I woke up Wednesday morning, Feeling stiff, with the girls on my arms I hadn’t been able to move all night. I was stiff in another way, a combination of a full bladder and morning wood. I nudged Jill to wake her. When her eyes managed to focus, She smiled and stretched.

“Deja vu all over again?” I asked softly.

She grinned and jumped out of bed, headed to the bath. The motion of the bed woke Claudia. She was one of those people who need coffee before they can function in the morning. She grumbled her way out of bed and stumbled toward the bath as Jill came out. I pointed at Claudia and mouthed the word ‘coffee’ to Jill, who nodded and headed for the kitchen. Soon I was able to get to the toilet. Claudia was still dressing as I came out. I dressed quickly and went out to the kitchen, and got cups out while waiting impatiently for the pot to finish. Jill ran off to get dressed. The pot finished it’s cycle and I poured three cups, setting them on the table as Jill steered Claudia to a chair We sipped our coffee in silence, watching Claudia slowly come to life. Claudia had to leave, almost at once, to get changed for her classes, Jill had a little time and had clothes here to wear today. Claudia ran out to a beat up Volkswagen I hadn’t noticed and buzzed off down the road. Jill and I got ourselves together and were soon on our way to the campus.

Today’s class and lab session were moderately interesting and passed quickly. By 1:00 I was back at the house. Conner was there, stringing a temporary phone line from the house to the shed. I had to make the request for the new phone lines, managing to get an installation date on Monday. About 2:30, a car I didn’t know pulled up. Jill and Lisa piled out and the car disappeared down the street.

We went inside and were soon working. I thought the proposed game would take at least three computers, on for the player, one for the backgrounds, and one for the NPCs that the player would interact with. Conner considered this for a moment.

“The better game consoles have multiple processors,” he finally said, “we might have to restrict the game to those. Folks that like to use their computers might get left out.”

“Yeah, and the bandwidth requirements would rule out running the whole thing on remote servers.” I observed.

We were still kicking ideas around when Claudia walked in, said ‘hi’ to everyone and went to her desk, she pulled out a notebook, checked the phone for dial tone, and started making calls. She spoke briefly to each one, occasionally making notes. I had Conner lay between the scanner panels, and had him identify the various sights and sounds from the past weekend. I did the same with Lisa. I had Jill lay down and asked Conner to show her a series of pictures I’d printed while I told Lisa to keep herself busy, facing away from them. When they finished, I had Lisa lay down again, with her eyes closed. I asked her to identify each image as she ‘saw’ it. All of the pictures were of well known landmarks. I started playing Jill’s scan and Lisa started declaring what she saw. Conner went through the pictures, as Lisa named them, nodding slightly to himself at each correct answer. When it ended, Lisa sat up.

“What was all that?” asked Lisa

Conner handed her the pictures

“You were ten for ten.” said Conner.

“What are you guys doing?” asked Claudia, finished with her calls for the moment.

“It’s a kind of computer/brain interface,” I said, do you have a textbook for one of your classes that gives you trouble?”

“Don’t we all?” she answered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This pile of crap.” she dug in her bad and produced a thick volume titled ‘Studies in Marketing’, this thing is so badly written, it would put anyone to sleep.”

I looked at Conner and nodded, he sat at another desk and rattled keys for a moment, studied the screen briefly and rattled keys again. A few seconds later, he handed me a thumb drive. I had Claudia replace Lisa, and told her to close her eyes and relax. I hit her with the sleep program, then played the thumb drive through Jabberwocky. This would take a bit over an hour. While we waited, we had coffee and talked. About an hour later the computer dinged.

“Three minute warning.” I said, “Jill, could you get her a cup of coffee?”

Claudia’s eyes snapped open and she immediately went into her wake up grouch phase. She smelled the coffee, and reached eagerly for the cup.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded, “I never go to sleep like that.”

“Well,” I said, “I put you to sleep, and we helped you.”

“What?”

“How far are you in that book in class?” I asked.

“Maybe a third of the way in.” she answered.

I grabbed the book and opened it at random in the back half, flipped acoupe of pages and read the section title aloud. Claudia began to speak, reciting the first two paragraphs before I stopped her.

“What the . . .?” she trailed off.

“You now have this book memorized,” I told her. “this is how we all have so much free time.”

“And you can do this for any class?” she asked.

“Except for classes that are based on physical skills,” I said, “this wouldn’t do for fencing, for instance.”

“Can you do this for all my classes?” she asked

“Bring me digital copies of all your text books and transcribed lectures,” I said, “and you could challenge all of your classes by next week.”

“Wow,” Claudia breathed, “What else can you do?”

“Well,” I said again, “our current goal is to include a full tactile experience for gamers.