The Proposal Ch. 02

Immersion Playground

Book #1: The Proposal

Chapter 2

Though it had felt like hours to them since they entered the pool house, less than thirty minutes after they began their passionate lovemaking Charlie and Todd step from the shower after washing the sweat and sex from their bodies. He smiles as he watches her. She moves like a lioness, full of power and grace, her eyes partially closed in the way of a well-fed cat. After dressing in their swimwear, she takes the top towel, damp with their sweat, and tosses it on the bench with their clothes. The bottom towel joins it on the bench and the remaining clean and dry towels are refolded and placed back on the shelves. By the time she is done, he has folded and placed their street clothes on the shelves as well.

Pool house tidied, and all evidence of their lovemaking removed, they emerge, the outside air feeling cool on their skin after the sweltering heat inside. As they exit, he latches the door open to allow the interior to cool and to remove any lingering scent of sex. Tossing the two towels they had set aside onto a chaise, Charlie slips into the pool, sighing as the water cools her. Todd takes a less elegant approach and, with a running start, cannonballs into the deep end of the pool, splashing water everywhere. He surfaces, then swims from the deep end of the pool to where she is standing, the water just covering her breasts. Laughing at her disapproving look, he takes her in his arms, easily lifting her off the floor of the pool, and kisses her with gusto.

They are still in the pool, laughing and splashing, when Giselle and Rick return home. "Hope you don't mind, but we started without you," Todd says in greeting as they step out onto the patio.

"Not at all. Rick and I will change, then join you in a moment," Giselle says with a big smile and wave.

Charlie watches as they enter the pool house. Giselle seems normal, upbeat even, but Rick appears a bit tense and reserved. Within a few minutes they emerge dressed in swimwear but carrying no towel. She clambers out of the pool as they appear and saunters over to Giselle without saying a word. Giselle is just settling into a chaise when she reaches her and bends down to kiss her ever so lightly on the cheek.

"Thank you," Charlie whispers so that no one but Giselle can hear.

Giselle sits still for a moment, shocked by Charlie's kiss, then gives her a near imperceptible nod in acknowledgement. Giselle peeks over the top of her sunglasses as Charlie begins to dry herself. "So, how was it? The immersion, I mean."

Charlie answers after some thought. "It was fantastic. It was like I was you." Then looking to Rick, she asks, "I thought you told me once that immersions can't capture people's thoughts?"

"It can't," Rick replies, getting comfortable in his chair. He is over his shock that Giselle would share something so intimate, her Sphinx-like calm while they were gone effectively defusing his anger and frustration. Now he's just embarrassed that Charlie, of all people, has seen him at his most exposed and vulnerable.

Charlie settles into a nearby chair, still drying her hair. "But I could. I could tell exactly what Giselle was thinking. When I... when she saw the pineapple I knew that was her favorite fruit. I didn't know that before."

"That's just a biochemical reaction to her seeing something that gives her pleasure. The neural interface picks that up and boom, you know she likes pineapple," Rick explains.

He would know, as he is a key figure in developing both the original neural network and the immersion interface.

Noting the look of confusion on Charlie's face, Rick continues, "Let me give you a bit of background to help you understand what we're dealing with. Early in the twenty-first century the amount of information available to people exploded. First there was the World Wide Web, then search engines, then intelligent search engines. Each was designed to better manage the ever-increasing volume of data, but even with all the advancements, people and businesses were drowning in information, which is nearly as bad as not having enough. The neural network, or net, started out as just the latest attempt to handle that flood of information."

"What's that have to do with pineapple?" Charlie asks with a grin.

"Nothing," Ricks says with a smile of his own, "except to give you some background on how we got here."

"So the chip I had implanted started out as nothing but a search tool for the net?" Charlie asks. "I didn't know that."

"That's right," Rick continues. "The chip NIT developed uses an ultra-thin film technology, powered by the heat of your body, and once implanted it is a totally self-contained device. That's what allows you access the net with the same seamlessness that you access your own memories."

"I don't know how anyone did anything before the net," Charlie says. "It's amazing that tiny little chip can do all that."

"I know," Rick nods. "It's hard to believe that something smaller than you little fingernail packs more computing horsepower than a warehouse full of computers did 50 years ago, but once I saw that this was going to work, I knew the neural interface technology wouldn't stay confined to data retrieval for long. And it didn't. Now you are seeing the beginning of a revolution in the way people interact with each other and the world. Companies like Feedback Alive are making continuous improvement in the software interface to the body, and now the technology is becoming so pervasive it's everywhere. Nearly anything that can be automated is now controlled through the net using that little chip." He looks at Giselle. "Take your car, for example. What do you expect as you walk up to your car?"

"I want the doors to be unlocked, with the air conditioning or heat on, making the interior comfortable for when I get in," Giselle says.

"So it is," Rick confirms. "But the Aston can't do that because it is too old, built before the net was even conceived. Here's another example. When you leave your house you expect the doors to be locked, so they are, right? It's all automatic now because we're used to that. But none of this was possible before the net. Well, not with the ease of use we have now. And all of this is controlled by that chip at the base of your brain reaching through the net, using a series of hardware-based encryptions keyed to each person's DNA, so just anyone can't start your car or open your doors."

"That's what makes it secure, impossible to crack or fake?" Todd asks as he climbs out of the pool, becoming interested in the conversation. "I always thought that bit of the spiel was pure marketing BS, but it's true?"

"That's right, it's true," Rick says. "That's why non-violent crimes like identity theft and fraud are now effectively down to zero, which in turn has led to an explosion in the use of the human/network interface. The immersion is only the first of what is likely to come. As soon as we work the kinks out on the immersion we're—Feedback Alive, that is—going to try to go for full simulation. And we're not the only ones working in that direction. We're just a little ahead of game at the moment," Rick says with a satisfied grin.

"Full simulation?" Todd asks.

"That's right. A complete virtual world where you—well, your avatar anyway—can do anything, be anything, and it will be as real to you as sitting in that chair."

Giselle has heard most of this before, but she can tell Charlie and Todd are thinking over the possibilities.

"Sounds pretty far-fetched to me," Charlie finally says.

"Not as far-fetched as you think," Rick replies with a grin.

"Maybe," Charlie allows. If anyone other than Rick had told her this, she would call bullshit on the spot, but if Rick believes it, she wouldn't bet against it.

***

Rick was born to two deadbeat parents who had had little use for anything that involved work. While they'd never been abusive to him, he had languished in benign neglect. His family never had anything that wasn't given to them. He'd hated his life and couldn't wait to get away. He threw himself into his school work and was accepted into Stanford with a modest scholarship and, though he qualified for grant money, he refused it, not wanting to feel indebted to anyone. With the aid of student loans and long hours working nights at whatever jobs he could get, he paid his way through college.

He had excelled in all his computer classes and showed an affinity for writing elegant, easy-to-understand interfaces. With plenty of hard work, and little social life, he had graduated near the top of his class with a BS in computer science. Because the workload of mornings spent in school and nights tending bars or stocking shelves was beginning to break him, he decided not to pursue an advanced degree at the time. Upon graduation, he immediately began his career working on what eventually became the neural net.

His skill at interface design got him noticed at NIT—Neural Interface Technologies—and he was put to work, along with hundreds of other software and hardware engineers, solving the host of problems involved in integrating a computer network into the human body. He never advanced beyond lower-middle management, his career peaking when he was placed in charge of the interface group to supervise twenty-odd programmers. The hardware engineers were the real rock stars of NIT. While Rick has never fully gotten his head around how the chip—it was always just called the chip—interfaced with the human body, when a hardware engineer said, 'When the chip receives this signal, I need the chip programmed to return that signal,' that he could understand, so he and his group went to work to make it happen. After ten years of grueling toil, the net was born. Those who had accepted stock options in lieu of a portion of their salary became wealthy, very wealthy, and Rick was among them. The neural network technology developed at NIT began to revolutionize communications, replacement bionic limbs, and data retrieval, and is slowly replacing a host of now obsolete technologies.

As NIT's business moved more toward hardware, he left NIT and, cashing out a portion of his stock, poured the money, and his coding talent, into a new company: Feedback Alive. Building on the work done by NIT, Feedback Alive, among others, purchased rights to the neural network software from NIT and began to extend and refine the software interfaces between the hardware and the human nervous system. Finally, just over two years ago, Feedback Alive brought to market immersion technology.

Feedback Alive is a privately-held company, owned by Rick and three other partners, but the fledgling immersion market is finally beginning to grow, and the company should be revenue positive in another year or so. Or so he hopes. At the moment he is very nearly living as a kept man on Giselle's income. He may be wealthy on paper, but a fat stock portfolio doesn't put food on the table. What they need is a blockbuster immersion that can show what the technology can do, then use that to ramp up their licensing and hardware sales.

***

Charlie thinks for a minute, trying to absorb the history lesson he fed them, before muttering, "I still think there is more to it than that. And if the chip can't read my thoughts, how does the search, and ping, and all the other stuff work?"

"Okay, I misspoke," Rick says. "The chip can read your thoughts. The problem is that your thoughts are like trying to pick out a conversation in a noisy crowd of people. Where you can't follow a conversation, you might hear your name. The chip works like that. It is looking for keywords among your thoughts. Take the ping, for example. Do you know why you ping someone instead of call them or talk to them?"

"No," Charlie says, shaking her head.

"Because when we were developing the interface, we did start out having the ping interface open when you wanted to talk to someone. The problem was, every time you wanted to talk to Todd about something, the damn interface would open, even if what you really wanted to do was talk to him when you got home. So, we came up with a new term, the ping, so you had to think 'I want to ping Todd' before the interface would open. That was one of the biggest challenges we had to overcome, processing all that stuff whirling around in your head in real time to find, and act upon, the keywords. So yes, the chip can read your thoughts, but the bulk of the stuff that goes into the chip is ignored and never passed to the interface."

"I don't know, Rick," Charlie says dubiously. "I swear I could tell exactly what Giselle was thinking."

"Trust me, you just think you could tell because of a very limited set of variables. Let me ask you this... at the beginning, when we," Rick motions to Giselle and himself, "are walking along the beach, did you know that we were having a picnic?"

"Of course," Charlie replies with finality.

"Wait!" Todd interjects. "You were on a picnic with Rick?"

"Nooo," Charlie replies. "Giselle was on a picnic with Rick. It is where he proposed to her." Turning to look at Rick she adds, "Well done, by the way."

Todd looks from Rick to Charlie, then back to Rick. "Well, buddy, I don't know what you've got, but I want some of it."

Charlie and Giselle giggle while Rick blushes. "Annnyway," Rick says trying to steer the conversation back to safer ground, "are you sure you knew, or do you think you knew because Giselle wasn't surprised? See, Giselle knew we were recording the picnic. It was kind of like a field test for the recording equipment. She just didn't know about the rest of it."

"What's the difference?" Charlie asks.

"Well, granted it's small, but it's a significant difference. That is why immersions works so well for one or two people, but not particularly well for a group. Here's an example. Giselle is sitting in the chaise and is daydreaming in the sun. If you are in an immersion of that event you will feel the contentment of someone at peace, but you won't know what she's thinking about."

"Oh... I think I would have a pretty good idea," Charlie says, causing Rick to blush again as Giselle giggles. "Maybe what you say is true, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Whatever the reason, that was the most moving and powerful immersion I have ever experienced. Ever. Would you mind if Todd experienced it?"

"What?" Rick asks, louder than he means to, and he can almost feel his eyes bug out.

"Would you mind if Todd experiences the immersion recording of you proposing to Giselle. I assume you have one."

"I do, but..." he splutters. He looks to Giselle who looks back passively.

"But what, Rick?"

He nods to Todd. "What does he know?"

"He knows that I was Giselle when you proposed to her after a picnic on the beach."

"That's it?"

"That's it. And that is all he'll ever know unless you tell him, or he experiences it for himself."

Todd suddenly becomes very interested in the conversion but says nothing, feeling like he is on thin ice.

"I don't know, Charlie," Rick says. "You know, until Giselle, you were my rock." He sees Charlie's eye flick to Giselle, then back. "You helped me through some tough times. But this is asking a lot." He pauses for a moment, then continues. "Why do you want to do this?"

"Because, Rick, there is something very profound in that immersion. It touched me. I'm assuming that your immersion would be just as powerful. It seemed like it to me," Charlie says, then corrects herself. "It seemed like it to Giselle. See, I can't even keep it straight. I know it was Giselle, but it was so real, so vibrant, so alive, it was like it was me."

Giselle moves from the chaise and sits down in a chair beside Rick and puts her hand on his arm. Rick looks to Todd with an almost pained expression.

"Buddy, it's your call. Don't do it if you don't want to. I don't mind." Then, ever the wit, Todd waits just the right amount of time before adding, "But can Charlie experience it again sometime?" The heavy mood broken, they all laugh.

***

A few hours later everyone has changed from their swimwear into street clothes and now the women are in the kitchen slicing fresh vegetables for the grill as they chat and laugh. While the women prepare inside, Rick prepares the grill, the act of cooking together a ritual both he and Giselle enjoy. Nothing more has been said about the immersion and the four have been pleasantly chatting; four good friends enjoying each other's company.

Todd sips his beer and watches Rick fuss with the grill. Though curious to know what happened on the beach that has so affected Charlie, it is obvious to him that Rick doesn't want to share, and that worries him. He knows from long experience how Charlie is when she wants something. She will worry the problem to death until she gets what she wants. He and Rick have been friends for... Todd zones out, accessing his interface, and has the answer in less than a second... thirteen years, nearly as long as he has been married to Charlie. That's a long time and this immersion isn't worth risking that.

Charlie and Todd began dating in high school and have been together ever since. A swimmer on his high school swim team, Todd had turned in a state record-setting time in a come-from-behind victory as the anchor in the four by one-hundred-meter freestyle relay, to secure the their school's first state championship in swimming. The hero of the moment, he had finally gathered the courage to ask Charlie out on date. She accepted, and while it wasn't exactly love at first sight, they have been together ever since. Moving from the Midwest to Los Angeles, Charlie began working as a model while Todd worked on his BA in marketing.

Rick met Todd when a calendar company used Rick's antique 2010 Aston Martin in a photo shoot. Though the car was almost sixty years old at the time, it looked new. It is the one thing Rick had splurged on when he became wealthy.

While Charlie worked with the car, they'd discussed antique cars, something that Rick enjoyed but Todd is passionate about. Todd knows more about antique English cars than Rick ever will, and Rick was fascinated as Todd effortlessly recalled horsepower ratings, zero to sixty times, prices, and all manner of minutiae on vehicles made by Aston Martin, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bentley, and Land Rover. Anybody can do that now, but this had been before the net had become pervasive and it was an impressive feat of recall.

Rick still has the calendar featuring his car hanging in his garage, perpetually showing July 2068. His Aston is overlooking the Pacific Ocean with Charlie, one hand pulling open her not quite fully unbuttoned shirt, the other pulling down on her unbuttoned shorts, wet with sweat from a spray bottle, hair flying away in the breeze from an unseen fan as she vamped in front of the car. Only Charlie could upstage that car, but upstage it she did. It had taken four hours of hard work, Charlie doing the same poses over and over to get that one shot, so Rick and Todd had had plenty of time to get acquainted. By the time the shoot ended, the beginnings of their friendship was firmly in place.

From out of the blue, Todd picks up the immersion topic again. "Rick, listen, don't sweat it okay?" Rick looks at Todd in confusion. "The immersion. You know how Charlie is. She will keep picking at this until she gets what she wants. But if you don't want me to experience it, I'm fine with that. Really. Give the word and I'll shut her down." Todd then bangs his chest comically and exclaims in a caveman voice, "Me man. She woman. Woman listen to man."

Rick raises one eyebrow in an uh-huh look, but says nothing. Todd, suddenly serious, puts his hand on Rick's shoulder, "It's okay man, really."