Read Online Another Life by Peter Anghelides - Free Book Online Page A

at her desk, surrounded by an accumulation of computer spares, alien artefacts, and stacked coffee cups. She eventually lifted her pretty almond eyes to look back at him through the piles of stuff. When she spotted Owen scowling at her, she fell into a new bout of giggling, and covered her mouth modestly with a raised hand.
    Owen tried not to rise to this. ‘I thought you’d been working on improvements to this game?’
    ‘Keep your hair on, “Glendower”.’ She tapped a few more keystrokes at her terminal. ‘I’ve got your enhancements here, as promised.’ Toshiko came back over to Owen. She brought a DVD case and what looked like a motorcycle helmet with an opaque visor at the front. ‘Before we get started, you should log off your Internet connection.’
    ‘Because…?’
    ‘Because you’re only going to do this within the confines of Torchwood’s firewall. At the moment, that low-resolution graphics version runs from the Second Reality company’s server machines in Palo Alto. Many thousands of people around the world, all simultaneously connected to a shared system. That’s why they call it a “Massively Multiplayer Online Game”.’
    Owen clattered away at his keyboard until the screen told him: ‘ Second Reality – do you really wish to disconnect (Y/N)?’ He pressed Y. ‘See you next time, Glendower Broadsword!’ it announced cheerfully.
    Toshiko slotted the disc into the DVD drive of Owen’s machine. The screen flashed up a series of messages, and the hard disk chattered as her software installed itself.
    She hefted the helmet into Owen’s lap, and proceeded to plug one of the attached cables into his computer. ‘OK, this should do for now. Put these gloves on first.’ She offered him a pair of bright blue items in a thin material, which Owen immediately recognised as the non-sterile disposable nitrile gloves he used for examinations and autopsies. Only these were now covered in wires and sensors, at the rear, along the side, even on the fingertips. ‘Prototype data-gloves,’ Toshiko told him, ‘adjusted to allow haptic feedback.’
    Owen screwed up his face into his ‘what the hell?’ look.
    ‘Reacts to touch,’
    ‘So do I.’
    ‘Careful not to get the wires tangled up,’ sighed Toshiko. ‘All right, put that on now. It’s a head-mounted display system. There are two emissive electroluminescent screens embedded in the visor to give you a stereoscopic image. No, the other way round…’ She helped him pull the helmet on correctly, and he thought that perhaps her fingertips lingered on the nape of his neck for just too long.
    ‘It’s very dark in here.’ Owen’s own voice reverberated in the helmet.
    Toshiko’s voice was muffled now. ‘It’s not switched on yet. Here, pull the microphone up so it’s just level with your chin. That’s for the speech-to-text translation – no need to do any more typing on your keyboard.’
    ‘Just as well, I can’t see a bloody thing! And what’s that smell?’
    ‘Cheese and onion crisps, I think. Just be patient, Owen. Right…’
    A kaleidoscopic flare of colours made Owen flinch. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the flicker of light on his lids. When he opened them tentatively, a grid of bright green lines on a grey background vanished off into the distance. He moved his head tentatively to one side, and the field of lines whirled around him. When he leaned forward, the nearest lines got closer.
    ‘Steady,’ Toshiko told him. Her voice was perfectly clear now, playing through the speakers in either side of the helmet. ‘It has six-axis position sensing, so it’ll translate any movements you make into the virtual world. Careful if you twist around, because it’s plugged into your computer.’
    ‘I think I may be sick.’
    Her muffled voice sounded worried. ‘That shouldn’t happen. It’s calibrated to keep in sync with your head movements.’
    ‘No,’ Owen teased her, ‘I mean that I hate cheese and onion.