Double Cross Read Free Page B

the gravity was lower on Mars than on Earth.
    I kept the red balls in the air for another five minutes, remembering the first time I had sent the robot body outside the dome. Because Bruce delivered sights and sounds and sensations to my mind, it was almost like being outside in my very own body. Although the computer effects were very complicated, the theory was simple.
    I stopped juggling the red balls and began to describe it for my journal.
    In virtual reality, you put on a surround-sight helmet that gives you a 3-D view of a scene on a computer program. The helmet is wired, so when you turn your head, it directs the computer program to shift the scene as if you were there in real life. Sounds generated by the program reach your ears, making the scene seem even more real. 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. You see, 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. Instead, it takes all the information that’s delivered to it by your nerve endings from your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin and translates that information.
    In other words, the body is like an amazing 24-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 the robot could?
    Well, that’s me. The first human to be able to control a robot as if it were an extension of the brain. It began with that operation when I was little and …
    I heard voices outside my room.
    My parents.
    I quickly saved all I’d written into my journal and rolled out to the common area of our minidome to greet them. I knew I had some work ahead of me to convince them I should be able to leave the dome with Rawling. And this time, not through a robot that I controlled.
    But as myself.
    I was excited—and scared.

CHAPTER 6
    â€œA four-day trip away from the dome? That hasn’t been done in the last 10 years. And you’re saying Rawling wants to travel 200 miles?” My mother looked across at my father with concern on her face.
    The three of us sat in the center of our minidome—Mom and Dad in chairs and me, of course, in my wheelchair.
    Like every other minidome, ours had two office-bedrooms with a common living space in the middle. Because we only heated nutri tubes, we didn’t need a kitchen—only a microwave, which hung on the far wall. Another door at the back of the living space led to a small bathroom. It wasn’t much. From what I’ve read about Earth homes, our minidome had less space in it than two average bedrooms.
    â€œRawling says we’ll take a platform buggy,” I answered. “He’ll double up on all the food and oxygen and water just in case anything goes wrong.”
    Naturally, Mom picked up on the one word a kid should never use when trying to convince his parents of anything.
    â€œWrong?” she repeated with a quick turn of her head. “What does Rawling think might go wrong?”
    As a plant biologist, it was Mom’s job to genetically alter Earth plants so they could grow on Mars. Normally she was very businesslike. In fact, until a month ago, when Dad