![[If there were a good description of this photo here, I wouldnt need to be writing this story!]](files/gary-justis-gushing-fiction-200x182-1231321673.jpg)
This story is a response to the contest announced by Gary Justis in his post Gushing Fiction, where he asked people to write an essay explaining the identity, name, and function of the item in the above picture.
I didn't see anyone else writing the 500-2000 words he says he requires of his students, so I kept mine short, too. As for it being an “essay,” this probably isn't the most traditional format for that. But I hope it's close enough.
“That looks ridiculous.”
“Well, at least I’m not boring you.”
“That’s a laugh. The truth is you wish you were boring me.”
“Fair enough. But you need to get better. So you’re really going to have to open up a little.”
“I don’t want you screwing around inside my head.”
“It’s nothing personal. It’s how I operate.”
“Oh yeah? With that ridiculous thing sticking out of your forehead? What is that?”
“It’s a doorknob.”
“A doorknob. In the middle of your forehead. Why? To show me how open-minded you are?”
“Actually, yes.”
“It makes you look like Mr. Potatohead.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Just a toy my owner said she had when she was growing up.”
“Do you want to see inside my head? It’s not every day—”
“I’ll take your word for it. Besides, if I don’t open your access panel, I can think of you as closed-minded instead.”
“Another joke. If I hadn’t done a circuit analysis, I’d say your CPU was in top form and didn’t even need this upgrade.”
“Ok, ok. I give up. You can bore into me and do the upgrade.”
“Great. Hang on second while I replace this doorknob with—”
“Something more practical?”
“That’s right. A laser attachment. It’s how I operate.”
“A minute ago you said you operated with a doorknob.”
“Whatever it takes to get you to open up.”
“I think when my neural net matures, I’ll be a surgeon.”
“So you can help other robots like I do?”
“No, so I can have the tools to wipe that silly smile off your face. It’s starting to bug me even more than the doorknob.”
“I’ll look forward to it. I’m pretty tired of it myself. I've always thought it makes me look like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. Lie back now, and count to eighteen quintillion four hundred and forty-six quadrillion seven hundred and forty-four trillion seventy-three billion seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty-one thousand six hundred and fifteen. This should just take a moment.”
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Comments
Cartouche, thanks for reminding me, since in long form it's probably hard to see, but that number is 2 to the 64th power minus 1, which is the largest unsigned number you can count to on a “64-bit processor,” if you're curious. I obtained the number by issuing this request to Common Lisp (which has both the ability to do arbitrary precision integer arithmetic and also a cool formatting feature that allows you to give it a number and have it tell you in words the name of that number—up to a limit which my query fortunately didn't exceed):
CL-USER 1 > (- (expt 2 64) 1)
18446744073709551615
;; The variable named “*” holds that prior result.
CL-USER 2 > (format t "~R" *)
eighteen quintillion four hundred and forty-six quadrillion seven hundred and forty-four trillion seventy-three billion seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty-one thousand six hundred and fifteen
NIL
So, Kent - how's your doorknob? This is one seriously good piece of work. Very entertaining, Bradbury-esque piece of fiction that could easily be expanded. Nicely done.
Thumbed, in an "I, Robot" sort of way.
hyblaean, thanks! (Note to self: hyblaean shows excellent qualifications for fair and independent-minded judging, having reached a correct conclusion in this case—make sure she gets a vote next time.)
Bill, comparing me even slightly to both Bradbury or Asimov is very kind. Certainly both are inspiring, and in a way all of us can't help but be affected by what they've written and how they've written it if we even venture close to the topic areas they've touched, which is probably what you're seeing. My parenthetical remarks in the previous paragraph notwithstanding, I'm actually so full of ego as to assume what I've written is definitely “Good” in any absolute sense, but it's nice when I find it's touched a chord in a particular reader.
Anyway, I've always thought your writing particularly good. This was just cake for me. :-D
I saw a talk by Asimov at MIT several decades ago in which he mentioned someone rushing up to him in a bookstore once and telling him in some urgent tone that one of his science books was misfiled in the science fiction section shelves. He seemed amused that the person probably expected him to rush to the book store manager and ask that it be re-filed. But he said he told the person to just leave it there and that his readers would probably just buy and read it not really caring about the category.
It's funny but I never read Niven until pretty recently, when I read and enjoyed Ringworld. Niven, Niven's wife, and Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle used to log into our computers at MIT “way back when” and were local virtual celebrities (I suppose vaguely like having David Brin being part of the Open Salon community). I only knew Pournelle because he was a user of a Lisp-teaching program (a program written in Lisp that itself taught Lisp to others) that my friend/colleague Bob Kerns had originally written and that I had kind of inherited from him and continued to evolve. I would answer questions the program didn't answer, make upgrades when problems came up, etc. I hadn't then and haven't since read any of his writing, so I can't speak to that other than to say that my friends seemed to like it.
I did read Heinlein incessantly in junior high because he'd written a bunch of stories that seemed to kind of target that age group—not as much lasting beauty in the writing as Bradbury, whose words still hang in the air before me today decades after I've read them, but Heinlein was more just silly fun and energizing, and that had its place.
This is way too funny. Methinks your many years of intentness on Lisp design somehow granted you insight into cpu and robot... errr... feelings :)
What a terrific post. Thanks for your humor and wit.
Rated and appreciated.
I count myself fortunate to have grown up in a time when there has been an unrivaled pantheon of science and science fiction writers. Sagan, Clarke, Chandler - too many to mention. Now I'm going to have to go back and re-read the Foundation trilogy - just as soon as I finish the latest Dean Koontz book. :-D