The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet Page B

quietly.
    Everyone nodded or answered in the affirmative. Surprisingly the only hesitation came from Dice, but in the end even he gave a yes vote.
    â€œAll right. Tomorrow we’ll pick up where we left off. Mike is scheduled for first thing in the morning. We’ll bring him in on the situation and give him a choice about whether he wants to continue with the program. Is that acceptable?”
    Chuck glanced around the table again. They were all sitting back in their chairs, smiling or looking thoughtful.
    â€œHe’ll stick it out,” Tim prophesied. “Guaranteed.”

Chapter 10
THE GOD WAVE
    â€œSo what is that, then?” Lanfen asked, running her finger along the bar of light that dominated the BPM’s touch screen. She glanced up at Matt.
    â€œWe haven’t actually named it yet,” he said. “Although I heard someone refer to it as the Tesla coil effect.”
    â€œThat’s a mouthful. I think you’re going to want something catchier for PR purposes.”
    He smiled. “Yeah. I’ll think about it. Right now what I’d like to do is see if you can reproduce it.”
    She stared at him but couldn’t read his face in the semidarkness of the delta lab. “Seriously? But I have no idea what Sara’s doing.”
    Matt crossed the darkened lab to stand at the edge of Lanfen’s workout mat. “She said it was like riding a horse at flank speed. I don’t suppose you ride?”
    â€œNo. Sorry.”
    â€œShe described a state in which everything she was doingwent from high tension to effortless. Like she was in sync. In the zone. Do you ever experience that while you’re doing kung fu?”
    â€œOf course—that’s basically a goal of the discipline.” Lanfen moved to stand beside Matt, gazing at the practice space and the currently inert robot. “So you’re hoping I can get into the zone and direct the robot from there.”
    â€œYes. Willing to try?”
    â€œYou bet. Hook me up.”
    She worked with the robot for over an hour, until she was weary and dripping with sweat. She’d managed to do most of the workout in a steady gamma state, but the elusive lightning refused to strike.
    â€œI’m too aware that I’m moving a foreign object and not my body,” she said. Sitting cross-legged at the edge of the mat, sipping water, she considered the problem that had both Matt and her frustrated. “There’s a disconnect. The bot is not me. Or it’s not enough like me to put me in the zone. Either way, I have to be too conscious of everything I’m doing.”
    Matt was silent for a long moment, then asked, “What if you were looking at the world from the robot’s point of view? What if you were looking out from inside the bot?”
    She thought about it for a second. “Well, I imagine that might improve my mental mapping. I’d still say the bot is pretty limited in the ways it can move, though.”
    â€œI’ll work on improving that,” Matt told her. “Though I can’t do anything about it immediately. The other part—the viewpoint issue—that I can deal with right now.”
    Lanfen looked at him askance. “Really? How?”
    â€œDice has integrated a VR helm into the rig in the alpha lab.”
    Lanfen gestured at the room. “Doesn’t do me much good down here.”
    â€œNo. We’re going to have to move you upstairs.”
    Her heart leapt. “Officially? I can be an official member of the program?”
    He shook his head. “Sorry, no. Not yet. I’m thinking spring of next year. In fact, I’d like your debut to be at the Applied Robotics show in April.”
    â€œThen we’d better get working on that VR component, Professor.”
    WHEN CHUCK BRIEFED MIKE ABOUT Sara’s new wave the next morning, the construction engineer took the news with characteristic tranquility. His only indication of