"Rajnar Vajra - Viewschool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

I nodded although he couldn't see it. тАЬWhen you alienate people, guess who loses out? She was
supposed to explain that you were getting tailored bacteria designed to carry microscopic transceivers
specifically to your optic nerves and slightly larger transceivers to wind up under your skin all over your
body."

"We're all on ViewNet?тАЭ White Night broke in nervously, but less so than his previous evaluators
would've predicted. That armor seemed to be helping him.

"ViewNet, exactly. VR isn't good enough for this classroom.тАЭ I didn't explain. To do my job properly, I
needed access to the real facial expressions, voices, and body language of my students. The
subcutaneous implants had multiple functions.

White Night's armored head swiveled around. тАЬI can't believe this! I can see everyone except you so
clearly. I thought that companies like Larger Than Life charge a fortune for this kind ofтАФ"

"It's not free, that's a fact. And I don't think Larger than Life or Imagine Yourself offers proxies this good.
Every one of you has a high-level e-con designed by the top banana: Enhancement Incorporated.тАЭ White
Night and Buddha glanced around with renewed interest. тАЬAnd because we need to hear each other,
we've all been given the gold package...тАЭ at 213,000 bucks a pop! тАЬ...which includes transceivers for our
hearing nerves and custom-designed e-cons. If you want, you can make the illusion even more convincing
by closing your eyes, or just try to disregard your actual surroundings.

"Of course, we don't have any kind of тАШfeelieтАЩ set-up. But VR touch-back is limited anyway unless you've
got the bucks for a full harness.тАЭ Enhancement's gold package was cheap compared to the price of a full
harness.

To my surprise, Madeline had frowned when I used the word тАЬfeelie.тАЭ Coincidence?

"Any questions? No? Then let's handle the formalities."

I did an old-fashioned roll call, which seemed silly with only six students, but it introduced the kids to
each other without risking potentially ugly interactions. Q-Ball refused to respond when I called his tag,
but I was pleased when Madeline managed a faint nod at her name.

Class, I decided, was going remarkably well so far. No one was freaking and I'd only been threatened
once, and only by implication.

Pressing the tab key on my console, the OSP shifted to display a submenu of twenty possible e-cons I
could use for myself. For Q-Ball, I went with one of my favorites: Joe Louis, the legendary boxer who
looked tough as hell, but at the same time, had a rather sweet face. For Madeline and White Night, I
choose the meekest-looking actor who'd ever lived: Wally Cox. Kekipi would see Bruce Lee; Buddha
would be dealing with the sad-faced clown, Emmett Kelly, who'd act as a kind of visual antidoteтАФI
hoped.

I had a hard time settling on a proxy for Cher. One idea was calling up a new image: Watson to Cher's
Holmes; I was sure Enhancement had variants of Watson available. But I didn't wish to appear in any
way subservient. Finally, I chose a rather spooky image, a genderless humanoid whose face was gray
and smooth with mirrors for eyes and no mouth. I used the keypad to enter my selections and pressed
the tab key again to restore the student images.