Read Online With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan - Free Book Online

confine herself to what was mathematically and scientifically possible. She could tell them whatever she dreamt of, however outrageous. “If we—by which I mean my dear Babbage, of course—can design an Analytical Engine to calculate the answers to equations, can we not design other sorts of engines for other sorts of tasks?”
    Frowning, Wrain said, “You mean, other devices that can be instructed by cards?”
    “Precisely! Engines which can perform complex tasks, more rapidly and accurately than any human operator could achieve. Composing music, for example: provide the machine with cards that instruct it as to the form of a song—a hymn, perhaps, or a chorale, or even a symphony—and then, by execution of the operations, the engine returns a new composition.” Her love for music was an abiding thing, close kin to her love of mathematics, though she suspected her mother—for all the woman’s knowledge of the latter subject—never quite understood the similarities between the two. “It wants only some means of presenting notes and their relationships in suitably abstract form. Well, that and the design of the engine itself, which of course is no simple matter; I expect it would require tens of thousands of gears, more even than the Analytical Engine.”
    Wrain’s mouth fell open by progressive stages during this speech; Nick had gone still as a stone. After a dumbfounded pause, the spritely gentleman said, “With sufficiently abstract representation—”
    “Anything,” Nick breathed, staring off into the distance like he had seen a vision of Heaven itself. “Music. Pictures. It could write books. It could—”
    His voice cut off. She felt as if she were flying, lifted above the clay of this earth by the power of her own ingenuity. Only gradually did she realize that while her companions, too, were flying, the path they followed was a very specific one. Wrain and Nick were staring at one another, communicating in half-spoken words and abrupt gestures, too excited to get their thoughts out of their heads before leaping on to the next. “Like a loom,” Wrain said; Nick answered him, “But our notation,” and the gentleman nodded as if his dwarfish companion had made a very good point.
    It produced a strange feeling in the depths of her mind. If these were her dreams, then why did it feel as if they had abruptly become about something she didn’t understand? A touch of fear stirred. Perhaps Mother is right, and this is the beginnings of madness.
    Wrain leapt to his feet and seized her hand, shaking it up and down as if she were a man. His grip felt very hard, and very real. “Ada, dearest Ada, thank you . Oh, I have no idea how to build this thing—we lack even the notation by which to instruct it; I mean, the system of notation we have is dreadfully inadequate, it would not suffice for a Difference Engine, let alone more—but until you spoke I never even conceived of such a device. Not for our own purposes. Will you help us?”
    Baffled, increasingly unsure of everything, Ada said, “Help you with what ?”
    Nick laughed, a rolling guffaw that made her certain he, at least, was deranged. “Building an engine of magic calculation. Something of gears and levers and wheels, that can tell us how to create things, faerie enchantments, too complex for us to imagine on our own. And perhaps, in time, to make them for us.”
    No, there was no doubt at all. Ada had taken the first step—or perhaps more than one—down the path of madness her father had followed. Faeries and enchantment, exactly the sorts of things of which her mother disapproved. If she did not turn back now, gambling, poetry, and sexual immorality were sure to follow.
    But she did not want to abandon her friends, even if they were phantasms of her diseased mind. Could she not allow herself a little madness, and trust to prayer and the rigorous strictures of science to keep the rest at bay?
    Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of