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

By two o'clock we hadn't gotten halfway through the lesson plan despite the mere half-hour lunch break,
but I was getting far better cooperation than I'd expected from everyone but Madeline, who remained a
lump. I decided a reward was in order.

"The bell's going to ring in another twenty minutes,тАЭ I announced, тАЬand we're already working like a team.
So I'll show you another trick I've got up my sleeveтАФpart of it, anyway. Sit tight and be ready for
anything."

I triggered the first astronomy sequence. With no transition, we were seated outdoors at night under a full
moon that somehow failed to bleach the stars in the slightest. I smiled at the gasp chorus. These kids, as
the clich├й goes, hadn't seen nuthinтАЩ yet.

Then the ground fell away as if our chairs were snubbing gravity. Oohs and Ahs. We sailed up beyond
the few scattered cumulous clouds then past some much higher cirrus jobs. Finally we slowed to a stop,
resting on nothing at the fringes of Earth's atmosphere. We could see from Ecuador to Alaska. Here,
during our educational trip to the moon, I'd pause to lecture about atmospheric layers and composition
and even I wasn't sure what else. Right now, I wanted to show the kids what ViewNet could do....

I waited a moment before speaking. тАЬPretty as a picture?"

We descended rapidly and I knew the kids were assuming the ride was over. But I stopped us within a
few hundred feet of ground level.

In the present mode, my function buttons controlled various plug-ins. I pressed F5, a plug-in developed
for Enhancement by the people at Adobe, and the scene transformed into a vast somewhat cartoon-like
painting. The moon still silvered the trees below, but it had become a crude ball, roughly cratered,
impressionistic, surrounded by a swirling aura of indeterminate colors. The stars had grown their own
auras, pastel twists suggesting Van Gogh's Starry Night but smoother and in a thousand tints. The effect
was peaceful and beautiful.

We sat in midair and gazed on a world turned to art and no one spoke until the bell sounded.
****
When the student images faded away and my OSP shut down, I stood up and opened the shades. The
afternoon sunlight poured into my studio like hot tea and my eyes watered. Without the OSP, I felt
half-blind but I also felt damn good.

My ViewNet link was scheduled to last another hour yet, but without any special feed, the world seemed
pleasantly normal. Until I turned around. My supervisor, Marty Robley, was standing there, apparently
haunting me.

As used by Enhancement and similar companies, a ViewNet proxy is intended to act as an optical shell
around a person's body, modifying their appearance as they wish for all nearby Viewnet clients. In bright
light, a proxy without a body underneath appears vaporous.

"This is a visitation, I presume?тАЭ I said, quoting from my daughter's favorite book: Edward Eager's Half
Magic.

"Bill, I'm just blown away. How the hell did you come up with those great animation sequences?"

"Thanks, Marty. Stroke of luck, really. Last spring, I met with Teresa Laudy of Enhancement