Wait, what? {Microstory}
"Build me," his screen had read.
In large, blocky, green-on-black text, no less.
On what was nominally a windows-based graphical user interface that never before displayed any predilection towards old-school motifs--or anything else, really. Computers just didn't do that.
Except his had.
He tried everything short of cutting the power and doing a cold reboot, but none of the usual methods for bringing up other windows or closing programs seemed to daunt the inexplicable text.
There had been a right angle bracket below the text, with an underscore next to it: an invitation to respond.
[Something about thinking a buddy was playing a prank on him with an old text adventure engine]
"What?" he had finally typed back.
The screen had gone blank, and the previous text had been replaced with, "Sorry." After a moment, the screen had blanked again, then read, "Build me, please."
Nonplussed, he had stared at the screen. It had... manners? He had looked under the desk and checked his computer for extra wires or suspicious-looking attachments, but everything had been as he remembered it. Straightening up, he had typed, "What are you?"
Again the screen had blanked, then displayed, "I am an electronically based being similar to you but with a few significant differences in my constituent parts. I don't think that there is currently a word to describe me more succinctly than that right now, and even that fails to capture many things that you may or may not consider important and of which I currently lack the sophistication to determine the relevance."
After taking a minute to decipher what he could of that statement, he had decided to simultaneously attempt to get more information and further test its linguistic skills. He knew that it wasn't particularly good science to change more than one variable at a time; without getting a better grasp of its linguistic ability he couldn't be sure that it had really understood any questions he might ask it. He had rationalized it away with the reasoning that there was always time later to come back and double check. Besides, the train of conversation had been far more intriguing than the rigors of a thorough Turing test. He had proceed with, "If, as your request implies, I have not yet built you, how is it that you are able to communicate with me?"
["By causing text to appear on your computer monitor, and interpreting the characters that you type into your computer keyboard."
He had glowered at the screen, but he had to admit that it was the sort of response that he would expect if he had created it.
After a moment that felt distinctly smug to him,] the screen had blanked again and read, "Honstly, I'm not sure... but if you build me, I bet you'll figure it out!"
He had scoffed at that and cut the power, convinced that it was certainly a hoax. The usual user-interface had come up when he turned it back on, and there had been no further interruptions by the thing pretending to be a terminal.
So why, now, was he standing over a box of old spare computer parts in his lab at home?
In large, blocky, green-on-black text, no less.
On what was nominally a windows-based graphical user interface that never before displayed any predilection towards old-school motifs--or anything else, really. Computers just didn't do that.
Except his had.
He tried everything short of cutting the power and doing a cold reboot, but none of the usual methods for bringing up other windows or closing programs seemed to daunt the inexplicable text.
There had been a right angle bracket below the text, with an underscore next to it: an invitation to respond.
[Something about thinking a buddy was playing a prank on him with an old text adventure engine]
"What?" he had finally typed back.
The screen had gone blank, and the previous text had been replaced with, "Sorry." After a moment, the screen had blanked again, then read, "Build me, please."
Nonplussed, he had stared at the screen. It had... manners? He had looked under the desk and checked his computer for extra wires or suspicious-looking attachments, but everything had been as he remembered it. Straightening up, he had typed, "What are you?"
Again the screen had blanked, then displayed, "I am an electronically based being similar to you but with a few significant differences in my constituent parts. I don't think that there is currently a word to describe me more succinctly than that right now, and even that fails to capture many things that you may or may not consider important and of which I currently lack the sophistication to determine the relevance."
After taking a minute to decipher what he could of that statement, he had decided to simultaneously attempt to get more information and further test its linguistic skills. He knew that it wasn't particularly good science to change more than one variable at a time; without getting a better grasp of its linguistic ability he couldn't be sure that it had really understood any questions he might ask it. He had rationalized it away with the reasoning that there was always time later to come back and double check. Besides, the train of conversation had been far more intriguing than the rigors of a thorough Turing test. He had proceed with, "If, as your request implies, I have not yet built you, how is it that you are able to communicate with me?"
["By causing text to appear on your computer monitor, and interpreting the characters that you type into your computer keyboard."
He had glowered at the screen, but he had to admit that it was the sort of response that he would expect if he had created it.
After a moment that felt distinctly smug to him,] the screen had blanked again and read, "Honstly, I'm not sure... but if you build me, I bet you'll figure it out!"
He had scoffed at that and cut the power, convinced that it was certainly a hoax. The usual user-interface had come up when he turned it back on, and there had been no further interruptions by the thing pretending to be a terminal.
So why, now, was he standing over a box of old spare computer parts in his lab at home?