Miguel felt a faint vibration through his entire body after Dr. Bob said he was opening the neural connection, and suddenly he felt the two digital paddles on either side of the screen in front of him. He saw them with his eyes, but felt them glide up and down as if in channels. He could apply mental pressure to feel a paddle against a channel, but could only move a paddle up or down.
The dot approached and he positioned the right-side paddle to intercept it. A thump thrummed through his core as the bit of light rebounded off his paddle.
“Wha…??” In his surprise, he didn’t adjust the other paddle to intercept and the ball sailed off the screen. As it passed out of sight, a vibration shook his body and he heard a ding as from a bell along with a buzzer in his ears.
“Feeling a little feedback?” Dr. Bob asked. Miguel couldn’t see him behind the screen, but he heard a smirk in his voice.
“A little feedback? How am I getting haptics with a mental interface? Or sound in my ears that clearly isn’t being generated by speakers, unless they’re installed in this ridiculously comfortable chair?” Miguel stammered, unnerved by the unexpected sensations.
“For a variety of reasons, the neural comm link includes sensory and motor connections. You can think of it as an enhanced virtual reality rig, but without external hardware like a haptic suit, VR pod, or even a VR helmet,” Dr. Bob replied. “That’s another reason for starting the calibration with simple games. Your mind doesn’t confuse your game actions with a desire to run, jump, or otherwise exit that wonderful chair in some inglorious fashion. You’re welcome.
“Ready for round 2?”
“Ok.” The dot appeared on the screen again moving toward the right side paddle. Miguel was prepared for the thump he felt against his chest this time and returned the ball smoothly from the left paddle with another thump to his chest.
“The signal is clear and stable Miguel. Are you ready to step it up a bit?”
“What do you mean, Rob? It’s just Pong.”
“You can feel a reverberation when the paddle connects. The connection you feel can also be used to adjust the paddle and ball parameters. Things like density, surface texture, weight, balance. Try focussing on one paddle and give it a bouncier surface.”
The ball had continued back and forth and Miguel felt the ripple of impact in different areas of his torso depending on where it hit a paddle. As it approached the right paddle again, he imagined a rubber surface that would give a little, then impart more energy to the ball as it bounced. The paddle caught the ball approximately in its center and Miguel felt a light impact to his sternum sink just a little before it sprang back, propelling the ball with just a little more speed.
“Try something soft on the left paddle to catch the ball.”
Miguel imagined a light foam covering the left paddle and felt as though something small bounced into his chest through a pillow. The ball sat motionless on the left paddle.
“Good. Add some texture and send the ball off again.”
Miguel hardened the foam to a rubberized surface with a wave pattern for a little grip and slid the paddle down in the track. He felt a slight compression in his chest as if the ball sank in a little, and then it rebounded as the ball was released to sail toward the edge of the screen.
“How about the ball?”
Miguel thought of an old soccer ball he had played with as a kid. Worn leather that eventually went flat and lopsided. The ball hit the edge of the screen and he felt a thump to his left forearm. The ball picked up a wobble on its way to the right paddle. Watching its movement, Miguel rubberized the texture on the right paddle, dimpled it, and made it just a little bit tacky. Positioning it above the path of the ball, he slid the paddle sharply down the track just as the ball hit. The impact furrowed a little into his skin as the angle of the ball’s trajectory was reduced to head back to the left without bouncing off a side wall again. It still carried a wobble, though less than it had. As it flew, Miguel hardened the ball to solid rubber, but imagined a heavier core a little off-center caused the wobble. At the same time, he gave the left paddle a lacquered, hardwood texture, firm, but with a little flex. As if his skin took on an armored quality, he felt the impact, but no give. He could also feel the core squeeze one section of rubber around it before the ball rebounded. On a whim, Miguel made the off-center core the yolk of an egg, with the accompanying eggshell on the outside. The right paddle became a concrete sidewalk with its hard, rough texture. Thinking of the tree-lined urban walkways around his home, tree roots pushed up and cracked the surface.
Through it all, the appearance of the ball and paddles never changed even as what Miguel felt adjusted to the changes he made. Of course the eggshell shattered on impact with his sidewalk paddle. While he didn’t exactly feel a thud of impact, he could feel the cracks form and collapse as the eggshell burst. He could feel the membranes rupture and the albumen and yolk ooze.
“Alrighty then! Looks like we got enough calibration data from that one to move on, unless you’d like to play Pong some more.”
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“Yeah, no. What’s next?”
“Still going with the mathematically simple…”
The screen blanked and a four-sectioned square started to fall from the top. On the left side of the screen separated by a vertical line, a T also made of four squares appeared.
“So do you know Tetris? You can rotate the pieces, move them side to side, drop them, or slow their rate of fall. They’ll fall faster as you advance.”
“So did you guys break into the Video Game Museum or something?”
“Heh! No, but our partners’ archives are extensive and the simple math required for the calibration prioritized our game choices.”
Rotating the pieces felt like flipping a small block across a table, and dropping a block in place like a short free fall of jumping off of a three-meter diving platform into a pool. When a piece fit snugly side to side and without a gap at the bottom, it felt like a small vacuum, just a little negative pressure, assisted to settle the block in place with a hiss and reassuringly solid thump. When there was a gap on the bottom, but the block still filled a space with blocks or a wall on either side, the feeling was similar, but it felt like the vacuum pressure was slightly less, like there was a small pressure leak. If there was space to either side, there was an easy rub of two smooth, plastic blocks sliding against each other, but no pressure to assist the descending block in place. When he completed a row and it blinked out of existence, it felt like a gong was struck with a padded mallet, sounding a clear note to reverberate through his body. Clearing multiple rows at once struck a bigger, deeper, and more resonant gong. It created an oddly visceral satisfaction for Miguel when he dropped a straight four-block long column down to complete four rows at once. As he tried to do that more, the column of blocks grew higher and the time to place the blocks grew less. It seemed the general pressure increased as the column reached higher, like rising water forcing air out of a tube.
“Things are looking great on this end, Miguel. How are you doing?”
“Good so far, but I’ll want to get up and stretch my legs in a bit if that’s ok?”
“Sure thing. We can do a short break now and then complete this stage of calibration with two more games, or we can do the two games and then lunch.”
“Two games then lunch sounds perfect.”
“Excellent! This next one might even juice up your appetite a bit.”
A maze of dots came up on the screen with a yellow circle in the center that had a pie-slice wedge opening and closing on one side.
“Pac-Man? Now I know for sure you raided the Video Game Museum. My parents took me there once as a kid. Biggest family vacation we ever had. Silicon Valley, Muir Woods, the edge of the Yellowstone Caldera on the California side. Even had cousins join us at the California Historical Society in SF as well as the Video Game Museum in San Jose. Still have a lot of family all over California.”
“Pretty sure you didn’t experience this version of Pac-Man at the Museum. And here you go!”
As Miguel hit the first dot, he tasted chocolate chip cookies. Soft, warm ones where the melty chocolate stretched with each bite.
“Seriously! Chocolate chip cookies?!?”
“You’re welcome. Again.”
The red ghost was nearly on him, but a power pellet was right there. Dark chocolate and a crisp, sweet cherry flashed passed Miguel’s taste buds as he flipped and chomped Blinky. Blinky was a warm blueberry pie with a flaky crust and a cool, creamy accent of vanilla ice cream melting against the pie's warmth.
“Oh! My! God! Blinky is soooo!! Tasty!!!!”
He caught up to Pinky, which turned out to be a tart, dark cherry pie. Clyde was next, a hot, apple-cinnamon crisp, and he felt a bit of firm, slightly sticky resistance as his Pac-Man bit down.
“Mmmm… YOW!” He flipped as Inky started to blink, but not quite fast enough and felt teeth clamp firmly on his butt. “What the…???”
“Yeah. Sorry. Not Sorry,” Dr. Bob just laughed.
“Totally not my fault,” Dr. Banarjee offered. But Miguel could tell she was barely swallowing her own laughter.
“For the record. Inky would have been a nice rhubarb pie. My grandmother would have been proud. It took a lot to get those recipes to translate properly. Want to try again? Would be a real shame to miss that one.”
“That’s ok. Let’s move on to the next one. Lunch had better be good.”
“You bet. And if you’d like to try any of those pies for real, we’ve got you covered. Alright. Last one, then we break. Little bit more complexity in this one.”
Blackness filled the screen in front of Miguel with only a triangle at its center. Irregular, angular circles of different sizes began to slowly drift across the screen from all sides.
“Shoot the asteroids and alien ships when they show up. Try not to get hit.”
Miguel found he could fire, rotate and thrust easily, and with just a little practice, fairly precisely just by thinking about it. He felt a kind of electrical squirt vaguely in front of his body when he fired and a flash of heat and shattering rock which resonated through his body when he hit an asteroid. The larger alien spaceships exploded with a hollow thump and a warmth of expanding gases that he felt on the surface of his skin. The smaller alien ships imploded with a sharp crack. If his ship was close to an alien ship when it was destroyed, he’d feel pin pricks of shrapnel pepper his skin. With the easy mental control of the ship, it took a while before he was hit. Eventually though, there were just too many small, fast-moving asteroids on the screen. He felt an impact like a stone thrown against a corrugated metal shed followed by the shattering of an eggshell with him inside, then a bloom of intense heat pulsing outward from the core of his body out through his extremities in a rolling flash.
“Ooof!!” he exhaled involuntarily.
“How are you doing, Miguel? All your vitals on this side look fine, with an occasional adrenaline spike still well within safety margins,” Dr. Banerjee said.
“I’m fine. That was surprisingly intense for a bunch of ancient video games.”
“Clean data and a smooth calibration so far, Miguel. Still some more to go, but we’ll be able to give you a preliminary introduction to your AI guide after lunch.”
“Alright. I’m fairly sure somebody (Rob) who shall remain nameless (Rob) mentioned something about pie.”