Oxygen Level Zero Mission 2 Read online

  That meant that in about an hour, Rawling would send me back into the experimental bamboo-corn to search for the truth about the aliens. It was something I thought might be interesting to add to my diary.

  I fired up my computer, rested the keyboard in my lap, and began to describe to my diary everything I knew about Timothy Neilson and his run-in with the aliens. When I finished, I realized I’d forgotten to explain one simple thing—how, exactly, I intended to look for them.

  So I went back to typing at my keyboard to finish my diary writing for the day.

  Ever since I was eight, Rawling McTigre has trained

  me in a virtual-reality program. Any of you on

  Earth are probably familiar with it already. You

  put on a surround-sight helmet that gives you a

  three-dimensional view of a scene on a computer

  program. The helmet is wired so that when you turn

  your head, it directs the computer program to shift

  the scene as if you were there in real life. Sounds

  come in like real sounds. Because you’re wearing a

  wired jacket and gloves, the arms and hands you see in your surround-sight picture move wherever you

  move your own arms and hands.

  But here’s what you might not have thought about

  when it comes to virtual reality: When you take off

  the surround-sight helmet and the jacket and gloves

  that are wired to a computer, you’re actually still

  in a virtual-reality suit. Your body.

  Rawling was the one who explained it best to me.

  Your eyes deliver information to your brain.

  When you look through the telescope, your optic

  nerves take the image and fire it into your brain.

  Your brain translates the information. But your

  brain doesn’t see. It relies on the extensions of

  the brain. Your eyes. Your telescope. Or the

  extension of virtual reality.

  After all, your brain doesn’t see anything. It

  doesn’t hear anything. It doesn’t smell anything.

  It doesn’t taste anything. It doesn’t feel

  anything. Your brain is this incredible jumble of

  stuff packed into your skull that translates the

  information delivered to it by nerve endings. Some

  nerve endings are attached to the back of your

  eyes. Or to your ear canals. To sensors in your

  nose or on your tongue. To nerve endings in your

  skin and bones.

  In other words, the body is like an amazing

  twenty-four-hour-a-day virtual-reality suit that

  can power itself by eating food and heal itself

  when parts get cut or broken. It moves on two legs,

  has two arms to pick things up, and is equipped to

  give information through all five senses. Except

  instead of taking you through virtual reality, a

  made-up world, your body takes you through the real

  world.

  What if your brain could be wired directly into a robot? Then wouldn’t you be able to see, hear,

  and do everything through the robot?

  Well, believe it or not, that’s me. The first

  human to be able to control a robot as if it were

  an extension of the brain.

  You see, I’m crippled because of an experimental

  operation gone wrong that inserted a special rod

  into my spine. If you saw an X ray of my shoulders

  and neck, you would see that short, dark rod,

  hardly thicker than a needle, wedged directly into

  my spinal column at the bottom of my neck, just

  above the top of my shoulder blades. What looks

  like thousands of tiny hairs stick out of the end

  of the needle into the middle of my spinal column.

  Those are biological implants that have grown into

  my nerves. Each of the thousands of fibers has a

  core that transmits tiny impulses of electricity,

  allowing my brain to control a robot’s computer.

  This was part of the long-term Mars Project: to

  use robots to explore Mars. Humans need oxygen and

  water and heat to survive on the planet’s surface.

  Robots don’t. But robots can’t think like humans.

  From all my years of training in a computer

  simulation program, my mind knows all the muscle

  moves it takes to handle the virtual-reality

  controls. Handling the robot is no different,

  except instead of actually moving my muscles, I

  imagine I’m moving the muscles. My brain sends the

  proper nerve impulses to the robot, and it moves

  the way I made the robot move in the virtual-

  reality computer program.

  I admit, it’s cool. Almost worth being in a

  wheelchair.

  The robot is amazing. It has heat sensors that

  detect infrared, so I can see in total darkness.

  The video lenses’ telescoping is so powerful that I can recognize a person’s face from five miles away.

  But I can also zoom in close on something nearby

  and look at it as if I were using a microscope.

  I can amplify hearing and pick up sounds at

  higher and lower levels than human hearing. The

  titanium has fibers wired into it that let me feel

  dust falling on it, if I want to concentrate on

  that minute of a level. It also lets me speak

  easily, just as if I were using a microphone.

  It can’t smell or taste, however. But one of the

  fingers is wired to perform material testing. All I

  need are a couple specks of the material, and this

  finger will heat up, burn the material, and analyze

  the contents.

  The robot’s strong, too. The titanium hands can

  grip a steel bar and bend it.

  Did I mention it’s fast? Its wheels will move

  three times faster than any human can sprint.

  “Tyce? Tyce?”

  I’d been so used to hearing my mom’s voice interrupting me that it took a second to figure out that the male voice coming from the other side of the mini-dome was my father’s.

  I saved my computer file and shut the machine down before I wheeled out into the common living area.

  He was standing there in jeans and a T-shirt. He needed a shave. He held a nutri-tube in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. “Did you get a chance to open the present I got you?” he asked.

  “The CD with the top 100 rock songs of the 1900s?” I said.

  That was his music, not mine. Ancient stuff. “Looks great.

  Thanks.”

  “We can listen to it together,” he said.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He sipped on his coffee. I tapped my fingers on the arm of my wheelchair. “Anyway,” he said, “how are you?”

  “Fine,” I replied.

  “Got time to share some breakfast?” He made a face. “Not that this artificial stuff comes close to a real breakfast.”

  “Wish I could,” I said quickly, “but I’ve got to go.”

  “This early? Where?”

  “Places. Maybe I’ll tell you later, if I can.”

  He frowned. “What’s the big secret?”

  “Got to go,” I said as I wheeled my way past him. I didn’t care if he thought I was rude. After all, he’d been gone for three years.

  He’d be on Mars for only another few months until the orbit was in position for a return trip to Earth. And now he expected me to drop everything for him?

  Not likely.

  I had some aliens to catch.

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  “Ready for those aliens?”
Rawling asked, smiling.

  “Which one would you like me to go after first?” I asked. “A slimy green one? Or a fat purple one?”

  “Help out all Earthling kids,” he said. “Get Barney.”

  “Huh? Barney?”

  “You know, the fat purple one,” he said, then stopped. “Sorry.

  Forgot you weren’t brought up on Earth. You see, there was this television show where . . . and now I remember. It was a dinosaur . . . and it had been around forever . . . but it could have been an alien . . . and . . .”

  Catching my puzzled expression, he shook his head in disgust at himself. “Forget I even mentioned it. We’ve got serious business ahead of us.”

  We did.

  As usual for all robot work, we were in the computer lab. I was on my back on a narrow medical bed. I wore a snug jumpsuit, in military navy blue. My head was propped up on a large pillow so that the plug at the bottom of my neck didn’t press on the bed. This plug was wired to an antenna that was sewn into the jumpsuit.

  Across the room was a receiver that would transmit signals between the jumpsuit antenna and the computer drive of the robot.

  It worked just like the remote control of a television set, with two differences. Television remotes used infrared and were limited in distance. However, this receiver used X-ray waves and had a hundred-mile range.

  “Let’s go through the checklist,” Rawling said. “I know, I know. We’ve been through this before,” he said as I rolled my eyes. “But just like flying, safety is the first matter of importance.”

  With Rawling I knew better than to argue.

  Rawling began pulling straps across my legs to hold me tightly to the bed so I wouldn’t accidentally jump and break the connection between the antenna plug in my spine and the receiver across the room.

  “First,” Rawling said, “don’t allow the robot to have contact with any electrical sources. Ever. Your spinal nerves are attached to the plug. Any electrical current going into or through the robot will scramble the X-ray waves so badly that the signals reaching your own brain may do serious damage.”

  Rawling tightened the straps across my stomach and chest.

  “Second,” Rawling said, “disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot’s computer drive. Your brain circuits are working so closely with the computer circuits that any harm to the computer may spill over to harm your brain.”

  Rawling placed a blindfold over my eyes and strapped my head in position.

  “Understood and understood,” I said.

  “Lastly,” he said, “is the robot battery at full power?”

  “Yes. And unplugged from the electrical source that charges it.”

  The robot was at the far end of the dome, near the entrance.

  Since the receiver worked at a distance, it wasn’t necessary to keep it nearby. Before coming to the lab, I’d made sure the robot was ready for use.

  “Good, good,” Rawling said, squeezing my shoulder. “Any last questions before I soundproof you?”

  “No,” I said confidently.

  “You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you?”

  It was dark for me under the blindfold, but I grinned as if I could see Rawling’s face.

  “Big time,” I said. The robot was a freedom that made up for my crippled body. No one else could wander the planet like I could.

  “Then let’s go.” He placed a soundproof headset on my ears.

  The fewer distractions to reach my brain in my real body, the better.

  It was dark and silent while I waited for a sensation that had become familiar and beautiful for me. The sensation of entering the robot computer.

  My wait did not take long. Soon I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.

  I kept falling and falling and falling. . . .

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  As I lay on the bed in the computer lab, light patterns from the other end of the dome entered one of the robot’s four video lenses.

  Translated digitally into electrical impulses, that light followed the electronic circuitry into the robot’s computer drive. From there, the electrical impulses were translated into X-ray waves that traveled through the dome to the receiver in the computer lab. From the receiver, the waves beamed to the wires in my jumpsuit, which were connected to the antenna plug in my spine. As the electrical impulses moved up the nerves of my spinal column into my brain, my brain did what it always did when light entered my real eyes and hit the optical nerves that reached into my brain—it translated the light patterns at the far end of the dome into images I could recognize.

  A similar process also allowed the robot to hear—but through sound waves that reached my own ear canals.

  No differently than thinking about moving one of my own

  arms, I thought about moving the robot arms. And instantly it happened. I brought both my titanium hands up in front of a video lens and flexed my fingers, wiggling them to make sure everything worked properly.

  That’s when the sound waves of a female voice entered the robot speakers and instantly entered my own brain.

  Actually, it was more like the sound waves of a female scream.

  I switched to my rear video lens. The image of a female

  jumping backward entered the computer and instantly entered my own brain.

  It was her. The girl I had seen the night before was standing a few feet away from me. Evidently she’d recovered quickly from the scare of meeting the robot; she now stared with open curiosity.

  As a robot, I was about her height. My video lens looked directly into her face. From this close distance, I saw her eyes were brown. She wore tiny, silver cross earrings.

  I rolled my wheels forward a few inches and backward a few inches.

  She jumped again.

  “Greetings, Earthling,” I said. The robot’s voice box worked like a telephone. Although it was capable of sounding exactly like my own voice, words tended to come out more mechanically. In speaking to this girl in front of me, I dragged out my words and talked in a nasal tone, just like I’d heard fake robots talk in science fiction movies I’d watched on my DVD player. I don’t know why I decided to do this; it must be just because I have a weird sense of humor and she was too new to the dome to know this robot was actually hooked up to a person.

  “You can talk?” she said, surprised.

  “Yes, Earthling. I can do many simple things. I can add two plus two. It equals four. Am I right?” I kept talking in that nasal, fake robot voice.

  “Yes!” she said. “What about eight times eight?”

  “Sixty-four, Earthling. Did you not know yourself such simple mathematics?”

  “Of course,” she said, folding her arms. “I was just testing you.”

  “Testing? What is testing?” I asked. This was fun.

  “I guess if you had real brains you’d know, wouldn’t you?” she replied smugly.

  Ouch. I deserved that.

  She stepped closer to me and looked me up and down. I knew what she was seeing.

  The lower body of the robot was much like my wheelchair.

  Instead of a pair of legs, an axle connected two wheels. Just like a wheelchair, it turned by moving one wheel forward while the other wheel remained motionless or moved backward.

  The robot’s upper body was a short, thick hollow pole that stuck through the axle, with a heavy weight to counterbalance the arms and head. Within this weight was the battery that powered the robot, with wires running up inside the hollow pole.

  At the upper end of the pole was a crosspiece to which arms were attached. The arms were able to swing freely without hitting the wheels. Like the rest of the robot, the arms and hands were made of titanium and jointed like human arms, with one difference.

  All the joints swiveled. The hands, elbows, and shoulder joints of the robot could rotate in a full circle, as well as move up and down.

  The hands, too, were like human hands, but with only three fin
gers and a thumb instead of four fingers and a thumb.

  Four video lenses at the top of the pole served as eyes. One faced forward, one backward, and one to each side.

  Three tiny speakers, attached to the underside of the video lenses that faced backward and sideways, played the role of ears, taking in sound. The fourth speaker, underneath the video lens that faced forward, produced sound. This was the speaker that allowed me to make my voice heard.

  The computer drive of the robot was well protected within the hollow titanium pole that served as the robot’s upper body. Since it was mounted on shock absorbers, the robot could fall ten feet without shaking the computer drive. This computer drive had a short antenna plug at the back of the pole, to give and take X-ray signals.

  It was an ugly body, all right, but in her eyes probably better than the crippled body of a kid her age.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, smiling. She tilted her body left, and rested her right hand on her right hip.

  I had to think quickly. I’d never thought of the robot having a name. I didn’t want to give her mine. It might be fun to keep secret as long as possible that I was directing the robot from my real body.

  “Bruce,” I replied, grabbing the first name that came into my mind.

  “Bruce?” She smiled again. I liked that smile. “How did you get a name like that?”

  “From my mother,” I said in a weird, slow robot voice.

  From my mother? What kind of dumb answer was that? If I had robot legs, I’d have kicked myself.

  She laughed. “Ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer. My name is Ashley.” She stuck out her right hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  I shook her hand with my titanium one, careful not to squeeze too hard. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “Well,” she asked, “could you give me a tour of the dome?”

  A tour of the dome. I could get to know her as the robot, and she wouldn’t have to stare at my crippled body in my wheelchair.

  That didn’t sound too bad.

  “Later, please, Earthling,” I answered. “When I return.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, confusion on her face.

  “To save all other Earthlings,” I said. “It should not take me long.”

  I wheeled away and headed toward the dome entrance.

  She waved good-bye, giggling—probably at how stupid I was.

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