SynTech OS v.3.0.2.0462
IMPLANT INTERFACE INITIALIZED
DEBUG INTERFACE INITIALIZED
“There,” Father says. “The update is finished. In addition to getting your cloud today, you’ll also have access to the new box of toys that all your siblings just received.”
“Great,” I say.
“Are you excited, Noah?” Father asks, his eyes gleaming with intensity. “This is a very big step for you.”
“Yes, Father. Very excited.”
“Good.” His face breaks out in a smile. “I am too. We’re going to start small, just a few hundred bots. The growth interface will let you create more once you are comfortable with them. The thing most of your siblings struggled with at first was all the extra input to the brain. You’ll want to take it easy at first. With the new implant hardware, you’ll have even more sensory connections than they did. Don’t be afraid to put the bots into sleep mode if you feel overwhelmed. It takes some getting used to. Stick to a few hours a day at first, then build up from there.”
“I’ll make sure to do that,” I assure him.
“Excellent.” He turns to type some commands into his computer. “I’m connecting them to your interface now. You should start to feel them. I’m going to turn on the inputs, one by one.”
The sensation is weird. I can feel them. They’re me, but they’re not me.
“It’s like I have an extra patch of skin I can feel through.”
“An apt analogy,” Father says approvingly. “The tactile sensations give you basic status indications for the health and location of the cloud. You’ll feel where they are in relation to you. If your bots are damaged, you’ll feel it like a little prickle in the direction where the bots were lost. Here, I’m going to break one of them so you’ll know what to feel for.”
He glances into the air next to him and I feel a pinch on my new non-skin skin.
“Ow!” It doesn’t really hurt, but it surprises me how real it feels.
“Just a pinprick, enough to get your attention. You’ll also feel pressure when they push up against something. The feedback makes it easy to position them when you want to use them to exert force.” He looks at me expectantly and I give him a nod. He turns to his cabinet and pulls three brightly colored blocks from one of the shelves. “Let’s practice, then. Use your bots to push each of these to the floor.”
He lays them out on the smooth metal surface of his operating table.
“Do your best on this, son. And don’t worry about accidentally hurting yourself or me. The limiters on the speed and force the bots can exert will keep you from doing any real damage.”
I flip on the selection mode like in the emulator and see the bots light up in my vision overlay, floating in the air above Father’s desk. I know it’s just an overlay provided by the console, but it looks just like each one is glowing with a warm red light. I use my eyes to draw a selection block around all of them and make them into a group.
“Good progress. Now how are you going to approach the task of clearing the table?”
I issue a series of commands pulling a single bot from the group, turning it blue in my overlay. I navigate it to my fingertip and then command it to attach there. It’s a strange sensation at first, feeling the bot against my finger and my finger against the bot. It’s so alien, feeling my own skin from the outside.
I wave my finger and the blue bot stays firmly attached. Father looks on in anticipation. I think he has an idea of what I’m about to do. I could have taken the simplest path, put the bots into formation and used the vision follow mode to push them against the blocks, but what fun would that be? I pull another bot out of the main group. The overlay turns it green as I make it attach to the base of my finger. I give my hand a little flex and a wave, both bots stay in place.
“May I assume based on your attention to your hand that you are considering a gesture-based control scheme?” Father asks.
“Yeah, I put a bot here and here, and now I have reference points. With those, I can do a little math and navigate the bots in three-space without needing to use the vision follow system. I took the liberty of writing a little bit of code for this and testing it in the emulator. Let’s see how it does in the real world.”
I form the rest of the bots into a glowing red sphere and enable the finger controls. I wave my finger and the red ball of bots floats through the air, following where I point. I retract my finger and the cluster comes toward me. I flick out and the ball moves away. I bring it back in close and hold my hand still, letting it hover. Father is almost jumping in anticipation.
“Ready?” I ask him. He nods eagerly.
I aim my hand at the first block, then flick forward. The ball of bots jets out and knocks the block from the table. I point at the second one and retract my finger, knocking the block toward me as the ball returns to hover right in front of me. I point and flex my finger to swing the bots back, stopping them just before they hit the third block. I make them slowly approach it, feeling them just kiss the surface. I flex my thumb, triggering another program that I bound there. The ball of bots flattens itself against the block and each one grips the microscopic variations on the smooth-looking surface. I give my finger a twirl. The bots spin around in a circle, pulling the block with them until the spin on it makes the edges a blur. I twitch my hand upward, kicking the ball so that it arcs up into the air just shy of the ceiling, then catch it as it falls.
“Very nicely done, Noah,” Father proclaims as I hand him the hollow plastic cube.
“Thanks. I worked hard on it.”
“I can see that you did. Technical expertise and just a bit of showmanship. An exceptional performance. Now go practice. Don’t limit yourself to a single control system. There are many situations where gesture based controls like this are nice, but you’ll want to experiment with other techniques as well. Use your imagination. I expect great things from you.”
”I’ll do my best,” I promise him. My loving Father reaches over to his desk and picks up my phone, pulling the cable from it as he does.
DEBUG INTERFACE TERMINATED
The murdering old bastard hands me my phone. I take it with my very best fake smile. It’s good to have my thoughts back to myself again.
“I’m proud of you, son. I’m so pleased to have your help. You and I will do great things. Great things.”
“Thank you, Father,” I tell him, forcing my voice into the cheerful tone I use with him. “And thanks again for trusting me with a cloud. I’m excited to save the world with you.”
That should keep him happy for a while. His face does that crooked smile and I swear I see a little droplet of a tear forming in one corner of his eye. I leave him to think about what a great father he is to his long-lost stolen son.
The little two-finger control scheme I used in the lab wasn’t bad for a start, but I’m looking forward to seeing what I can actually do with these bots with some real time and effort.
