“That’s your next ride,” Corrigan said. “Take a seat.”
“You mean I don’t get to dance this time?”
“Oh, sure you will. I told you, it gets better.”
Shipley held some of the trailing cables aside and beckoned Evelyn toward the chair. “It looks as if I’m going to be electrocuted,” she said, stepping forward.
“Medium, rare, or well-done?” Hatcher asked from the console. They all laughed.
The headrest, Evelyn saw as she sat down, was in fact an integral part of the collar unit itself. Corrigan moved over to stand by Hatcher, and they went into a technical exchange about loop gains and parameter settings.
“Where did you get your background in DINS?” she asked Shipley as he closed the collar and began securing connections—partly from curiosity, partly to get him to talk more.
“Oh, I used to be with part of the SDI program—using active optics to precorrect laser beams for transmission distortion.” He had a deep, gruff, but not unkindly voice. Corrigan could be fun to have around, but when it came to more serious business, she hoped that she would be working with Shipley. He went on. “That needed fast algorithms to compute complex signal patterns in real time, and the math turned out to be ideal for generating brain-stimulation sequences, too. . . . Now you’ll need to hush up so I can position the lateral pads.”
The front portion of the collar immobilized her jaw, making this a lot more constraining than MIMIC and fixing her gaze on the holo-projection space above the metal plate.
“Okay, Evelyn, relax,” Corrigan said, turning to face her. “You might experience a few funny feelings at first, but don’t worry about it. This time we’ll also be injecting sensations into your neural centers. Your brain won’t be able to tell that they’re not coming in via the sensory system. But first we have to calibrate to your particular ranges of scale and sensitivity. It only takes a minute.”
Suddenly, Evelyn’s body went numb from the neck down, as if she had undergone an instant spinal block. Then she felt a pins-and-needles sensation in her arms and legs, especially in the fingertips. When she tried wriggling them, they wouldn’t respond. After a few seconds this faded, and more normal feelings returned, but blurred somehow, as if she were suspended in molasses.
Tom Hatches called across to her from the console. “Feel okay? Blink once for yes, twice for no, three times or make dentist noises in an emergency.”
She blinked, and could see the word “Yes” appear in green in a corner of one of Hatcher’s screens. Evidently there was an eye tracker operating somewhere. A trained user would be able to communicate a whole vocabulary through eye movements.
“Weird—kinda like an all-around water bed, but okay?” Hatches asked, checking.
She blinked once.
“Any discomfort?”
She blinked twice. A red “No” on the screen confirmed it.
“Now I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you’re standing normally on the ground. Open your eyes when you start to feel heavy, then blink once when it’s about right.”
Evelyn closed her eyes. An instant later, sensations came over her that were completely at odds with the situation she knew herself to be in. She could feel herself standing: feet pressing on the floor, back erect, arms hanging loosely. But too light. She felt precariously anchored, like a balloon just touching the ground, waiting for the first breath of wind to carry her away. But even as she thought it, her weight started to increase. Then she was twenty pounds too heavy, her spine sagging. She opened her eyes abruptly. The heaviness slackened off, reduced slowly . . . and she felt normal. She blinked.
“Close your eyes again,” Hatcher called. “Now imagine that you’re holding a grapefruit in each hand. Lift them sideways to shoulder height, keeping your arms straight. Open your eyes when they get heavy. Blink once when they feel about right.”
The routine went the same as before.
“Now raise both arms straight up over your head—without the grapefruits. . . . Point them straight forward from the shoulders. That’s great. . . . Now raise each leg in turn, knee bent, until the thigh is horizontal. Okay. . . . Now keep your eyes closed and try walking a few steps.”