams estate any royalties, and hence it was prone to getting shut down.1 It had the best food and the best floor shows of any place Helen had ever found. A superintelligent shade of blue led them to their table, past a motley collection of customers that included a fifty foot tall sasquatch who was precariously balanced on a tiny chair, trying to use chopsticks on a small plate of sushi. He seemed to be getting frustrated.
William was feeling and smelling everything he could politely get away with. The audio and video were almost perfect, but very few 3D models carried the necessary information to make the experience compelling, which explained why so few customers were actually eating.
"Slow night?" William asked, looking over the crowd.
"Yeah. They had to move again an hour ago. Plus, a Vogon poetry slam starts in about forty minutes, and I think people are rushing to miss that." They sat down, and Helen looked at the menu. She considered ordering a round of drinks -- she had once contributed some improvements to the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster -- but decided against it. William wouldn't be able to get drunk from it; getting sloshed required access to his actual brain chemistry, which their system didn't have.
"Should I order for you?" she asked. "I've been here about a dozen times, so I know how everything tastes." William gave a distracted nod as he continued hefting and putting down his water glass. Then he stuck his hand in the water and fished out an ice cube, which he proceeded to rub on his neck. "I can't take you anywhere," she laughed.
The waiter -- a diminutive, wheeled robot that projected an air of annoyed servility -- approached their table and asked for their order.
"We'll start off with two amorphous samplers," Helen said, "two fillet of voluntarily-leapt-into-the-panfish, a bottle of your cheapest Betelguesian Merlot, the Paradoxical Caesar salad, and two nullifood cookies."
The robot shook its head sadly. "I must advise you that nullifood cookies tend to wreak havoc on innocent universes."
"Fetch us the cookies with all haste," Helen ordered. The robot sighed and rolled off. She rolled her eyes. "It's hard to find good service these days."
"I'll bite. What's a nullifood cookie?"
"It's a cookie that uses an antimatter payload to remove food from your system. It cleanses your palate for the next course."
William stared at her for a few seconds, then finally said, "You're going to make me ask, aren't you?" Helen nodded. "Okay, why don't you explode when you eat it?"
"Simple. The explosion is redirected into an alternate universe, leaving you with a pleasantly warm feeling in your tummy. It's a bit sociopathic, but trust me, you're going to want plenty of room for dessert. The tiramisu here is definitely worth the lives of millions of innocents. Ooh! Breadsticks!"
William just gave her that wry smile that said she was being very silly, and by all means please continue. For the few seconds it lasted, that smile was the whole of her world.
/*****/
Helen invited William back to her place, under the pretense of trying out some of the textures she had invented. She felt her stomach swim when he agreed. A few seconds later, they were back in her cottage, sitting on her couch, and Helen felt a twinge of regret that she hadn't flown, or taken a shuttle. The feeling of anticipation was heady, and she didn't want it to end. Yet.
Her texture collection was gathered in a thick, portable book that bore a clear resemblance to a packet of carpet samples. The surfaces had names like "water," "sand", "ice," "silk," and "eaten alive by minnows." William tried the last one first, rubbing his hand across it. "Hey, that tickles -- ouch!"
She smiled. "You walked straight into that one. Try 'sand' next." One by one, she led him through them, making notes of which ones he liked and which he found unconvincing. "Skin," he said, reading the label. He ran one finger across it, then his entire hand. "No, this one's wrong."
"Bullshit," she shot back. "That's the one I'm most proud of."
"Sorry, it's definitely off."
"Look, it's a context thing. It feels wrong because you don't expect a book to feel skin-like. Try it here," she said, rubbing a finger across the small of her neck. Hesitantly, he drew his hand along her neck, giving gentle squeezes here and there. "Believe me now?" she asked, putting her hand over his.
He drew his hand back like he'd been bitten by a snake. "I should probably get going."
"What? Why?"
"Well, it's getting late. Classes tomorrow." He shrugged. "But
thank you for the wonderful evening."
Eyes downcast, cheeks burning with anger and shame, she could barely get the next sentence out. "William, I need to know. Do you realize that I'm trying to seduce you?"
His face got a confused, terrified look that somehow reminded Helen of a wildebeest who had just been warned of an impending visit from an IRS auditor. Finally he said, "Repeat last transmission?"
"Okay, technically I've been trying to get you to seduce me." She waved her hand dismissively. "Girl thing. Don't ask."
"God, Helen. I'm sorry. I thought I was imagining..." William's voice trailed off. Helen heard the note of hope in his voice, and felt her own hope rekindling. She slid next to him, and took his face with both hands, cupping it gently.
"You loved me once," she murmured. "I didn't realize what a precious thing that was. I'm so sorry for that, and I hope you'll accept this apology." She drew him in, kissing him hard, and soon he was kissing her back, his hands taking hold of her waist, repositioning her on his lap.
As she began to unbutton his shirt, he asked, "Are you sure about this?"
"Dear lord, you can be dense," she purred, then began kissing his neck. Nothing more was said on the matter.
/*****/
Date: August 11, 2036
Several months went by in a pleasant fashion. Helen had received 'the implants' next -- or at least a simplified Altworld mockup -- because it was far cheaper and safer than installing another real world prototype, and it would be illuminating to try transferring experiences from one person to another.
It turned out to be as tricky as they had feared. Sensations were very dependent on the neural context which created them. When Kriti tried to give back the pinch that Dr. Mellings had inflicted on her a few months back, Helen screamed in agony. It felt like somebody had stabbed her hand with a knife.
Vision was even trickier. Helen described the first attempt as TV static on an acid trip. As Kriti had never seen TV static, that took some explaining. It took two weeks of intense calculations just to map out a rough nerve correspondence. Even with that solved, visions that were played back to her had a surreal, sometimes cubist quality to them.