The Sensory Deception

by Ransom Stephens

  The guards stepped forward, raising their AK-47s. Farley froze.

  Sy said, “Farley Rutherford, we are not here for your glory.”

  Farley walked back to the quarters that he used to think of as his lab. These days, he shared it with Tahir and two other men.

  He understood that the documentary would take time and he appreciated Gloria’s plans to use it to promote VirtExReality, but he had to do something to affect his own destiny. He started spending most of his time at the generator, getting whatever charge he could for his laptop so he could edit his own version of the documentary. He titled it Pirates at the Plank of Life and worked on it at night when he could turn the screen brightness way down to extend battery life. His experience making zoological instruction videos helped.

  It took another three weeks to create a story from all the raw footage. The edits were too sharp, the audio needed to be mixed and blended, much of the footage needed enhancing to fix the lighting and effects, but he finally had something. Reinvigorated, he brought the laptop to Sy’s tent, where he showed the thirty-minute encapsulation of life and trials in Sy’s kingdom. It played well on the king’s ego, and Sy agreed to narrate the film and give Farley extra time at the generator. Farley came back the next day with a script and cameras.

  Farley overlaid the audio and integrated the new video that night. When he finished, he still had enough charge to transmit the whole thing to California. He connected the satellite phone and started the upload. While waiting, he succumbed to the old habit of checking up on the Moby data.

  Without a GPS chip, which Ringo had left out to simplify circuitry and extend battery life, they used a simple satellite triangulation calculation, accurate to about a kilometer, to track Moby’s path. Farley checked the map and saw that Moby was well off Africa’s continental shelf, heading south on the open sea, into deeper and colder water where the Indian Ocean gives way to the Antarctic.

  Again, out of habit, Farley brought up the latest log file. The file showed nothing but empty headers. No data was being transmitted.

  Farley stared at the screen, thinking that he could really use a lucky break about now. The obvious answer was that the sensors or the transmitter had used up their battery power. The other possibility was that Moby had tired of the equipment and managed to scrape it off, and the sensors were lying at the bottom of the ocean.

  He counted the number of weeks since they had equipped Moby; the charge should last another month. Moby had stayed with the pod for two weeks and then traveled for two and a half months.

  Farley switched back to check progress on the documentary upload. For a while it streamed along at a few megabytes per second, but then it bogged down. He checked the network connection. It was blazing. Something was sucking up his bandwidth. He found the guilty process and reopened the Moby data log file.

  Farley kicked himself for being such a pessimist. The sensors and transmitter were fine. Moby was fine. He’d just surfaced from a long dive, and the sensors were overflowing with data. He disconnected the laptop from the Moby data. It would all be collected in Santa Cruz, and he couldn’t do anything with it, anyway. With full bandwidth, it only took a few more minutes to finish uploading Pirates at the Plank of Life.

  Chopper and Ringo packed the transducers for the sensory saturation chambers—that is, the VirtExReality chambers, plus two racks of computer servers, peripherals, and cables, lots of cables—in Ringo’s VW Microbus. They arrived in Santa Monica in the afternoon. The focus group would be there the next day, and they had to get everything in place.

  The VirtExReality chambers had already been delivered, and their sleek fiberglass facades would arrive the next day.

  Chopper followed Ringo inside, his yellow tackle box in hand. Gloria called out their names and pranced over. She poked Ringo in the belly with an index finger, hugged him, and said, “How can a black man have a pasty complexion? You need to get outside, get some exercise, meet a nice girl.”

  He poked her back and said, “Yeah, so do you.”

  Then she greeted Chopper, engulfing him in a light fog of her jasmine-scented perfume. With his right arm fixed in place by a sling, she wedged her hands around his waist and squeezed him. Then she ran her hands along his healing shoulder. Her hand lingered on his right bicep. She looked up at him. When she spoke, her breath smelled like coffee and happiness. Her eyes were huge, and her smile emphasized the density of her lips. In the overwhelming rush of Gloria, Chopper realized something. These were Farley’s feelings—the residue of how Farley felt, but in Chopper’s mind. He smiled at her—a real smile, not the one that spelled trouble. A smile that reflected feelings he rarely had and almost never shared. In that instant, he felt very close to his friend Farley.

  Gloria said, “Are we ready for the focus group?”

  “It runs and swims and doesn’t crash,” Ringo said. “The wisdom of an insignificant sample size isn’t going to tell us anything.”

  She glared at him.

  Chopper wanted to tell Ringo the true value of the experiment but couldn’t, of course. He’d decided not to administer his sensory deception drug to the focus group. Instead, he’d use the focus group results to find out if sensory saturation could be obtained with only external stimuli. He set his yellow tackle box in a corner.

  There was another reason that Chopper didn’t spike the focus group. Bupin, the greedy VC, had denied their Series B funding and, in so doing, had earned the privilege of being the first recipient of the tlitliltzin-prime formulation.

  Ringo enjoyed the physical labor. Sometimes software felt too ethereal. With Chopper’s injury, Ringo had to do most of the heavy lifting, and Gloria had been right: he was totally out of shape. The two of them worked overnight so that the chambers would be ready when the fiberglass facades arrived. They ran cables, set up the computing/data processing room—the real guts of the VR—and rewired the entire store.

  Since he and Chopper had been working side by side the past few months, Ringo had grown closer to Chopper. Without Farley around, Chopper seemed to loosen up a little, didn’t seem to take things as seriously. Ringo felt as if the reality of Chopper was more pleasant than the concept. Chopper said no more than necessary, didn’t even banter, but he always seemed to know what Ringo was trying to do.

  The facades arrived the next morning. Done in sparkling metal-flake blues, purples, reds, and greens, the covers swung up like the gull wing doors of an exotic sports car. They looked like a cross between a small racing boat and a UFO. A U-shaped drink bar surrounded by fixed stools took up the center of the arcade. Three suede couches lined the back wall, forming a lounge where customers could relax before and after their VirtExperiences. Video screens that lined the walls at ceiling level would show live video feeds of ongoing VR experiences.

  Once the new hardware was installed, after thirty straight hours of work, Ringo had a good accomplishment buzz going and decided to go crash at the hotel rather than sit around and watch Gloria’s focus group criticize everything he’d worked on for the better part of the last two years.

  Ringo packed away his tools and walked back to the hotel. He kicked back on the bed for a while but couldn’t sleep. He tried watching TV but ended up pacing. He couldn’t even focus on a video game.

  Ringo walked back to the strip mall. On his first pass, he walked right by the storefront and continued down to the pier. As he watched the sunset, he kept visualizing Gloria’s focus group, seven people unqualified for much of anything judging his work. What bullshit.

  He walked back to the arcade. He stopped on the curb and saw a guy about his age emerge from one of the chambers. The guy looked excited. That was good, but then he started talking to Gloria and she looked less psyched, so Ringo walked down to Venice Beach. He sat at a bar and watched the people go by until he couldn’t sit still. Back at the strip mall, he bought a ticket to a movie and managed to sit in the theater for two hours. As he walked out, he couldn’t even remember what movie he’d seen.
r />   From across the parking lot, it looked like they’d finished. He walked into the arcade. Chopper stood behind the drink bar.

  Ringo said, “Where’s Gloria? What’s the verdict?”

  “Gloria’s having dinner with Bupin.”

  “When did he get here?”

  “Right after you left.”

  “Great. Another unqualified judge. It makes my day.” Ringo took a Vitaminwater from behind the bar and sat at one of the couches with his tablet computer. “All right, Chopper, I’m ready. Let me have it.”

  Chopper said, “It’s going to be fine.”

  “You mean it’s not fine?”

  “It was all right.”

  “What happened? Did they like it? Were they suitably blown away? And—you know the question I want to ask—did it work?”

  Chopper leaned on the counter. He squinted and said, “We’re close to sensory saturation.”

  “Oh, shit.” Ringo stood. “So it didn’t work.”

  “No. But it will.”

  “You’re damn right it will.” Ringo tossed the tablet computer on the couch and marched into the server room. Four huge monitors filled a table. He took a keyboard and mouse and brought up the software library and editors. He began stepping through the Moby-Dick app. He yelled out the door, “God, Chopper, I’ve been through this code so many times. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chopper said. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Ringo went back in the arcade.

  Then Gloria opened the door and walked in with Bupin. She averted her eyes from Ringo.

  “How bad was it?” Ringo asked her. “Chopper’s being weird.”

  Bupin stood by the door.

  Gloria took a breath. “I think we’re close.”

  “That’s what Chopper said. Just tell me how bad it is.”

  She looked at Bupin, who wagged his head and said, “There is good news, too.”

  “I suppose,” Gloria said. “Okay, Ringo, you’re a bad-news-first type. Moby-Dick doesn’t quite measure up. We might have to postpone the opening. The good news is that the polar bear app dazzled them. Totally dazzled. The before and after questionnaires show that the system can work.”

  “Can work? So you mean it doesn’t work.”

  “We’re not postponing the launch,” Chopper said. “The two veterans in the focus group got off on Moby. It’s going to be fine, you’ll see. We’ll fix a couple of bugs and Moby will get over the sensory saturation threshold. Trust me. We’ve got twenty-seven days.”

  Gloria looked as confused as Ringo felt.

  “So Moby worked for a hundred percent of people who have fought in wars,” Ringo said. “What’s with Mr. Positive over here?”

  She said, “Chopper, are you drunk?”

  He squinted again, as though he were staring into sunlight.

  She waved a hand in front of him and asked, “Are you okay?”

  Chopper spoke with vehemence: “We are not postponing the launch.” He rubbed his eyes and then stared at the ceiling. Ringo had seen this look before. It meant that Chopper was going to be stubborn. “Gloria, you’ve got everything prepared,” Chopper continued. “There’s no reason to postpone your grand opening.”

  Ringo said, “I’m ready for the good news now.”

  “Bupin liked some of what he saw. He’s offered us some funding to finish development. See? That’s pretty good news.”

  “Except for the but.”

  “What?”

  “The but.” Ringo turned to Bupin, who still stood at the door. “Everything Bupin does comes with one. You’ll grant us funding, but…”

  Bupin said, “Ringo my friend, you will find this the best news of all. Your but is that you get to develop superhero apps first. Congratulations. Gloria tells me that she has a contract with Marvel ready to sign. You can develop any hero you like.”

  “No!” Chopper said at full volume. “We’re not caving in yet. The launch goes as planned.”

  The room went silent.

  Chopper set his tackle box on the counter. “Farley isn’t here to sign anything. Ringo and I won’t agree to changing our goals, at least not until Bupin experiences the Moby app.”

  Bupin stepped forward. “I don’t matter. The focus group is your demographic. No one cares for opinion of old technocrat.”

  “I care,” Chopper said. “Let me fix you a cup of tea and then we’ll suit you up and you can do the demo.”

  Bupin spoke to Gloria. “There is no point to putting me in your chamber.”

  Ringo said, “Just hang on, everyone. Chopper’s got a point. Give me a chance to look at the focus group results and a couple of days to work on Moby. Sensory saturation is tricky. The tiniest distraction kills it. Chopper’s the expert. If he thinks we’re close—it’s his call.”

  Chopper was pouring water into a cup. His yellow tackle box sat on the counter next to him. He stirred Bupin’s tea and said, “I think he’d be pretty impressed right now.” Then he closed the tackle box and set it under the counter.

  “If Moby isn’t dazzling within one week,” Gloria said, “I’m going to postpone the opening. Too many things have to happen in the month prior to launch. If we have to postpone, we’ll run out of money and won’t have any choice but to switch to Plan B.”

  Ringo stepped back into the server room. “One week? I can create an entire world in one week. I’ll even rest on the seventh day.”

  Bupin said, “Very well. But I will take the tea.” He walked over to the bar.

  Ringo looked back at them and saw something strange. As Chopper handed Bupin the cup of tea, he tripped and dropped the cup to the floor. With anyone else, it would have looked like an accident. It did look like an accident, except that Ringo had known Chopper for fifteen years and in that time had never seen him drop anything. The man had perfect manual dexterity. Weird.

  He shut the door behind him and settled behind the monitors. He’d been staring at this code for months. It was like returning to the scene of an accident. He stepped through the initialization routine to remind himself of the parameters. He groaned. What was Chopper thinking?

  He closed the development windows and brought up his e-mail. He just needed a minute, and deleting junk e-mail always soothed him.

  Farley had sent him a note. He read the first few lines. It woke him up. There was a link in the message to a file Farley had uploaded to the DAQ system. Ringo clicked on the link. It was a video, Farley’s cut of the documentary.

  He stood and opened the door.

  Gloria was showing Bupin one of the VR chambers across the room.

  “Holy shit,” Ringo said. “Check this out.” He ducked into the room and configured the display on the huge video screen at the rear of the arcade.

  “This is Farley’s cut of the pirate documentary.”

  The video began with sunrise illuminating the silhouettes of Sayyid Hassan’s skiffs and speedboats. “These are the ships of a pirate,” Farley’s voice intoned at its lowest timbre. The scene changed to four young men swimming to shore and being greeted with hugs by a woman who could only be their mother. “These are pirates.” Then it showed the same boys standing in line at the village well. After three minutes of placid scenes of the pirates tending their vegetable gardens, classrooms with children studying arithmetic, families sharing meals, and Sy arbitrating trivial disputes—“not exactly Captain Hook”—the video changed tempo.

  Sy’s dozen-strong fleet converged on a fishing trawler as it lowered nets into the sea. One of the skiffs came alongside the trawler. A stout man with a bullhorn stood in the bow of the skiff: Sy. Speaking English, he quoted the tariff for fishing in his water. Weapons were pointed at the trawler. The message was clear: pay or surrender. Sy stood, arms crossed, at the bow of the skiff, waiting. The camera zeroed in first on the Somali flag that Sy flew and then the flag flying from the stern of the fishing boat: white with a large red disk, the Japanese sun. It panned out to show the rest of Sy’
s fleet corralling the seine nets.

  The scene faded to one of Sy sitting on a rug explaining how foreign fishing fleets had all but eliminated coastal fishing stocks since the collapse of the Somali government in 1991. Sy recounted the history of his fisherman ancestors. Since the eighth century these pious people had led peaceful lives, fishing and growing crops, hunting and trading. He painted a picture of a rugged, self-sustaining people whose greatest challenge had been finding ways to be ignored by foreign antagonists—slavers and Italian and then British colonists. He explained how they had survived the Cold War by playing the Soviets against the Americans, all the while wanting nothing but to be left alone.

  The scene switched back to the ocean standoff. The nets had been rolled up and left floating in a single pile. The trawler collected it and sailed into the horizon. The video switched to a woman watching over a dozen children playing. Then back to sea and the video of the pirates raising the barrel of toxic waste. As the scene unfolded, the video periodically cut to Sy describing how European toxic waste was dumped along the intertidal zone and explaining that he was the only coast guard. He raised his voice, and hints of his African heritage colored his English accent. He described how real pirates, the ones who hijack yachts and commercial freight ships, accept bribes from commercial waste dumpers. As the barrel was unloaded from a skiff, the video zeroed in on the fragment of the label, the fragment whose edge contained the triangular symbol warning of radioactivity. It also showed a trademark: Terre Mer Gestion SA. With the label lingering like a video watermark, the scene moved back to children playing, zeroing in on the boy who lacked an eye and a hand, kids with club feet doing their best on a soccer field, and a crying mother cuddling a deformed baby.

  Now speaking in a resigned but angry monotone, Sy described the real pirates: renegade criminals who raided the village every few months in pursuit of women and children to kidnap and sell into slavery, and militant Islamic factions who tried to conquer Sy’s village and submit the camp to strict Sharia law. Finally, he explained that he had to protect his nascent civilization from covert attacks from the West.