No one outside the plane was hurt.
• • • •
Olivos saw the plane explode and in such a spectacular fashion too. In as much as all of the enemy Oni had been dealt with, he took the time to search the area but did not find any further sign of the wizard that had attacked Brasilia. Since he had personally seen that wizard enter the airplane, he assumed him to be dead.
Good riddance! Feeling a lot better about the event, he sent his remaining Oni back to Brasilia. He himself returned to the Games.
SECTION III
EMERGENCE
FOURTEEN
Rental House
Magdalena Rd
Los Altos Hills, CA
August
Tuesday 7:16 a.m. PDT
“But really, I’m not that badly hurt,” Capie protested as she lay in the large king-sized bed in the master bedroom. The bright California sun was shining through both windows into the room.
“No broken bones, no major organ damage. Just a little blood loss, a few nasty bruises and some burned skin,” she added. “No big deal, not really. So, please, let me get up and fix myself an honest breakfast. Something better than chicken bouillon, for goodness sake!”
Paul clucked, shaking his head. For two days after their return, he had nursed her closely, calling upon a plethora of fictional doctors to examine and proscribe treatment for her. She was vastly understating her injuries, especially the more than two pints of blood she had lost before he could stem the bleeding. And the burn she had suffered had been more than ten percent of her body. His best guess was that she had no shield up when the blast from the Oni had caught her in the left side. And she had nearly paid for that mistake with her life.
“The doctors want you to get another day or two of rest,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Yes, I know that you are using magic to heal yourself at a fast rate and that transfusion of blood I gave you didn’t hurt either. But please, humor me, CB! I nearly lost you. By the by, let me say again, that was a pretty neat stunt you pulled, going to Brasilia and tricking the Oni there to follow you to Rio. I wasn’t making any headway taking out the plane, protected as it was by a dozen Oni.”
“It just seemed the right thing to do,” she modestly admitted. “Even with the two of us, we would have had a hard time getting past a dozen Oni and stopping the plane. We were over-matched, especially considering how little time we had. I just figured that the Errabêlu in Brazil might be as upset as ourselves at having the Olympic ceremony, the Maracanã Stadium and 80,000 Brazilians killed by that horrible bomb.”
“Absolutely brilliant on your part,” Paul said, with a single nod of his head. “And now, as rewards for your labor, you can take it easy in bed and rest up. Sleep, read, watch TV or whatever. Relax. Doctor’s orders.”
She gave him a sour expression. “You can be so stubborn.”
“Now, I have good news for you. For lunch, you can have chicken noodle soup with real noodles. I have a special family recipe which you will absolutely love!”
Later in the afternoon while Capie was fast asleep, Paul headed out to the garage. As he stared at the latest qubit processor only half assembled on the workbench, he put his hands together, cracking his knuckles.
“Now!” he crowed. “To get back to what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted!”
• • • •
On Monday evening, Paul completed testing the first 1,024 qubit processor.
“Just how high do you plan to go, dear?” Capie asked him Tuesday morning at breakfast. “A million qubits? Ten million?”
Paul paused as he buttered his toast, thinking about her question. “We could do that, but I don’t see the need. We’ve successfully established all the basic processes involved in building any size qubit processor that we want. The problem now is how we use the new style of processor to build the brain for our first Scottie.”
Capie cocked her head at him and raised one eyebrow.
With a glance at her expression, Paul shrugged his shoulders and nodded. “Okay, that was a pretty cryptic remark on my part, wasn’t it, honey?” With a wave of his hand, a holographic display appeared in mid-air above the breakfast nook table. In it could be seen a block diagram of a computer system.
“The problem with the quantum computer approach is that all we have right now is the hardware involved. No one has developed the software for quantum computers—at least, nothing like what we need. Now, I have no doubt that we could do it—given sufficient time.”
But Capie’s puzzled expression told Paul that there was something that she didn’t understand.
“Problem?” he asked, eyebrows raised, head cocked to one side.
“I thought you already had the software issue solved. All that work you did in Chicago, copying your mental processes, I think you said.”
“Ah, I see your point. I admit that the intricacies of computer programming leave me more than a bit confused as well. Like most engineers, I’ve dabbled in software programming, but I am not a software engineer. The Microsoft models—well, in my opinion, they were developed by Machiavelli. But I digress. For the Scottie, I’m shooting for a straight forward three tier approach. The top tier will have the applications programs which will host the Scottie’s mental processes and intelligence. That’s where the subroutines I worked out in Chicago will run. The second tier, underlying the first, is the operating system. In our case, a lightly modified version of Linux. The third and most basic tier is the one I’m talking about right now, something most engineers refer to as embedded software or machine code. It’s the lowest level of any system, moving blocks of data from point A to B, doing byte to byte comparisons, integer addition and so on. Standard stuff for binary computers, highly exotic for quantum computers.”
“But you have another idea, I take it,” Capie prodded him along.
Paul grinned mysteriously. “You know me too well. Yes. I have an idea.” And he pointed at the display. “I propose we use a standard Intel sixteen core CPU, running Linux as the operating system, as I said. It will act as the system central server, loading data to and from a sizeable array of qubit processors. We can tailor the qubit CPUs to handle specific tasks such as vision, hearing, speech and so forth. Each core of the Intel processor will shuffle the data back and forth to the qubits while the real processing and data crunching will be performed by the qubit processors.” Paul glanced back at Capie with a hopeful look. “It’s not optimum, of course. But since the qubit processors are nearly instantaneous, this configuration should give us the speed we need, and we can use standard software for the Intel processor—and yes, use the software that I developed back in Chicago. Think of it as a hybrid system, integrated with the best of both worlds. It will save us a huge amount of development time and a ton of work.”
She half bowed at him. “Bravo. We like the ‘saving time’ thing. Where do we start? What can I do?”
“You can build the qubit processors,” he said, taking a bite of his toast. “Clear off a spot on the workbench out in the garage and copy the 1,024 qubit design. I need sixteen of them to start with. In the meantime, I’m going to take a standard motherboard design and figure out how to adapt the bus structure to interface with the qubit processors.”
Capie adopted a more serious look, as she began moving items on the workbench. “Paul. Is this really going to work? Can we really make an intelligent computer? The Plan depends heavily on making it work,” she firmly reminded him.
“It’s a big gamble,” he reluctantly admitted. “I need to do this on Earth before we commit ourselves to a trip to Mars. It would make life a lot simpler just in case I discover later something critical that I missed, something that is only available on Earth, or worse, not available at all anywhere. And it needs to be totally successful, not just show a degree of promise.”
“‘Do, or do not. There is no try,’” she quoted Yoda, with a smug grin.
“Yes, Master Yoda,” he politely responded, smiling as he got to his
feet, leaned over giving her a tight hug, and taking his empty plate to the kitchen.
• • • •
With the use of the workstation, Paul was able to open an internet link with other mainframes around the valley, hacking through firewalls into supercomputers at Apple, NASA, Google, Microsoft, and a dozen other places.
During the course of the next few days, using the supercomputer access, he was finally able to put together a theoretical design of the new Scottie hardware architecture.
“Let me summarize what we have so far,” Paul explained to Capie at the end of another long day of pounding the keyboard at the IBM workstation. “I started with an existing design of a motherboard from a manufacturer in the Far East, to cut down on design time, but I did quite a bit of tweaking on the known bottlenecks. Also, utilizing a new theoretical three atom transistor design, I was able to shrink the scale of several of the more critical components. In fact, I was able to segment and expand the onboard RAM by a factor of two, up to 512 gigabytes and to locate them adjacent to all of the processors, providing each with a local cache.”
“I’ve finished all of the qubit processors that you asked me to make,” Capie informed him with a tired smile, handing him a small glass tray stacked with integrated circuits. “I never thought I would finish that task. Um, we’ve been working pretty hard lately, dear.”
“Ah, I know that tone, CB.” Paul put the tray on the workbench, stood and stepped up to her, taking her hands and looking into her eyes. “What’s up? What are you thinking?”
She glanced down and then back up shyly. “Ever been to DragonCon, Dom?”
“No, I have not! I’ve heard of it, of course. One of the largest science fiction and fantasy conventions in the United States. Where is that? Atlanta?”
“I’ve never been there either. It’s, ah, this coming weekend…”
“Perfect! Have you ever been to Atlanta, Georgia?”
“Yep,” she replied. “The Southeast in August? Hot, muggy. Just like a sauna.”
“Oh, so you have been there!”
“So, we can go, please?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” He looked back at the workstation, using a small spell to save his work files. “It’s time to stop and go get some dinner. I’m starved.”
Capie took Paul’s arm and squeezed it, guiding him through the garage door and into the kitchen. “I thought you would never stop for the evening. I must say, I am really impressed with everything you accomplished these last few days.”
Paul grinned in amusement. “Yes, well, my mind works just like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.”
She chuckled. “Who said that?”
Shrugging, Paul replied, “I don’t have the foggiest idea.”
Squeezing his arm tighter, she asked him, “Are you having fun?”
Paul smiled wickedly as the two of them passed through the dining room. “For the last month, I have been doing real engineering. Boy, am I having fun!”
• • • •
“Paul? Where are you?”
“In the garage, dear,” he answered as he modified the settings on the o’scope lying on the workbench.
Capie stepped through the garage doorway, arms crossed and a frown on her face. “I thought we were leaving for Atlanta this morning.”
“We are, we are,” he answered quickly, as he terminated two wires from the motherboard to two other printed circuit boards on the bench in front of him. The hodgepodge of boards and wiring in front of him looked remarkably like a rats nest. “I just finished wiring everything up for an initial power-on test, and all I need is just fifteen minutes or so to confirm that it’s working. Please?” he implored Capie with an innocent smile.
She rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, dear. You won’t be happy until you know if it works.”
“It won’t take long,” Paul muttered again as he resumed his seat on the stool, craning his neck this way and that, running another visual check of his connections and adjusting a couple of more wires.
“Uh, huh. Sure thing,” was Capie’s only comment.
Paul seemed not to notice her skepticism. One more look over the jury-rigged assembly and he rubbed his hands together in excitement. “I’m ready, CB.” And he reached over to snap on a series of small switches.
When he flipped the fourth such switch, a puff of smoke exploded out of the center of the assembly followed by a small flame burning quite energetically. A whole host of sparks shot forth in all directions.
“Fire!” Paul yelled, casting a fast spell, opening a three inch portal to the Pacific Ocean, the water dousing the flame—which, instead of putting it out, actually increased the amount of smoke produced. He immediately enlarged the portal, practically drowning the entire work bench in water and himself as well.
After that, the board was no longer smoking.
Capie coughed, waving a hand at all the smoke in the air.
“Does that mean that we won’t be going to the DragonCon after all?” she asked, uncertainly.
Crestfallen, Paul stood, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the burnt and waterlogged printed circuit boards. Then he sighed. “It didn’t even pass the smoke test.”
“And, pray tell, what is a smoke test?” Capie asked.
“Oh, you don’t know that one? It’s the very first test that is done on all new electronic equipment. You see, all of these components contain smoke inside. They all run on smoke—”
Capie knew when she was being teased. “Uh, huh. Right. On smoke.”
“Yep, on smoke,” Paul answered, casting a portal spell to sweep the air clear of remaining smoke and then another one to dry his wet clothing. “When you turn on a piece of equipment for the first time, if the smoke comes out, that’s bad. It means it failed the smoke test ’cause it can’t run without it.”
“I admit, I never knew that, dear,” Capie responded with heavy sarcasm. “But you haven’t answered my question yet. Does this change our plans for this weekend?”
“Not on your life. This? Only a minor setback is all, I assure you. Hardly worth mentioning.” But Capie could clearly see the pain written in his face. “And I needed to make a few changes anyway. I’ll build a new motherboard when we get back. Oh, and I’ll need another set of qubit processors.”
She smiled at her husband. “Then let’s go. You will feel a lot better when you meet a few thousand people dressed in superhero costumes, StarFleet uniforms, and as aliens from outer space!”
• • • •
On the Friday afternoon following their holiday at the convention in Atlanta, Paul hummed a merry tune as he strode down the hallway and into the master bedroom. There he found his wife, folding clothes and slipping them into the dresser drawers.
“You look happy,” she observed, noting the huge smile on his face.
“Yep,” he whooped, doing a small dancing jig in front of her and throwing his arms wide. “It works! The first Scottie computer works! Fully tested, primed, and raring to go!”
Capie clapped, beaming with joy. “That’s wonderful news! And the benchmarks?”
“Off the charts!” Paul announced, pumping his fist in the air. “Now all we need is the software and, if that works, we will have the first Artificial Intelligence in history!”
“Congratulations!” she squealed, rushing forward to give her husband a big hug. “I knew that you could do it!”
“Hey, team effort here,” he barked, hugging her back. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” He leaned back to give her a kiss. “Let’s celebrate! The sky’s the limit! Where do you want to go?”
“Well, fancy that you should ask that question,” she said lightly, looking up at the ceiling. “Did you know that the MidAmeriCon2, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention is coming up in Kansas City this weekend?”
“Fantastic coincidence!” he declared, with a huge grin on his face. “I’ve never been before, have you? Let’s go!”
Indeed, it was the first time ever tha
t either one of them had attended what some have argued to be the most important science fiction/fantasy convention held each year. They especially enjoyed trying to guess who would receive the Hugo Awards for the year at the award ceremony and then the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. It didn’t faze them any that none of their guesses were correct. They simply enjoyed themselves the entire weekend.
But, as in all things, good times have an end. The WorldCon was over and they needed to return to San Jose and to continue their work building the first Scottie.
• • • •
“Wow!” Capie muttered softly, eyes wide as she stared around her. “So this is what virtual reality looks like! It’s nothing like the Matrix movies.”
Paul chuckled in reaction. “Funny, but that was pretty much my first response as well.”
The two of them were in cyberspace—specifically, inside the confluence of a half dozen supercomputers scattered around the Silicon Valley area. All around them was a soft white light, including the ‘ground’ beneath their ‘feet.’ Except for a tall column made of brightly flashing strings of lights a few feet away.
“Those are the programs running, right?” Capie surmised, reaching up to push a stray strand of hair back into place. “All this space and that’s the only things that are running?”
“Seems a waste, right?” Paul observed, smiling at his wife. “But it’s not like this all the time. On the occasions that it gets really busy, I get out. I don’t want the system administrators to know we are tapping their unused processing power. They have no sense of humor about such things.”
“No, probably not,” agreed Capie, stepping closer to the strings of lights. “So, we are tapped into this space through the workstation back at the house. And you’re going to start assembling the software for the Scottie in here first and move it to the quantum computer later.”
“In a nut shell, you’ve got it.” He waved a hand at the free space around them. “There is a lot more space here to use for development of the A.I. than in the Scottie, even if it is a bit slow by comparison. So let’s get started.”
Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Page 18