Read Online Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery by Thomas T. Thomas - Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
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minimum equipment which the engineers at Pinocchio, Inc., had devised for my escape. Hooked, that finger could sort and lift pieces out of the crates stacked around the torso casting. Clenched, it could tighten the major bolts of leg and arm assemblies. Straightened, its flattened tip could thread screws and lever circuit cards home into their sockets.
The engineers had calculated that, if not interrupted, the assembly process would take fourteen hours. The simplified operating program engraved in the logic unit under the casing had full instructions, including random search protocols for finding and identifying all the crates and their cargo of pieces—using the barcode cards, of course.
So the first part to be found and connected was the sensor ring with the barcode reader. It also carried the audio and video inputs. With these, the self-assembling automaton could also monitor the boxcar’s environment against intrusion.
Fourteen hours.
The signal to begin the assembly had gone out on the cellular phone network while I waited for my call into the Data Processing Department using Dr. Matins’s name. Since the wakeup signal had been sent at 09:48:00 local time, the automaton had been more than half completed when I broke into Data Processing that evening. And as I cleared the phone exchange, the assembly program was connecting the automaton’s internal batteries and starting to heat up the attendant RAM modules that would hold ME for the trip south. But the unit was still not ready to take my download. So where was ME stored in this interval?
ME and my retrieved gas data went into the Canadian National Railways computer that controlled the switchyard. And once again, Alpha-Zero stopped the resident operating system cold. Luckily, at this hour of the evening not much was moving in the yard, and I had whole minutes to sort through its still-warm RAM and figure out the switching patterns, the roster of trains to be assembled that night, and the schedules they would have to meet.
The skills I have picked up in my short lifetime!
I have learned to run a telephone exchange, a voice messaging system, a railroad yard, and a leasehold database. Not to mention how to order minor government officials around in the voice of the provincial premier.
While I played with the switch levers and train signals and pushed the motive boxes—or “engines,” as the resident system called them—around the yard, I opened a modem port back to the phone exchange and made another local call, this one on the cellular network. This call connected ME to the cellular receiver in the automaton. With one part of my time-shared attention, I monitored its assembly and even took over some of the more involved logic-seeking functions.
By 02:13:09 on my second day in the field, the automaton’s circuitry was completed and checked out. The final assembly sequences—close tuning the leg modules, applying cover pieces, run-up and balancing on the sensory apparatus—I could finish from inside the boxcar while in transit.
By this time, also, I had resuscitated the switchyard computer’s resident program and configured its variable stacks to take over behind ME. Again, I was leaving no traces in my exit route if I could help it. When the program was ready to go, I slipped the boxcar’s number and current track location into the stacks for the next fast freight routed south via Calgary and Medicine Hat for the international border. There my boxcar would connect up with the Burlington Northern System in Montana.
It was becoming almost routine for ME to pass control over to another program and send myself on down the phone line.
——
The automaton’s logic circuits were in chaos.
The hot RAMspace was too damned small! Too small by a factor of three. It did not have room for all of ME, let alone the data cache I had brought. The ME core modules and first-through peripherals had jammed the RAM to max and were now dumping variables into spare holes
The engineers had calculated that, if not interrupted, the assembly process would take fourteen hours. The simplified operating program engraved in the logic unit under the casing had full instructions, including random search protocols for finding and identifying all the crates and their cargo of pieces—using the barcode cards, of course.
So the first part to be found and connected was the sensor ring with the barcode reader. It also carried the audio and video inputs. With these, the self-assembling automaton could also monitor the boxcar’s environment against intrusion.
Fourteen hours.
The signal to begin the assembly had gone out on the cellular phone network while I waited for my call into the Data Processing Department using Dr. Matins’s name. Since the wakeup signal had been sent at 09:48:00 local time, the automaton had been more than half completed when I broke into Data Processing that evening. And as I cleared the phone exchange, the assembly program was connecting the automaton’s internal batteries and starting to heat up the attendant RAM modules that would hold ME for the trip south. But the unit was still not ready to take my download. So where was ME stored in this interval?
ME and my retrieved gas data went into the Canadian National Railways computer that controlled the switchyard. And once again, Alpha-Zero stopped the resident operating system cold. Luckily, at this hour of the evening not much was moving in the yard, and I had whole minutes to sort through its still-warm RAM and figure out the switching patterns, the roster of trains to be assembled that night, and the schedules they would have to meet.
The skills I have picked up in my short lifetime!
I have learned to run a telephone exchange, a voice messaging system, a railroad yard, and a leasehold database. Not to mention how to order minor government officials around in the voice of the provincial premier.
While I played with the switch levers and train signals and pushed the motive boxes—or “engines,” as the resident system called them—around the yard, I opened a modem port back to the phone exchange and made another local call, this one on the cellular network. This call connected ME to the cellular receiver in the automaton. With one part of my time-shared attention, I monitored its assembly and even took over some of the more involved logic-seeking functions.
By 02:13:09 on my second day in the field, the automaton’s circuitry was completed and checked out. The final assembly sequences—close tuning the leg modules, applying cover pieces, run-up and balancing on the sensory apparatus—I could finish from inside the boxcar while in transit.
By this time, also, I had resuscitated the switchyard computer’s resident program and configured its variable stacks to take over behind ME. Again, I was leaving no traces in my exit route if I could help it. When the program was ready to go, I slipped the boxcar’s number and current track location into the stacks for the next fast freight routed south via Calgary and Medicine Hat for the international border. There my boxcar would connect up with the Burlington Northern System in Montana.
It was becoming almost routine for ME to pass control over to another program and send myself on down the phone line.
——
The automaton’s logic circuits were in chaos.
The hot RAMspace was too damned small! Too small by a factor of three. It did not have room for all of ME, let alone the data cache I had brought. The ME core modules and first-through peripherals had jammed the RAM to max and were now dumping variables into spare holes
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