Debra quirked an eyebrow, then said, "Sure, why not. You'll like this,
guys."
Tim hustled us backstage, where Lil and I used to sweat over the
animatronics and cop surreptitious feels. Everything had been torn
loose, packed up, stacked. They hadn't wasted a moment -- they'd spent a
week tearing down a show that had run for more than a century. The scrim
that the projected portions of the show normally screened on was ground
into the floor, spotted with grime, footprints and oil.
Tim showed me to a half-assembled backup terminal. Its housing was off,
and any number of wireless keyboards, pointers and gloves lay strewn
about it. It had the look of a prototype.
"This is it -- our uplink. So far, we've got a demo app running on it:
Lincoln's old speech, along with the civil-war montage. Just switch on
guest access and I'll core-dump it to you. It's wild."
I pulled up my HUD and switched on guest access. Tim pointed a finger at
the terminal and my brain was suffused with the essence of Lincoln:
every nuance of his speech, the painstakingly researched movement tics,
his warts and beard and topcoat. It almost felt like I _was_ Lincoln,
for a moment, and then it passed. But I could still taste the lingering
coppery flavor of cannon-fire and chewing tobacco.
I staggered backwards. My head swam with flash-baked sense-impressions,
rich and detailed. I knew on the spot that Debra's Hall of the
Presidents was going to be a hit.
Dan took a shot off the uplink, too. Tim and I watched him as his
expression shifted from skepticism to delight. Tim looked expectantly at
me.
"That's really fine," I said. "Really, really fine. Moving."
Tim blushed. "Thanks! I did the gestalt programming -- it's my
specialty."
Debra spoke up from behind him -- she'd sauntered over while Dan was
getting his jolt. "I got the idea in Beijing, when I was dying a lot.
There's something wonderful about having memories implanted, like you're
really working your brain. I love the synthetic clarity of it all."
Tim sniffed. "Not synthetic at all," he said, turning to me. "It's nice
and soft, right?"
I sensed deep political shoals and was composing my reply when Debra
said: "Tim keeps trying to make it all more impressionistic, less
computer-y. He's wrong, of course. We don't want to simulate the
experience of watching the show -- we want to _transcend it_."
Tim nodded reluctantly. "Sure, transcend it. But the way we do that is
by making the experience _human_, a mile in the presidents' shoes.
Empathy-driven. What's the point of flash-baking a bunch of dry facts on
someone's brain?"
========= CHAPTER 4 =========
One night in the Hall of Presidents convinced me of three things: