Set The Ray To "Jerry"
An amazingly accurate science phiction metaphor in relation to our "reality"

Chapters
1. SIgmond Floyd designs video headset
2. Sigmond builds the device's initial presets
3. The record store and the keychain
4. Keychains evolve
5. Mass-spread of the device
6. New elaborate "keychains"
7. The end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine...)

1. Sigmond Designs Headset

It was a rainy afternoon on Howe Street. Not many residents were out and about on this particular afternoon. I can recall, as I was their bicycle delivery person, that the wind was whipping around Chapel Street over by Claire's at speeds in excess of that which caused their public lawn furniture to blow away.

The request at Miya's that afternoon was for me to deliver some seared tuna sashimi and edimame over to an apartment on Crown Street. So I rode my bicycle over to Miyas in time to pick up without having to wait too long. Sigmond the inventor and Matthew, a freelance engineer, were sitting at the sushi bar, sitting with the left-by remains of a lunch that had long since passed in time. They apparently had been talking for quite a while.

I overheard only some of their conversation. But this is what they said:

Sigmond: "Yes, so the idea for that invention would be to save kids' knees by absorbing the shock from vibrations to the deck."
Matthew: "Sig, that's a wonderful idea but I have something even better. I'd like you to consider this. An optometrist contacted me with a bit of a decent concept. It would be a video headset."
Sigmond: "A video headset, eh? What do you suppose that would look like? Hmm. Something that sits on your head."
Matthew: "He was imagining that it would be something like a pair of eye glasses, or goggles, where an input transmits something onto the screen. Can you build that for me?"
Sigmond: "I'd have to check the lab for parts, and see what I had available. Hmm, let me think. Optics... Optics... I don't have a whole lot but like I said, if I had to order some things, it could take a little longer, depending on the distributor of the parts that I would need. But, yeah, that would be not a problem to build. No trouble at all.

Weeks Later

Not too much longer, Sigmond put together the parts for the device. The screen had to be in balance with the focus of the eyes, so he had to research the degree of blur required to make an image physically millimeters from the eye appear to be eight times the size, and encompass ones' entire vision. The optics were by far the most impressive feature of the entire design.

Then he used a fisheye lens on the exterior of the device. By concaving the image on the screen, and using a fisheye, it kept the distorted image into the same perspective. It truly was like seeing with your own eyes, only through pixels. So he tried to make the pixels really small. Determining that he needed to have a processor which could carry the level of resolution that he wanted, but that the processor wouldn't be running other software, he picked a miniature quad core, with each of the cores running different parts of the light spectrum. But there was one of the cores that would not be used.

Sigmond's desk was cluttered, by the end, with fragments of little pieces of things. Small shards of former video cameras, computer processors, and eye glasses that had been redesigned and redeployed as different items. It was, in essence, a frankenstein of an invention.

He put them on his head for the first time ever. He walked outside and saw a rain storm, passing over the city from his balcony. He zoomed in on a plant that swayed in the breeze. He focused the lens on the tiniest fragment of a droplet, just one water droplet, with the reflection of the balcony light refracting from one particular angle of the droplet. With that, he knew a few things.

First, that it worked correctly. He promptly went into his kitchen and fixed himself some coffee. This was big, he thought. This could be really big. This could change lives, he thought, as the coffee was brewing. I gotta call Matthew, he thought, then he hesitated. Wait. I can't give up this invention, his thoughts continued. I can't have Matthew running around with this thing, acting like it's his. What's the price for a thing like this?

Just then, the phone rang. It was Matthew. Sigmond, against his best interest, picked up the phone. "Eh, hello Matthew. How's it going?"

Matthew: "Hey Sigmond, what's new? How's that invention I gave you the idea for?"
Sigmond: "Oh, the invention... Yes! It goes great. Truly. It's going to be wonderful."
Matthew: "Are you near the completion of the project?"
Sigmond: "It's getting near... It's almost completed."
Matthew: "Well, when's it going to be ready?"

Sigmond then realized that he had to make up a bit of a fib just to get what he needed for a while. He needed a little more time.

Sigmond: "Hey, well, yeah, you know what I was saying about the distributors? I need this one particular optic part, and it's extremely rare, and we want this one particular one."
Matthew: "Yeah, oh yes, we need to get the right one."
Sigmond: "Well, in order for us to get it, we're going to need to wait until they make more."
Matthew: "What's it going to take for them to make more?"
Sigmond: "We might need to order a dozen, just to get the ball rolling."
Matthew: "Oh crap! How much is that going to cost?"
Sigmond: "They're a dime a dozen. Just kidding. Well, they are if a dime is a thousand dollars."
Matthew: "A thousand dollars each? What are we going to do with the extra ones?"
Sigmond: "That's for us to find out, I suppose."

So Matthew agreed to throw down the twelve thousand dollars for a one dozen shipment of a part that he wasn't even aware of the exact specifications of.

The catch was that Sigmond had already used the only video microprocessor of its caliber that he was aware of. It was such because it was meant for an invention of a different sort (See the "Nuclear Laser Project"), but that particular project was disassembled, but certain parts still existed.

But Sigmond was actually speaking of a different processor that was similar, but more widespread and available. Plus he needed to make rent. Plus his idea was to make a batch of video headsets, now that he had figured out how to build one.

One of the batches would be sent to the Library of Congress. He had a deal with them, where they were keeping all first runs of his designs and inventions because of how prolific he was. He usually sent the prototype of anything he thought would be significant or important over to them, in physical form. It beat the heck out of anything he could say about it on paper, that was for sure. Plus, he thought awfully highly of himself. He pictured it all in a museum someday. An odd collection of designs and inventions from the 21st century.

But another of the copies he would keep for himself, and do peculiar things with. He had realized, back on the balcony, looking at the plant with the rain droplet, that the invention had way more potential beyond what it originally appeared capable of. It wasn't entirely certain what the future of this strange device would be.

Though certainly it would be amazing.

2. The pre-sets

Sigmond took the device onto his workbench and plugged into his mainframe computer. he had several computers scattered throughout his room. All were connected by one cable, whcih snaked around desks and drawers, cabinets and other storage containers, around his door and underneath the two west-facing windows.

The device was plugged into his desktop to show what was on screen in the viewer. He used the desktop as a monitor and headed over to his laptop. On the laptop, he began to reprogram the device so that it would work just the way he wanted.

First, he found an old camcorder. It was a DCR HC30 camcorder from the mid-2000's. He opened up its internal files and extracted a code which let him place images on screen, which could be used as a menu. One of the first things he did was add a brightness/contrast feature.

"This is great," he said when he put on the headset again. The room was rather dark, but he adjusted the contrast. "This is much better than my eyes. I can even use them as sunglasses."

But he then began to envision what other kinds of things he could add. So he just downloaded the entire range of options from the camcorder. All of the inputs and lens filters, the sepia tones for when he felt a little old; the bitmap when he was feeling quite pixellated. Now he was living in his own home movie.

Next, he unplugged the camcorder. He had downloaded everything fom it that he could have downloaded. So he wired the video headset so it would route all of the images into the camcorder, and he could pick and choose when to record from it. Having all of the code inside of the headset, he was able to manipulate the recording feature the same way he was able to adjust the brightness and the contrast. So he kept the camcorder in his pocket, at all times. Except now he was able to record, without using the videocamera.

Life was about to get very interesting.

The first thing he did was try to walk outside of his room. It was very disorienting. He took one step towards the door, and had to look at his hand. "Is that really me, there, or am I dreaming?" He wasn't really sure. He looked down at his hand, through the eyes of the videocamera. he moved it around, and felt his muscles pull his fingers towards and away from eachother. It was verified, that he was movign his hand, and it was not just a video of his hand being moved. This was real life, and he was watching it through the lens of a video camera. Only now he still had to manage to get his hand to reach for the doorknob, which was only a few feet away.

He struggled to approximate the distance between his hand and the doorknob. He kept reaching out and bumping into other things besides the knob. He knocked over a book on a shelf right next to the door. Then finally his fingertips made contact with the doorknob, and he was able to exit the room. Next came steps.

So he took little tiny ones, tiny miniature steps down the hallways and around the corridors through to the other side of his labyrinth apartment. The vast loft spaces at Dagger Square was no match for his ability to lose himself in video land. He felt as if he were playing a very bad episode of Wolfenstein 3D. But the sword was not in his hand, he had no knife or weapon. This was unusual for a first person shooter. Still, he felt danger lurked around every corner. Perhaps there would be a warewolf, or a German soldier, ready and waiting to unleach massive firepower to lose his energy life force.

Oh crap. The battery.

At that point, Sigmond realized that he was losing his battery power. He had left the device on the entire time while he was modifying it for the purpose of adding in all the additional components. Furthermore, it was quite possible that he would have to take off the device quite soon becasue the screen would go blank and there would be no more to see.

Still, it worked though. He was geting better at walking around. He saw the elevator down the hallway. So he walked towards it. All of a sudden, there was a voice which came from somewhere; but exactly what direction was unknown.

"Sigmond? Is that you?" said Conrad Doyle, the great literary writer who lived in the building.
"Yeah, Conrad. It's me. I'm here. I'm just..."
"What's that thing on your head, man? You look all geeked out, like a geekin' robot."
"It's my new invention. I'm trying it out."
"New invention? Looks like some crap you bought at Radical Shanty."
"Some of it is. Well, most of it. What's important is what it does, though," he said as he made his way towards to elevator. He kept running into the walls, bumping into things, and functioning as a practical mess as he made his way along with Mr. Conrad.

"You're not too handy in that thing, are ya?" Said Conrad. It was true. The inventor was awful at navigating around at first..

"I'm having a little difficulty with it, that's for sure."

But they got where they were going and then the elevator door closed and a private conversation began, which could not be repeated.

"What are you trying to do, Sigmond? Enslave us all?"
How prophetic. The writer seemed to feel certain about something that had not yet occurred.
"What do you mean, Conrad? I'm just having fun."
"You call that fun? Wait til everyone on the planet wants a pair. Then we'll see what fun is."

Conrad looked annoyed. Sigmond was perplexed. How could he do this, seem so indignant over the cause for the video headset? Sigmond quietly stood with the goofy headset on, trying to not feel unfomfortable in the elevator.

"what could be better than this? We can't get enough television so now we have to watch the world as on ebig TV show. Is there ever any rest from this? I spend my whole life trying to get away from people who watch TV shows. Now you got that thing on your head, and you're watching me like a TV show. I don't see where they get the balls to call that crap "reality." I'm not on your stupid show. I'm a real human being, and I wont have any of your foolishness.

and then the young man-turned-robot stepped out to meet the world and see what he could see. First he wandered towards the hospital he always walked by . The people thought he might be blind, or that he was getting over some form of blindness or light sensitivity. Then, he walked around to the carts of vendors selling tacos and sushi to the hospital staff who frequented their sidewalk curbside vending carts. He got in line as normal, and then began to zoom in on the particles of steam from the broccoli, in a small metal container. The zoom feature of the headset was sufficient to make out great detail of these miniature organisms that composed the broccoli. The organisms were called cells. All of the cells happened to be broccoli cells, composing and assembling to form a piece of broccoli. But inside they were made of smaller parts, and the headset helped him realize this, and prepare for the onslaught that would incur of the robot ever attracted the attention of the authoities, which would indeed occur if the wrong person saw him crossing the street.

Finally he was next in line at the burrito kart.

"My good man,

3. The record store and the keychain


The morning that the programming was completed, Sigmond made himself a very elaborate breakfast and ate it by himself as the sunshine entered the room. It was Sunday morning, early springtime. Daybreak was right around the corner, and he was quite assuredly optimistic about anticipating an interesting summer.

"I wonder if I could make it look as if it were raining outside, somehow," he thought to himself. Nothing was ever done with the man's ideas. In just one moment, his feeling of completion was swept away from him and he felt instantly compelled to persue the sensation of completion which was within his grasp yet had suddenly again turned on him and became so elusive.

So it was back to the lab.

Sigmond plugged the processor into the central mainframe of his home computer network, and ran some analytic system scope. Determining that he had an entire core of his processor still available, he configured QuadCore#4 to operate a new program that he designed and called under the file header, "Object_Insert"

Object_insert was a whole new concept to the video headset. In his first attempt to create an object_insert, Sigmond discovered that he could essentially build something out of the existing video, by adding effects to the images that he saw. Fog and rain were simple. There were already fog and rain algorythms available, so he found the best one, and put it into the central processor.

Then he ran a new menu screen. This was the first time that there were ever options available. This part was intensely computeriffic. Instead of simply loading the video from processors 1, 2, and 3, the video headset now had options available. Did you want fog? Did you want a better resolution or to change the resolution? And this became much more elaborate, as his programming extended for days, weeks, months.

An entire year later, after a disappointingly uneventful summer, Sigmond was back in his kitchen, eating an elaborate breakfast, thinking optimistically about a very interesting future that he had designed for himself. Some time between the previous October and January, he had begun working on a very complicated algorythm for advanced object insertion. Perhaps it was out of sheer boredom. Maybe he did it because he really wanted to see robots and dinosaurs. Regardless of the case, the point was that it was awesome.

Also he had designed a series of keychains. One looked like a robot. Another appeared to be a dinosaur. And a third was considered to be a pirate. A fourth was a very pretty girl. And there was a skeleton, as well.

The keychains had transmitters inside of them. The transmitters worked with a new reciever that was built into the video headset. The receiver took in the transmissions and generated the image that was being sent by the signal, and inserted it into the screen. Anyone holding the dinosaur keychain on their person would appear to Sigmond to be a dinosaur. As with the skeleton man, the princess, the pirate, and the robot.

He sent the mold of these tiny devices over to a vinyl toy maker in China, where it was still legal to process the manufacture of vinyl toys. The toys came back in separate boxes, and were delivered to his doorstep, as all of his packages were.

On this amazing Saturday afternoon, Sigmond rode his bicycle downtown to the record store. Along the way, he ran into Meghan, who worked at the coffeeshop.

Sigmond:
Meghan:

Once the auxillary image implants were programmed, Sigmond realized there was some serious fun to be had. The first thing he did was put on the video headset and run to the park. He saw dogs, of course, as there were dogs that were being walked. None of them were programmed input dogs. But he did in fact spot a dinosaur, which was not something he often noticed.

So he went up to the dinosaur. "Hey Steve," he said. "You're looking rather paleolithic today."

Steve: "What do you mean?"
SIgmond: "Oh, I don't know. You just have this thing about you, where you look kind of jurassic."
Steve: "Hey, I know I'm getting old. But I'm not that old. Hmm. Are you talking about that keychain?"
Sigmond: "Yes! The dinosaur keychain. I certainly am referring to the keychain."
Steve: "What's with the weird gear that you have on? What's going on with the headset and everything?"
Sigmond: "Ah, the headset. It's my new invention. I call it the video headset."
Steve: "It certainly is a video headset. For sure. That thing is as big as your head."
Sigmond: "Hey, come on, it's not that big, is it?"
Steve: "Take that goofy thing off your head."
Sigmond: "No man, then you won't be a dinosaur."
Steve: "Why, do I look like a dinosaur in that thing?"
Sigmond: "You don't look like you do in real life, let me just put it to you that way."
Steve: "Hey, come on. Let me try to put that thing on my head.

So Sigmond took off the video headset and handed it to Steve, who carefully placed it on his head and turned it on. "Now I need glasses," said Steve, "is that going to affect things?"
Sigmond: "It really oughtn't. There's a blur reducer on the side."
Steve:"Oh. I got it. Wow. This is really neat. Everything looks like I'm watching it on video!"
Sigmond: Yes, it does. Certainly. Only it's happening in real life.
Steve: "Now what were you talking about, with the dinosaur?"
Sigmond: "Let me see your keys."
Steve: "My keys? Oh, yes, you mean the keychain that you gave me the other day. Ok, sure. Here you go. Just don't drive my Passat away. There's no way I'm catching you with this crazy gadget on my head."

Sigmond put the keys in his pocket, and the dinosaur signal was activated. In the vision of Steve, just as it had when it was in his posession, the dinosaur keychain sent out the signal of the image of a dinosaur. Sigmond looked like a cartoon tyrannosaurus. It was quite spectacular.

Sigmond: "Do you see what I mean?"
Steve: "Ah, now I see what you were saying about the vision thing. With the dinosaur."

Steve took the headset off and handed it to Sigmond. The two of them continued walking to the coffeeshop on the other side of the park. Steve looked at the world a little differently as they walked. He started trying to notice more detail in things with his real human vision. He felt as if the world seen with his own eyes should appear equally if not better than that of the world through the eyes of a machine. He thought much about what he might have been missing, simply by not noticing.

Steve: "Sig, you need to distroy that thing."
Sigmond: "What do you mean, Steve? I can't destroy the headset. This is my best idea ever."
Steve:"Yea, sure, but you you know what people are going to do with that thing?:
Sigmond: "I haven't really given it much consideration but I'm hoping they have a lot of fun with it."
Steve: "Oh, it's going to be more than just fun. They're going to be wearing these things everywhere."
Sigmond: "Well, that's OK. Everyone has their headphones on all the time.
Steve: "You're about to make that situation ten times worse. People are going to get these things whether they need them or not, just to have them.
Sigmond: "They do make the world look really neat, do they not?"
Steve: "Yeah, and when you take them off, the world looks like a totally different place. You better be careful with that idea of yours. It has some serious implications if it takes off like you want it to.
Sigmond: "Steve, I have no interest in marketing this thing commercially. I'm really just enjoying it for the fun of it."
Steve: "Well, the keychain thing threw me off."
Sigmond: "Everyone likes the keychains. Watch this for example."

The two of them entered the coffeeshop. Steve ordered a double espresso.

At first, the keychains were a big success. The first ones sold in the record store.