I’m still not sure what that was supposed to mean. Given that the only person listening was a horse, I have to assume Betty was just filling the silence with some decorative word-nonsense. She began to clatter on her keyboard.
‘You have to think outside the bag, horsey-hoofs. The world outside is a question whose only answer is another question. We must imagine our world before we can see it.’
She was adding a new word to my vocabulary, to symbolise the concept of ‘possibly’. It appeared on my screen, explained via a series of pictorial demonstrations involving carrots and different-coloured bags.
> Where is carrot?
> Carrot is ‘possibly’ in green bag
> Carrot is ‘possibly’ in blue bag
I almost felt like I should be running these tests myself. I already had a firm grasp of these concepts but had to wait laboriously until she gave me the specific word to describe them. This job would have been done a lot faster if I were allowed to make up my own words, but since I was still hiding behind a veil of stupidity I had to walk through these tasks at the prescribed pace.
She added a final statement on the subject of carrots and bags.
> If carrot is possibly in green bag, then carrot is possibly in blue bag.
This didn’t seem necessary to say, but many of these lessons ended with an ‘if and then’ statement, probably as a prelude to future tests based on logical terminology. It was all bafflingly obvious. ‘If raining then wet, if hungry then eat.’ I imagine most animals would have a basic understanding of such concepts. Nevertheless, we had to play this game for the sake of building a common language. I just wished there was a way to accelerate the process.
A new object appeared on the screen. It was yellow and curved, and sitting on a table. Whatever it was I had never seen one before.
‘What is on table?’ she asked.
I would have shrugged if only I could.
‘Unknown is on table,’ I responded. ‘Possibly carrot,’ I added. It didn’t look like any carrot I had seen, but I had seen some fairly unusual carrots in my time.
‘Unknown is banana,’ she replied, and the symbol for the new word appeared on the screen. Part of this exercise was to differentiate between pictures of objects and the symbols that represented them. The symbols seemed superfluous at first, but I understood now that no two carrots are exactly alike, so a symbol became necessary in order to wrap the entire carrot experience up in a single idea.
‘Banana is carrot?’ I asked. Instead of typing her response, Betty got up from her keyboard and walked over to me, pulling a real banana out of her magical bag. I gave it a sniff. Whatever it was, I wanted to eat it.
As I munched on this unknown object, taking note of its un-carrot-like qualities, Betty retreated back to her computer to make some notes of her own.
‘Don’t think you’ll be eating every new word you come across, horsey-hoofs,’ she muttered.
Outside the stable door the sound of Tim’s footsteps approached, though their usual languid rhythm was infected with a slight sense of urgency.
‘Timbolanus!’ Betty exclaimed as his lanky form materialized in the open doorway. ‘Where have you been hiding? You have been missing some sparkling conversation.’
‘Dr Elizabeth Brown,’ he replied. Betty seemed momentarily stunned by this formal greeting. ‘You have a couple of visitors,’ he continued, aiming his finger at her.
‘Visitors?’
‘What are you a doctor of, anyway?’
‘Visitors?’ she repeated.
‘Two ladies from the D.I.S.,’ he said, shaking his head solemnly. Betty’s confused expression took on a subtle shade of dread. ‘They want a word with you.’
‘With me? The D.I.S.? Is this a joke, Timothy dear? You don’t joke about things like this.’
‘Deadly serious, mate,’ he replied.
‘Deadly serious?’ she asked. ‘Do they look deadly serious?’
Tim thought about it for a moment.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they’d laugh if you told them a joke.’
‘No? Would they smile though?’
He considered it further and shook his head.
‘Not even politely,’ he replied. ‘Something I should know about? Or something I shouldn’t know about?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Visitors’ waiting room. They have briefcases.’
‘Briefcases, you say. Yes, well. They probably just need my help with something. Hmm, yes. That is probably what they want. An expert doctor’s opinion.’ Betty sat in her chair, tickling her chin in thought.
‘Are you gonna go then?’ Tim asked her.
‘Yes. I suppose I should.’ She remained in her chair for a few more seconds before reluctantly rocking herself upright. ‘Buttercup?’ she called to me from the doorway. ‘If I should not return… you’ll look after Timothy for me, won’t you?’
I know now that somewhere between leaving the stable and arriving at her unscheduled meeting, Betty pulled out her phone and activated its recording function, before concealing it once again inside her pocket. I’m not sure why she did this. Perhaps she required the evidence for potential legal purposes, or simply wanted a record of what was said for future reference.
Whatever her reason I am eternally thankful that she did, because I have since been able to retrieve this recording, and while the exact details of the encounter might not be strictly necessary to relate, there is no denying that the substance of this meeting would turn out to have profound and far-reaching consequences. It therefore serves to provide an illuminating layer of colour to our picture of these historical events.
‘Dr Brown. Thank you for coming to see us. My name is Patricia Clarke, I am from the Department of Information Security.’
‘Patricia, from the D. of I. S. How lovely to meet you. Please, call me Betty. Do we shake hands?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the voice of Patricia Clarke from the Department of Information Security. ‘Please take a seat, Dr Brown. This is my colleague Murgatroyd.’
‘Murgatroyd? Well. That’s a… beautiful name.’
Murgatroyd responded with an oppressive silence that she maintained throughout the entire interview. Chairs scraped on the wooden floor as the three women took their seats.
‘So…’ Betty began.
‘We would like to ask you some questions relating to an investigation we are conducting,’ said Patricia.
‘Ask away, my dear. I am a professional answerer of questions.’
‘Yes.’ The inquisitor paused to leaf through some papers, and the silence of Murgatroyd filled the air. ‘You are currently engaged in independent research, funded by Bunzel Incorporated. Prior to this you were employed by Bunzel for twelve years,’ she continued.
‘Twelve years was it?’ Betty seemed surprised by this knowledge. ‘My goodness, happy times.’
‘Indeed. As their Head of Communications Research.’
‘I certainly was. Twelve years, teaching computers to talk to each other. They are very friendly, computers; they love to chat. But they do need a little bit of help, sometimes. Hmm?’
‘Mmm.’ Patricia left a slight pause to establish her lack of enthusiasm for the subject. ‘During your time at Bunzel, you were also a member of the open-source coding community “Soldiers of Simon”, under the user name’ – she took a moment to read from her bundle of papers – ‘“Bettylicious”.’
Betty was unusually lost for words, but her questioners seemed to be waiting for a response.
‘How…’ she started, but lost the will to finish her sentence.
‘You worked on a number of applications under this pseudonym,’ Patricia continued. ‘Whether or not this constituted a breach of contract with your previous employers… is not really within the purview of our investigation. Though it does perhaps provide cause for further reflection. No, what we are interested in today, Dr Brown, is anything you can tell us about Sparkle.’
&nb
sp; Betty waited for an explanation that never arrived.
‘Sparkle?’ she asked. ‘Who is that? Is that a horse?’
The silence of Murgatroyd threatened to descend once again, but Patricia interjected.
‘Sparkle is a virus, Dr Brown,’ she said. ‘A computer virus.’
‘Ah, I see. Very naughty. Not my area of expertise though, my dear. I do have a colleague who would be more than happy to help…’ Betty became distracted by the sound of a briefcase opening, followed by the thump of a folder of papers landing on the table.
‘Sparkle is an unusual virus, Dr Brown. Once contracted it completely blocks access to the infected machine, which is then operated remotely for the purpose of running certain calculations. What these calculations are for, we have yet to ascertain.’ Her voice was accompanied by the flicking of pages.
‘And that’s unusual is it? In the world of viruses? Hmm? Not that I am any kind of expert on the subject of course.’
The flicking of pages stopped momentarily.
‘In the world of viruses, Dr Brown, there are typically three paths you can take: exploitation, extortion or destruction. Sparkle does not appear to fit neatly into any one of these categories. Hence “unusual”.’ The pages resumed their turning as Patricia continued. ‘It might be considered exploitational, were it not for the fact that it broadcasts its existence. The name Sparkle, incidentally, is derived from the random patterns it displays on the screens of its victims. Not exactly surreptitious, you might say.’ Finally the last page was turned, and the folder slid across the table. A finger tapped on it.
‘What do we have here, then?’ Betty asked.
‘This is an extract from the source code for the Sparkle virus. We would be interested to know if it seems familiar to you, at all.’
‘Familiar? Why…’ her voice drifted off as she examined the papers.
‘If you could direct your attention to the highlighted section, you may notice that it helpfully includes the name of its author. One “Bettylicious”.’
Betty remained silent for some time as she examined the evidence. Patricia added her own silence to the silence, and for a while these silences combined into a force of nothingness that drowned out even the silence of Murgatroyd.
‘Hmm,’ Betty said at last. ‘Yes. Interesting. Very interesting.’ There was the sound of pages flipping back and forth. ‘This is Squigley,’ she said finally.
You could almost hear her audience exchanging bemused glances.
‘This whole section,’ she went on to explain, ‘it looks like it has been copied and pasted from a piece of software I wrote, well now… a long time ago. Nothing to do with a virus of course. No, you’ll probably find this code lurking in all kinds of unexpected places. Open-source, like you say. My gift to the world. I called it “Squigley”. What it does, it helps computers talk to each other. “Hello, I’m a computer,” they say. “Oh how do you do, so am I.” Hmm?’ Betty’s finger tap-tap-tapped on the page of computer code. ‘Squigley,’ she repeated.
There were a few uncomfortable seconds of consideration before Patricia responded.
‘Squigley…’ she stated.
‘That’s right…’ Betty replied.
Murgatroyd exuded a fresh wave of expectant stillness.
‘I know it’s an odd name,’ Betty explained. ‘There’s an interesting story behind that. But anyway, this looks like a very old version of my code. From my pre-Bunzel period, I believe. Most of my software is a bit out of date these days, to be honest. I’ve moved on to… other stuff. You’ll probably still find Squigley in your fridge, though. If your fridge connects to the internet. Do you have an internet fridge, my dear? My fridge talks to my toilet, would you believe. I wouldn’t like to imagine what they are saying about me.’
Squigley 2.0
Betty stormed back into the stable clutching a folder of papers. The video camera perched in the corner of the room registered a minor earthquake as she slumped into her groaning chair next to it.
‘We are in so much trouble…’ she said.
‘We?’ Tim enquired over his shoulder.
She immediately leapt out of her chair and stormed back to the open doorway, peeking stealthily around the corner. Tim rotated in his chair to observe this odd behaviour.
‘What’s going on, mate?’ he asked. With no unwanted listeners lurking outside, Betty turned the full glare of her bespectacled attention on her colleague.
‘What have you been up to, Timothy?’ Before he could even protest she shook her folder at him. ‘Sparkle! Ever heard of it? Ring any bells? Hmm?’
‘Sparkle?’ Tim stared gormlessly into space before furrowing his brows in thought. ‘You mean that stupid virus?’
‘Where is Buttercup?’ Betty scanned the empty stable as if I might be hiding behind a bale of straw.
‘Dunno, mate. Out? What’s going on?’
‘You tell me, Timmus. Here,’ she crossed the room and pushed the folder into his chest. ‘Read me a bedtime story, why don’t you? The adventures of Sparkle. Courtesy of Patricia and Murgatroyd, our benevolent overlords at the Department of Infinite Suffering.’ She waited with folded arms while Tim examined the mysterious manuscript, picking through its pages like an ancient artefact.
‘They printed out the source code?’ he asked.
‘Indeed. Proper old-school, the D. of I. S. Fire and brimstone. Page one seven six is where the fun starts.’
‘But what’s this got to do with us?’
Betty snatched the folder from his grasp and violently flipped to the relevant page before thrusting it back into his hands. While Tim reluctantly absorbed its contents, she wandered over to the doorway and gazed outside. It is possible she was watching me munching some grass at the far end of the field. It is also possible she was staring vacantly into the abyss of her unknown future.
‘Is this the Squigley code?’ Tim said at last.
‘Congratulations, Timbo. First prize. You win an afternoon of interrogation with our friendly government information police.’
‘Huh,’ he replied, peering at the lines of code. ‘Why did you give it that stupid name anyway? And who is “Bettylicious”?’
Betty whirled across the room and grabbed the pages out of his hands.
‘Never mind about that. The real question here, my dear darling Timolina, is what Patty and Megatroid from the Department of Infernal Sadism are going to do to your private parts once they find out what you have done.’
‘Wait, what? What I’ve done? Mate, are you on something? Anyone could have nicked this code.’
‘That is exactly what I told them, young Timpson.’ She nodded and smiled at him. ‘And by some miracle they believed me. And I also asked them to bestow upon me the Book of Sparkle’ – she held up the wad of printed computer code – ‘so that I may shine the light of my wisdom on its pages and perhaps dispel this viral curse that blights our land. And they believed me again. The dull blade of bureaucracy, hmm?’
She dragged her chair away from her desk and set it opposite to Tim, sitting herself knee to knee in front of him.
‘Now, what I didn’t tell them’ – she cast a quick glance over her shoulder – ‘and what I am telling you right now, Timothy dear, is that this version of Squigley’ – she poked the offending page of numbers and symbols – ‘this happens to be a version that I never actually released. It is, in fact, a version that I specifically modified for the sole purpose of connecting a horse’s brain to a computer. And the only two people in the whole world who have access to this code are at this very moment sitting in a stable looking at each other.’
Tim’s face froze in a position of permanent confusion.
‘Hmm, yes, it is an interesting conundrum isn’t it?’ said Betty, turning a few pages in the Sparkle document and delicately inserting it back into Tim’s hands. ‘While you are thinking about that, here is another piece of the puzzle that I neglected to mention to our recent guests. It seems that Squigley might just be the t
ip of the iceberg of horse manure we are sailing into. See, they couldn’t know where that virus is sending all its data. I mean, obviously it all ends up at Bunzel Towers, but then it disappears down the information plughole along with everyone else’s. That is the magic of Squigley after all, and the reason my toilet remains free from the forces of evil. So imagine my surprise when I saw this.’ She directed Tim’s dazed attention to the book sitting in his lap. He gradually lowered his eyes to where Betty’s finger was pointing, whereupon his face somehow managed to achieve an even higher level of stupefaction.
Betty sat back in her chair and watched him slowly processing the information in front of him.
‘That’s…’ he said at last.
‘The name of your computer? My goodness me, Timbums, how did that get in there?’
Tim looked over his shoulder at the machine behind him.
‘How…’ he stammered.
‘Bit of a smoking gun that, Timothy. Now, why would our sparkly Sparkle virus be sending you secret messages I wonder? Hmm? Is this some weird hobby of yours?’
Tim snapped out of his trance.
‘Mate, what? Why would I… This is just stupid. Why would anyone make a virus that shits everywhere and then points at the guy who made it? Seriously? That’s mental.’
‘Well, Jimbo, if you have an alternative and non-mental explanation then I am quite literally made entirely out of ears right now.’ She crossed her arms and waited, while Tim’s eyes danced around the room. Then a light bulb seemed to switch on in his head.
‘It’s sabotage. Mate, that’s it. Bunzel. They want to stop our funding, yeah? But they can’t break the contract, so they steal our code and make this virus and…’
‘… And we get thrown into the D.I.S. dungeon? That’s a bit harsh don’t you think? I’m sure the almighty Bunzel could turn our taps off whenever the fancy took them, hmm? Without some elaborate conspiracy shenanigans.’
Horse Destroys the Universe Page 7