Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,27
better why do the commercial units have a power switch and USB port?” Smith asked. “Cost?”
Bailer gave a bemused shake of his head. “Excellent guess, Doctor, but the reality is much stranger. Our market research suggested that people are comfortable with wired connections and that not having them made the perceived value of the unit less—even though they’re completely outdated and serve no real function.”
“How do you charge it?” Pedersen asked.
“Dr. Smith? Care to guess?”
He winced perceptibly at the question and considered purposely answering wrong, but his ego wouldn’t allow it. “Induction.”
“Well done,” Bailer said. “There’s a small mat that plugs into the wall and you just lay the unit on it. Takes about an hour for a full charge, which in turn will last about twenty-five hours of normal usage. The increased battery size is almost entirely responsible for the additional weight you may have noticed.”
“And how does it connect to the computer?” Pedersen asked.
“Standard Bluetooth. But it’s only necessary for the initial setup. After that, it stands alone.”
He crouched and dug out two military helmets from boxes beneath the table. Both looked more or less government-issue with the exception of elaborate fore-and-aft cameras bolted to the top. “If I could have you put these on and take a place in front of a laptop, we’ll get you up and running.”
“So the system is built into helmets?” Pedersen said.
“Yes. But only for the purposes of this demonstration. In a combat situation, you’d have to use the head studs.”
As he tightened his chin strap and sat, Smith couldn’t help feeling a little excitement. Dresner’s demonstration, while impressive, had been nothing but a big screen and some interesting parlor tricks. To actually feel a machine-brain link, though, was something he never thought he’d experience in his lifetime.
“Uh, how do you turn it on?” Pedersen said.
“Dr. Smith? You’re doing so well. Care to take another shot?”
“I have no idea,” he said honestly. That seemed to cheer the general up a bit.
“It couldn’t be simpler. Just give it a good shake.”
Smith did and the computer screen in front of him immediately recognized the unit, bringing up its serial number and asking if he wanted to enter the setup routine.
“Do I just choose yes?”
Bailer retreated a bit. “No more help from me. I want you to get a feel for what it’s going to take to get your people up and running.”
Smith clicked through and five images of a tree came up on the screen. The caption asked him to select the sharpest image. He did and what felt a bit like an eye exam continued through a few more screens, asking him to judge color, rotation, and the relative speed of objects. Finally, the word “silver” appeared and he was asked to repeat the word over and over in his mind. A few seconds later, a notification came up that he was done and icons sprang to life in his peripheral vision.
“Whoa,” he said, leaning back in his chair and blinking hard.
“It’s a little disorienting at first,” Bailer explained. “But the effect goes away after a few seconds.”
Smith stood and began walking unsteadily forward. The unit, sensing his movement, caused the icons to fade until they were almost invisible. Bailer was right. In less than a minute, his mind had grown accustomed to them.
“General Pedersen? How are you doing?” Bailer asked.
“Done,” he said, standing a little too fast and having to steady himself on the table.
Bailer waited for him to regain his balance before starting his pitch. “With the studs, what you see would be quite a bit sharper and will have a more three-dimensional quality. You can manipulate the icons through rudimentary mental commands like ‘weather’ or ‘current location’ but it takes a couple of hours to get the hang of it so I’m going to use our demonstration software to run the apps on your units if that’s okay.”
They both nodded.
“As I said before, this is really just a basic platform. We don’t have access to your weapons systems and Christian didn’t want to get involved directly in that anyway. But I think you can imagine what the Merge could do if it was, say, linked to a fighter jet’s onboard computer. You potentially wouldn’t need a canopy or even any physical controls. You could have a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view using cameras and all flight and weapons systems controlled mentally. But right now we’re going to concentrate on less ambitious applications. Now, if you gentlemen could look down at the jungle