Martin H. Greenberg & John Helfers (ed) by Man vs Machine

Author:Man vs Machine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-12T00:19:45+00:00

and pulling until suddenly Hayden found himself looking up at himself. A more robust version of himself, he found himself admitting, but there could be no mistaking who the soldier was supposed to be.

"Cute," he called up to the unseen, watching Pietro.

"You must have, what, a dozen digital cameras in here to get the morphing on the face right, yeah? I thought so. That's not how you're going to impress me."

"No, son," Pietro answered. "You're supposed to impress me. I've frozen the sim--"

"--to give me a little time to get used to the controls. Yeah, yeah, I get it."

"I hope like hell you don't talk this way to your regular sergeant, son," Pietro grumbled. "Give a signal when you're ready for insertion, and it'll be go time. Good luck," he added, and cut the connection.

"I don't, sir," Hayden grumbled, and addressed the control configuration. A few quick strides took him to the spot directly in front of the pillar, where he gazed up at his virtual self in admiration. The controls were simple enough, he found--basic movement and look covered by the thumbsticks, with firing, reload, and weapons swap cycles handled through the buttons in a semi-intuitive pattern.

He'd heard about simulators like this, of course. Every tactical shooter fan had read a half-dozen press releases from various companies bragging about how the military had used their game as a supplementary trainer, or how the Army had bought some engine or other to develop a simulation. These stories always went away in a matter of weeks, only to be replaced by the next one, and eventually he'd stopped paying attention.

Apparently the Army hadn't, however, and he was impressed with what they'd done. Experimentally, he made his onscreen character dive, roll, and run while crouched. The animations on the character were smooth and flawless, the details on the characters perfect. Experimentally he squeezed off a couple of rounds, and felt the corners of his mouth quirk in pleasure as the spent brass spiraled down, gleaming in the sunlight.

"Whoever did this," he shouted up at Pietro and the ceiling, "deserves a bonus. Let 'er rip, Sarge." He flipped a salute at the unseen watchers, then planted himself, legs shoulder-width apart and posture easy, with the controller held out in front of him. Eyes on the screen above, he waited.

Precisely fifteen seconds later, all hell broke loose above him, which was just the way he liked it.

"I don't care what you say, that boy is not a soldier." Pietro let go of the microphone and sat back in his chair. To his left, a skinny man in what might have been someone's idea of a uniform poked at the buttons on a large console. Behind him, in full uniform, was a crewcutted slab of muscle and sinew who'd been introduced as Major Gerard, of the Army Simulation Exercise Initiative. With him were a couple of eggheads in white lab coats named Alfredsen and Seymour; they'd shaken his hand and then started fluttering around the

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