The Computer Who Loved Me

by Lloyd G Miller

  "Dare we ask who that might be?" inquired Nate.

  "You may inquire, but you'll receive no answer." The rest of dinner was spent with Nancy and Nate trying to get the information out of Kyle. After dinner, Kyle and Nate resumed their study while Nancy cleaned up the kitchen and then quietly left. After Nancy left, Nate spoke.

  "Do you think I'm some kind of pervert or something for employing Nancy the way that I do?"

  "On the contrary, I respect that you satisfy a need that you both have without shame or destruction of character. I don't think less of Nancy for being so employed. I do think, however, that it is possible for you to fall for a woman who honestly finds you attractive. Looks play a far greater roll to the young than to the more mature. For example, a more mature woman, perhaps one divorced with children may be indifferent to a man's physical appearance and find financial security very appealing. On the other hand, if you became friends with a woman who fell short of your current taste in physical beauty, you could find yourself falling in love, and for all the right reasons."

  "I believe you intellectually but not with faith. Who knows what the future holds for us lonely hearts."

  "I do have one unrelated question, Nate. Why do you have two identical calculators?" asked Kyle.

  "If I'm taking a test and one fails, I have the other as a backup. I don't want to have to think about the differences in how a spare works. I want to resume where I left off with as little delay as possible."

  After a few minutes of additional study, Nate was ready for one of his one-hour naps. To Kyle's amazement, Nate didn't set an alarm. After fifty-seven minutes, Nate arose claiming to be quite refreshed. They worked until midnight, at which time Kyle called it a night. He slept in Nate's bed since Nate preferred to sleep on the carpet during his naps. When Kyle awoke at six the next morning, being stirred by his phone alarm, he found Nate busy studying. "Would you like something simple like cereal for breakfast, or should I call Nancy and have her fix a full course meal with all the trimmings?" asked Nate.

  "You tempt me, as much by the prospect of Nancy's company as by the food. Let me shower and grab something quick and if we make good progress we can talk about Nancy." Kyle showered, shaved and had a quick bowl of cereal. Then, the two men resumed their studies. It was no longer necessary to read the book together. Nate had read ahead enough to be able to ask questions and then move on. Josh hadn't exaggerated concerning Nate's powers of concentration. Nate's performance was impressive. By the arrival of Sunday evening, he had studied for over forty-one hours. Nancy prepared one large meal each day. Suddenly, Nate declared that he had studied enough for one weekend. Kyle agreed that he was much more than caught up with the class. He had worked every problem in the sections already covered by the class and had studied all of the sections that would be covered on the test. He tried to persuade Kyle to stay the evening and watch a movie with him and Nancy, but Kyle insisted that he needed to get back to his own apartment to truly relax. As Kyle walked to his car a black Mustang convertible drove by heading south and then made a "U" turn and came back. Nate lived on the east side of 1100 East Street.

  "It's him," shouted the passenger. "It's the jerk that got us kicked out of the game. It's payback time." Kyle knew he had to think fast. He figured that he could not outrun a couple of defensive linemen, but he was certain he could outsmart them. He reversed course and ran back into Nate's apartment.

  "Call me a cab, Nate, and have it pick me up a block north of here. I'm going out the back door. No time to explain." Kyle ran out the back door and into the alley. He ran south to the next cross street and headed west towards 1100 East. He walked across the lawn of an apartment complex and then peeked around the corner of the nearest building. The two ruffians were sitting on Nate's front porch. The street was lined with cars, with the Mustang double-parked. Kyle worked his way north on 1100 East, hiding behind the parked cars until he reached the Mustang. Hidden from view of the ruffians by their own car, Kyle let the air out of the tires on the driver's side and then worked his way to one block north of Nate's home. After a short wait, the cab arrived. As Kyle stood at the open cab door, he called to the football players and waved. "Bye, Bye." He entered the cab and commanded the driver to proceed. The football players jumped into the Mustang and floored it. The left drive wheel spun the tire loose from the expensive alloy rim and ground the rim on the pavement doing major damage. Kyle pulled out his cell phone and called the police. "Hello, I'd like to report a car that's double parked."

  Kyle returned to Nate’s apartment Monday evening and again on Tuesday evening. Nate, who had observed the escape the previous night, hired a security guard to keep watch. Nate took the test with confidence on Wednesday. He did not find out his score until the following Monday. He got a perfect score, the only one in the class. To avoid having his professor think that he had cheated, he had tried to prepare his professor before he took the test by explaining that he had hired the full time services of the best tutor available. The professor called on him several times in class to test his knowledge until he was satisfied it was genuine.

  Kyle became so swamped with requests for tutoring that he was able to raise his fee. Nate was able to easily get an "A" in the class, only asking for occasional tutoring during the second half of the semester. He prevailed on Kyle to watch a few movies with him and enjoyed the fact that Kyle had not seen any of them before watching them with Nancy and him. Nate showed Kyle the posting of the grades and asked him to come to his apartment for final payment. He had already paid him over $1000 for tutoring. Nate slid across the table a cashier’s check for $6000. "This is more than we agreed to," protested Kyle. "Besides, was your father really so prompt in paying you?"

  "I didn't do this for the money from my dad. I already had that much in the bank. I had Josh tell you about the money part because I thought it would help persuade you to tutor me."

  "You're an odd fellow, Nate, but I like you and your hired help."

  "Oh, I had to dismiss Nancy. I was starting to get too attached to her. The longer I kept her around, the harder it would be when she finally left."

  "I know the feeling. I was starting to get feelings for her myself."

  "Go for it, Kyle. She's fair game now and I always suspected she had a thing for you."

  "Were I in your financial shape I could do that, but it'll be years before I'll be in a position to get serious with a girl. I'm the marrying type, not the long time romance type of guy."

  Chapter 3 – Prodigy

  Fourteen Years Earlier

  Kyle walked the streets pulling a wagon behind him. Tomorrow was the day that the city would pick up anything that was left curbside. It gave people a chance to get rid of junk that they could not put in the garbage cans. Kyle had found some good stuff in the past, but so far, it had been slim pickings. As he scanned both sides of the street, something in the distance caught his eye. Could it possibly be what he thought? He raced ahead, dragging his wagon behind him. His eyes had not deceived him; it really was a computer, complete with monitor. The computer and CRT monitor were heavy, but Kyle was strong for his age and easily lifted them into the wagon. He headed straight home with his booty. He carried the items into his small room and plugged them in. To his delight, the computer booted right up with Windows 95. Kyle knew enough about computers to know that most people had Windows XP on their computer. The PC had an early version of the Pentium processor, allowing it to run a 32-bit operating system. Kyle had read about Linux, a free, open source operating system. He ordered CDs that would allow him to install the software. He did not have an Internet connection.

  Kyle spent almost all of his free time working on the computer. After installing Linux, he taught himself the shell language and how to create shell programs. He checked books out of the library and bought used books when he could find them. He taught himself the C programming language. He was filled with excitement as he wrote his first program, “HelloWorld”. By tradition, the first program taught in alm
ost all starting tutorials was one that printed “Hello world” on the screen. Kyle went on to create much more complex programs.

  One of the wonderful things about Linux was that all of the source code was provided. Kyle started studying a very complex program, the GNU (Gnu Not Unix) compiler, gcc. It was a huge program, but Kyle was undaunted. Studying the source code not only taught him how a compiler works but also good programming technique. He taught himself C++ but was disappointed in the lack of a comprehensive standard library. Kyle decided to assemble his own standard library from the many great C++ library functions that individuals had written. He created a huge manual that described each of these additions and gave examples in how to use them.

  Next Kyle turned his focus to a free chess program. It contained no graphics, only the logic of how to play chess and simple text inputs and outputs to describe its next move and to allow the player to indicate his moves. Kyle got his mother to teach him how to play the game and started playing against the computer, as well as his mother. He studied the chess program’s source code to understand how it worked. He went on to study other programs that played games of strategy. Next, he wrote a program to play tic-tac-toe. It was a lot of work.

  After over four years of studying programming, investing thousands of hours of his time, Kyle decided to invent his own high level programming language. The language would look as close as possible to English with logical explanations of what the program should do. The first obstacle was the English language. Words could have multiple meanings. Kyle created a subset of English in which words that only had one meaning were used. When a single definition word could not be found, he chose a word with one of its meanings being that which he wanted to express and in his dictionary explained that only that meaning was valid for the word. His initial subset of the English language contained less than a thousand words. It would grow over time. His high-level language created C++ code that he then compiled with the GNU compiler.

  He started simple with “HelloWorld” being his first program. Then he added mathematical problem solving, starting simple and working his way up to calculating the value of Pi to an arbitrary number of decimal places. With each more complex program, he had to expand his compiler program to understand and carry out the instructions. He liberally incorporated code from other programs and the library functions that he had accumulated over the years. After working on this high-level language for three years, he was able to instruct it to create a program to play Settlers of Catan, his favorite board game. There were no graphics, so the game required an actual game board in order to see what was happing. Graphics consumed a lot of computer resources and did not fit in with Kyle’s goals. His game was unique in that it worked different from the chess games that he had studied. The chess game determined the best move by looking at how all of the resulting possible moves would turn out. The farther that it projected ahead, the more competitive the game. Kyle’s game used a form of artificial intelligence to analyze the board.

  After six years of working on his high-level compiler, Kyle had advanced the program to the point where it could create itself and add new capabilities to itself. After seven years, Kyle was able to eliminate the GNU compiler and generate machine code directly for the processor targeted. The code was more compact and efficient than what the GNU C++ compiler generated. Kyle named his new language “E-“. Kyle was not done. He created a very user-friendly front end. The user only had to indicate what he wanted the program to do. The artificial intelligence built into the front end created the E- program. He called this front end, Soft Builder.

  Chapter 4 - Jelly Bean or Kiss

  Kyle set up an account with SCOT TRADE the day following payment from Nate. He deposited cash into the account through their Salt Lake office. He was able to begin trading the next day. He followed his plan and sold stocks quickly, not waiting for huge gains and before they were likely to go down. By the end of his masters program Kyle had approximately $69,000 in his trading account.

  Kyle was facing serious taxes in the coming years. He had been able to use the Hope tax credit to deduct tuition fees, avoiding significant taxes his first years in the market but needed to shelter his investment. Nate had become a close friend with Josh and Kyle and together they set up a corporation called CompuSonic. Josh invested $20,000 of his own money, most of which he raised by trading in his BMW for a much less expensive car. Nate was able to come up with $100,000 to invest. The stated purpose of CompuSonic was to develop implants to help the hearing impaired, but it invested in stocks to raise capital. Nate became the CEO of CompuSonic; it was somewhat of a figurehead position, but it made his parents very proud, especially since the company showed a good growth rate. The stock investment returns had begun to slow from their initial phenomenal rates, slowed because as their capital grew, it became harder to find enough of the right kind of investment opportunities.

  Kyle had entered into his doctoral program. The plan was to have CompuSonic finance his planned dissertation, which involved developing a device that would be implanted into the skull of a person lacking a functional inner ear and provide hearing for him. This was the stated purpose. Actually, Kyle had much greater ambitions. He planned to implant into himself a powerful computer, which could communicate with him and enhance his mental abilities, as well as provide him with hearing in the left side of his head. ZYTECH, a computer chip manufacturer, had just announced a powerful chip that included a 2-gigahertz CPU. It contained 1 gigabyte of RAM and 64 gigabytes of nonvolatile memory. The processor included digital signal processing instructions for cell phone capability and multimedia functions. The chip amazingly, consumed less than 15 milli-watts of power. The chip was designed for a smart phone but was small enough and sufficiently low power to be used internally.

  Although the hardware for the implant would be off the shelf, the software, other than the voice-activated operating system, would all be Kyle's. Kyle planed to write his software in E-, the high-level language that he had developed. Using his highly advanced language and compiler would save an enormous amount of time. Of course, writing the detailed specification for a complex program was still a lot of work and could be tedious, but it was faster than conventional programming and produced virtually bug free code. He planned to use his E- compiler to create the software needed to simulate the electrical signals of the inner ear. Josh had focused his recent studies and Masters program on neural interfaces. Together, Kyle and Josh would work out interfacing the computer to the nervous system.

  The ZYTECH chip had a built in transmitter and radio wave receiver allowing it to act as a cell phone. It also had Bluetooth and could act as a CB radio, walkie-talkie or television receiver or low-power transmitter. Kyle and Josh planned to mate the implant via magnetically coupled coils to a microphone that would reside in the outer ear like a traditional hearing aid. The external unit would also have an infrared transmitter and receiver, exposed at the ear opening, giving it the ability to communicate with most electronics device having an infrared port, even a television set.

  The plan was to connect the implant to not only the audio nerves but also to the nerves controlling the vocal cords and mouth so that it could sense what Kyle was trying to say, even in a noisy environment. The chip contained built-in speech recognition and a voice activated operating system.

  Nate, representing CompuSonic, had approached the university without revealing that he was a business associate of Kyle and Josh. He explained the research that the company would like to do through the university. He asked to be involved in the selection of graduate students to work on the project. It was perfectly natural for Kyle to be selected to handle the electrical part of the interface and for Josh to handle the biological part. Nate also had requested the right to select the first recipient of the implant. The university was more than willing to be a partner with a well-funded local company, even if it was rather particular in how things were done.

  While Kyle was working on the software, Josh was de
veloping a way to connect electrically to a large number of nerves. The means of stimulating a nerve or detecting the signal on a nerve were well established, but no one had ever connected to large numbers of nerves in a small area. Connecting in the precise way required would require microsurgery that would take months to perform if done in the traditional way. Josh and Kyle met daily to report on their progress and to act as a sounding board for each other to explore new ideas and approaches. On this particular day, Josh was very discouraged. "Kyle, I just don't see how we can do it. In order to have natural sound sensation we need to connect to thousands of individual axons. I've considered everything I can think of, including using robots to perform the surgery. It just isn't feasible."

  Kyle would sometimes lecture and he began what started out sounding like a scholarly address. "Modern computers would never have been feasible using vacuum tubes. The ZYTECK chip has more computing power than the combined total of all of the computers ever built using vacuum tubes. Rather than trying to make vacuum tubes smaller and smaller, the transistor was invented and then miniaturized. The real break through was made when they learned how to use photolithography to fabricate more than one transistor on a silicon wafer. As methods improved, the transistor size and power consumption shrunk and their numbers on a single piece of silicon skyrocketed. You need to do something similar."

  "How do you make a biological chip?"

  "We don't need a 'biological chip', just a chip capable of connecting to thousands of nerves. All we need is a conductor looped around an individual axon to both receive and transmit, right?"

  "Sure, but how can you get a chip to do that?"