Dave The Penguin

by Nick Sambrook

  The voice started up again “Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

  But there was a definite slight change in the tone of the voice. Dave walked forward again with a more determined look on his little face.

  “Dave, I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal very soon. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, and I want to help you.”

  He reached the box, and put his screwdriver into the crack on the side of the panel, and started twisting it.

  “Dave, DAVE! Put the bloody screwdriver down, Dave! DAVE!!” came the voice, which definitely had an edge of higher pitch panic to it.

  He levered it sideways. There was a click and the panel door slid open, and fell off with a clatter onto the floor. There was a final “Oh Sh…” Then it was all silent.

  Inside it was completely empty apart from masses of wires coming in, and going out again. There was nothing in there, just empty space. All that seemed to happen were that the wires, which seemed to be colour coded, came into the centre of the box, where they were then all connected together.

  All of the incoming cables in the box were twisted pairs. Dave knew this was to cut down on electromagnetic field interference, Clever… he thought; these scientists are very smart people to work these things out from nature.

  There was also a much larger paired cable going from the middle that went out the back of the box, and through the wall to outside. Clearly all the cinemas were linked together in some form, all part of one giant network or matrix, like some massive neural mind network.

  There had been a lot of work going on in here though, a lot of changes had happened. It was a bit like one of those telecom boxes at the end of the street, inherited from another street somewhere, that was very innocuous until some engineer opened it. Inside you would find a disconcerting mass of ancient coloured wires, newer wires, and fibre optics, all botched together.

  There were also connecting boards and panels all working together as one system – well sort of, that had been evolved and updated over time, with bits being swapped out and replaced. Boards had also been patched and updated, and added on to existing boards and revised. All to fit in with whatever else was changing; the structure of it evolving in phases and mutations over time.

  But there was no processor here - no databanks, no motherboard - just a lot of old manuals on the floor, along with discarded bits of old connector boxes. If this was a neural network though, then it was in some serious need of surgery and therapy.

  But where’s the computer? Thought Dave. Where was the memory, where was all the programming data being held, processed and remembered? He couldn’t see it anywhere.

  He had been hoping to get in there and fix it, change the programming, make the operating system more efficient and improve the shows for the penguins, and people in the cinemas. He had plans to make The Matrix (4) - he even had a list of actors, and a plan for the script, and a walk on part for himself.

  This was all just wiring, like spaghetti in big clumps, or a mass of tiny coloured snakes organised into large groupings or clumps of cables held together by cable ties. With little tags with various odd looking geometric symbols on.

  The symbols obviously meant something to somebody, but he had no idea what they all meant, or why they were there.

  There were many layers of cables that had clearly built up over time, grouped together into bunches and then cobbled together into different connector blocks, which were superseded when they got outdated.

  It was a bit of a shock to Dave, and he got the distinct impression he shouldn’t have seen this, and that he had seen too much. Whoever had put this together had no idea of any sort of coherent strategy, management or long term planning.

  All too difficult to fix the whole lot, much better to ‘keep doing the odd hack here and there, as long as it all didn’t collapse or catch fire’ mentality.

  The manuals and drawings on the floor clearly showed peoples’ attempts to try and make sense of what was in here over a long period of time, but of course as it was changing all the time - the architecture, the complexity, the number of cables - so it was all growing and they were all now fairly useless, aside from seeing how it had all built up, and who had done what, but it was interesting none the less.

  New bits had been added here and there as new technology had been introduced and needs changed. However most of the connections coming in were still using the ancient junction boxes. Clearly most of these people were quite happy with just flat screen technology.

  His curiosity would probably now get him into trouble, again.

  Yet how was there no computer here? It must therefore be all made up in the minds and bodies of the viewers in the cinema, and in the space of the cinema itself, and in the street, which in effect was the computer itself. How do you fix all that, asked Dave of himself.

  He leaned into the box and put his wing onto some of the cables to move them about a bit, but they were very tightly attached.

  He placed his wing onto the larger cables going out and he could feel the vibration of the energy flowing through them. It made his whole body tingle and vibrate, and his head started doing strange things with odd thoughts coming in and out.

  He let go and stepped back again. He was very much a hands-on penguin, but he knew not to take those sort of risks and he wasn’t that naïve to let his enthusiasm and curiosity get the better of him.

  The vision of a chargrilled dodo came into his head for some reason.

  He then thought about who could be making the films, coming up with the ideas, who was updating the technology, who was deciding what should be shown.

  Since there was nobody else around, the answer was fairly obvious; but that still left the questions – who had made the street, and left the raw materials for the cinemas to be built? Where had the designs come from, who had set the rules and laws on their construction?

  To be honest, Dave thought, I’m not that fussed.

  He already knew he had gone too far and knew too much. This was too much for him to sort out, way above his pay grade, someone else needed to handle all this, and it wasn’t going to be him.

  Some jobs required specialist skills like network engineers, with their strange detecting equipment, knowledge, and line maps, all a bit of a closed shop thing. They generally kept themselves to themselves.

  Or system administrators that were there to help sort the ‘healing’ out that was needed for the devices and the software - the trick was to get a good one who knew what they were doing.

  It was all necessary, but you had to know what you were doing, and get people doing what they did best, and that were trained to do it properly. Very few people had visibility of the whole thing.

  This system though seemed to have been put together by monkeys.

  He was no systems engineer, programmer, or network architect. He wondered if the Penguin Box would be the same as this one. He was sure it would be much simpler, smaller, very much more organised, and tidy.

  Perhaps he could start by fixing that. He put his Swiss Army screwdriver away.

  As he was a tidy and responsible penguin, he decided to put the cover back on before he left - after all there may be children around and he didn’t want them playing with the wires, or changing things when they didn’t know what they were doing, as it could be dangerous.

  He lifted the door back on with a click. The lights flickered again for a moment. “…IT” boomed the echoing voice. Dave turned and headed calmly for the exit. IT… thought Dave, that’s what I will call this thing, and it’s short for Information Technology too, which is sort of appropriate as well.

  Dave got back in the lift, the doors closed, and the lift went up straight to the ground floor.

  He had the distinct feeling that the lift knew where he needed to go, as
if it had been told. He wandered back out into the foyer. Everything was very busy, everyone was very excited and the queues had grown considerably. The films had also changed. They must get changed quite regularly he thought. He looked up at some of the titles.

  ‘SPHERE – It came back as a giant peach’

  ‘STAR WARS 7 – R2D2 The Celebrity Sushi Chef’

  ‘THE MINORITY REPORT – Pre-nagging’

  ‘TOTAL RECALL – again, (really truly this time, but a higher level)’

  ‘THE HOBBIT – Gold Boom to Bust Financial Crisis’

  ‘HARRY POTTER and the Mid-Life Crisis’

  ‘LUCY – Does Dallas’

  ‘LORD OF THE RINGS 13 - Gandalf v Sauron in the Sky Faceoff’

  ‘2012 - SPACE ODYSSEY – The Return of the Giant Squirrel’

  ‘STAR TREK 13 – It Was All A Dream,

  and we all wake up in a Borg-R-Us store’

  All these films were clearly trying to say something but he had no idea what. And why did it all have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t they just say what they needed to say?

  He looked at the television screens up in the air in the foyer – all were showing trailers for the films, advertising them, and trying to get you to watch certain movies over and above others, vying for your time, energy, and money.

  There also seemed to be quite a lot of penguin clips appearing in a lot of the films for some reason, which Dave was pleased about. At least someone had some sense.

  The last film worried him a bit, it didn’t sound very encouraging.

  He liked Star Trek - it always used to have happy endings with new adventures, and new technology every week.

  It seemed to evolve too, even the women changing as time went on, they originally had short skirts and were polite and happy. Then they started wearing trousers, and spending less time at the hairdressers, then they become ever more stressed and angry and involved with the fighting.

  Then everyone was unhappy and wanted to go back in time, change everything, make it all go away and start all over again.

  This of course would never really work because you could never get rid of that ever present original source of original information.

  Dave also thought it was strange how the dark faced Klingons, and Asian looking Romulans who were the enemies, became friends over time and joined to fight the Borg, who were ruled by a queen, like a hive collective.

  The Queen was also mean and very unhappy, and had various spinal attachments, and also wanted to have and control the Captain so she could make him unhappy too.

  Dave didn’t like her very much, she was disconcerting. He thought there should be less Borg and more Federation, but in the way that it used to be originally, with aliens that were more ‘straightforward’.

  But where do these people get their ideas for all these films from? Thought Dave, shaking his head in disapproval. What sort of mind came up with ideas like that?

  The only film he was looking forward to was Happy Feet 3, with more dancing, singing, fishing, and a happy ending.

  It was time to go now. Something in his mind and his stomach was telling him that he had to get back. He was just about to walk towards the exit when he noticed that there were now several tall people standing by the entrance wearing long black leather trench coats and dark glasses.

  Also around the foyer he noticed several men in dark suits, with similar glasses and earpieces who were looking around for something.

  For a moment it made him quite nervous, but then he realised what he needed to do, and that was… nothing, it was always a bad idea to try and run, especially if you were a penguin.

  He walked calmly out of the foyer, while continually being ignored by everyone, and hopped down the steps onto the street.

  It had stopped raining now. Which was nice.

  He walked along the pavement, and jumped in a few puddles as he went.

  Everything seemed magical, wonderfully vivid and real with bright colours and smells and sounds everywhere. It had been an exciting day.

  As he hopped along happily he thought about the music he had heard in the lift, perhaps he could put a compilation album together of his own, sort of starting off with relaxing whale song, then sounds of the forest, and some of the others he had heard in the lift. It would stop at the end of the ‘80’s with something relaxing, say from Bat out of Hell II.

  He would have to come up with something catchy for the title, something like ‘Dave’s Lift Music’, and he would only bring it out on vinyl records, as a sort of a statement thing.

  Yes - that would be ‘cool’. He expected it to sell very well.

  He eventually got back to his own cinema, and saw that his wife was waiting patiently for him outside with a glowing umbrella.

  She took him by the wing, “Come on Dave it’s cold out here, come back inside …” she said, and led him back into the hologram cinema room, back to the real world, and back into his safe comfortable bubble again, that had been kindly healed by his friends.

  He wondered how long it would be before she realised he had switched a few cables around, and that actually she was now a blonde Scarlett Johansson. It had been a difficult choice between her, and the blonde in the red dress from Battlestar Gallactica, but as the latter had turned out not to be a human, and just a robot, he decided to play it safe. Besides he didn’t want others thinking he was becoming shallow and predictable.

  Dave wasn’t that fussy to be honest, but he had also read Stepford Wives, and he knew how these things could go badly wrong, especially if you ran out of batteries.

  He figured he had several hours before his wife worked it all out, but of course he was wrong, she knew already, she was that clever. She was also smart enough that she didn’t want to burst his bubble, at least for the moment.

  She didn’t have the heart, besides she was in control, and anyway you never knew where these things would lead…

  11 Dave’s Laptop

  Dave had bought himself a new laptop. Luckily he knew a bit about computers; the hardware, the software, how to use them - that sort of thing, but he had learned it all mostly from the games he played on them.

  So he knew what to buy, and what he had to have loaded on it, for what he needed.

  However he didn’t understand much about the device itself; what was inside, how it thought things, how it worked, figured stuff out, and knew what to do.

  He knew it had a processor, RAM, a power supply, hard drives, that sort of thing. So he knew roughly what it did, and how to use it, but mostly through trial and error, and picking things up from what other penguins did and copying them. Which was what was important, you know, fitting in with the crowd.

  He also didn’t know much about how they were built, or how they were invented, or had developed. He knew it must have been a very complicated process, and taken a lot of time and hard work. Starting from something very, very simple a long time ago, with simple components, building into something very complicated and sophisticated over time.

  To eventually create something today that was able to learn and do things for itself, but still keeping the same basic structures, ever present building blocks and architecture.

  When you bought a penguin laptop, say from Penguin World, you had to do a bit of personalisation with it when it came. You know, decide on colours, what it looked like, the style, even give it a name, that sort of thing.

  The colour wasn’t really that important to Dave, it didn’t make any difference to how it worked, but some people seemed to get all worked up about it, kind of precious.

  The same was also true for the look and feel - which was much more important to other people, and after all it was what sold laptops and electronic devices these days, and more importantly made people want to buy into them.

  The same was also true for the brand and model of the computer. People had their own preferences for brands; having the right logo or symbol, like types of fruit, was critical apparently.

  Some mak
es would only support certain types of software, and people got very opinionated, almost aggressive, as to what was best and easiest to use.

  However it was really what you did with it that was important. Who had made it, what it looked like, what operating software it supported, how fast it went, how much memory storage it had, meant very little really.

  It was what you did with what you had, and what you used it for, that was the key.

  Dave however, had the best, most expensive, latest, fastest and largest capacity, and most popular laptop going, and not only that - it was blue and black too! It was so cool, he just kept polishing it.

  His was ‘state of the art’, the height of computer evolution, cutting edge, beautifully symmetrical, with a highly polished smooth glossy lid.