It was uncanny. Although Evelyn knew that she was sitting immobile with her head held in a restraint, she could feel herself walking across a floor. A bit lumpily and jerkily, it was true—but walking.
“Does it feel quite right?” Hatcher’s voice asked. Evelyn opened her eyes and blinked twice. “Tell me which of these corrections feels more normal. This? . . .” The discontinuity got worse, as if her leg were actually coming apart at the knee with each step. “Or this?” The feelings became smoother, almost right now. “Which was better?” Hatcher asked. “The first one?” Two blinks. “The second one?” One blink. After a couple more trials they had it perfect.
“Okay.” Corrigan pulled another chair close and sat down where Evelyn could see him. “MIMIC reads muscle-control information directly from the brain,” he said. “DINS transmits information into the brain, bypassing the normal sensory apparatus. This is what happens when we combine the two together.”
A solid figure appeared in the holo-space, again female, wearing a simple red, loose-fitting dress. Once again, Evelyn could feel herself standing—in the same attitude as the figure, she realized after a second or two. She moved her eyes to look at Corrigan inquiringly. He nodded. She looked back at the holo-figure and made to move her arms. From the corner of her eye she could see that they remained motionless on the armrests of the chair. Instead, the hologram figure moved its arms. But unlike the case with MIMIC, this time Evelyn could actually feel it: the weight shifting and pressures in her joints altering as the shoulder and elbow angles changed, the tensions in her muscles—even the light rubbing of the dress material against her skin. Yet she knew that all the time she was sitting unmoving in a chair. It was unbelievable.
“Still feel like a dance?” Corrigan asked, his eyes twinkling. “There’s no cable to worry about this time. The motor outputs from your brain are being read as before with MIMIC, but a DINS signal is suppressing the onward transmission of them into the spine—like an externally induced anesthetic. At the same time, the computer is synthesizing the feedback signals that you ought to be experiencing, and injecting them back the other way.”
She walked the figure forward, then back, sideways and in circles, finally pirouetting and launching it into a series of twirls and minor acrobatics. At first it was odd to feel the figure’s internal dynamics, yet at the same time to be observing it from a viewpoint outside. Corrigan watched, letting her get the hang of it. And then something changed suddenly, like the image of a wire cube reversing: the two bodies of sensation fused, and she was able to project herself inside, compensating unconsciously for the discrepancy in visual space.
Corrigan sensed it. “Managed to make the flip?” he asked. She blinked at him once and forced a parody of a grin.
“Try these,” Hatcher’s voice said. A flight of steps appeared in the display. Evelyn walked the figure over to them and began climbing. The sensations of her legs lifting and pushing, foot tilting and shifting the weight onto the ball, felt completely real.
“The illusion is totally compelling if you close your eyes,” Corrigan said.
She did, and there was no longer any doubt: she was climbing a staircase. Already her thighs were starting to ache; and ache; and—surely not—she could feel her heartbeat accelerate from the effort, even slight perspiration. She opened her eyes again. They must have looked alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” Corrigan said. “It’s all simulated. You’re bone dry and as relaxed as a sleeping baby. . . . So now you can see why MIMIC is in the museum already. This is its successor. We call it `Pinocchio.’ What do you think?”
* * *
The three of them got down to specifics over lunch in the staff dining room at the top of the Executive Building, back at the front of the complex.
“We’re looking for more help on the neurophysiology side to go into the next step,” Shipley said to Evelyn. He had said little since his few words about his SDI background, over in the IE Block, which Evelyn now knew was dedicated to various aspects of Interactive Environments. Now that they were into Shipley’s territory, Corrigan no longer played the lead but was happy to sit back and let him get on with it. Evelyn sensed an easy, informal working relationship between them. She was finding the prospect of becoming a part of it increasingly appealing.