The Sensory Deception (5 page)

Farley motioned to Ringo, who turned on an overhead light.

“This is our virtual experience lab.” He ran his hand along a wall, encouraging her to do the same. It was covered in a black screen-like fabric. The tension of the cloth varied over the hollow spaces of speaker cones, air-exchange gratings, and solid plywood. “There are transducers in the walls, the ceiling, even embedded in the chair. Transducers are devices that convert electrical signals into outputs that stimulate different senses. Speakers transduce electricity into sound. Video monitors transduce electricity into light and images. Heaters and coolers transduce temperature. We have scent transducers that convert an array of chemicals into smells. We’ve submitted patents for every transducer that’s not an off-the-shelf part.”

He guided her back to the reclining chair. As he pushed the huge monitor out of the way, she felt both a desire to sit in the chair and a fear of what could happen if she did. Selling this thing would take some innovative marketing.

She ran her hands along the leather, but couldn’t feel anything except padding.

Ringo returned with a bottle of dark red wine and refilled her glass. She was starting to really like this quiet, pleasant black man. She caught herself wondering if he experienced the same type of prejudice as she did: rarely negative or positive, but a constant reminder that she was different from the typical Silicon Valley technologist.

Farley reached down to the side table and clicked the mouse. A familiar image appeared on the screen: the polar bear’s point of view as she slid across the ice just before entering the water. It looked blurry and unnaturally colorful. Farley offered her the heavy glasses. With the glasses on, the image seemed unrealistically vivid. Image boundaries jumped out; the edges of the ice and the color of the sky were vivid like black-light posters.

Farley magnified the image and said, “Our video has ten times the resolution of standard high-definition TV. We use the extra pixels to embed more information for your optic nerves to process.” He zoomed in on the image until it became pixelated. “See how we mix in bright, fluorescent colors? We use similar tricks with sound. First, we use binaural audio, which is recorded with multiple microphones so you can decipher where a sound comes from—three-dimensional sound. We also mix the recording with certain frequencies amplified to control mood. We even mix in music. Classic themes from movies are sort of melted over the natural sound—we might have to pay royalties to John Williams. The music, soothing colors, and scents also prevent the irritation of sensory overload—which was a big problem in our first prototype.”

He advanced the image to the point when the bear emerged with the seal in its mouth.

Gloria pulled the glasses to the top of her head and said, “I can’t believe I ate a seal. And really enjoyed it.”

“It’s not enough for us to just dump data into your brain. To excite
your
senses we have to monitor what works and what doesn’t. We use biometric feedback to drive the transducers in a way that optimizes your response.” He took the glasses from her head and inverted them under the light. “Here, near the hinges, you can see the sensors. They measure pupil dilation, which tells the system your level of excitement, fear, and attraction.
Temperature monitors are embedded through the bridge. They measure blood flow in your nose to gauge your response to scents. The headphones have similar sensors to track your audio response, and of course the band we wrapped on your arm tracks your pulse, blood pressure, and perspiration.”

He set the glasses on the table and said, “Lean over the chair.”

She did. He clicked the mouse and, in a flash, the smell of roast beef surrounded her. It reminded her of horseradish again, and her mouth watered.

Farley said, “If you hadn’t responded to roast beef, you’d have gotten fried chicken in the next instant—quickly enough that with everything else going on, you wouldn’t have noticed the change. Scents are difficult.”

He sat on the arm of the chair. “The combination of sounds—including ultralow frequencies that you feel more than hear—with blasts of brightness and drafts of hot or cold air affect your comfort level. The combination puts the sensory-processing part of your brain into overdrive.” He held out his arms and concluded, “That’s how it works.”

Gloria leaned against the wall. She still hadn’t shed the disappointment of all those sunrises with no ice in sight and the shock of awakening with rifles leveled at her. She looked around. Farley looked confident, as though he’d closed the sale.

Ringo leaned toward her, cupped her elbow in his hand, and asked, “Do you need to sit down?”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s an amazing experience.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, preparing to do her job. She assembled a skeptical question involving profit and loss and marketability. “I just wonder—” she began, but as she did she found the sentence bitter on her tongue, cynical. She stopped and looked at each of them. It occurred to her that Farley and his team had created something special from all these transducers.

“Dr. Rutherford,” she said, “this will be difficult. Venture capitalists don’t like funding academics. You’ll have to show them a clear path to profitability. I’m not taking three PhDs into the boardroom without a professional marketing and product-release road map.”

Farley nodded slowly from his waist, and as he leaned over he bit his lip, which pulled the left side of his mustache into his mouth. The intensity of his focus was cute, in a way, this bear of a man sucking on his own mustache. He continued nodding, rocking slowly back and forth.

He asked, “Can you help us with the business plan?”

“We’ll see,” she said, but she already had a vision of how to present the idea to Sand Hill Ventures. “No one is going to buy all this equipment.”

“We can implement much of the technology in a virtual reality headset and gloves. It will look like supercool motorcycle gear and should be reasonably spectacular.”

“Reasonably spectacular?” Maybe it was the wine, but she couldn’t help giggling at the phrase, and then her giggle became a yawn.

He laughed with her. “It’s okay; you just swam hundreds of miles. Of course you’re tired.” The warmth of his hand comforted her shoulder. He applied a tiny bit of pressure, a simple suggestion to leave the room. It too was comfortable. She caught herself looking up at him, hoping that she hadn’t preened her hair aside but certain she had.

They walked out of the lab/garage, back through the kitchen to the family room.

Chopper sat, strumming the guitar. A yellow tackle box was on the couch next to him. Ringo leaned against the counter that separated the kitchen from the family room. Farley guided Gloria to the couch.

This time she tried to look professional, didn’t curl her legs under her or rest them on the coffee table. She said, “You play beautifully.” Chopper nodded toward her but kept those amber-brown eyes on his guitar. The guitar was scratched up and dull, its lacquer worn away, but it sounded bright. He switched to a long cresting wave of blues. She realized he was now staring at her.

“You play?” he asked.

She took the guitar from him. It was warped, too, nearly ruined, held together by packing tape along one edge. She strummed a G chord. The body felt alive with vibration. She’d never held a guitar like this.

“I once used it as an oar on a Greenpeace Zodiac,” Farley said. “Chopper over here thinks it learned to sing from humpback whales.”

She set the guitar aside. The list of questions in her briefcase seemed so trivial now.

Farley sat next to her at the edge of the couch, oriented toward her.

“Gloria, I want to be completely transparent with you about our goals. Obviously we need your help.” As usual, his initial words were loud and clear, with those that followed diminishing in volume, but then he interrupted his loud-to-soft voice modulation. “The four of us can change the world.” The way he said it, punctuated with those clear blue eyes leveled at her, it was easy to believe him.

“It wasn’t the universe that disappointed you; it was humanity. If you fill a balloon with carbon dioxide and expose it to sunlight, it gets hot faster than if it’s filled with air, which is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Human beings have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by forty percent in the past hundred years. The planet is heating up and ice is melting. The cause-and-effect relationship is straightforward.”

Chopper added, “Earth is running a fever because it is infected.”

“Our goals are twofold,” Farley resumed. “Nature-based virtual reality experiences will make people sensitive, viscerally sensitive, to their role in Earth’s ecosystem, and this is the key to building solutions to humanity’s greatest problems. Second, our product will generate both a volunteer network and a great deal of money. Money is important. Money wins cultural and political battles. It’s far more effective to buy people’s interests than to try to alter their actions.”

“You don’t have any business experience.” Gloria tried to sound skeptical but it came out more like advice. “Most companies like yours fail within a year, and those that survive have one thing in common: a sustaining, overwhelming desire to succeed.”

From across the room, Ringo interjected, “We have that.”

“Good, but you’ll have to be convincing. You want to change the world. I understand. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I experienced in there.” She sighed. “But that’s not what makes a business succeed.”

Chopper turned to her, his eyes slits. “Then you tell us, holder of capital. Tell us what makes businesses succeed. Be honest. Use the word
greed
.”

“Greed plays a role,” she said. She could see that Chopper was the heart of this team, the passionate lead guitarist. His temperament was necessary for their success, but could just as easily destroy them. It boiled down to his allegiance to Farley. She looked at each of them again. Farley was the front man of this band, the singer, and Ringo set the tempo, the bass line and percussion. There was something missing. They lacked rhythm, a day-to-day business rhythm.

“Entrepreneurs who make it through the bad times—and there will be more bad times than good by the time you either
surrender or succeed—are compelled to win for the sole reason that they love to win and hate to lose. You want to change the world.” She tried to sound cynical. “I’m not sure it’s the same thing.”

Farley grinned. He looked as though he were laughing inside. “Gloria, we’re not quitters. We have the will to win. We’re fighters, not tweedy academics, and we’re not PETA activists. We are veterans of the environmental movement, but we’re not radical.” Then he laughed that booming laugh of his. “I eat meat. Chopper smokes cigarettes!”

Serious again, he said, “We’re ambitious professionals and we want to make money. A lot of money. Does it matter whether we want money to pay for lavish lifestyles or to finance what we believe in? Trust me, we’re going to win.” He leaned forward until his eyes were level with hers. “Gloria, I want you to help us.”

Good answer. That was it. It was easy to believe in this man. It was easy to relax on that suede couch, too. Easy to slip into Chopper’s blues riffs, easy to sip some more of the red juice of aged grapes. She could think about the details later. Right now she had that exhausted but upset feeling that you get after a good cry, the teary resolution that puts you to sleep as surely as a melancholy lullaby.

Farley couldn’t read Gloria right now. She was too out of it. Virtual reality exhausts the brain faster than actual reality because it dilates the user’s time scale. Sleep is the natural response. With her head nestled between two couch cushions, she snored quietly.

Farley shook the cushion. Gloria closed her mouth for a second but then sank deeper into the couch and resumed snoring.

“Gloria,” Farley said. Then louder, “Gloria.”

She didn’t move.

“Dude, she sleeps like the dead,” Ringo said. “What do we do?”

Chopper chuckled.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Farley said. “VCs don’t work weekends, do they?” He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her.

Her eyes popped open for an instant and she said, “Yeah, I’m coming.” But then they shut again and she snuggled herself still deeper between the cushions.

Farley looked at the others and shook his head. “Well, we got her attention, I guess.” He shook her again and she kept snoring.

Ringo asked again, “What do we do?”

Farley said, “We make her comfortable and turn out the lights.”