Part 4 (1/2)
Not only did Dennis never take offense, he never worried about giving it, either. But I didn't blame him for teasing me about my job description. Officially Julie had hired me as a ”creative consultant”
to the Reality Factory. It was a position I was uniquely suited for, she said, because I had firsthand experience with what virtual reality was ultimately meant to be: an imaginary universe where different people could meet, interact, and be creative together.
Once I got past the obvious objection -- my father had built the house as a means of crowd control, not to express his creativity -- I had to admit it sounded intriguing. But it's hard to be a consultant to a project that is years ahead of its time.
My first virtual experience was particularly disappointing. It was a really awful home video-game called Metropolis of Doom that used a set of cheap stereoscopic goggles and a handheld trigger b.u.t.ton.
The goggles showed you a bright red 3-D line drawing of what was supposed to be a city. As you inched forward along the city's main street, riding on an invisible conveyor belt, little flying pyramids meant to be attack jets would zip out from between the ”buildings” and fire rockets at you. The object of the game was to shoot the jets down; the goggles could sense movement, and by turning your head you could aim a crosshairs that hung in the center of your field of vision. But the motion sensor was sluggish -- you'd turn your head, wait a beat, and then the crosshairs would move -- and by the time I shot down my first jet, I had a headache. Then the goggles fogged up.
”I'm sorry,” I told Julie, wiping sweat from my eyebrows as I handed the goggles back to her. ”I don't think I can help you with this.”
”Don't be so hasty,” Julie said. ”This isn't my prototype. It's just to give you an idea --”
”It isn't like what you described -- like what I thought you described. And it isn't anything like the house. The house isn't real, but it seems real. This, though. . . it's not even a good toy.”
”I know it's not. But the VR system my partners are working on is much better, much more state-of-the-art. . .” She grew thoughtful: ”Seems real, you said. How real?”
”Hmm?”
”You said the house seems real, even though it isn't. I want to know more about the quality of the experience. When you're in the house, you still have all five senses, right?”
”Sure. Of course.”
”So it's like a perfect hallucination.”
I frowned. ”Hallucination is the wrong word for it, I think.”
”What's the right word?”
”I don't know. I don't know if there is one.”
”What about a dream?” Julie asked. ”Is it like dreaming?”
”No. It's like what I thought you said virtual reality was like: like being wide awake in an imaginary place, with other people. But” -- I pointed at the goggles -- ”it's nothing like that, so now I'm not sure how to describe it.”
But Julie, not the least bit discouraged, said: ”You should let me introduce you to my partners.”
Despite growing up in the bush, the Manciple brothers were no strangers to high technology.
Their parents' homestead was powered by a solar array during the summer months, and there had been a computer in the house as far back as 1975, when Dennis and Irwin's father had ordered a build-it-yourself Altair kit through the mail. The brothers grew up with the Altair and the series of ever more sophisticated personal computers that came after it, and pa.s.sed a lot of long winter nights programming -- or sometimes, in Irwin's case, tinkering with the innards of the older machines. Then in 1993, a shareware adventure game called The Stone s.h.i.+p that the brothers had coauth.o.r.ed (Irwin came up with the story, while Dennis wrote most of the actual code) earned enough money to convince them to turn professional. They left Alaska and came south to seek their fortunes in the software industry, choosing Seattle over Silicon Valley out of fear that California would be too warm.
Julie met them through her job at the physical therapist's, where Dennis came for help with his back problems. By that point, late 1994, the brothers had been in Seattle for over a year with nothing to show for it. In spite of The Stone s.h.i.+p's success, they'd been unable to interest any of the established software houses in their ambitious follow-up project, and having spent most of their money, they were starting to think about quitting and going home. But Julie, who was having her own career difficulties (she and the physical therapist had been dating for a while, and now they weren't, and she was about to be fired and evicted in the bargain), talked them into founding the Reality Factory instead, taking her on as business manager, chief fund-raiser, and unofficial CEO.
The brothers' virtual-reality system was called Eidolon. Like Metropolis of Doom, it used a set of 3-D goggles, although, having been custom-designed by Irwin, the Eidolon goggles were more comfortable to wear and didn't fog up so quickly. There was also a ”data glove” that told the Eidolon software what your right hand was doing, whether you were pointing or waving or grabbing.
It was better than Metropolis of Doom. The graphics were full-color, with solid, textured shapes rather than wireframe outlines. Instead of riding on a conveyor belt, you had complete freedom of movement -- you could spin around, float up and down, slide backwards and forwards and sideways, all by gesturing with the data glove. And n.o.body was shooting at you: instead of a war-torn city, the world in the Eidolon goggles was a sort of playroom with toys, like a bouncing ball you could toss or bat around, and a magic mushroom that, if you poked at it, made violets and dandelions sprout up out of the floor.
It still wasn't anything like the house, though. The graphics were better but still more cartoon-like than real, and though you could see things, you couldn't really touch them: poking the magic mushroom was like poking air. You couldn't smell the flowers, or taste the water in the rubber-duck pond. The first time I tried Eidolon, you couldn't even hear the ball bouncing -- the goggles had stereo earphones built in, but Irwin hadn't got them working yet. And the ”free” movement could still be annoyingly sluggish or jerky, especially if you tired out the computer by making it draw too many dandelions.
Also, I wasn't exactly sure what the point of the whole thing was.
”The point is whatever the end-user wants the point to be,” Julie told me. ”That's the point.”
”Well, but. . . not that it isn't neat, and all, but do you really think people will pay money just to play an imaginary game of catch?”
”You don't get it, Andrew,” Julie said. ”Eidolon isn't the playroom.”
”It isn't?”
”No. Eidolon is what built the playroom.” She went on to explain that Eidolon was actually a ”software engine,” a sort of programming language and interpreter. ”The playroom is just a sample application. A demo. But you can use the engine to design any sort of geography you want, for any reason you want. So maybe you're a real-estate developer who wants to take someone on a walk through a building that only exists as a blueprint; Eidolon will let you do that. Or maybe you do want to play an imaginary game of catch, but using your own laws of physics; Eidolon will let you do that, too.”
”Hmm.” I didn't say so out loud, but these examples still didn't sound very interesting. But Julie sensed my lack of enthusiasm, and quickly came up with an application that did interest me. ”Or,” she said, ”maybe you've been hurt.”
”Hurt? Hurt how?”
”In an accident, say. Let's suppose you've had a spinal injury that leaves you partially paralyzed, with no feeling in your legs. You might be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But with this” -- she tapped the back of the data glove -- ”you can still get up and dance any time you want to.”
”The engine would let you do that?”
”Sure.” She smiled. ”So you see, it's not just an expensive toy. With the right application, it can be a tool for living a fuller life.”
A tool for living a fuller life. . . I liked that phrase. ”It sounds good,” I said. ”But who would actually program that application? I mean --”
”The end-user,” Julie said.
”The person in the wheelchair?”
Julie nodded. ”The finished version of the programming interface will be very intuitive, very easy to use. You'll be able to define and create whole new geographies using just the headset and the glove.”
That got my attention. Inside Andy Gage's head, only my father was allowed to make changes to the house and the grounds; but here was an opportunity to wield a similar power myself.
”Can you show me how that works?” I went to pick up the goggles and the data glove again, but Julie stopped me: ”The finished version, I said. It's not finished yet.”
”Oh. . . you mean there's not even a test version I could try?”
”Nope. Sorry. Dennis is still working on the core Eidolon engine, so for now, applications have to be coded individually. The simplified geography editor -- we call it Landscaper -- is still a ways down the road yet.”
”How far down the road?” I had a sudden nagging suspicion. ”When is Eidolon supposed to be finished?”
”When it's done,” said Julie.
Every few months Dennis would cobble together a new demo program, showcasing the latest version of the still-unfinished Eidolon engine, as a lure for potential investors. These demos were the closest thing the Reality Factory had to an actual product. They were also my only real chance to play consultant: before Dennis started coding, Julie would sit me down with him and have me offer suggestions about what the demo should include. But these brainstorming sessions never lasted very long, and most of my suggestions were things that Dennis couldn't possibly implement. ”This is not the holodeck on the stars.h.i.+p Enterprise!” he would end up shouting at me, his patience exhausted. ”I can't program it to let you smell things!”
So I ended up spending most of my time doing nonconsulting work: helping Irwin a.s.semble and disa.s.semble hardware, entering data strings for Dennis, running errands for Julie, patching the shed roof, and handling other maintenance ch.o.r.es around the Factory -- like emptying the Honey Bucket -- that Julie and the Manciples couldn't be bothered with. Generally I kept busy enough to feel I was earning my six-dollar-an-hour salary. But there weren't that many spare ch.o.r.es, and I couldn't see what a fifth employee would do.
”Supposedly she knows something about interface design,” Dennis said now, as I continued to question him.
”Interface design? You mean she's a programmer?”
”The High Commander seems to think so.”