"FWLS17" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

*

"Why?" Shelia asked.

"Why not?" her Yttian coworker shrugged, lab coat pulling
itself up high enough to show mismatched socks. "It's a neat
concept, you gotta admit. Can't believe how well it's working,
too. Bolt out of the blue."

"Robots aren't exactly a new idea. So you're patching one
with a VOS interface. What's the big deal?" Shelia asked,
pausing to push up her overly round glasses.

"You can control them by remote, better than anyone possibly
could. No need to send in the bomb squad, just patch the bomb
experts into a few of these suckers and do it by remote. If the
bomb goes boom, no problem, send in more robots. Also for deep-
space work, or other harsh environments. With total mental
control, anything's possible. T'lliTak's gonna eat this up."

"W'ny, may I remind you we're still a smalltime operation?"
Shelia warned. "We make cheap decks for kids to use at school.
Maybe a few terminals, some educational software. NOT precision
control robots. Sure, they may eat up the idea, but they'll barf
the thing up, choking on the price tag."

"All I need are three prototypes. That'll do, then I can
sell those to either our bosses here, or to MurfTech, or
anybody."

"Why three?"

W'ny paused in his typing. "I just need three," he
reaffirmed.

*

He had to sell his station wagon and get a beat-up compact
shuttlecraft for parts money, but it was worth it.

Sure, they were ungainly, but the exterior didn't matter.
All they had to have were realistic human joints and you've got a
fully-working, whole body waldo. Changing the appearance is easy
enough.

He had tested the VR interface on all three of them. The
units were color blind, but that was okay, as they had heat
sensors and motion trackers and the like. It was just like being
in a normal human body, only slightly colder... he'd have to