Stimulus Age cont'

In the month that Terse was born, the first Main Frame experiments were being done. The words "main frame", a hold over from the computer age, were used because the experiment, done on several subjects simultaneously, was generated by one conceptual field program that allowed many simultaneous hallucinations to happen at once creating an over-all reality effect for more than one test subject at once. The interactions between the test subjects, who were kept apart in separate rooms, and monitored over the course of a month, would set off various other hallucinations for the group. These hallucinations could be denied by anyone of the group or the hallucination could be altered by anyone in the group. This kept into play both the fantastical and the mundane hallucination. When combinations of them were formed, the results would either create hyper-real or comical results. The consensus result as things played out usually showed a preference for the hyper-real, but as time went on these subjects began to create fields of perception in reality not unlike that in common-placed reality. That is to say, that if the ocean were the hallucination, then there would be sand for the beach, some rocks, seaweed, shells, sea foam and waves. It would also sound, taste and smell much like the ocean. Of the fourteen experiment subjects, one was Terse's father, Emeric, an unemployed actor for video-world games. That is, unemployed until he took this work as a "lab rat" as he called it. Emeric had both helped to design and create living characters for video-world movies and games which were very popular at the end of the computer age, but had conceded to the POD frenzy that eventually consumed most of the spare time for both child and adult, especially after POD's were beginning to experience more visual sensation with there POD devices. POD devices were made cheap, and surprising to most of the early POD researchers, people chose the more anti-social activity of the POD device over most socially inter-active activities. This would be surprising if you noted the heightened sociability of many activities leading up to the POD devices. Some researchers have speculated that as the world became more accelerated-seeming, people were getting more and more depressed in a way that anti-depressants and psycho-therapy no longer had a lasting effect on. The POD devices created a simple solution that would last as long as you were using the device and sometimes for days after. The POD device could give you the illusion of being happy or in a happy place. This included the feeling of being full after a delicious meal, being sexually satisfied or, for children, the exhilarating experience of having fun.