...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 2-3: Cheryl on Q

Cheryl got it.

She was the one who was ready to jump in the VR chair and interact directly with the Q.

It was the hours she'd already spent trying to make sense of what she now called "the Q's core dump" that made her want to try it. That, and her confidence in both Ray and Dema to be her backup and guide her through the experience.

She had Ray enter the same priming data in the Q, but this time he would also present it to her in the VR space as an animated model floating in front of her, and show the Q's feedback to her the same way. The manipulator gloves let her filter the feedback, focus on part and shunt the rest aside until she was ready for it.

After a couple of hours of waving her hands around in mid air, she was ready for a break.

"That was intense!" she said as she took off the helmet. "From that starting point of a simple ocean current model, I got several variations I never would have thought of that could happen, would happen, under real conditions. Each one could be the basis for a ground-breaking research paper.

"And I've barely scratched the surface. It was like talking to the ocean! I could make a little change in one part of the model, send it back to the Q, and it would come back with several possible ways it could go from there.

"Well, tons actually, but it was like Dema said, my own thoughts were guiding it, and I could just know which responses were most realistic, and which ones I could leave for later."

She stopped and looked around. When she saw the look of rapture on Ray's face, she jumped up and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back. She said, "Ray, you've done it! It's a miracle! I could kiss you." 

He said, "Go ahead."

She did, and he kissed her back. Dema discretely left the room.

Later it was Cheryl's turn to talk in the lounge. She told them about her day.

"After that first session," She looked at Ray and blushed. "After that first session I went back in two more times. All three sessions were recorded. I can plug the best pieces straight into my model. Or I can use them to build a completely new model. This is the start of a whole new era in model building! We can create models interactively, working directly with the source of the actual data!"

Cheryl stopped to take a breath, and looked around. Then she said, "You need to try it, all of you! Who's next?"

Tengri spoke up. "Drake, I think it's your turn. It was you who promoted this idea of the Q, the plenum, as something real that gives us this link to life and thought."

"You're right. I really need to experience this for myself. Because from what Cheryl said there may be more to it than even I was ready to believe. Cheryl was talking about getting feedback from ocean currents. Ocean currents! Was she really sensing the flow of water directly? Or was it life forms in the water that were resonating with her thoughts? My original theory was biological, but what physicists mean by the plenum is something subatomic." He smiled at Cheryl. "There could be several papers for me in this too."