vantage or perhaps get lucky and see the missing girl inside one of the buildings. Henry clicked onto the workstation and the view displayed on the monitor was looking out from b ehind the bar at the Saloon. From this vantage Henry and the other controllers can see the Saloon is occupied by three of the Saloon girls. Each of them is dressed wearing tight corsets and feathers. A piano is playing. The room is dim, but sunlight is filtering in through the wide windows that look out onto the main street. The win dows are not clear, but they can make out the outlined shapes of men standing out front.
Henry clicks on the workstation again and instantly the display was changed. Now the view on the monitor is from outside, standing in the front of the Saloon. There are two other cowboys standing next to nearby. The monitor clearly shows the dusty main street of Squabash. Across the street is the barber shop with its distinctive candy striped pole. There are no people walking on the street or wooden sidewalks. The town is deserted. Inside the barber shop the barber is cautiously peering out through his wide window.
Henry clicks again and now the view shifts to across the street and Henry and the controllers are l ooking out from the Barbershop window. This is the same scene but from the opposite perspective , they are seeing through the eyes of the barber. From this perspective they can see the three cowboys standing guard in front of the Saloon. Two are thin, one is heavy.
There is no direct communication setup from the control room to the individual hosts. A public address was never installed system in the western t own. There was no way to contact them directly. When the team in the control room accesses a Synaptic Interface de vice wired onto a host cowboy they can see from the perspective of the host and they can monitor stat istics on the game related to each cowboy, but their ability to impact the action inside the game is quite limited. Inside the control room they had no more control than any of the remote players.
Henry opened a map display on a central vid-screen that depicted the town of Squabash from overhead. The position of each host was represented by a dot that would move about continually indicating the position of the host on the map and their relative position to other hosts. The color of the dot indicates the status of the relationship between the player and the host. If the host was fully compliant with the player’s remote commands then the dot displayed on the overhead map indicate s as green.
Yellow dots indicate the host was resisting th e remote player’s commands and r ed meant that the host was not responding to a player’s commands. A red dot meant we had a rogue cowboy.
The map display reminded Anand of the cut away views of human bodies that decorated Sahdna’s laboratory in Los Angeles. The dots moved about like synaptic impulses moving through the neural network of a strange animal. On the overhead display there were hundreds of dots moving about in and around the cut away buildings and on the s treets of Squabash. Most were green, a few were y ellow, and only one was red.
Henry used his work station controls to click on the red dot. A small display opened trailing behind the dot that indicated the Synaptic activity being transmitted to the remote player and viewers. This counter was designed to alert technicians if there was a failure in the Synaptic Interface device. Watching this display, Anand realized that if a host was killed in a real shootout using real bu llets, the control room moni toring the synaptic activity would watch as the counter drop ped to zero.
Henry typed in a command and a new window appeared with statistics about the rogue cowboy:
Name: Yang Wu
Role: Elijah - Outlaw
Age: 24
Sex: Male
Popularity: 83%
Player Control: 0%
Viewers: 2,678
As Anand watched the readout the number of remote viewers
Henry clicks on the workstation again and instantly the display was changed. Now the view on the monitor is from outside, standing in the front of the Saloon. There are two other cowboys standing next to nearby. The monitor clearly shows the dusty main street of Squabash. Across the street is the barber shop with its distinctive candy striped pole. There are no people walking on the street or wooden sidewalks. The town is deserted. Inside the barber shop the barber is cautiously peering out through his wide window.
Henry clicks again and now the view shifts to across the street and Henry and the controllers are l ooking out from the Barbershop window. This is the same scene but from the opposite perspective , they are seeing through the eyes of the barber. From this perspective they can see the three cowboys standing guard in front of the Saloon. Two are thin, one is heavy.
There is no direct communication setup from the control room to the individual hosts. A public address was never installed system in the western t own. There was no way to contact them directly. When the team in the control room accesses a Synaptic Interface de vice wired onto a host cowboy they can see from the perspective of the host and they can monitor stat istics on the game related to each cowboy, but their ability to impact the action inside the game is quite limited. Inside the control room they had no more control than any of the remote players.
Henry opened a map display on a central vid-screen that depicted the town of Squabash from overhead. The position of each host was represented by a dot that would move about continually indicating the position of the host on the map and their relative position to other hosts. The color of the dot indicates the status of the relationship between the player and the host. If the host was fully compliant with the player’s remote commands then the dot displayed on the overhead map indicate s as green.
Yellow dots indicate the host was resisting th e remote player’s commands and r ed meant that the host was not responding to a player’s commands. A red dot meant we had a rogue cowboy.
The map display reminded Anand of the cut away views of human bodies that decorated Sahdna’s laboratory in Los Angeles. The dots moved about like synaptic impulses moving through the neural network of a strange animal. On the overhead display there were hundreds of dots moving about in and around the cut away buildings and on the s treets of Squabash. Most were green, a few were y ellow, and only one was red.
Henry used his work station controls to click on the red dot. A small display opened trailing behind the dot that indicated the Synaptic activity being transmitted to the remote player and viewers. This counter was designed to alert technicians if there was a failure in the Synaptic Interface device. Watching this display, Anand realized that if a host was killed in a real shootout using real bu llets, the control room moni toring the synaptic activity would watch as the counter drop ped to zero.
Henry typed in a command and a new window appeared with statistics about the rogue cowboy:
Name: Yang Wu
Role: Elijah - Outlaw
Age: 24
Sex: Male
Popularity: 83%
Player Control: 0%
Viewers: 2,678
As Anand watched the readout the number of remote viewers
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