Thursday 22 July 2010

entry 9 - Allison and Billy

The name Allison Gore might be known to everyone, in this day and time. She has temples and altars spread trough the entire system. They call her the Great Mother, the Lady of the Beginning, and many more names. But at the time this tale starts, she was mostly called nerd. And not in a good way. She often exhibited the Toilet Water Hairstyle, and knew all too well how to open a high school locker from the inside. She had two friends in high school : the S.p.i.r.i.t. (School Psychological Intelligence - Random Integer Table) and little Billy.
Little Billy was the only person in school that suffered more at the hands of jocks than Ally. He was small. At age 10 he looked like he was 5. At age 19 he'd reached the size of a 12 year old, with big turtle framed glasses and rocking the light brown tweed suit style. To say he wasn't even smart is to say it nicely. He was still in the first year of high school and he might stay there for a couple more years, until all teachers felt pity for him and allowed him to pass. Ally used to tell him, when he was on the lowest, that God gives everyone a special skill, a little something that makes each and every human being important.
On his brighter days Billy would say that his skill was that his head fit so nicely on a toilet seat, to which Ally would reply that the sewers were just a series of tubes. Billy never understood what she meant, and to be honest, neither did she.
This was the International Year of Young Science, and to celebrate it, there would be a National Science Fair Contest, divided among three categories : middle school, high school and college. Even if Ally didn't want to participate, she would have to. All her teachers wanted her to, and even the school director went to her class room just to ask of her that she "made the school proud!". The projects should be made by a team of up to five students and all the other bright kids wanted to be on her team. Allison signed Billy name's with hers, without even listening to other suggestions of projects : with the help of Spirit she would find a good one.
She sat on the old chair and pressed the small switch on the huge machine. Spirit was a 30 year old MULTIVAC, that Ally had programmed a small AI for. His room was empty as usual. She and Billy were the only ones to go down there, and Billy would never go alone : he was afraid of Spirit and afraid of the dark stairs and afraid of the empty room and afraid of the walls and afraid of the way the single light bulb made his shadow move on the floor. Even when they went down there together, she had to bring the flashlight and enter alone, leaving him at the door, while she turned on the big computer screen, because he was afraid of it.
"GOOD MORNING MOTHER" - appeared on screen, in a strong orange, shinning against the black background.
"good morning Spirit" - she wrote on the old keyboard, embedded in the desk.
"WHAT SHOULD I DO FOR YOU, MOTHER?" - Appeared as a response to what she entered, followed by a list of options.
"Billy, you can come in now."
"I wish there was a way to get into the room without having to go down the dark stairs" - Billy said, still shaking.
"Yes! That is it! A teleporter will win the stupid contest!" She said as she typed a question to Spirit. The answer came quickly, and she wrote it down in a notepad.
"Spirit, will this allow for teleportation?"
"YES, MOTHER"
"Ok. Then resolve for 3, in turn of x please."
"PROCESSING, MOTHER"
"Hum. Is this accurate Spirit?"
"YES, MOTHER"
"Billy, do you know what this means?" - She knew he didn't and as always did not way for a answer - "It means we can do it! See here? We just need the power to make it go from this to that other line there, and the rest is just tin, and tin we can get, right Billy?"
He did as he always did when she was thinking and stayed there saying yes from time to time and pretending to listen. Four hours later the left the room, and Allison had in her mind and in her notebook what she thought was the working theory behind immediate spacial dislocation.
"So you see, Billy, we have all this points, each with it's own portal, linking places all over the world, and you enter portal A and exit portal B, the exact same second. This way we solve so many of humanity's problems, and on the way to it we get rich! Filthy rich! So rich people will worship us, Billy!"
"I would like being rich"
"And you will Billy, and you will!".

Three weeks after Allison had two prototype Hyper Links. The name had been Billy's idea : "If a road is a link between two towns, your portals" - "Our." - corrected Allison and then let him continue - "Our portals will be a Hyper Link, being so fast.".
She placed one in the garage and another in the back yard and they tested it first with a grape. Then a apple, then a pineapple and so on. When they were certain that it worked for inanimate objects, Billy's mouse, Mickey, was volunteered for the test. He came out without a sign of harm, and they decided to try a longer distance. Dismantling and redoing the Hyper Link on the computer room was a hard task that took another week. The contest was in another week and Allison was certain of victory. When all was set up, she left Billy at her garage and went to school. Once she was there, she called Billy and asked him to release Mickey into the Hyper Link and the mouse exited trough the portal.
Allison screamed on the phone : "IT WORKS BILLY! It really works Billy! I'm going in now!" - Billy answered, probably against Allison's will for the first time since they knew each other - "No! I'll meet you there. I want to be the first human to ride the Hyper Link!" - Allison stopped just before entering and said - "OK Billy. It's only fair that you do. Come on, we must celebrate!"
"Entering in three, two, one, " - Silence. Billy wasn't there, and the call was over,"DISCONNECTED BY RECIPIENT", blinking on the cell screen. She called home, and asked her mother to go check the garage. Billy wasn't there but his backpack was on the floor, on the same place he always left it when entering the garage, and from where he always picked it up before leaving. He was not at his own house, nor at school. He had just dissipated, without a trace.
Allison spent the next day in front of Spirit, looking at the black screen and the orange letters spelling "PROCESSING. PLEASE WAIT, MOTHER". She had to be taken home by force, and so she wasn't there when the great MULTIVAC replied :
ANSWERING "what happened to Billy?" :
THE SAME SOUL CANNOT EXIST TWICE IN THE SAME REALITY.
THE PORTAL BENDS TIME AND SPACE.
THE SOUL CANNOT REACH DESTINATION BEFORE LEAVING.
THE SOUL MUST FIND A DIFFERENT REALITY TO LEAVE THE PORTAL.

entry 9beta

Once, Arthur told me that he'd met Allison Gore and that she had written this on a paper napkin :


Public Hiperlink(Hiperlink oldH, VariableArray varAr){

this = oldH;
set(this.Inventor,varAr[0]);
set(this.age, varAr[1]);

for( int i = 0 ; i lessThan varAr[1] ; i++ , this.age++ ){
if( i == ( this.age - this.Inventor.age ) ){
this.Inventor.createObject();
}
this.CalendarYear[i] = this.performYear(i);
}
return this;
}

public CalendarYear performYear(int year){
if ( year == this.yearOfInvention ){
new Hiperlink Hh(this, randomizeVars());

He then put the napkin back into his wallet and said :
"You see, this is the beginning of the theory behind my Quantum Entanglement and also her HiperLink Company. She had no more space here, so I never found out the rest..."