Chapter Two
12.31
Ten floors below, Ron the Tech Guy was completely immersed in a pile of cables. Just how many cables were in the heap didn’t really bother him. Nor did the complete mess which surrounded the cables. Nor did the fact that he hadn’t eaten food for three days. What he was concerned about was the thing that the cables were plugging into. It stood on a bench in the center of the room, glistening, towering over everything. It was the center of Ron’s universe, a monolith with the gravitational pull of a thousand stars. It was…
…ok, so it was only a computer, but the word ‘computer’ couldn’t really define it. He had been putting this graceful machine together his whole life in his head, imagining the day when he would have it in his grasp. The lightning-fast processor, the mind-numbingly huge storage capacity, the super-giga-fractal video port. It was down to this last plug, placed gently in this socket here and…
The machine came to life with a quiet whir. At last! Ron could feel it’s circuits springing to life, pulsing, computing, crunching millions of figures in the blink of an eye. He walked around it a few times staring up at it longingly as it went through it’s boot sequence. He put his ear to it’s side and listened to the awesome throb of fans, motors and electrons spinning. This last he just had to imagine. As he waited for the final preparations, Ron reflected and thought it to be the sweetest pain. The machine was teasing him, a tantalizing pause of booting and initializations. At last, the screen lit up with the welcome prompt and the slow dance was over. It was time for action.
He sat down before the screen and rested his fingers lightly on the keyboard. It was not necessary of course, such things were antiquated after the advent of voice recognition technology. But Ron preferred the touch, the connection between human and computer that speech just couldn’t replicate. As he typed now, he watched the screen intently as he loaded the simulation program he had designed personally. Now was the time for the real test.
Tina Merry entered the elevator and hit the button labeled ‘B’. She would have to see Ron, about the only person in this building who she could completely relax with. Not only did Ron not try and hit on her at every opportunity (he was far too interested in his gadgets), but he was also completely devoted to his work, a quality she had a lot of respect for. Lately though, the level of his devotion was sometimes a little worrying. And the keyboard thing really gave her the heebie jeebies.
The elevator opened and she walked down the brightly-lit corridor and through the double doors at the end, above which hung the sign TECHNO STUFF.
“Is it alive yet?” she asked brightly at the hunched figure of Ron.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Ron’s gaze did not leave the screen for a second as he took in Tina’s presence. “You and I are in for a treat, Tina. Oh yes!” as he said this, he loaded the simulation program. She knew this to be his ultimate test of processing prowess. She saw him reach for his stopwatch.
“Other machines have so far been pathetically average in their computations. Load times were at best slow. Performance was to say the least, primitive. You are about to see the face of computing change. A new era of performance is almost upon us!”
Tina could see the little veins on the side of his head bulging as he was talking. She had known plenty of robo-geeks at college and so this sort of behavior was nothing out of the ordinary.
“So how fast was the last computer?” she ventured.
“A pathetic twenty-five seconds” he spat. “What a joke!”
“And this?” she said, indicating the huge machine before them. “Sorry, HER? What will be her time?”
He looked at her for the first time, a solemn look upon his face. “Let’s just say,” he said, “that she will make all these other machines look like mere pocket calculators.”
With that, he turned back to the computer, gave it a loving stroke with this hand and pressed the button.
“Twenty seconds?” Tina looked at the stopwatch.
“Yes, wasn’t she awesome?” Ron was staring at the screen and stroking the huge metal casing lovingly.
“Uh…yeah.” She tried hard not to sound as unimpressed as she was. “Anyway, I need you to order a robot for me.” Ron was still immersed in his post-simulation bliss.
“Sure thing,” he replied. Tina carefully made her way to the door.
“And have it programmed for academic usage.” Ron had still not moved.
“Uh huh..” he was toying playfully with the keys. All good so far, she thought.
“It will be our new author. Anyway, I must be going.” she turned and pushed open the double doors. Ron spun around.
“Slow down a sec missy! Did you just say ‘author’?” Ron’s concentration was now firmly fixed upon her.
“Author, yes I said that,” she replied, “anyways, I’d best be going….” Again, she tried to turn but this time only managed a ten degree rotation before Ron had jumped in.
“So by the pronoun ‘it’ I take it you mean this robot you requested me to order, with as you would have it, academic programming?” Ron knew exactly what she was trying to do and she knew that he knew.
“Yeah, the robot, an author. Anything else?”
“Anything else?” he asked rhetorically. “Anything else? Now, let’s see. Maybe you could inform me just when did robots become authors? Surely the progression of Creative Robotics from the science fiction to the science fact must have generated some commotion. Admittedly, I spend most of my days down here in the basement and don’t get to catch up on the latest developments, so please tell me. When was this spectacular development made? I’d love to know.”
“Uhgh!” was her reply. She sank into the nearest chair and stayed sunk for a good five minutes before she did anything else.
Later, after she had told Ron of the Director’s plan, she felt a little better having shared part of the insanity with someone else.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” she complained. “I can’t seem to get it through his head that robots can’t write his books for him.”
Until now, Ron had been quietly listening to Tina speak. He sat back in his chair, tapped his fingers together and leant forward again.
“So you have no other choice than to fail?” he ventured.
“It would seem so.”
“So fail then!” he replied matter-of-factly.
“Ron, you’re not helping! I can’t fail, I’m already failing at three other things already. I don’t have the time to explain another failure to Frank.” She looked at him angrily. Why the hell was he so amused by this?
“That’s ok,” he continued unfazed, “the robot can explain its failure on its own.” Tina glared at him.
“Is there any point in me talking to you, Ron? We have a serious problem here if and when this project fails. We are out of money and something will have to go. Everything that has been built over the last year, including this department, will have to take some serious cuts and I hate to think what will be left afterwards.” She nodded at the machine behind him, standing as unobtrusively as an erection, in the center of the room. “Do you think that they can justify a machine like that when there’s not enough money to go around?” The smile left Ron’s face.
“Now now. Let’s not get hasty! We’re not in that much trouble…. are we?” he asked tentatively.
She smiled a thin smile. “I heard that Frank’s golf account is nearly empty.”
“Oh god!” Ron threw himself at his pride and joy, clutching it’s sleek metal sides. He raised his head and spoke to Tina. “What can we do?”
Tina liked the sound of ‘we’ a lot better. It didn’t solve any problems, but it certainly diluted responsibility.
“I have no idea. But Frank wants this robot and we will have to give it to him. Order it. We have no choice but to give him a personal demonstration.”
“And then?” Ron asked, a look of genuine fear across his face.
Tina did not know. But she knew whatever it was, it would not be good.
“Just order the robot. We’ll figure it out from there.”
With that, she turned and headed back to her office. For a while she would try to forget about robots and budgets and just succeed in adequately failing a number of tasks she should have failed last week. As the lift closed and she felt the inertia of the rapid acceleration upwards, she closed her eyes and fell asleep instantly.
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