Riding the waves

I spent far too much time thinking of an appropriate title for the maelstrom of stuff swirling around me at the moment. At the moment I still seem to be above the chaos and not in it, but some of those waves are looking pretty tall.
Long Term Projects: I have fleshed out several story tiers for my creative ventures. Maybe I'm the product of my environment. My parents visited us this weekend and I spent an hour or so describing the background and high-level story to my mother. Then, the next day, the book I'm currently reading flipped narrative directions and took the exact same approach I was describing, and there is an interview online of a guy heavily invested in the space-program espousing the exact philosophy I was planning to embed in my story. Equally disheartening and exciting.

As for the actual program. There were a few epiphany moments once I started breaking down some of the core concepts into actual processes and algorithms. Basically, the thing I want to begin with can be treated as a Board-Game with a twist. It sounds obvious, but somewhere in my head had been a voice saying "Well how the hell do you iterate through all the various options and keep the interactions straight?" Answer: Approach the logic as if it was a board-game with physical pieces. Once I started translating the things I wanted to happen into that space it helped me narrow down where I would need to limit abilities and how to define the 'rules' that will affect the 'board.'

 Exciting Technology: For the last few days I have had the opportunity to play with Virtual Reality equipment. An Oculus Rift DK2 paired with a Leap Motion Controller. It is extremely difficult for me to provide objective commentary. I've wanted something like this for as long as I can remember. Now that it is within striking distance I am recognizing just how far we still need to go before this will become 'better' than what we have now. Let me elaborate... What we're missing is a centralized, intelligent, low latency concierge of our various devices. Some kind of device or interface that recognizes the interfaces I have access to and binds them together seamlessly. If I start a game, and pick up a controller, the concierge should enable controller mode. If I start a program while wearing the Rift, the concierge should ensure that the program is started with the options and parameters necessary to display it on the display. Instead, what I have now is a situation where I have to manually add, drop, reorder, reconfigure my various input and output devices to trick the computer into treating the Rift as just another screen that just happens to be displaying content that looks 3D when viewed through the lenses. It's part of the fun of new technology for me, and to be 100% clear, the DK in DK2 stands for Developer Kit. What I am saying is that the Oculus will suffer along with all the other custom interfaces that PC users have had access to through the years. Some of them work great right out of the box, while others require some tuning, scripting, driver juggling, etc etc before it will be recognized by the program that maybe it was never intended to support. A low latency concierge could subvert that by simply mapping the input generated by the device the user is touching to the codes the program is expecting. The concierge would also be content aware. If I'm looking at a screen and a notification or other program wants to pop up a message it should pop up at the periphery of the screen I'm looking at, not smack in the center. Now I'm just daydreaming. The Rift, once it is running and humming along is fantastic. The sense of presence in a scene is shocking, and after showing it off to a few people around the office and at home the response has been overwhelmingly positive, despite the limited calibration and customizing for individuals I was able to do. More on this once I've had a chance to digest and process. But if this is where the future is going... sign me up.

Interrogation Logs: Resistance Subject 00342

Listen, the mind is a terrible thing. It can betray you. These words are hitting your consciousness and you're already discarding them as 'silly.' That's your mind protecting itself from the truth. My name is Michael and my mind betrayed me.

I don't know how I am speaking to you. My body hasn't been my own for so long, my senses bludgeoning my awareness with data I have no way to respond to... maybe I'm finally insane. Maybe you're my delusion. A spark of comfort imagined from this sea of torment. I was never this eloquent in my body. I had the words. I was educated, damn it. But my vocal cords would stumble and blunder while enunciating, so I keep things simple. When you're a cop in a big city big words come from the people that make your day hell. Nosey detectives. Supervisors. The Governor's office. Any number of alphabet-goons looking down their noses at the local 'talent' they are saddled with. So you keep it to yourself. Internalize. And slowly it atrophies. That itch between your eyes when someone says 'irregardless.' That sigh when you're reading barely legible memos from your superiors. You trade it all in for the occasional slap on the back and the invitation to the neighborhood barbeque. The alternative is lonely.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some suffering genius. I'd say I'm comfortably above the median of the bellcurve. Hell, I'm dumb enough to spend 25 years on the same beat, when I know damn well the asses that needed kissing for me to move up the chain of... Don't go! Wait! It's been so long. I can feel you there. I know you want something from me. This part of me. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.

My memories? Memories are strange here. Out there they seemed like fleeting mists. Distractions. In here... I wish I had better memories. I wish I could bear to face her without... You want the beginning.

I remember being afraid. I am sitting at my desk at the station. My keyboard under my fingers, my eyes on the pages of my pocket notepad propped under the screen. My eyes are on the words, but I don't see them. I feel my pulse pounding in my ears. Sweat beading on my skin. The constant drone of the big room filled with people is a muted hum in my ears. I can hear the electronic whine of my monitor, I can see the film of dust forming around the pictures of my family under the screen. My legs are shaking. I can feel the panic forming behind my eyes. I know that it is panic. I know what my body wants to do. I know that I'm losing control. My hands shake as I lift them from the keyboard and slowly reach for the foam globe my shrink gave me during our last session. Destroy enough office equipment and they send you to a shrink. I close my eyes and my hand tightens around the foam. Knuckles cracking. Tendons stretching and contracting. Skin white from the pressure. I don't scream. I don't wail. I keep it inside. I don't scream. I don't scream. My chest hurts. Hurts bad. Like I've been running. I hunch forward, eyes closed, fist pulsing, and try to breathe. A phone rings. It won't stop. Stop! STOP!

"STOP!!"

The room is silent except for the whine from dozens of screens and the traffic outside.

I keep my eyes closed. I know what's coming next. The muttering. The anxious laughs. The concerned coworkers. The meeting with the supervisor. I take deep breaths while wondering if I managed to kick my chair away when I lunged forward. The room stays silent. I smell gunpowder. I SMELL GUNPOWDER! My hand is holding something. I know it's my pistol. I KNOW it's my pistol. Why am I holding my pistol? When did I... My eyes are still closed. I can't. Why? I'm shaking but my shoulder and arm don't. I can't feel them. What did I do? What have I done! I don't want to see this. I don't want to see the fear in their eyes. The doubt. The disgust... I can't. I picture the gun under my chin. The flash of heat. I open my eyes and see my arm holding my smoking pistol. It is gripped in fingers I can't feel. Can't twitch. The arm held forward rigidly while the rest of me shakes like a leaf. I see the others in the periphery. I see my fellow officers, secretaries, perps, persons of interest... and none of them are looking at me their eyes fixed on the floor in front of my desk. I can hear the screams now. Screams that don't matter because there's something laying in front of my desk, out of my sight. I'm panting. I can't catch my breath. I picture a child. I can see enough of the floor to know it couldn't hide a man or woman unless they were small. WHY WON'T ANYONE MOVE TO HELP!? Suddenly my arm drops and the pistol rattles off my keyboard and onto the floor. I can move again and I stumble sideways to see what I have done.

That was the first time we saw one. One of them.