Coding Isis (2 page)

He reached out his right hand and carefully moved the cover, turning past the end-pages to the first ornately decorated text. Chris couldn’t read the ancient Latin, but he had learned from others that the first chapter was Jerome’s epistle to Paulinus—in truth he didn’t care much about the content, it was the book rendering he was interested in and in a way it helped him to focus on the aesthetics of the book when he couldn’t understand the words on the page.

With both hands, Chris grabbed the opposite corners of this ancient book and pulled it toward him until it filled his entire vision. The detailing of the vellum was perfect and he could even see through the translucent paper to the text of the page below. He tipped the book forward and examined its edges, his eyes told him he was holding an ancient book but he felt nothing in his hands. The new graphics code he had written was incredible; his sponsors were going to love this. He closed the book and tossed it aside and as the book fell away from him it faded to nothing. Now he wanted to test the eye-tracking cameras he had added to his glasses. The tiny cameras monitored the position of his eyes, allowing the software to determine what was holding his interest. He decided to use another book, something he could read this time.

‘
I want to read a book by Conan-Doyle,
’ he said.

The computer system interpreted his voice commands and instantly a line of books faded into view and stretched far away to his right beyond his peripheral vision.

‘Something about Sherlock Holmes.’

The books that were not about Sherlock Holmes quickly faded and disappeared and the remaining books moved up to close the gaps. He was left with a line of books floating just in front of his view at arms-reach. He scanned the line of books and as he turned his head they moved and slid into view. He let his gaze rest on a book entitled
The Valley of Fear
and a second or so later, the others faded slightly and adjusted their positions so that this one could be in the center of the line.

Chris had spent a lot of time studying how people read. He’d used the eye-tracking glasses with some of his students and had recorded and analyzed the movement of their eyes as they read in order to learn from their behavior. He’d found that just prior to opening a book, or turning a page, their eyes would flick to the top right corner of the book and so he had built his augmented reality system to take advantage of such subtle gestures, which had resulted in a system that people knew instinctively how to use.

He gazed at the top right corner of the book and the cover turned and the pages flicked forward to the start of the first chapter entitled
The Warning
.
The other books faded into the background as he started to read, and the miniature cameras continuously tracked the position of his eyes calculating exactly which word his eyes rested upon at any given moment. He stared at the word
vexation
and after a few seconds the word became highlighted and a series of boxes, like speech bubbles, floated around the word. Each bubble contained a synonym for the word, pulled directly from the thesaurus and a dictionary definition. He smiled to himself at this subtle enhancement his colleague had finished yesterday. As he gazed to the next word, the bubbles faded to nothing and he continued to read until he reached the bottom of the page. Subconsciously he looked at the top right corner to turn the page and the page flicked over. He had programmed the system so that as soon as the reader’s eyes had scanned the last line of text, a look at the top of the page would trigger a page turn. It was a simple concept but the experience was, for many of his students, as close to magic as computers could get. It was as though the machine was reading his mind.

He looked beyond the book and, as he did, it faded to five percent opacity—just enough to know it was still there but not enough to distract him from other tasks. He caught sight of the clock. It was gone four; too late to go home now. Michelle would have given up waiting for him long ago, and by the time he’d driven home and got into bed it would be nearly time to get up again. Michelle was good to him and she understood his obsession with his work, or at least she said she did. He’d make it up to her once this meeting was out of the way. He thought about the meeting later on today and decided to check everything was in place.

‘Show me the agenda for my meeting today,’ he said.

The Sherlock Holmes book shrank and faded to a miniature version just in the lower corner of his vision and a piece of paper faded into view directly in front of him. He scanned down the list of bullet points, mentally checking them off. He had only the facial recognition routines to test, but that would need to wait until there was someone else around. He dropped his glasses on the desk and rubbed his hands around his neck and face. Protech were coming to see his progress tomorrow and he was pleased with how far he had come since those initial meetings when he had proposed his concept. They had believed in him and had practically given him a blank check. He’d been able to select his own staff, buy whatever hardware he wanted, and the university had even cut back on his teaching schedule to allow him more time to run the project. He still had no idea how they’d managed to swing that, but he appreciated it. He liked teaching the students, it kept him grounded in reality, but his passion was in his research. He put his glasses back on and stared at the miniature Sherlock Holmes book, waiting for it to pop back into focus, but instead his phone rang and a picture of Michelle appeared. To the side of the photograph of his wife, a series of labels told him Michelle was calling from home using his office direct-dial number. He’d made the phone interface as intuitive as possible too. To answer a call, he simply looked at the photograph of the caller and spoke his greeting. Like everything else in the system, the simplicity of the interaction hid the complexity of the technology. Not only was the computer system showing all the information it had about the caller, it was waiting for him to speak to determine whether he wanted to take the call or not. He’d programmed the system to not only recognize the content of his speech but also his tone of voice. An enthusiastic
Hi
would instruct the computer to connect the call and relay the words to the caller. To ignore a call he simply had to say something like
not now
or
take a message
and the computer system would take care of things.

‘Hi babe, I thought you’d be asleep,’ he said. He waited the split second for his speech to be interpreted as a command to accept the call, and for a recording of the phrase to be played to his wife. 

‘I was,’ she said. ‘I woke up. I miss you. How’s it going?’ She sounded tired, like she’d only just woken. He thought of her lying in bed and felt foolish.

What the hell am I doing here when I could be at home in bed with you?

‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I was going to come home tonight but it’s really late now, I thought I’d just crash here on the sofa. Sorry honey.’

‘That’s OK, I understand. You’ve got a big day ahead. You need to impress the guys with the bank account so you can keep on playing with your expensive toys. Do you want me to drop by with some fresh clothes for you later?’

‘That would be great. You’re an angel.’

‘I know,’ she said. Chris could hear the smile in her voice. She sounded happy but sleepy. ‘I tried to call your cell phone, but there was no answer. Is everything OK?’

‘Sure, everything’s fine. I must have left it in the locker at the club. Thanks for the heads-up.’

‘Try to get some sleep Chris.’

She was right of course. If he worked through, his caffeine-induced energy would not get him through the big day ahead.

He saw he had unread email, but that could wait for tomorrow—or later today. He dropped his glasses on the desk and made his way over to the leather sofa. He grabbed a blanket and tried to get comfy, his head was still buzzing from the work, but he was tired. The worst thing about augmented reality, he thought, was that in comparison,
reality
was just a little disappointing. There were no icons or images zooming around his vision now, just him, and his thoughts. He closed his eyes and before long he was in a deep sleep.

Chris woke to the feeling of being kissed. He opened his eyes and saw Michelle’s beautiful face.

‘I think I’m dreaming,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Don’t worry’, she said, ‘you’ve still got plenty of time. I brought breakfast.’

Chris sat up and felt his back muscles aching from his night on the sofa. He felt rough, but a hot shower and coffee would soon fix that. He looked at his watch; it was just past seven thirty. Michelle was right, there was plenty of time. His visitors were not due until after nine and that gave him time to get cleaned up and maybe put some finishing touches to his presentation. He watched Michelle as she unpacked muffins and fruit from a bag. Maybe he was missing her from the long hours he’d been working, but Chris thought she looked really good this morning. She had a way of making the simplest of clothes look great; it shouldn’t be possible to look so good this early. He stood and let the blanket fall to the floor, stretching his back. He walked up to Michelle as she laid out the food on his meeting table. He put his arms around her waist and nibbled at the back of her neck and ear. He let his hands slide up to her breasts and she chided him, but didn’t move his hands away.

‘You don’t have time for that,’ she said. She turned and kissed him on the lips. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’

Chris ate the berries and muffins Michelle had brought. Not his first choice in breakfast, but better than nothing. The coffee was strong and black and definitely helped. Chris talked about his work as they ate and Michelle listened attentively and nodded in all the right places, but it was a game they both played. Michelle pretended to understand what he was talking about and he pretended not to notice the glazed expression on her face. It helped to talk things through. After finishing their breakfast they kissed and Chris took the bag of things Michelle had brought and went to use the showers in the changing rooms.

‘I’m cooking dinner tonight,’ called Michelle from the hallway. ‘You’d better be thinking of coming home.’

Chris grinned and blew her a kiss and she shook her head in mock disgust. He knew he’d been putting in way too many late nights at work over the past few months and Michelle had been amazing—she was so understanding, he knew that deep-down she wanted him to succeed in this project just as much as he did.

The shower helped and Chris started to feel human again. As the hot water soothed his aching muscles he thought of the remaining tasks for his presentation later on. He found he did his best thinking in the shower. Someone had once told him that the water molecules acted as an air purifier which allowed more oxygen to reach the brain. He didn’t know what the trick was; maybe it was because there was nothing to really do but the most basic act of cleaning, which allowed the mind to wander. He’d had the idea for the augmented reality system in the shower. He figured that instead of trying to pack powerful portable computers into smaller and smaller devices, he would focus on streaming massive amounts of data at very high speeds to a place where it could be processed by super-computers. He’d flipped the problem on its head and used powerful computers in the cloud to do the intensive calculations. He had a massively parallel processing array of state-of-the-art hardware handling the feeds and generating the three dimensional image that was to be displayed on his glasses using a technology similar to the heads up display used by fighter pilots. After getting the idea, he’d run through the house to find Michelle and share his eureka moment, and had simply forgotten he was naked. She’d thought he was crazy, but had listened patiently as he’d explained how the images his computer system would generate would be layered on top of the real world giving the illusion that the computer generated images were part of reality, hence the term
augmented reality
.

Chris didn’t want to leave the shower. The hot water soothed his tired body and aching neck, but even though he knew he had things to get on with, he stayed, and thought about work. He knew this system was going to be big. In commercial terms it was more than a consumer electronics device, he had invented the first real improvement to humankind for hundreds of years. It wasn’t just about enhancing a user’s experience, but also about keeping those experiences, so that they need never forget things again. There was potential to keep the experiences being recorded by his headsets indefinitely and he imagined a world where people could bequeath their recordings to their loved ones and they could know their life, but not their thoughts—maybe that was the last hurdle he needed to clear. To cut out the need for glasses, to get inside someone’s head, now
that
was a goal worth pursuing. Reluctantly, Chris turned the faucet and stepped from the warmth of the shower into the cool changing room.