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same time to be observing it from a viewpoint outside. Corrigan watched, letting her get the hang of it.
And then something changed suddenly, like the image of a wire cube reversing: the two bodies of
sensation fused, and she was able to project herself inside, compensating unconsciously for the
discrepancy in visual space.
Corrigan sensed it. "Managed to make the flip?" he asked. She blinked at him once and forced a parody
of a grin.
"Try these," Hatcher's voice said. A flight of steps appeared in the display. Evelyn walked the figure over
to them and began climbing. The sensations of her legs lifting and pushing, foot tilting and shifting the
weight onto the ball, felt completely real.
"The illusion is totally compelling if you close your eyes," Corrigan said.
She did, and there was no longer any doubt: she was climbing a staircase. Already her thighs were
starting to ache; and ache; and surely not she could feel her heartbeat accelerate from the effort, even
slight perspiration. She opened her eyes again. They must have looked alarmed.
"Don't worry," Corrigan said. "It's all simulated. You're bone dry and as relaxed as a sleeping baby. . . .
So now you can see why MIMIC is in the museum already. This is its successor. We call it `Pinocchio.'
What do you think?"
* * *
The three of them got down to specifics over lunch in the staff dining room at the top of the Executive
Building, back at the front of the complex.
"We're looking for more help on the neurophysiology side to go into the next step," Shipley said to
Evelyn. He had said little since his few words about his SDI background, over in the IE Block, which
Evelyn now knew was dedicated to various aspects of Interactive Environments. Now that they were
into Shipley's territory, Corrigan no longer played the lead but was happy to sit back and let him get on
with it. Evelyn sensed an easy, informal working relationship between them. She was finding the prospect
of becoming a part of it increasingly appealing.
"What is the next step?" she asked.
"Pinocchio Two," Shipley replied. "As things stand, we're limited to the medulla. The system can't handle
the Trigeminal and the Abducens. To go further, we want to bring somebody into the team with the kind
of background you've had at Harvard experience of connecting at the pons."
Evelyn thought for a second. "That's why the face and eye movements didn't look right, isn't it?" she said.
"I noticed when Tom went to close-up. I pulled a face deliberately, but the holo was still smiling."
Shipley raised an eyebrow at Corrigan. Corrigan nodded that he liked what he was hearing. "You're
right," Shipley told Evelyn. "The face is dubbed, purely for effect. The computer fills in what it thinks is
appropriate."
They were saying that Pinocchio's combined motor-intercept and DINS interface coupled in at the
lowest region of the brain stem, the medulla oblongata, the main railroad of the nervous system, where
the seventh through twelfth of the body's twelve cranial nerves terminated. These were the nerves serving
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the body's voluntary and involuntary motor systems, along with the sense of balance, which was what
enabled body movements and sensations to be reproduced in the ways that Evelyn had experienced.
(These nerves also handled speech, taste, and hearing, but those faculties were not subjects of the current
research.) The remaining functions jaw and upper-face movements, ocular motion, vision, and
smell were handled by the first to sixth cranial nerves, which synapsed in higher regions of the brain.
In particular, the fifth and sixth cranial nerves, known as the Trigeminal and the Abducens, both
synapsed in the next region above the medulla oblongata: the pons. Shipley was saying that they now
wanted to extend the coupling level up to the pons. Such a step could be in preparation for only one
thing.
"So the eventual intention must be to add vision," Evelyn concluded. That would require going further, to
the thalamus, the next region above the pons. "You've already got hearing and speech, potentially, at the
medulla via the Acoustic, Glossopharyngeal, and Vagus. Extend from the pons to the thalamus, and
you'll have it all: full-sensory direct-neural."
"Except for olfactory," Shipley said, smiling faintly.
"Oh, yes, of course." Evelyn checked herself. Smell was handled by the first cranial nerve. The most
primitive of the senses, it was the only one to enter the brain above the thalamus and go directly into the
cerebrum.
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