Smith clicked through and five images of a tree came up on the screen. The caption asked him to select the sharpest image. He did and what felt a bit like an eye exam continued through a few more screens, asking him to judge color, rotation, and the relative speed of objects. Finally, the word “silver” appeared and he was asked to repeat the word over and over in his mind. A few seconds later, a notification came up that he was done and icons sprang to life in his peripheral vision.

“Whoa,” he said, leaning back in his chair and blinking hard.

“It’s a little disorienting at first,” Bailer explained. “But the effect goes away after a few seconds.”

Smith stood and began walking unsteadily forward. The unit, sensing his movement, caused the icons to fade until they were almost invisible. Bailer was right. In less than a minute, his mind had grown accustomed to them.

“General Pedersen? How are you doing?” Bailer asked.

“Done,” he said, standing a little too fast and having to steady himself on the table.

Bailer waited for him to regain his balance before starting his pitch. “With the studs, what you see would be quite a bit sharper and will have a more three-dimensional quality. You can manipulate the icons through rudimentary mental commands like ‘weather’ or ‘current location’ but it takes a couple of hours to get the hang of it so I’m going to use our demonstration software to run the apps on your units if that’s okay.”

They both nodded.

“As I said before, this is really just a basic platform. We don’t have access to your weapons systems and Christian didn’t want to get involved directly in that anyway. But I think you can imagine what the Merge could do if it was, say, linked to a fighter jet’s onboard computer. You potentially wouldn’t need a canopy or even any physical controls. You could have a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view using cameras and all flight and weapons systems controlled mentally. But right now we’re going to concentrate on less ambitious applications. Now, if you gentlemen could look down at the jungle and tell me how many combatants you see.”

“Two,” Pedersen said, squinting to pick out two camouflage-clad mannequins nestled into the trees.

“Dr. Smith?”

“Four. One directly behind the most obvious guy and one pressed up against a tree on the looker’s far right.”

Bailer’s eyes widened slightly. “I’m impressed. No one has ever picked out the fourth man from this distance.”

It wasn’t surprising. He’d always had a naturally good eye and had spent a fair amount of time putting a fine point on that innate ability. It, among a few other skills he’d picked up over the years, was responsible for him not currently residing in the Arlington Cemetery.

“Let me launch the application that takes feeds from the camera on your helmets.”

An icon floating to Smith’s right flashed once, but nothing else changed.

“Okay, now I’m going to start layering in different vision protocols. The first is an outline enhancement. For this, the computer uses an algorithm to search for lines that have a potential human or military component and bolds them. The human mind actually does something similar, which is what makes some optical illusions possible. With all due respect to evolution, though, our system is quite a bit more advanced.”