Parkowski took a few steps forward and looked around. The surface around her was mostly flat, save for a few shallow craters and crevasses. The terrain sloped gradually at first, then sharply, towards the massive volcano to her east named after Sacajawea. She saw a bit of aliasing in her display, a jagged edge of a ridge near the horizon reminded her that she was in a simulation and not in the real world.
There was a hiss of static, and then a new voice spoke to her. “Can you hear me?” Pham asked, his voice a little garbled.
“Yes, but not great.”
A pause. “How about now?” Pham said, more clearly this time.
“That’s better.”
“Okay.” She heard a rustling of papers. “Grace, I’m going to need you to switch between the two robots. You are currently on ACHILLES 1, I want you to check out ACHILLES 2.”
“Copy,” she replied.
Parkowski used the controls inside of her gloves to pull up the heads-up display’s main menu at the bottom of the VR headset. A blue translucent table appeared with several options. Using a wheel located in her right glove’s thumb, she selected the icon that would allow her to switch between robots.
In an instant, Parkowski jumped to ACHILLES 2. The entire VR screen snapped to show the view from the “head” of the second probe through the electro-optical sensors located where the robot’s “eyes’ would be. The view was much the same, except for some more noticeable aliasing. “The image quality from the second probe is worse.”
“I know, we had the same problem all morning,” Marx chimed in. “The software guys think it’s the simulation software itself rendering at a lower quality level to save computational power. Or something like that.”
“Thanks, Caleb,” she said as she took a few steps. Parkowski looked down at her feet as she did so, amazed at how her walking in the real world was instantly translated into the virtual one.
Parkowski remembered the first time she ever used VR. It was at DePresti’s house, in his spare bedroom that was his office and video game playroom. She almost laughed at the memory. It had been early in their relationship, maybe the second month or so, and she was in shock that this seemingly normal, attractive man she had been dating was a giant video game nerd. Parkowski wasn’t turned off or offended, her father and brothers played video games; she just hadn’t pegged DePresti as the video gaming type. He had shown her his setup, which consisted of a powerful gaming computer, headset, and motion-controlled, handheld actuators. “This is the future of entertainment,” he had insisted. “In five years, everyone will be playing on something like this.”
She wasn’t so sure. The entire setup cost over a thousand dollars for the virtual reality headset and controllers and God-only-knew-how-much for the PC, a high bar of entry for most people. However, she had let DePresti put the headset on her before getting her into a simple game where she’d cut open blocks coming at her with a laser sword. After about twenty minutes, she took the headset off. “That’s it?” she had jokingly asked a shocked DePresti. It didn't have quite the “wow” factor that he had expected.
Back in the present, Parkowski continued walking, catching sight of the first ACHILLES robot about half a football field away. She noticed that ACHILLES 1 carried a large package, an oblong box dark in color with wires sticking out of it. That must be the ground-penetrating radar. She hadn’t noticed it when she had been in control of it, the VR system didn’t simulate weight. Parkowski picked up her speed and caught up to the first robot.
“Alright, I’ve got the two together,” she told Pham. “What’s next?”
“You are currently at point Alpha, and need to get to waypoint Bravo,” the older engineer told her. “Grace, pull up your HUD. You’re missing out on a lot of information.”
She groaned. Parkowski hated the HUD — it was information overload. “Ok,” she replied as she used the thumb switch to pull up the full heads-up display.
Now, it really looked like a video game. There was a miniature map in the upper-left corner of her display with a blue triangle in the middle of it showing her current position. A model of the ACHILLES robot she currently piloted was in the top right, with numbers showing stresses, strains, temperatures, and battery life for each of its components overlaid on top of it. The bottom left had the current communications settings and the health of that system. The bottom right was empty at the moment. It was customizable, allowing the user to display any number of settings or status pages that they wished.
