Page 39 - Unlikely Stories 3

Cyberceutics Deletes Obsessogens with Ping-a-Ding

to AIDS. The obsessogen triggers obsessive thoughts and behaviors
which are not rational; they keep coming back, they grow by
association and are very resistant to conventional therapies. In my text
I reify and simplify the cause of virtually every malady the mind can
suffer, linking it to functions of daily existence with which everyone is
involved. My conclusion is that obsessogens might be traced to specific
neurons in the brain. And there I leave it.”
Young Barfuss nodded. “I get it. You’ve planted the seed.”
“Right again. Then I transform into a different Doctor, one of
engineering and computer science. As you might have surmised, my
book was largely ghostwritten. So was my sonic location game, Ping-a-
Ding. I guess I’m entitled to credit as its designer; at any rate, as works-
for-hire, the copyrights to both are legally mine—and will pass to you,
because they are in the name of the holding company. If you’ve ever
played the game, you know that it requires the user to purchase
software for his or her computer. That application, once installed, links
to Ping-a-Ding’s main server in Finland. It also drives the output to a
set of headphones (which we also sell) capable of generating tones in
both audible and higher frequencies,and to a rotatable three-
dimensional screen image of a human head with the brain revealed.
The game can be played alone or with anyone else logged into Ping-a-
Ding. The system randomly generates a coordinate within the skull and
sends that position to the user over the network. The client-side
software creates a tone seeming to originate in that location. It does so
by means of the well-known psychological calculation which allows us
to tell where a sound is coming from based on the relative loudness
and time-delay of that binaurally-received sound. Artificial stereo takes
advantage of this built-in biological mechanism. The player uses the
mouse to choose and click on the screen image where he or she
believes that very brief ping is located, rotating the graphic to
triangulate it with vectors. If more than one player is active, they get
the same coordinates downloaded at the same time. The tone is
repeated at unpredictable intervals until it is found. The winner, if one
is playing against others, gets to it first; if playing the solitary version,
one attempts to improve against past scores. The game also has a
crucial feature: for practice, the user can indicate a location on the brain
image and get it pinged. This product is but one in a crowded field, and
would have only modest sales were it not for Cyberceutics.”

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