by Don Johnson
"There must be the capacity for storing huge amounts of data here," said Billy, shaking his head in wonder. "When I saw all of the System Memory area I thought that was big, but this is just, just huge” - he struggled to find words to describe the enormity of what Monty was telling him.
"This is not that big," advised Monty, "There are lots of Hard Disks bigger than this one. And the humans are improving them all the time. They are making disks where the magnetic areas can be closer together, and the tracks more tightly packed, constantly improving the capacity for storage. They have been doing this for years, which is why, in the early days, a ten Megabyte disk was considered quite large, but now ten GigaBytes is considered fairly small. As a Gigabyte is a thousand Megabytes, you can see that they have made a lot of progress. When they put several disk systems together they now talk of TeraBytes, which are millions of Megabytes!"
All the way back through the airlock room, where Billy and Monty left their 'clean' suits, Billy thought about all he has heard about hard disks. He tried and tried to visualise the massive numbers of Bytes of storage area that Monty had spoken of, but in the end just had to content himself with using the same word as before - 'huge'. When they arrived at the window above the cable down to the main system, he was still pondering on the subject, as he put on his safety harness. He had watched when the supervisor had strapped him in earlier, and thought that he was following the same routine, but because of his lack of concentration on what he was doing, he missed one vital step. He forgot to insert the locking clip that held the whole harness together. All the ends were fined to the central pin at the front of the harness, but the locking clip was not pushed through its hole. Monty had been busy trying to get to Drivers to agree to take them down, so he did not notice Billy's error. When he finally found two willing Drivers, they were in rather a rush because of the delay talking to Monty, so they just checked to make sure that the quick-release buckles were properly attached to their harness rings before taking their two passengers on their backs and starting the descent.
The procedure for descending the cables was quite different to that for climbing. With complete unconcern, the Drivers simply let the cables slide through their hands for a while, so that they, and their (astounded in Billy's case) passengers, descended at an ever-increasing rate. At some point when they felt that they were starting to go too fast for safety, they gripped onto the cables and slowed nearly to a stop. They then released their grips and started accelerating down again. Unfortunately, this rather jerky motion tended to shake their passengers about rather a lot and their harnesses were alternately loosened and tightened as the sliding and braking actions took place. Billy eventually started to relax, and began to think that they were probably far enough down the cable for him to take a look around without being frightened by the height. He loosened his grip on the Driver's harness so that he could turn away a little from the back of his Driver and take a look around when his Driver suddenly decided to brake rather violently for some reason. Billy's grasp slipped from the Driver's harness, and the combination of this and the sudden braking caused his own harness to spring undone under the strain as there was no locking clip to prevent it. Billy immediately separated from his Driver, and started to fall free. He was too shocked to scream!
Chapter 8 Down and Out
If Billy had felt bad when he awoke that morning after the party on the Sound Board, it was nothing to how he felt when he finally recovered consciousness after his fall. It was as though he had been ridden over by a thousand Clock Cycles – all fitted with spiked tyres! Every part of his body was complaining about the rough treatment it had received, and pains shot through all his limbs as he struggled to move.
“Don’t try to get up yet, Billy,” said Monty anxiously, “You fell quite a long way, but luckily the safety routines in force here saved you from really serious injury. You were caught by the Data Monitors, who have the job of ensuring that no accidents occur with data being transported to and from the Hard Disks. Unfortunately, their equipment is really only designed for information packets, not Bits like yourself, so I’m afraid you bounced around quite a bit on the plastic sheet they use for catching things. How do you feel?”
“Broken!” groaned Billy, but as he realised that he was not as dead as he had expected to be when he started to fall, he found that the pains were actually starting to reduce as his shocked system recovered. “What happened to me ?” he managed to enquire.
“We checked your safety harness, and it is not damaged, Billy, so we think that perhaps you forgot to put in the safety pin. I should have checked for you, so it is really my fault you were hurt. Please, please accept my apologies!”
As he realised that nothing was actually broken, and rather embarrassed at not having put the harness on correctly, Billy responded with, “No! No! Don’t worry Monty – no harm done really. I’ll probably have some picturesque bruises later, but otherwise I think I’m fine!” – this through gritted teeth! He got to his feet with some effort – and assistance from the Data Monitors – who he thanked effusively for saving his life.
“Just part of the job!” declared one. “Glad to help,” said another, although they did seem a little disappointed that Billy was all in one piece and there were no broken bits to gawp at. With slightly disgruntled expressions, they all wandered off to take up their posts once more.
“Strangely, they didn’t seem too pleased,” commented Billy.
“No, they do a good job, but nevertheless they were hoping for a bit of gore – people always seem to ‘enjoy’ looking at the aftermath of an accident, despite their expressions of sympathy for the victims,” declared Monty. “I think it’s just the same in the human world”.
“Well, I’m very grateful to them, but not really sorry to deprive them of the sight of me being carried away on a stretcher. . . . . . Shall we go?” enquired Billy.
“Are you sure you can carry on?” asked Monty. “You can rest for a while if you want.”
“No, no. Best if I move about, I think,” said Billy, but he did quietly wince every now and then as another muscle decided to complain about the harsh treatment it had received. “Let’s get on!”
“O.K. then, if you’re sure” replied Monty. “But if you need to stop for a rest, do say so.”
The two travellers walked for quite a while, and Billy began to feel much more comfortable as the gentle exercise relaxed his tense body. When at last he stopped concentrating on how he felt, he realised that he could hear the noise of rushing air. He looked up from the ground (which he had been studying carefully to ensure he did not trip over the increasing number of tracks that they were crossing and thereby fall and agitate his strained muscles) and saw they were approaching an enormous square, black building, formed by rows of strange metal sections. It was from the gaps between the sections that the air was rushing, and Billy felt its warmth on his face.
“At last, the CPU,” declared Monty, waving his arms wide.
Chapter 9 The CPU
Billy looked up at the gigantic black building in front of him in surprise. He saw that the ends of the System Bus tracks ran into the building from one side, but that there were lots of sets of other, smaller, sets of tracks entering on the others. If he had been a human, he might of though it all looked like a massive railway junction with tracks everywhere, but as he was a Bit with no experience of the outside world, he just struggled to grasp the size of it all. “It’s enormous!” declared Billy, gazing in awe at the massive shape in front of him. “Just how big a brain has the CPU got? You could get twenty Memory Units in there!”
“Hold on!” said Monty, “It’s not all the CPU – only the ground floor!”
Billy looked more closely, and saw that the lowest part of the building was not made of metal sections, but was more like offices, with small windows under the overhang of the ponderous upper part.
“The top part is just the heats
ink and fan,” shouted Monty above the noise of the rushing air. “The noise you hear is from the fan in the middle, as it draws cooling air over the metal sections clamped to the top of the CPU building and so conducts heat away from the CPU. This contraption is needed to keep the CPU from melting from the heat generated by all the processing that is being done here. If the fan ever stops, the whole CPU may suffer from heat exhaustion, and the whole system will grind to a halt. But let’s get inside – out of the noise.”
Monty led Billy to a glass door in the wall of the lower building, then took a shiny card from his pocket and slid it through the slot of a device on the wall by the door. With a click and a hum of automatic mechanisms, the door opened for himself and Billy to pass through. After they had entered, the door closed again, totally shutting out the outside noise. The silence was almost a shock after the noises outside, and when Monty spoke he unconsciously almost whispered.
“Security is very strong here,” he muttered, “Can’t even get though the door without a Pass, and even then you have to satisfy that security chap over there that you have an appointment, or you get no further.”
Monty walked over to the desk where the security officer sat, and was obviously confirming the details about himself and Billy. That left Billy himself free to gaze around at the grand entrance hall. There was a huge sign high up on one wall with the word ‘Intel’ in raised blue and silver letters, and there were a number of spotlights directed at it so that it dominated the whole hall area. There were other smaller signs with their own spotlights lower down and they appeared to have details of medals and awards that had been presented to the CPU for things like ‘processing speed’ and ‘data handling capacity’. Not many made any sense to Billy, but they were very impressive, and he began to get very nervous about meeting the person who had received all these distinctions, and who was obviously considered very important by lots of people.
Monty returned from the desk, holding two clip-on badges – one for himself and one for Billy – which he attached to their jackets. Billy was surprised to see that his badge had a picture of himself sealed inside, and seeing it, began to realise just how well organised everything was at the CPU.
“Keep this visible at all times,” warned Monty, “If the officers of the Security System can’t see it, and think you are an unauthorised intruder, they’ll use the ‘End Task’ routine to deal with you – and that’s not funny!”
Billy decided he really would prefer to remain ignorant about the ‘End Task’ routine, and made sure that his badge was well and truly clipped on, and would not fall off accidentally. He walked behind Monty as he motioned for Billy to follow him to one of a row of doors set down one side of the large entrance hall. When they reached the door, Monty waved his badge at a glass window beside the door, and a sign in the window glowed: “Accepted - Next”. Following Monty’s lead, Billy waved his badge, and the sign changed to “Accepted – Two to Enter.” The door slid open noiselessly, and they stepped into a small office containing some filing cabinets and a desk. A very smartly dressed ‘female’ sat at the desk. Billy was quick to notice that the occupier of the office was a female, using the experience he had gained at the Sound Card party, and despite the fact that ‘she’ was wearing a formal business suit. Somehow she fills it differently to a man, Billy thought, and she’s so beautiful …. and the smile she is giving me is dazzling. . . . He came out of his daydream only slightly as he realised that she was addressing him.
“Ah! Mail Messenger Montmerency! And you must be Mr. Bit – ‘Billy’ isn’t it?” she said in a rather officious voice. “I am Wanda, the CPU’s Background Operations Secretary. You are expected, so go right through.” - She pointed to another door on the opposite side of the room to the one by which they had entered. She turned back to her desk after Monty had thanked her, and seemed to have no further interest in Billy. Monty ushered Billy though the second door – with some difficulty because Billy was having trouble dragging his gaze away from the lovely Wanda.
“Behave yourself!” Monty hissed to Billy, “Stop staring. You don’t stand much chance with her anyway – not as just a Bit. She would only be interested in System staff at her own level or higher. I even had difficulty getting to talk to her myself,” he added with a rueful smile. “Anyway, thoughts of pretty females are not what should be occupying your mind right now, you should be concentrating on your impending interview with the CPU. Your whole future is at stake!"
Monty’s words finally stirred Billy out of his reverie, and with a last backward look as he went through the door, he entered the domain of the CPU. This turned out to be a great hall, with a curved ceiling so that no internal supports were needed. The hall was lit by yellow lights hanging from above, and there was a huge illuminated clock on each wall, but with only one hand and just four points where the hand paused. As the hands reached their pause points, there was a soft ‘bong!” noise that carried throughout the hall. To Billy, the interval between ‘bongs’ seemed to be what to a human would have been about ten seconds, but as has been said before, the occupants of computers work on a much faster time scale than humans. Beneath each clock was a sign with the legend “STANDBY” glowing on a yellow screen.
As Billy looked around further, he saw that there were different coloured sets of lines on the floor, leading from similarly coloured large floor areas around the sides of the hall. There were lots of individuals standing about in these areas, talking amongst themselves, but not looking particularly busy. Moving between these areas was someone sitting on the back half of a bicycle, the front of which had been replaced by a steerable box on two wheels – rather like an old-fashioned ‘Stop me and Buy One’ human ice cream seller’s trike. He was taking numbered plastic cards from the box and giving them to some of those standing in the coloured areas as he passed. At each bong of the clock, Billy saw that one of the card-carriers started out along the coloured lines – which led to the centre of the hall. At the centre there was a raised platform with separate rows of steps leading upwards from the ends of the sets of coloured lines. In human terms, it looked like a queuing system was in operation, rather like that used at the ‘deli’ counter in Tesco’s, with the card-carriers taking their turns in the order decided by the trike rider.
When the card-carriers reached the platform, they climbed their own set of steps, and approached the occupant of a large chair. On the chair sat a person dressed in blue robes lined with silver, the same colour combination that Billy had seen on the ‘Intel’ sign in the entrance hall. As Monty led Billy along one of the sets of lines towards the centre of the great hall, he quietly passed on information about some of the things that Billy was examining.
“They’re the System Clock dials,” said Monty pointing upwards, “And the lines on the floor act as guides so that no-one bumps into anyone else as they move backwards and forwards.”
“It doesn’t look as though there would be a problem,” queried Billy, “There seems to be little chance of collisions at the moment.”
“That’s because the System is in ‘Standby’ condition at present,” responded Monty. “You wait until we go ‘Live’, then you’ll see some action! It goes mad in here when there are a number of Programs running at once.”
“Are the numbered cards designed to help?” enquired Billy.
“You do pick things up quickly,” declared Monty. “Yes, the trike rider is The Scheduler, and he helps the CPU by setting the order in which to deal with the various tasks in the most efficient way. The CPU is very fast, but if things are not organised properly, time can be wasted unnecessarily. Each of the coloured areas is for a different Program that the human User is running at the same time, and each Program has to share the CPU’s time according to the priority set by The Scheduler.”
“That set of thirty-two black lines in the middle of the far side,” continued Monty, “Are for information coming and go
ing from the System Bus, carried by the Clock Cycles to other Components of the System – you remember?”
Billy well remembered his hair-raising rides on the Clock Cycles, and now began to realise why he had seen so few of them moving on the System Bus. It was obviously because the System was in ‘Standby’, which must mean that it was a time when not very much was happening, and not much data had to be moved about.
“Yes I certainly do. What is that rather dimly-lit area over there?” asked Billy.
Oh! The white area which looks a bit dusty!” exclaimed Monty. “That’s for DOS Programs – they’re rather old-fashioned now, and so it doesn’t get used much. Some of the workers there haven’t done a stroke for ages, but they have to be kept on just in case the User decides to run one of his ancient games. I seem to recall hearing about something called ‘Space Invaders’, but I’ve never actually seen it working.”
On one side of the black lines Billy could see a number of tables with operators controlling the positions of set of indicators mounted on the desks. On the other side was a fenced off zone which appeared to contain a small memory area like Billy’s home.
“The tables are the Registers, which the CPU uses for counting, and the fenced-off zone is the System Cache,” advised Monty when he saw where Billy was looking. “Rather like your home, but much smaller, and only used for very temporary storage of data. So you see, the CPU is really not just one person, there are lots of background workers and facilities to help with the processing. But the CPU is the one who makes it all work, and without whom the whole System could do nothing”