Software In Time

“I write software.”

“Soft wear? Is this some new fangled form of clothing that does not itch like the devil in the summer heat? May I have some?”

It was at this point that the enormity of the task that I was facing struck me. Or I thought it did, but the enormity of my miscalculation would only be revealed much later of course.

“But how can you write clothes? Do you mean you draw patterns that tailors stitch?” he made a sharp flicking gesture with his hand, which I took to refer to the current fashion in stitch dancing.

“ ‘Tis a strange profession though, isn’t it? I have known a fair few artists in my time. All of them were rascals and layabouts, and all the women loved them, but they couldn’t draw the little wild tree in their backyard, let alone the beautiful pictures of God and his children that you see plastered over all those holy places. Well, couldn’t don’t mean shouldn’t, so they usually did end up drawing – perhaps that’s too strong a word, eh? – sketching smudgy impressions of the holy deity. Not the peach tree in the frontyard, and certainly not clothes. Mighty odd, you saying you draw clothes for a living. New fangled ones that don’t itch in the summer at that. Hmm”

At the end of that thorough but thoroughly inaccurate rant, the man looked directly and deep into my eyes, all but demanding an explanation for my unsatisfactory choice of profession.

A bead of sweat made its stately way down my finely sculpted temple.

“Right. Do you know what er.. come you tosser?”

“Tosser? Just because I’m showing an entirely innocent interest in your vocation doesn’t mean I want to take it away, sirree. There’s no need to run away with your tongue, I’m not going to pilfer your soft wares. Tosser?! I’m only – “

“I didn’t call you a tosser. I said cump-you-terse. Do you know what they are?”

The man looked perplexed for a moment, trying to work out if I’d only gone and repeated the insult in spite of the apology.

“No, sir.”

“They are er.. Boxes.”

“Boxes? You mean you’ve got boxes full of soft wear?”

In spite of myself, I brightened immediately. This conversation was looking up. Right? Maybe all those years of hard graft would be worth something. There’d be fame of course. But.. fame is always a function of other people’s desires. It’s something that’s given to you – a gift, alms to the needy if you will. I wanted more: something for myself, something that couldn’t be taken away on a whim. Maybe that’d still come, but that cliff yonder was starting to look remarkably attractive for an impromptu dive into the unknown beyond. Well, at least sorta unknown. I knew there’d be barrelsful of jagged rocks at the bottom to tear me into little pieces of carrion-to-be, but at least I didn’t know how many barrelsful there would be. Wait, didn’t I set off to brighten up a moment earlier? Yes. No jumping yet.

“Exactly!” said I in apparently spontaneous excitement, totally undermined of course by the heavily pregnant pause that’d preceded that exclamation.

Meanwhile, remember that brightening thing I had banged on about for a bit earlier? It quickly disappeared as I took stock of the rain-dark clouds that were rapidly scudding across my companion’s face. He looked, as you’d say, thunderous.

“I didn’t know you had boxes, sir. Not only do you appear to be an uncommonly stupid simpleton, but a liar and rogue to boot. If you had boxes and boxes of your magic fabric stowed away, why did you profess such unwarranted hesitation at my request to see one? I only wanted to see, I had no intention of –“

“Please. These boxes er.. only have the blueprints.”

“You mean the drawings? Why do you need boxes then? Are you such a bad artist that you fill up boxes and boxes with tripe before you come up with something good?” A genteel titter accompanied that rhetorical question.

I was fighting a losing battle with my ego at that point. Here I was, a brave pioneer trudging paths never before seen, bandying words with a crude peasant.

“Could you not talk for a minute? Or two? Or thirty? OK. So, a computer is a box which can add numbers. It can – “

“Did I tell you about my great grandmum? Fine old lady she was. Lost both her legs to the 'pox. Most of her mind followed until she could only remember her name when it snowed fifty kilometres away. But a fine old lady she was. She could add numbers too.”

I blanched graciously.

“Right. Hold on to your tongue for a minute, will you? Here’s a steel clamp to help you out. I’ve seen it used to tether elephants.”
“A computer is a box that can add numbers in magical ways. For example, I can use that box which adds numbers …“ I rooted around for the best metaphor to tie into the utterly useless conversation we’d had so far. “… to er.. model new kinds of fabric.”

“You mean the soft stuff.”

“Yeah, the ‘soft’ stuff.” Even my supremely unflappable demeanour was feeling the strain a little, and a touch of sarcasm crept into my otherwise perfectly considerate tone. “That day, when you’d missed reading the newspaper because you were off talking to yourself since you were so bored of talking to yourself, that was the day it was reported that scientists had figured out that manipulating numbers was all there was to the world.”

“Pardon me, sir, but if you’re referring to the day my dead grandmum appeared before me and told me in no uncertain terms that it was my destiny to not become a great man, to not become very wealthy, to not have a beautiful wife and to not be the happiest man in the world, your allusion is callous and .. and blatantly in disregard of – “

“No, not that day. The other one. Anyway, the point is that computers are boxes that add numbers, subtract numbers, and juggle them like, really, really fast. Take the fastest wagon you’ve ever seen. Now imagine it were about a thousand thousand thousand thousand times faster, that’s how long my pretty little box would take to multiply your age with your height with your weight with the temperature, and round off to the nearest hundred. But computers, computers aren’t smart. We need to get them to do what we want – and that is where I come in. I tell these boxes that they can only juggle numbers in certain ways, and I ensure they remember my instructions by occasionally rapping an object shaped like a bar of soap.”

The man, I’m glad to report, finally looked a shade weary of this exchange. His eyes scoured every nook of my visage, perhaps in search of mockery. I’m glad to report, again, that I passed the test.

“So, what you're saying is, you have a box that can add numbers, and you not only use this box to add numbers in magical ways to make blueprints of soft fabric that doesn’t itch in the summertime, but also to store blueprints of soft fabric that doesn’t itch in the summertime. What you do is tell the box to only make blueprints and none of those greenprints, and to get the point across, you use a bar of soap. And you don't have any of that fine fabric to share right now.” I nodded helpfully at every syllable.

With that, he gathered one very heavily muscled arm and cuffed me gently on the chin before going on his way. When I woke up a couple of days later, I wondered if I was wrong about passing the test after all. Right then I made a vow: I’d never travel in my time machine again.