The Dragon Man by Brian Stableford Page B

you understand what I mean by the generative code?”
    “I think so,” Sara said. “At bottom, everything in a machine is just a matter of switches being on or off. What you see in a window or a cocoon is a translation of a long string of ones and noughts.”
    “That’s right. A lot of what you see on your desktop screen or through a window starts out as a picture, which is converted into generative code so that it can be reproduced—and the picture can then be made to move by means of an animating program. But you don’t have to start with the picture. You can use code to generate imagery that no one has ever seen or imagined before: whole virtual universes, which can then be explored at the sensory level. Do you see what I mean?”
    “And that’s what you do all day—explore imaginary universes?”
    “I used to, when I was working full-time. I wrote code to generate alien virtual environments from scratch, then checked them out, to see whether any of them were interesting. In those days, I was looking for commercial exploitability. It’s how I made my money. Nowadays, it’s more of a...well, I suppose Steve would call it a hobby, because that’s what I’d call his junk-collecting. I’d probably call it a vocation, because that sounds much more serious. Not that I turn down the opportunity to earn more credit if I find something I can sell. Dragons were never my sort of thing, though. Somebody else collected the royalties on your little trip.”
    “I like dragons,” Sara said, defensively.
    “So I’ve noticed,” Father Lemuel replied—although, so far as Sara knew, he had never actually come into her room to see the models on her shelves or look through her picture window. “It’s okay to like dragons. The reason I started telling you all that was to explain why you can only go so far with dragons—or any other conventional invention of the imagination. Your own senses—touch as well as sight—have been shaped by millions of years of evolution to deal with the world you walk around in. Even virtual worlds that mimic the actual world as closely as possible can only reproduce an appearance, and your brain is never completely fooled by it. My cocoon is state-of-the-art, but state-of-the-art will never quite catch up with the texture of actuality, even with the aid of clever IT. You’ll never get an adrenalin rush from climbing in a cocoon that’s the same as the one you got from climbing the hometree, because your brain and your body will always know the difference. There are some kinds of experience where it makes very little difference—including school, playing games and chatting to your friends—but whenever an experience is really important to you, or whenever you want an experience to be really important, you’ll be aware of that margin. That’s why so-called VW addicts never really lose touch with reality. Reality is the only place you can get the whole sensation of touch.”
    Sara thought about that for a few moments before saying, “I really did enjoy it.”
    “I’m glad,” Father Lemuel assured her. “It was new, closer to real experience than you’ve ever been in a Fantasyworld before—but next time, you’ll be more conscious of the difference. And the time after that...well, I suppose I should let you find out on your own. It’s that old parental responsibility coming through again, always making free with the warnings and the sermons. You have to learn from experience to get the full benefit from your senses—all you’re born with is the potential. You’ll notice that more and more as you get older. Maybe we should have created more opportunities for you already, but parental committees always tend to take things slowly. Maybe it was different in the old days—but maybe not. Maybe two parents did just as much worrying as eight, but couldn’t share it out so easily.”
    “In the even older days long before the Crash,” Sara said, spotting an opportunity to show off her