“Well, this is very cool,” Zane said, “but I’m ready to get going. So where is everything? Flight controls? Gauges?”
“Right here,” Daren Mace said. He handed Zane a thin, lightweight helmet resembling a bicyclist’s safety helmet, with an integrated headset and wraparound semitransparent visor encircling the front. Daren then handed him a pair of thin gloves. They all took seats. Putting on the helmets helped to kill the noise of electronics-cooling fans and air-conditioning compressors.
“How cool is this!” Zane repeated. A few moments after turning on the system, he saw a three-dimensional electronic image of an ultramodern B-1 bomber cockpit. No conventional instruments — everything was voice-controlled and monitored via large, full-color, multifunctional electronics displays. He was able to reach out and “touch” the MFDs and move the control stick. “Man, this is unbelievable!”
“We can shift the view to anything you’d like to see — charts, satellite imagery, tech orders, sensor information — anything,” Daren said. “Calling up info and ‘talking’ to the plane is easy — just preface every command with ‘Vampire.’ Voice commands are easy and intuitive. We have a catalog of abbreviated commands, but for most commands just a simple order will do. Try to use the same tone of voice, with no inflections. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”
“Very nice,” Zane exclaimed as he got settled in. “It’s like a fancy video game, only a lot noisier. Almost as noisy as the plane, I think.”
“General McLanahan wants to build a nicer command-and-control facility here at Battle Mountain,” Daren said, “but we have to prove this thing can work first.” He spent several minutes explaining how to enter commands into the system — voice commands, touching floating buttons or menus, touching the screen with virtual fingers, or using eye-pointing techniques to activate virtual buttons and switches on the instrument panel.
“You almost don’t need arms and legs to fly this thing,” Zane commented.
“It was designed at Dreamland by a guy who lost the use of his legs in a plane crash,” Daren responded. “Zen Stockard. He’s a buddy of mine. There was a phase where everything designed there was based on virtual-reality or advanced neural-transfer technology, simply because that was the best way for paraplegics to be able to use the gear. You don’t need to be an aviator to fly them either — the computers do most of the flying, even the air refueling. We use crew chiefs and techs to fly Global Hawk all the time. Let’s report in and get the show on the road.”
“I’m ready, boss,” Zane said excitedly. “VAC is up,” he said on intercom, addressing himself as the “virtual aircraft commander.”
“VMC is up,” Daren reported as the “virtual mission commander.”
“The guinea pigs are in place,” Rebecca responded. “I mean, AC is up.”
“MC is up,” Patrick said. “The guinea pigs here resent that.”
“VE ready,” replied Jon Masters from the seat beside Patrick, reporting in as the “virtual engineer.” Dr. Jon Masters, a boyish-looking man in his mid-thirties who had several hundred patents to his name long before most kids his age had graduated from high school, was the chief engineer and CEO of Sky Masters Inc., a small high-tech engineering firm that developed state-of-the-art communications, weapons, and satellite technology, including the virtual cockpit. Patrick McLanahan had known Jon Masters for many years and had been a vice president of Sky Masters Inc. after he had been involuntarily separated from the Air Force.
“Okay, folks, here we go,” Daren said. “VAC, you have the aircraft.”
“Oh, shit, here we go,” Zane muttered. In a shaky but loud voice, he commanded, “Vampire, battery power on.” Instantly the lights inside the EB-1C Vampire’s cockpit came on. He tuned in several radios and got permission to start the plane’s APU, or auxiliary power unit; then: “Vampire, before-APU-start checklist.”
In the cockpit, Rebecca barely noticed the response. All the checklist items — eleven steps, which normally took about a minute to perform — were done with a rapid flicker of warning and caution lights. Within three seconds the computer responded, “Vampire ready for APU start.”
“Wow” was all Rebecca could say.
“Shit-hot,” Zane exclaimed. “Vampire, get me a double cheeseburger, no pickles.”
“Would you like fries with that?” the computer responded.
“What?”
“You youngsters are so predictable. That was one of the first responses I programmed into the voice-recognition software,” Jon Masters said gleefully. Jon was only a few years older than the “youngsters,” so he knew them very well.
“Can we get on with it?” Rebecca asked. “This thing is giving me the creeps.”
“Roger,” Zane said happily. “Vampire, APU start.”
The checklists ran quickly and smoothly, and in a fraction of the time it normally took to get ready for engine start, the Vampire bomber was ready. They had to wait for Long and Pogue to finish their checklists, done in a more conventional manner. The bombers were then towed to an elevator and hoisted to the second level, where they started the engines and performed a before-takeoff check; shortly thereafter the two bombers were raised to the surface.
“So how do I taxi this thing, boss?” Zane asked.
“You don’t. The computer does,” Daren replied.
“O-kay. Vampire, taxi for takeoff,” Zane spoke.
“Laser radar is on and radiating, very low power, short range,” Patrick reported. Just then the Vampire bomber’s throttles slowly advanced, and the plane crept forward.
It was slow going, but eventually the Vampire taxied itself out of the hammerhead and onto the end of the runway. “Vampire in takeoff position, eleven thousand four hundred feet remaining,” the computer reported. “Partial power takeoff performance okay.”
“The LADAR maps out the edges of the runway and automatically puts you on the centerline, then measures the distance to the first set of obstacles — in this case, the edge of the overrun,” Jon Masters explained. “The laser radar also measures nearby terrain and samples the atmosphere and plugs the information into the air-data computer for takeoff-performance computations.”
“So what the heck do I do?” Zane asked.
“You get to choose the type of takeoff,” Patrick McLanahan said.
“Can’t I make my own takeoff?”
“The computer can make about a dozen different takeoffs: max performance, minimum interval, unimproved field, max altitude, partial power, noise abatement — you name it,” Masters said. “You just tell it which one and it’ll do it.”
“So can I, Doc, so can I,” Zane said. “How do I work this thing?”
“Rest your arm on the armrest,” Daren said. Grey did. “Vampire, cockpit adjust,” Daren spoke. In an instant the cockpit flight controls rearranged themselves to fit Grey’s hands. “In the virtual cockpit, the controls come to you—not the other way around.”
“I love it!” Zane exclaimed happily. The rudder pedals did the same, and when it came time to flip a switch or punch a button, all he had to do was extend a finger. The control panel came to his finger, then moved again so he could clearly see the display, then moved out of the way so he could “look” out the window or “see” other instruments. Zane experimentally “stirred the pot”—moved the control stick in a wide circle to check the flight-control surfaces — and watched the control-surface indicators move.