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It was a rainy February day in Eugene, Oregon. The year was 2004, but in my experience most February days in Eugene are rainy. Pacific pressure systems careen over the Oregon Coast drenching the Willamette Valley before dropping snow on the Cascade Mountains.
My body was in the library trying to get into the second semester of my first year of law school. My brain was freediving off the coast of Oahu. I tried to bring my thoughts back to Oregon, but they rested somewhere in the middle. Mulling over if there was anyway to simulate the experience of freediving over endless coral reefs teeming with life.
I took a break from studying, walked downstairs, out into the rain, and let the thoughts run. I imagined a flat-screen television on the bottom of an Endless Pool. Probably semi-doable, if you ignored the challenges of projecting images through moving water that had been oxygenated by jets.
I remembered watching the "Lawnmower Man," the epic virtual reality movie of the 1990's. While VR had died out for the time being, I guessed that it was only a matter of time, engineering improvements, and finding the right application before it reincarnated into a technology capable of replicating the floor of the ocean.
My body was in the library trying to get into the second semester of my first year of law school. My brain was freediving off the coast of Oahu. I tried to bring my thoughts back to Oregon, but they rested somewhere in the middle. Mulling over if there was anyway to simulate the experience of freediving over endless coral reefs teeming with life.
I took a break from studying, walked downstairs, out into the rain, and let the thoughts run. I imagined a flat-screen television on the bottom of an Endless Pool. Probably semi-doable, if you ignored the challenges of projecting images through moving water that had been oxygenated by jets.
I remembered watching the "Lawnmower Man," the epic virtual reality movie of the 1990's. While VR had died out for the time being, I guessed that it was only a matter of time, engineering improvements, and finding the right application before it reincarnated into a technology capable of replicating the floor of the ocean.
| Virtual reality goggles popped on the head of the swimmer in my internal Endless Pool. Projections of spinner dolphins swam above the Hawaiian coral reef. I tried not to think about the electricity in the goggles or the audio-visual cable trailing through the water. That didn't work. I skipped further into the future where the virtual reality goggles are waterproof and wireless. | |
The image of the virtual reality pool gave way to the soft cold rain. Contract law was waiting.
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