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“Are you ready?” Vasily said to the node terminal.
He sat erect in the stained roller chair he used in the lab. He had cut off the morning’s tour with Inchrises when his stomach began growling. That was just after neutron-etching and the woman with the bug-eye goggles. Vasily had taken a meal alone in a corner of the senior managers’ break room then, to forestall his usual post-meal grogginess, bought a cloyingly artificial stim-stick from the auto-dispensary. Brooding over what Inchrises had said, Vasily wasn’t up to implementing his newly-conceived managerial role all at a stroke. He had retreated to his lab to settle upon some face-saving algorithm and specifications for the coding arts competition. Plus, the conversation with Inchrises had given him an idea for a new project.
Now, in answer to the question, the comeye telltale of the node terminal blinked blue three times and chimed.
“Okay. Terminal, run auto-edit when I finish speaking, then append that packet. And remember, label it appropriately as a category six output — take some zeds out of the strings. When that’s done, put a copy of just the algorithm on my tablet. Remove the parenthetical program execution code that you use to emulate.”
Vasily blinked and looked directly into the comeye.
Dear Esteemed Professor Ramflow:
We thank you for your consideration in personally extending an invitation for us to submit an entry into the art contest. It is important for the Alexseyev’s to show our continued support of the institution bearing our name, particularly when certain departments therein have come under fire for not producing ‘practical’ results. As if one could measure worth by mere functional output!
Here at the Works, the practical often does take precedence over the creative, but increasingly as I personally assume the reins of my legacy here, art is being infused into the purely functional methods and systems that make up our Linnet-class — nay, Empire-class — manufactory. In doing this, I look forward to a time, hopefully not too far distant, when not just manufactory, but also trade and governance Linnet-wide, inculcate creative modes into their methods and systems. Programming arts represents just one way that refined sensibilities can be brought to bear upon hitherto hard, inflexible practices. What Linnet wants is a figure — with one hand in manufactory, one hand in the rarified realms — to unite the arts and the works. Someone to light the way for future generations of Linnets trapped by the affectless, overbearing expectations of dead souls calloused by overmuch toil in mind-numbing production. And trade too.
In what spare time I have had of late, in taking up the challenge you put to me so personally in your invitation, I have toyed with some long-secreted ideas I first formulated in college. Based on these, I have chosen a class-four cellular automaton for my entry. It is one that previously has not been explored past ten-to-the-eighteenth iterations because it alternated between static and infinitesimally-branching modes apparently without end. However, using a proprietary shortcut method of my own design, I have been able to explore slices of the output at far later iterations. And what one finds is subtle changes tending to shorten the periods of stasis and increase the periods of branching. My submission shows a ten-to-the-fourth power slice of a ten-to-the-twenty-third iterative run, achieved — again — by proprietary protocols using the powers no greater than those of typical category-six multicores.
The precise instruction lines and the specifications for the emulation run are all shown on the entry. I’ve packaged the output as a hologram, free of distracting aural or tactile artifacts. You will notice the interleaved, pseudo-random patterns of alternating nesting and branching. Extrapolated into three-dimensions and run at high speed, we see extraordinary stroboscopic effects. A most unusual and unexpected result! (You will appreciate that the holoprojectors I have access to here at our Works are industrial-class, but I believe that the older, less robust projectors you’ll have access to will give a fair representation of what my algorithm is capable of.)
I look forward to your announcement of the winner of the competition, and please let me know what we may do to continue supporting you in your innovative, forward-thinking endeavors at Alexseyev College.
“There. That’s good. Enough, but not too much. Terminal, remove the coughs and run some compression, sibilant softening, and pitch smoothing. Use a shop-floor backdrop with some muted clanging and banging. Make the compression attack on the background noise audible so it seems real. Then put the vid into the outbound cache. Use a courier at the other end and get a handshake with sign-off. Terminal, where is Inchrises?”
“Mr. Inchrises has just returned from an extra-manufactory errand and is bound for his own office.”
“That’s on my way. Tell him to wait for me there.”
“A message awaits from Mrs. Alexseyev. Shall I play that?”
“Later. What does she want.”
“A meeting.”
“Bother. Everyone wants a piece of me.”
Vasily & The Works (Tales from the Middle Empires Vol III) Page 8
