A Larger Universe

by James L Gillaspy

  "What's wrong? Why are you crying?" Valin asked.

  "I didn't even consider the lords' alphabet, or that I would need a special font, which doesn't exist." The tears filling his eyes made Valin's face a featureless sphere. "I can't think of everything. I can't do this. This is too much for a sixteen-year-old kid."

  "How can you say that? Look at what you've already done."

  Tommy wiped his eyes with his sleeve and lurched to his feet. "I haven't done anything. You want computers to replace the old computers on your ship. We haven't even started on that. I'm no better than these useless Earth computers." He kicked the AT cases stacked against the wall. "I talked you into using computers first for the translators, and I have no way to print the translations. This may have all been a complete waste of time. Your choosing me, kidnapping me from Earth to do this, was a mistake."

  Valin shrugged his narrow shoulders. "We made a choice, you or some random person. How would choosing a person randomly be an improvement over you, who's obviously very familiar with computers?"

  "You just don't understand," Tommy yelled. You didn't know what you were getting into when you started this project."

  "Yes, I did. We were and are completely ignorant."

  "No! What you don't understand is that I am almost as ignorant as you are!" He wrapped his arms around his chest and looked at the floor. "And any single person you might choose would also be almost as ignorant as you, there's so much to know. Most of those who work in systems are specialists. No one knows everything, or even much of what could be known."

  "Tommy, in spite of what you think, we're not fools. We knew one little boy would not know all we needed to know. Why else would we have taken the books? Why else would it be so important to translate the books?

  "We couldn't kidnap a group of adults, so we took you. You're what we have, and you've done well so far. You can find an answer, even to this problem, among all of those books and boxes. I've learned that already from you." He paused. "And however hopeless it may seem, you have no choice except to try." In spite of Valin's choice of words, Tommy couldn't mistake the pleading expression on his face.

  "I suppose you're right." Tommy again wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He looked at that sleeve as if he had never seen it before. "If you think I'm doing so well, do you think I could get rid of these farmer clothes and wear something more colorful? At least when I'm not crawling on the floor?"

  Valin was right. The next day Tommy was deep in study of a book on fonts and installing software that would guide him through creating the symbols that would display on the screen and on the printer. After some discussion, the same artisans who labeled the storeroom doors created stickers for the keyboards. The next demonstration was flawless.

  Tommy had learned touch typing from a computer program, but he was sure no typing program existed for the lords' language in his store of software. For this he was on his own. He had Sanos, one of the two helpers he had been assigned, tally each letter in fifty pages of a handwritten book in the lords' language, and assigned the top ten symbols to the "asdfghjkl;" row of the keyboard. The next ten he assigned to the "qwerty" row, with the remainder spread across the remaining keys. When each member of the translation team was hunting and pecking on his own, Tommy asked Valin to come into the computer room, away from the click of keyboards and chatter of Valin's staff.

  "Valin, we should start on the real purpose of all this, replacing the old ship's computers."

  "The lords insist they have instruction manuals for equipment we install, and we have to throw out our first translations and begin again. How could we replace any computers now?" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Though to be honest, I'm certain they only read the pages on how to operate a machine and never the part on how to service it. I'm equally certain that, without the artisans to repair their machines, eventually nothing would operate properly."

  "I could write a manual that describes just the tasks required for whatever computer we replace. If you're right about what they read, that would be enough. Maybe that's all you should translate, for now. Maybe that's all you should ever translate for each new computer we install. How would they know the difference?"

  Valin tilted his head and looked at Tommy for a long while. "You put unfamiliar thoughts in my head."

  "Anyway," Tommy continued, "if we get started replacing one of your computers, you'll have a sample to work with when the translations are done, if they ever are," Tommy said. "At the rate you're going, we'll all die of old age before you finish. How about an out-of-the-way computer we could work on without being noticed?"

  Tommy watched as Valin's eyes became unfocused and he seemed to be looking deep into the ship around them. Finally, Valin took a deep breath. "Yes, as long as you continue to help us learn this strange vocabulary. Follow me."

  For the first time, Valin led Tommy to a bank of elevators in the central column. "We're going too far to take the stairs," Valin said.

  The deck, twenty levels below the translators' workroom, was divided into eight pie-shaped sections, each containing a hydroponics farm spread through several connected compartments. The air in the room Tommy and Valin entered as they left the elevator was heavy and moist, saturated with the odor of plants and chemical fertilizers. An artisan, whom Valin introduced as Moder, met them there. Moder led them around the central column, unsealing doors and resealing them behind them. Each of the first three sections was alive with greenery growing in long, transparent vats on top of low tables, and the sound of fans blowing air in and out of the compartment. Behind the fourth sealed entrance, the vats were empty except for a dry powder covering their bottoms. Wires and tubes that had been hidden in the other room by plant life were exposed. The air was lifeless, except for the faint stench of mold.

  Tommy sneezed. "What happened to this place?"

  "This was a hydroponics farm, as are the other areas we passed through. In a ship this size, many such areas are required, in addition to the Commons, to maintain the quality of our air and health. This one has been dead for many years. Getting it working again would be of great benefit."

  "Why is it like this?" Tommy asked.

  "Moder, if you will show him?" Valin said.

  Moder led them to a room next to the central column. Inside was a closet-sized cube. "This was the device that controlled the environment in this section. When a critical part failed, we were unable to repair it. The result is as you saw."

  Tommy opened a panel in the cube's side. Except for some wires trailing through the interior, the cube was empty. "Where's the rest of it?"

  "We had no more of one critical part, and other parts in this device have been used to keep similar devices working." Moder said.

  "You cannibalized it!" Tommy said.

  "I told you these computers are old," Valin said. "and we have no replacement parts. When one breaks down, we must decide if it's critical and must be repaired, or if it will become replacement parts for other, more valuable computers. Either way, we lose one of the ship's computers. Many areas of the ship are no longer inhabited because of computer failure, and not just in the lower decks. Perhaps you understand now why this is important."

  "And would also get you out of trouble with the invisible lords?"

  "They're not invisible."

  "Whatever. I need access to a live hydroponics farm and its computer for me to have any chance at this. And to the artisans who maintain it."

  "Moder is the master of all of the artisans on this deck. He will answer your questions and give you anything you need." He paused. "A word of caution."

  "Yes?"

  "Be careful of the remaining computers on this deck. For you to shut one down, briefly, wouldn't cause repercussions, but to permanently lose another, with you being seen as the cause, wouldn't be beneficial to any of us."

  "You know, if I worry about screwing this up, I'll be too afraid to make it happen," Tommy said.

  He didn't have time to worry. He spent at least a part o
f each day with the translation team, answering their questions. As soon as he could break away, he went down the elevator, usually with Potter, whining in his carrying case, to talk with the artisans about what they insisted on calling "devices." Potter would search for mice below the foliage of a live farm while Tommy tried to learn enough to even understand the problem.

  The first issue was that the devices were process control computers, not the general-purpose computers he was accustomed to. Tommy's knowledge of process control computers consisted of a programmable robot he had been given for Christmas. The robot could be programmed to pick up objects and place them in a container and move from place to place. This was much more complicated.

  The computers received input from sensors scattered throughout the farm and used that data to control water flow, air movement, temperature, chemicals in the water, light, and even, indirectly, human activity. According to Moder, no one knew how old the devices were. As to who programmed them, Moder was unfamiliar with the concept. The devices were kept in a certain configuration. They were connected to various sensors in a certain way. Power was supplied. Lights on various control panels indicated areas in the farm needing attention by the human caretakers: fertilizer tanks to be filled, foliage to be cut, filters to be cleaned. Other lights indicated problems with the device or one of the sensors. Do every procedure as it had always been done and the plants would thrive.

  On the other hand, the artisans were familiar with the interface between the device and the sensors and the controllers in the farm. The signals sent in either direction were constantly monitored as part of ongoing maintenance. A degradation of those signals was reason for the artisans to replace a sensor or attempt to substitute parts in the central device until the signals returned to normal. Tommy had to reproduce those signals to control the hydroponics farms. The artisans were also able to provide him with an instruction manual for the device, as required by the lords, handwritten in the lords' language. A reference in the appendix of this book to another book on "control codes" resulted in a deck-wide search, and the discovery of a rudimentary programming book.

  When Tommy found several books on using PCs for process control in Valin's library of computer books, he began to hope he had a chance of success. A pallet of programmable computer boards, specialized for process control turned his hope into conviction, and he buried himself in the problem.

  The electricians put power into the room containing the old cannibalized computer; then he had his assistants put together a PC on the floor inside the old box, more because he thought it was funny than for any need to route sensor wires. The new computer looked like a toy inside the old one.

  His first test burned one of the probes the artisans used, which didn't make them happy. Probes weren't as rare as computer spare parts, but they were passed from father to son and twenty years had passed since the last had been taken from storage. Rather than take this risk again, Tommy stopped work, and searched through the computer warehouse for electrical testing equipment from Earth. For his next test, he was able to assure the artisans that the voltages from his computer weren't great enough to damage their probe.

  During the fourth week, Sanos and Vent, his two assistants, revealed they had been attempting to read every book he had selected for this project, including the programming instruction manuals for the computer boards. Vent looked down and shuffled his feet. "Um, we were wondering," He said without looking up, "Would you listen to a suggestion we have?" Tommy listened and grinned. After that, they became more than just extensions of his hands; they became part of a team.

  Fifteen weeks after the project began, the team turned on the first vat and watched as a hydroponics artisan planted seeds and cuttings in the fiber sheet suspended in the water. For the next few days, as Tommy and his team stood by, ready to fix anything that went wrong, the artisans monitored plant growth and the signals being transmitted to and from the new computer, just as they would have with one of the original devices.

  Nothing went wrong. The plants grew, Potter had fun--he always did--searching for small animals among the wires and tubes crisscrossing the floor, and Tommy's two assistants had a large number of women to discuss, but Tommy was bored.

  Three weeks before, he had realized he was losing the physical fitness that working in the stable had given him. Now, he used his time to put together and begin an exercise program, again by finding and reading several books taken from Earth. This helped him sleep at night but did nothing to keep his mind busy. In frustration, he studied the hand-written programming manual for the original device. He knew he was probably wasting his time, and, if he had had anything else urgent to do, he wouldn't have bothered. He was, after all, here to introduce Earth computers, not amuse himself with some antiquated programming language. Even so, he was soon deep in the small book and didn't notice those around him.

  This is an assembly language, he decided. One step above the code the computer uses and not sophisticated at all. Nothing like the Java language he used for the new programs, but this language provided the instructions for anything one of these computers was capable of doing. Sophistication is for the human side of the equation, not for the computer, and for security and reliability. A mistake would be easy to make and hard to find in this programming language.

  He wrote some small programs on paper to amuse himself, but, since he didn't have a computer to test them, he eventually lost interest and found a book to read from Valin's computer library.

  After watching the results for two weeks, Moder declared the first tank a success and ordered that the remaining tanks in the section be filled. A few days later, all of the tanks contained growing plant life, and the artisans on the deck gathered to congratulate Tommy and his team.

  With them were three new faces. They had Moder backed into a corner.

  "He must fix my farm next," said one artisan.

  "Why are you asking me to decide?" asked Moder, "I had nothing to with my farm being first. I can't decide who will be second."

  "Who then?" asked the second artisan.

  "Yes, who?" said the third. "We all have broken control devices."

  "Don't I have anything to say about this?" asked Tommy.

  All three turned toward him, "No, you don't. But someone must decide," said the first artisan.

  The door to the elevator next to them opened, and another artisan stepped out. The bickering immediately stopped, and Moder and the three withdrew behind Tommy, leaving him facing the new artisan alone.

  The new artisan stepped up to Tommy. "Are you the feral human responsible for reviving this farm?"

  No one had called him that for months. "Others were involved, but yes, I suppose you could say that."

  "Can you do it again?"

  "Sure we can. These three were just arguing over who would be next."

  "That is not in question. My farm will be next." He stared at the other three artisans. "Do you have objections?"

  The three glanced at each other. Finally, one of them responded, "No, of course not. We weren't thinking. Of course, a farm in the lords' part of the ship must be repaired first."

  The new artisan turned to Tommy. He pursed his lips. "You seem troubled. Do you have issues with where you will next perform this miracle?"

  All the artisans dressed colorfully, but this one was extreme. Tommy jerked his eyes away from the purple tunic with green stripes and yellow pants. "No. I'm just surprised. I thought no one from down here went into that part of the ship. And what's your name, if we're going to be working together?"

  "My name is Tillie. Who told you such a thing? Many work above the Commons. How else would the ship's functions be performed? How else would the ship stay in good repair?

  "Enough of that. When will you start, and how long will it take? I was told you took over fifteen weeks here. Must I expect the same?"

  "No," Tommy said. "We should be able to get our part done faster this time. I can't make the plantings grow faster, though. We can st
art tomorrow, if you want. Where should we go?"

  "I understand you're working with Valin," Tillie replied. "He knows where we are. Have him direct you." And as abruptly as he had come, Tillie turned into the elevator and was gone.

  # # #

  Tommy found Valin alone in the translation room, going over the day's work. The meeting soon went beyond how to find Tillie's deck. "Valin, I planned to talk to you about this anyway. We need to train some more people."

  Valin pushed his chair back from his desk. "Aren't the three of you enough?"

  Tommy pulled up his own chair and sat down. "That depends. We have four decks of hydroponics with dead computers, or devices, or whatever they want to call them. The three of us shouldn't have much trouble duplicating what we've already done. If that's the end of it, I guess I'll be able to retire at age sixteen, and maybe you can put me on the next ship home. Is that the end of it?"

  "Just a moment," Valin said, and got up to close the door to the outside corridor. "I'm not sure closing the door does any good, but...

  "Tommy, many computers on this ship are broken. Each year, more fail, and it's been many years since we've had the means to repair them without using parts from another computer. When Lord Ull originally called us to discuss the problem, she was uncharacteristically honest, I think. This ship is over two thousand years old and has been home to generations of lords and humans alike. She believes the ship will suffer a critical breakdown unless we find a solution. If you need more help to complete your work, I'm certain we can find a way."

  Tommy was sure his astonishment was obvious. "She? Lord Ull is a she?"

  "Yes, she is," Valin replied. "All of the lords we know are. Why should that matter?"

  "It doesn't, except it makes me wonder about the way you treat your own women."

  "What does one have to do with the other?" Valin said. "Lord Ull also told us of factions among the lords who refuse to accept that there is a danger. We must be careful with these new assistants that you need. Those same lords would stop any perceived rise in our knowledge and abilities. They like to believe we're dispensable."