The Sensory Deception (12 page)

C
hopper liked the rain forest at night. Moonbeams struggled through the canopy, hinting at the trail. Alive with the voices and footsteps of hundreds of animals and thousands of insects, it provided easy food and drink. Through three days he slept in trees or on rocks in six-hour stretches—a feat he had never accomplished indoors. He cataloged the vines and documented the microecology of anything with inverted-cone-shaped flowers. He collected as many seeds as would fit in his tackle box.

The trip here, with the chaos of airports and the close-packing of airplanes, had tortured him. It got better with each step, though. The plane from Manaus to Uarini had been a fifteen-seater, and the way it bounced through the clouds was almost pleasant. When he stepped onto the sandy road in the heart of Amazonas and put out his thumb, he could sense relief nearby.

He climbed into the back of a circa-1950 Chevy pickup with three other guys. The ride wasn’t smooth, and for about an hour it wasn’t pretty either. To the left of the road he could see river tributaries through dense forest—exactly what he’d had in mind—but the view to the right was a different story. As they drove west toward the mountains, the land on his right changed from clear-cut pasture with patches of ordered crops to nothing but dead, ash-covered, barren land. Soon, they were driving
through clouds of smoke. Then they reached the fires. Teams of men with shovels and torches manipulated the flames inexorably westward.

Chopper’s immediate thought was to kill these men, exterminate the disease. As he considered jumping out of the truck, a thought invaded his mind. It came as though someone had whispered it in his ear, someone he trusted. It was Farley’s thought, of course, and it made sense. It was obvious. Right now Chopper was on a mission, and besides, what could one man do in the face of this scale of destruction? He would accomplish this mission, and after his labors bore fruit, he would return.

He didn’t speak Portuguese and the guys in the old pickup didn’t speak English or Spanish, so as the road curved into the jungle and the forest closed in, he slapped a fender when he was ready to get off the truck. He stepped off, felt the amused stares on his back, and walked into the jungle. The auras cleared and the migraine hammer relaxed to a gentle tapping. By nightfall in the forest, the pain was gone. With no auras blocking his sight, he could even discern a path lit by filtered moonbeams.

He found them at night: giant white blossoms at the ends of fragile vines that stretched as far as it took to capture a ray of moonlight. When the sun came out, the blossoms closed and drooped into the shade. Even here they were rare. The lacelike mesh of the vines was easily torn by anything that passed through. He found just a dozen of this variety within a few square miles. They grew in extremely alkaline soil several feet above the level of the river. He dubbed the plant tlitliltzin-prime, a deviation from the morning glory family.

On his fifth day, he came upon a village of almost a hundred people who lived on the bounty of small plots of cleared land, food from the rain forest, and fish from the river. He spied on them for a few days, monitoring their routine, identifying the
male and female leaders as well as the younger members most likely to challenge that leadership. It was embarrassing that they found him before he chose whether or not to impose himself. They were sturdy, swarthy folks who wore shorts and button-up shirts. Some had jeans and most were barefoot, though some of the older men wore boots, and they lacked the American norm of personal space. They stood close, they stared, they didn’t conceal their curiosity or suspicions. Compared to the arrogant citizens of civilization, they cared for the land and each other. Chopper felt a foreign feeling that he identified as empathy.

In anticipation of the obvious but unspoken question “What are you doing here?” he showed them his stash of seeds and pressed flowers. Two youths took him to the man he had identified as the village patriarch. As he approached, the man rose from a long bench carved from the trunk of a tree. The wood was dark enough to be mahogany. It reminded Chopper of the table in the conference room at Sand Hill Ventures. The house behind him was built of the same dark wood, its roof formed by layers of huge leaves. At first Chopper’s feeling of empathy gave way to a more familiar feeling, outrage, that they had harvested endangered trees, but then he laughed at himself. These people lived with the trees; they made the trees part of their lives—not to harvest and sell, but to share with Earth.

The patriarch was the same height as Chopper, several inches taller than the other villagers, and spoke Spanish. He said his name was Mariano Tuxauas.

Chopper spent the following two days with Mariano, mostly sitting on that bench talking. The effects of the seeds from the gigantic white blossoms were known in the village. Chopper gave Mariano a crash course in practical biochemistry as it pertained to botany: photosynthesis, fertilization, crossbreeding, and ways to isolate the pharmacologically active ingredients of various
plants using the cooking tools at hand. In exchange, Mariano gave Chopper a botanical tour of the rain forest.

Mariano showed Chopper a wide swath of flat forestland that could be burned back for sugar or coca production. Chopper almost lost his temper, arguing that greater wealth was already growing in that rain forest. Mariano stopped him and explained that it didn’t matter; they had no money or political power and so no chance against the plantations. If the owners came, they’d take the land and might even re-enslave them. The two of them discussed ways to keep the area lush and dense so it could be concealed.

By the time he left, Chopper believed he had convinced Mariano to pursue a new type of agriculture. Mariano recognized that his village could flourish on the wealth derived from a sustainable harvest of rare plants that they could sell as pharmacological resources and natural remedies. As he saw the understanding come to light in Mariano, Chopper thought of Gloria. This was her idealistic brand of capitalism. He decided to bring her back with him, and see if she could live up to her philosophy and help these people.

For the better part of a day, the bitterness that Chopper felt for
Homo sapiens
disappeared. As he walked away from the village, he wondered if he might have been too harsh. Was it possible that humanity had some redeeming qualities?

Chopper liked making a difference. He liked being a part of this village and looked forward to coming back. He’d learned something valuable here, and, fortified by this knowledge, he felt renewed confidence that VirtExArts held the solution to Earth’s biggest problem—because he had the solution to VirtExArts’ biggest problem in his tackle box.

R
ingo grew up in a tough Oakland neighborhood, the only child of an auto mechanic and a librarian. He inherited a passion for craftsmanship from his father and academics from his mother. Always the smallest and smartest kid in his class, he was also a preferred target of bullies. He developed an abstract appreciation, but a visceral distaste, for violence. Ringo was an ardent follower of Spider-Man, Batman, and Daredevil, but in his heart, physical contact that wasn’t born of affection felt perverse. Why touch someone you don’t like? So when Ringo liked someone, he tended to lean toward them. He wasn’t free with hugs but went out of his way to bump into you. When he laughed at something you said, he’d push you in the chest or pat your shoulder or knee. The result was the endearing, gentle, eccentric genius, Reginald “Ringo” Hayes.

Ringo hadn’t been in an airport in more than a year, since he’d worked for Intel. He liked that everyone around him was on a mission. Ringo’s mission was taking him northeast to Minnesota, where he would work with a contract manufacturer’s engineering team to set up production of the VirtExArts helmet, jumpsuit, and gloves.

He caught himself envying the people at the gate who were participating in conference calls; working on a big team meant
lots of positive feedback. But after four hours sitting in a coach window seat, twenty minutes standing in line for a rental car, checking in at an overpriced hotel situated between industrial parks in a Minneapolis suburb, and eating at a mediocre chain restaurant seated at a table for one, any nostalgia for his Intel days had evaporated.

In the morning, the two-hour time difference made his eight o’clock meeting feel like six o’clock. He’d forgotten that, too.

He decided to stick with his Silicon Valley uniform. Shorts and flip-flops spoke eccentric genius, something that a principal engineer could get away with but a mere tech couldn’t. It made for a chilly walk from the hotel to the manufacturer’s sprawling one-story building. With no sidewalks, as though they seriously expected him to drive the hundred meters from the hotel, he walked across a wide expanse of dewy grass. Ringo didn’t think of himself as an environmentalist in Farley’s or Chopper’s league, but this absurdity offended his sense of design.

He walked through the big glass door chilled to the bone with his feet dripping wet. The receptionist looked him up and down without any indication that she recognized him as an eccentric genius. He half expected her to assume he was a janitor. She wouldn’t be the first person to mistake an African-American engineer for a member of the labor pool.

Just as he prepared to put the big-haired, round woman in her place, she said, “You must be the Californian!” She stood and said, “I just put a fresh pot on let me get you a cup you must be freezing.” There was a nasal tone that lent a pleasant whine to her rapid-fire speech pattern. It occurred to Ringo that speech recognition software would have a hard time with her.

She asked how he liked his coffee and Ringo said, “What are you brewing?”

“This is a dark one!”

He walked around the counter to the coffee station and she offered him a cup. He sipped it under her scrutiny and lied: “Good stuff.”

Then he told her about the Santa Cruz Coffee Company’s Morning Blast roast. He was writing its web address on a pad next to her workstation when a man walked in wearing a blue lab coat.

“Rosalee, stop flirting with Dr. Hayes.”

The receptionist blushed, and Ringo leaned toward her, rubbing his elbow against her shoulder. “You were, huh?”

She whispered, “I wouldn’t.”

“But you were, huh?”

The man in the lab coat said, “I’m Bernie McGuire. Let me a get a cup, and then we can get to work.”

“Call me Ringo.”

Rosalee printed out a visitor’s pass and fixed it to Ringo’s T-shirt. A minute later, Bernie swiped his badge at a wide door and directed Ringo into the plant. They entered a huge room with people hustling about in blue lab coats. Some attached parts to circuit boards, others put circuit boards into fixtures, still others examined each part, and, at the end of the line, the products were tested.

Bernie said, “I can’t tell you anything about the other products, but…” Then, true to the spirit if not the letter of his word, he described the production challenges on this line. Ringo realized that everything Bernie said had some relation to the helmet and glove designs. By the time they made it to Bernie’s cubicle, Ringo had a good idea of the design changes Bernie would recommend.

In addition to the circuit boards, cables, and test equipment on his desk, Bernie had a life-size poster of Wolverine over his computer monitor and a framed cover of
Daredevil
, Volume 1, Issue 1, hanging on a wall.

“Virtual reality,” Bernie said. “This is the coolest project I’ve ever worked on.” He pushed his computer mouse and Ringo’s designs came up on a monitor.

“Bring up the helmet graphic,” Ringo said.

The red and gold helmet came up on the screen.

“Love it, love it, love it,” Bernie said. “Can I please be the first person to do your Iron Man VirtEx reality?”

“What?” Ringo asked.

“When are you going to do Spidey or the Dark Knight? Can you do one that’s not so commercial?” He motioned to Wolverine.

“Actually,” Ringo said, feeling painfully uncool. Not uncool in a global sense, but uncool in a room with Wolverine staring at him and
Daredevil
Issue 1 on the wall. He picked up a circuit board from the desk. “We’re doing endangered animal VR.”

“Endangered animals?” Bernie sounded like a kid being forced to eat broccoli instead of ice cream.

“What? The animal VRs are awesome.” Ringo tapped his unlimited reserve of optimism. “They put you right in the mind of a polar bear, or a bird of prey, and the killer app will be a sperm whale fighting a colossal squid.”

“Jules Verne? That sounds good.” Bernie was less effective at generating enthusiasm. “But why? Superheroes are hot; they’d do a lot better than animals.”

“It’s kind of an environmentalist thing.”

“Oh.” Bernie switched back to the CAD diagrams of the transducer circuitry, interconnects, and input/output receiver/transmitters. He said, “I reworked the design a little. If you mount the antenna on the back of the helmet, like this, so it’s closer to the I/O system, you can increase bandwidth and reduce interference.”

Ringo said, “I can do a Superman app from the bird-of-prey software.”