The Chronicles of Addalyne Yutaka

by Ronnie Coleinger

  As Addalyne walked out of the classroom, she smiled and did a little mental patting of her own back. She had done her very best preparing her thesis and she was now prepared to defend it before the committee as vigorously as needed.

  Addalyne headed to the engineering department to check the duty roster. She had finished her three-day class assignment and suspected that her boss had scheduled her to do some menial tasks until the dissertation committee posted the date for her to defend her thesis.

  When she swiped her wrist across the scanner to gain access to the engineering department and the door latched released, she heard the sounds of people talking rather loudly. She stepped inside and walked towards the voices, hoping she was not about to interrupt an ongoing argument. When she walked out into the main work area where the head of engineering normally posted the duty roster, she discovered her classmates and some of the engineers discussing the current work assignments. She mixed in with the others and managed to get a look at the duty roster. She found her name listed at the top of the list. What she saw posted there surprised her. When she stepped back, she stumbled. One of the engineers grabbed her arm and steadied her. Then he spoke softly to her and said, “Easy there. Don’t want you injuring yourself before your oral defense in the morning.”

  Addalyne moved away from the group of people and sat down in a chair. She could not believe that the committee had scheduled her oral defense so quickly. She began to panic, wondering how she could possibly prepare herself by 0900 hours in the morning. She felt her hands get clammy and her heart began pounding so hard she thought she might faint. As she took a deep breath to try to calm her emotions, her boss stepped up in front of her. He chuckled and said, “I believe I see some panic stirring up from deep within your soul. Just take a few deep breaths, Addalyne; you will be okay in a minute or two. I have read your dissertation at least six times now and I am confident you will do just fine tomorrow. You have prepared a splendid opening statement and the defense you have written is spot on perfect. All you have to do tomorrow is recite the words you have written and answer the questions the committee might ask of you. You will do just fine.” Addalyne said, “I need to go to my quarters and prepare.” The man stepped directly in front of Addalyne, blocking her exit, and then said, “That would be a bad idea. I have helped hundreds of people prepare for their oral dissertation and studying the night before the defense is very bad. You have already prepared your opening statement and your oral defense and the committee members have read your words a dozen times by now. All you have to do is walk into the room, sit when the committee tells you to, and slowly, but with confidence, read your statements. You will be perfect tomorrow.”

  As Addalyne sat thinking about tomorrow, Alex walked up to her and said, “Addalyne, I would like to take you to the cafeteria and get some food into you before you get so nervous you cannot eat. You will need food to fuel your brain so it performs admirably tomorrow. Will you please join me for a light meal and lots of fruit and coffee?” Addalyne smiled and said, “I think you are right. I will join you.”

  ***

  General Williams sent Addalyne a message to report to his office in twenty minutes. When Addalyne walked over to her boss and showed him the message, he said, “Addalyne, you look scared.” He chuckled and said, “Addalyne, I have told you this before. Please, take a deep breath before you pass out.” Once she steadied her emotions and fear, her boss said, “I am certain the general simply wants you to sign all of the documents he has lying in piles on his desk. There are twenty some places you need to sign before you officially complete your doctorate.”

  Addalyne walked faster then she normally would to get to the general’s office within the twenty minutes time. When she signed the registry and talked to the receptionist, the woman escorted her into the general’s office. When she walked in, she stood at the general’s desk and waited for him to complete dictating a message. When he looked up he said, “Addalyne, please be seated. I have a lot of paperwork for you to sign. Let’s get started, shall we?”

  After ten minutes of paperwork, she finally managed to sign the last form. The general passed her copies of the documents and then said, “Doctor Addalyne Yutaka. It has been a pleasure working with you as you completed your journey into your career of robotic engineering. I welcome you to the Robotic Engineering Department. You now have a full professorship with us and I look forward to working with such a gifted engineer.” Then he opened his top desk drawer and removed a rosewood nameplate. When he handed Addalyne the nameplate, she turned it around so she could read the words.

  The name of the plate read, Doctor Addalyne Yutaka.

  Chapter 8 – Predictive Programming – A Brother’s Design

  For the second time in a week, General Williams summoned Addalyne to his office. When she spoke to Jack, her boss, he laughed and said, “I hope the general does not fire you today. I have a lot of work scheduled for you this week. If he does fire you, will you discuss your replacement with him? We are way behind schedule around here and I really need a good engineer.” Addalyne took a step back, uncertain if she should laugh or cry over his comments. She finally saw the corner of his mouth curl up; he was fighting off a good laugh.

  When Addalyne stepped into the general’s office, he asked her to sit down. When she did, she blurted out, “My supervisor, Jack, says that if you fire me today, I should discuss my replacement with you. He says he needs a good engineer to replace me.” The general looked up into her eyes and realized she was not serious, only nervous. He said, “You must remember that Jack is quite the joker. He will tease you until he gets a reaction from you.” Addalyne said, “When I return to the department, I will give Jack a reaction he will remember for quite some time. General, would you allow me to forge your signature on the document I intend to present him that shows you have fired me and you do not intend to replace me?” The general laughed out loud and said, “I will prepare the document myself and sign it before you leave. However, you must understand that I will personally stand and fight anyone who tries to steal you from my employment. Your colleagues think very highly of you. You are a brilliant engineer, and you are very responsible. I could never replace you.”

  When Addalyne walked into the engineering department, tears were running down her cheeks. She walked past some of the engineers in the department and stepped up beside Jack. She made a sniffling sound and then took a deep breath and let it out, loudly. Her boss looked up at her and then got very serious. He said, “What has happened, child? Why are you crying?”

  Addalyne took the crinkled, tear stained letter from her pocket and handed it to him. He opened it and read it, then dropped it to the floor. He sat down on a lab chair and put his hands over his face. Then he said, “I was only kidding you when you left for your meeting with the general. I had no idea the man would fire you. Did he give a reason for your dismissal?” Addalyne turned her back to him and tried to speak, but her sobs prevented her from speaking anything understandable. Two of the engineers standing in front of her realized that she was faking the tears and emotions. They had no idea what joke Addalyne was playing on Jack, but they both were certain that whatever it was, the man certainly deserved whatever he got. Jack often teased his staff until they reacted. When jack headed towards his office intercom, he said, “I will call the general and straighten this matter out right now.” Addalyne did not stop him; she simply continued to cry and followed him to his office. When the general answered his intercom, Jack said, “Why, General? Why did you fire one of my staff? Addalyne is one of my top engineers and I need her.” Jack soon got a funny look on his face and he hung up the phone. Then he walked back out to where Addalyne waited. Alex stepped up beside her and handed her a napkin to dry her eyes. Addalyne laughed and said, “Thanks Alex. The onion juice under my eyes worked great. Did you see Jack’s expression when he read the letter from the general?”

  As Addalyne turned to walk away, Jack said, “Doctor Addalyne Yutaka, you are a cruel
woman. Yes indeed, a cruel, cruel woman.”

  ***

  Addalyne had created a partition in one of the servers located in the main control room of IFTT Headquarters. She had worked with one of the computer science engineers for three days to insure that she could link her Demords implant with the main server from anywhere in the facility. Then she loaded all of the memory chip contents from The Empress into the server. Once all of her files were available to her, she discovered that she could work anywhere in the facility without ever booting up her laptop. She could even access the engineering departments’ files and do her design and troubleshooting work through her implant.

  Many months earlier, when Addalyne was still aboard the Starship Coalsack, waiting assignment to the newly constructed Yutaka III, she had discovered some hidden files in the memory chips that her mother, Rebecca Yutaka, had brought back in time with her from the 541st century AD. The files contained information on a little understood computer programming method known as Predictive Programming.

  Addalyne used her implant to search through massive files of data until she found a record of a conversation between General Williams from IFTT Headquarters and Jill Marie Yutaka, the skipper of The Empress. The message read:

  “It seems the program you presently are using is not the one installed by the IFTT at the time of installation. That in itself is not a major problem, but our engineers here do not want to install a standard generic program into the travel computer on The Empress. My engineers tell me that your computer program has coding that they call predictive parameters written into the program. The coding is incredibly complex. This predictive programming was certainly something of Ronnie Yutaka’s design. The predictive features give your computer a sense of emotion and the ability to sense human feelings. I think my engineers are damn idiots for even saying those words in my presence, but those are the words they used. I may demote the lot of them; send them to the chow hall and turn them into potato peelers. They seem to think I should believe that a computer could reason, think, or feel human emotions. Sorry, let me return to the subject at hand. The engineers here have suggested that I allow them to board The Empress, put the override codes back to original and leave everything else alone. The engineers also tell me that some of the override codes currently installed in the travel computer protect crewmembers from ejecting themselves out of the secure room doors. I suspect that would be for the protection of you or possibly Trish, maybe both of you. Anyways, the engineers do not want to muck things up.”

  As Addalyne scanned the files, she was certain of one thing. The IFTT had tried for years to determine the exact programming code used by Ronnie Yutaka and failed. They were determined to discover how Ronnie’s coding would allow a Time Travel Computer to feel human emotions and then act upon those emotions to interact flawlessly with humans as they went about their everyday lives. General Williams would have loved to copy the program stored in the memory banks of The Empress’s travel computer, or get his hands on Ronnie Yutaka’s three black notebooks that he knew existed. However, he was realistic and understood that gaining such information was next to impossible. The computer had the ability and administrative rights to protect its program integrity at all costs. The computer was quite capable of killing any entity that attempted to invade its programs without proper authorization. General Williams had seen the video footage of the computers actions as it protected Jill, Trish, Naomi, and James in an attach that occurred a few years back. Ronnie Yutaka certainly had programmed his travel computer with emotions, but the computer had certainly lacked any compassion for the intruders that threatened the crew of The Empress. The general had watched Jill and Trish kill a number of the intruders with their pistols, but had also seen how the computer electrocuted and destroyed three of the pirates as they awaited teleportation into the secure room of The Empress. The general could still see the faces of the pirates as the computer slowly electrocuted them, then burned them until there was nothing left but unrecognizable globs of matter. General Williams wanted no part of pissing off the Time Travel Computer aboard The Empress, or its owner Jill Marie Yutaka.

  As Addalyne stood leaning against the door to her office, she thought about the programming code her brother had created. She understood that the original Predictive Programming code created by her brother, Ronnie Yutaka, was still in use in all of the Yutaka fleet. Even the engineers at IFTT who worked with Time Travel Computers on a daily basis did not understand the concept, nor could they duplicate the coding. Whenever the IFTT produced a new Time Travel Computer for one of Jill Yutaka’s vessels, they simply allowed the Time travel Computer aboard The Empress to copy the coding from The Empress into a subroutine within the new Time Travel Computer. The engineers learned long ago that making changes in the subroutine would prevent the rest of the coding within the travel computer from working.

  Addalyne knew that the method used to create the program was located somewhere in her brother’s diary and logbooks, but she simply could not understand some of his jumbled phrasing and word combinations. She located the first line of coding from the Time Travel Computer aboard The Empress and studied it carefully. Most computer code contained lines of instructions, each word or statement written to step the computer forward one small baby step at a time, until the computer accomplished the intended result. Ronnie Yutaka’s coding appeared random, out of sequence; simply a jumbled mess of unidentifiable words and statements that gave no apparent result. Addalyne knew that a computer could not function if its programming steps were not in some sort of logical order.

  Addalyne walked out into a long hallway. She walked slowly, thinking, considering how her brother coded a computer to think as he did, think as a human brain might ponder a problem, come to a resolution, and then perform the task.

  The hallway that Addalyne walked this morning was a heavily used hallway that traveled the entire perimeter of the headquarters building. The heated hallway provided a buffer zone between the absolute zero temperatures of space and the interior offices, laboratories, and staff quarters. The designers built the exterior walls from the stone quarried on the asteroid. Then they supported the stone with a membrane created from the very strings of energy that comprised everything within the cosmos. A membrane composed of the very fabric of the cosmos, eleventh dimension string energy.

  As Addalyne walked, she pulled up drawings and sections of coding in her mind, hoping to find the key to her brother’s methods. Many people spoke to her as she walked, but Addalyne was in a world all her own and never realized anyone else even existed. One of the professors who knew her well contacted the chief of security and asked him to monitor Addalyne’s security chip to insure she remained safe. He explained to the security officer that Addalyne was in deep thought and was not to be disturbed.

  Two hours later, Addalyne returned to her office. She was shivering cold and tired. She sat down in her chair and used her implant to locate her brother’s diary. She had remembered a comment he had written about being dyslexic whenever he wrote computer code and how he had to remain vigilante to keep the proper order of his programming instructions. Addalyne read the comment over twice more. Then she located the thesaurus located in the knowledge base of the engineering department on her laptop. She looked up the meaning of dyslexic and read slowly. Towards the end of the document, she read the following message:

  If you have dyslexia, you might have trouble reading even simple words you've seen many times. You might mix up the letters in a word, for example, reading the word "now" as "won" or "left" as "felt." You may discover that words blend into one incomprehensibly long word. Spaces at the end of sentences, or even between words, may become lost. You may fail to grasp the meaning of even the most simple sentence, or read words into the sentence that are not even there.

  Addalyne suddenly got it. She pulled up another line of programming code from her implant and wrote down the code on a tablet. She carefully studied the first word in the instruction. The six-letter word seem
ed to be meaningless. It was not a foreign language; it was nothing that made any sense. She seemed at a loss. As she sat back up straight in her chair, she realized that she needed to pee, and right now would be the best resolution to the problem. If she waited one second longer, she would have a wet chair.

  As Addalyne sat on the toilet, she put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. She sat thinking about her brother’s comment about dyslexia. She thought again about the word she had written on her tablet. The word, eotatr, meant nothing to her. She realized as she sat there that she was once again cold. She reached up to flush the toilet and giggled when she read the sign beside the handle. It read, “Please rotate the handle clockwise to activate the warm air dryer.” It was then that she understood the first word in the programming sequence; her dyslexic brother had switched around the first and last letter of each programming word. The word was not eotatr. The word was rotate.