...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 13: Virtual Reality

Karen finished cooking eggs and sat down to eat her own breakfast. She sat near Dema and Cheryl so she could listen in. When Cheryl laughed at Dema's outburst, she did too.

Dema looked at Karen. "You two are in cahoots, I take it?"

"That we are. We're both a bit bummed that Ray is off on this plenum thing instead of finishing our latest adjustments to the model."

"But you can show us what you've got so far, right?" She reached over and grabbed Cern's arm, pulling him to her. He of course had been sitting beside her, taking it all in, basking in Dema's glow. He loved seeing her like this. It was a far cry from when she was in her Lamia the Avenger mode, tracking down evil-doers.

"You bet we can!" said Karen. "C'mon, Cheryl, let's give 'em the global tour!"

So Karen and Cheryl led them to the climate lab. There were big Mercator projection maps on two of the walls, with white-board markings all over them that appeared to show air and ocean currents. There were two computer consoles with wide screen displays, and two big recliners with what looked like some sort of fancy video game gear hanging from the arms. Karen ushered Dema to the chair on the left while Cheryl conducted Cern to the other one.

"Here, put these on!" Karen held up a pair of gauntlets that looked to Dema like hockey mitts. While she slipped her hands into them Karen picked up what could have been a motorcycle helmet, complete with a dark faceplate. As Karen started to drop it over her head Dema glanced at Cern, who was getting the same treatment and seemed to be okay with it. So she reminded herself she was in good hands and let her head be encased.

"Dark in here." Cern's voice was muffled by his helmet. "Am I supposed to be seeing anything?"

"Sorry, mate. It'll just take a mo' to bring up the system."

Dema began to see random flashes of light here and there, then suddenly the planet appeared beneath her. It was like hovering over Google Earth, almost like dropping into a shaman dream, but this was being done for her, not by her.

"Yeah!" said Cern, "That's better."

"Good. Now look at your hands."

Dema instinctively raised her hands and looked down at the same time. The image of Earth slid out of view, and her hands appeared in front of her. Except, they weren't her normal hands, and they weren't the gauntlets either. Instead it looked like she was wearing simple, close-fitting gloves.

"Okay, now look at Earth again. If you reach out toward it and then wave your hand in like you're summoning it, it'll come closer."

She did, and it did. It was like zooming in, except that with no room-reference like you'd have with a screen it felt a lot like falling toward it. She instinctively put her hand out to stop it, and it did, then it began receding. She experimented a bit and found that closing her fist got it to stay steady. Like a cop conducting traffic or something.

"Good Dema. We can see what you're seeing here on our screens, so we can guide you a bit. If you wave your hand like you're trying to spin a globe, the Earth will turn for you. Yeah, that's it. Works for up and down too. You got it. You're both catching on fine.

"Now, raise your other hand and look at the palm. Good. See that dashboard icon? Just tap it and it will expand and you can slide it around where you want it. Right. This is what we use to start the simulations. I can start one from here for you so you can get the idea. Since we were talking about snow before, let's start with the last ice age peak, the last twenty thousand years of global warming. You'll see the buttons flash on the dashboard as I go through the menus."

She did it too fast to really follow, but Dema could see that she clicked on 20k BP, Now and 1.00. Then she repositioned the globe so they were looking at Canada and the pole.

"This is going to run by in about a minute, so the minor oscillations will just be quick flashes."

The Start button flashed and Canada turned white, all the way from Greenland to the Pacific, and extending down below the Great Lakes. Slowly at first but then faster, the white began to recede, until the ground began to look 'normal'.

"Wow!" Dema breathed.

"Can we vary the speed? The time scale? How much?" asked Cern.

"Sure. You can go back billions of years and watch the tectonic plates slide around. Sorry though, you can't zoom in and watch dinosaurs."

"But we can zoom in some? Like to watch the Great Lakes form?" asked Dema. "I got a hint of that from what we just saw."

"Sure. Or you could zoom in on Puget Sound. That changes pretty dramatically too. There's an eruption of Mount Rainier that had a big effect."

"Yellowstone would be another place to watch," said Cern.

"It's all fascinating." said Cheryl, "But not terribly accurate. Right, Karen?"

"True. The data points are scarce, and get scarcer the farther back you go, so there's a lot of extrapolation involved."

"Same for scanning into the future, I suppose," said Cern.

"Right. There it's all extrapolation. All we have is the starting point."

"And even that is sketchy in a lot of areas," added Cheryl. "Most of our work is trying to make that better."

"I'll say," said Karen. "It's amazing how much changed when we started improving the ocean current model."

Dema and Cern had removed their helmets. Dema looked pensive. "I wonder how much better the data will get if Ray can really tap into the plenum."

Cheryl's eyes got big. "Wow! That could be huge! Let's go see if he's surfaced yet. Then we can ask him!"