Chapter 17 Part 1
Sal nursed his drink. He could just discern the heads undulating on the stereophonic kinetic floor. He had made it a habit to profile people by figuring out where they would eventually occupy the floor.
The stereophonic kinetic floor would have been a hit at Woodstock if it had been invented a thousand years sooner. Most people at a concert would keep time to certain notes, and ignore other notes. Some people preferred the baseline. Others preferred the higher notes. The reason that concerts typically featured a wall of speakers was not so people could better hear the music, but so people could better FEEL the music inside themselves. The pressure waves from the sound would literally rattle their insides, and for a little while at a concert it was if people literally were the music.
When the holonosphere appeared, it did not take long for someone to carry this phenomenon a little farther. Instead of having pressure waves populate the area and saturate people's bodies, it seemed like an easier way would be to translate these sound waves into literal kinetic waves. If you took a membrane and caused it to vibrate at different rates in different places in time to the notes, then you could have people participate more fully in the music. Hence, the stereophonic kinetic floor was born. People on the floor would in actuality undulate to the music in addition to dancing to it. The membrane was, of course, generated with help from the holonosphere.
An unexpected aspect of the stereophonic kinetic floor, at least for Sal, had been the observation that certain kinds of people tended to cluster around certain notes. If you happened to frequent bars as often as Sal did, you began to get a sixth sense for who would end up where.
Sal like to amuse himself by testing his hypothesis. He had noticed a younger Asian girl who had entered the bar. She had her hair pulled in a combination of ceremonial buns on the side of her head along with multi-colored spikes in the middle. She wore a playful skirt, and seemed to be the kind of girl who was emotionally excitable. Sal pegged her almost immediately as being the sort of person who would, like a hummingbird, center on the high notes to obtain a maximum amount of bounciness.
The gentleman that was her escort, though, was another story. He was roughly six feet tall, darker raven hair, and had a stern countenance. Sal figured he would probably go nearer the baseline. Very often, couples would feature one bouncy person, and one person who was more the stabilizer.
As the two made heir way to the floor, Sal was not disappointed to discover his hypothesis was correct. The girl broke to the high notes almost instantly, whereas the taller gentleman took his time and found his place amongst the baseline. Even if people weren't making music with instruments, they did so with their beings.
Sal squinted as he looked down into his mug. The bright blue ale had a kick. He guessed they did not call it the Hyperspace Epileptic Tantrum because of its soothing properties. When he had ordered it, he had every intention of trying to ease his mind. Since he had learned what he had at Telray, there had been a tension inside of him he was finding difficult to shake. He was thankful Belvedere had found the solution to the problem posed to him, but his intuition told him that whatever Telray was planning to do, it was something more insidious than usual. It especially troubled him that Agron was involved so intimately. if Agron had seen it fit to cooperate with a shady underworld institution like Telray, the business that was about to be done had to be something several magnitudes more twisted than normal. The only good thing about it all was that he was in a position to potentially make some money since he had the only known solution to whatever deception it was that Telray and Agron were prepared to perpetrate.
A couple of stools down, some patrons were cheering. A few young men were playing a game of Bubble Joust. Bubble Joust was a drinking game enhanced by the holonosphere. Two competitors would find themselves on raised digital platforms. These platforms required a larger than average ability to maintain balance upon. One constantly had to shift their weight in order to stay centered on them. It wasn't particularly hard to manage for most people after an hour of practice. the movements became automatic, like the legs sailor develop on ships when the seas are turbulent.
What made Bubble Joust interesting, though, was that each person had a stick with which they would try to attack the other person. the objective was to knock the other person off, but not necessarily by hitting them so hard they fell. Since the platform was constantly shifting, it was usually enough to nudge them. Patrons would gather and take bets on who would win. The losers would have to take a drink--including the guy who fell off the platform. The another round would start, and the person who had the round in him would have to fight against the alcohol, the platform, and the other guy all at once.
