The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 17
We type type type type type in our cubicles the whole day through,
To type type type type type is what we really like to do,
It ain’t no trick to find a glitch,
If you type type type you’ll get an itch,
In the cubicles! In the cubicles!
The singing was emanating from a group of athletic nerds marching single file in the midst of the huge lobby. Jennifer Love and Fenestra Gates had just entered The Cold’s main building, and stood off to one side admiring the frescos. Gates’s favorite was the one portraying Jesus’s last supper at the base. The billionaire contractor looked very regal, clearly enjoying the mashed potatoes with gravy train.
“Who are they?” asked Love, pointing to the singers.
“The System Administrators — SysAdmins,” replied Gates. “They always chant on their way back from lunch.”
Love surveyed the big band as they chorused along, until finally disappearing behind a large double door, which bore an emphatic sign saying Authorized or Unauthorized Personnel Only.
With the assurance of one as familiar with the place as a panda is with the nape of her neck, Gates led Love through the corridors of power. She could almost feel in her bones the electricity coursing along the walls through thick red-white-and-blue wires.
“I’ve never heard of this place before,” remarked Love as she turned a corner.
“Not many people have,” began Gates, turning the corner back to its original position. “Several years ago, a group of distinguished double patriots had come to realize the United States was falling behind, or everyone else was rising ahead. A lengthy debate ensued as to the best course of action to pursue.”
“And what was their conclusion?” asked Love, her curiosity piqued to such heights she could tell the moon was moonlighting.
Gates continued thoughtfully. “They finally decided upon three solutions to the problem at hand. One, imposing a prohibition on decaffeinated tea; two, lifting the prohibition on decaffeinated tea; and, three, building mighty computers.”
“Did the tea affair work?” inquired Love breathlessly.
“To the hilt,” replied Gates evenly. “From that day onward, the tea everybody has been drinking is either caffeinated or decaffeinated — never otherwise.”
“And the computers?”
“That’s where this place comes into the picture. The group in question decided upon a massive investment in chess computers, to be housed in a top-secret installation.”
“The Cold.”
“The Cold, indeed. The details of the proposal were nebulously vague, the double patriots suspiciously dubious, and the requested budget enormously elephantine. And so the bill passed both houses faster than a grandmother on wheels. The result you see around you.”
“Impressive,” commented Love sotto voce, awed by the immensity of the implications implied by the immanent immaculacy. They continued to walk in silence for several minutes, during which sundry people crossed their path, greeting Professor Gates with the standard salute (raising the right hand, and pressing the thumb against the other four fingers in rapid succession). Finally, upon entering a huge enclosure, Gates stopped and announced proudly, “Welcome to Rainbow Room. This is it.”
The first impression Love had was one of blinking lights …
The second impression Love had was one of blinking lights …
The third impression Love had was one of blinking lights …
The fourth impression Love had was one of blinking lights …
“Enough blinking!” protested Gates loudly, and then, more softly, he said, “Sorry about that. In computerspeak we call it an infinite loop.”
“Don’t worry,” smiled Love, “I’m used to this. In politicspeak we call it ‘talking’. I can see why this place is named the Rainbow Room.” In addition to an impressive array of blinking lights covering every inch of the walls, five enormous rectangular structures occupied most of the room’s space, their bright colors serving as food for the spirit.
Noting how Love’s gaze shifted between the colorful blocks, Gates began, “Those are the computers. We named them according to their colors: Snow White, Indian Red, Deep Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Forest Green.”
Love just stood there, utterly unable to utter a word, a hiccup, or an inauguration speech.
“It had that effect on me the first time, too,” whispered Gates.
“What are the blinking lights for?” asked Love, after several minutes of meditative yoga.
“They’re for politicians and generals,” explained Gates. “You see, for years Hollywood has promoted the association between high-performance computers and blinking lights. People come to expect it. So we had the walls covered with this light array. Totally useless, of course. Billy wrote the program that controls the random flickering.”
“Your Billy?”
“My Billy.”
“You must be very proud of him.”
“Not overly — this program is really kids’ stuff. But the brass love it, so who am I to complain?”
They’d been strolling about the room, eventually coming to stand in front of a large scoreboard, which bore the names of all five computers.
“What’s this?” asked Love. “It looks like your computers are playing amongst themselves.”
“They are,” confirmed Gates.
A puzzled look clouded Love’s right eyebrow. “But … from what you explained earlier, I thought this was the United States’s major line of attack. The Chess Computers, and all.”
“Pooh,” replied Gates dismissively, waving has hands like a grumpy hyena. “They can play chess — very well, in fact. But they’ve turned out to be absolutely useless in the war effort.”
“So …” Understanding was beginning to perch upon Love. “So you’ve set them loose upon each other?”
“Precisely,” cried Gates joyously, and then — much less buoyantly, “Hey, I’m losing money here.”
“Money?” questioned Love uncomprehendingly.
“We make bets on the outcome of the games. I put my money on Deep Blue, and look — he’s ranked last. Damn!”
“Billions and billions of dollars, and you end up with the races,” mused Love, clearly amused to no end.
Gates just stood there sulking.
After four minutes and twenty-two seconds Gates snapped out of his moody mood, and said, “You haven’t met Theo yet.”
Love was having one of those days wherein riddles popped up uninvited by the dozen. “Theo?”
“You must think,” Gates began mischievously, “that the project has been a total failure.”
Love sounded an ambiguous well. “Well …”
“Not so!” Gates jumped atop Deep Blue, and continued from this oral high ground. “Of course, spending billions on these damn computers was doomed to fail. Take a boatload of money, add a pint of politicians, let simmer for several years, and what do you get?”
Intuiting this was probably a trick question, Love opted to remain standing on one foot and a half.
“A kludge cake!” exclaimed Gates thunderously. “But, a couple of years ago — and here I fear I must sidestep academic modesty for a moment — I found the perfect solution. The ultimate Chess Warlord, with the intelligence of a trunk, the intrepidity of a tusk, and the memory of an elephant.”
“You designed a new kind of computer?” Love asked the professor.
“No, I found him.” Gates pushed himself off Deep Blue and led Love through a small gray door into a big gray room.
“Jennifer,” he announced ceremoniously, “I’d like to present Theotokopoulos Domenikos. Theo, this is my good friend Jennifer Love.”
Gates found herself staring into the wise eyes of a white elephant who was holding out his proboscis.
They shook hand-and-trunk.
“I’d been attending a conference in Greece, on the island of Crete,” reminisced Gates. “Something on advanced search techniques for finding spiders on the Web, if memory serves. On the third day, despair had sunk in. I knew I’d never leave those trenches alive.” Descrying the befuddled look upon Love’s face, Gates made a little coughing sound, and apologized, “Oops, sorry, I lapsed a bit too far into metaphor there. Anyway, on the third day of the conference, I’d found myself bored stiff, which — by the way — had been an all-time record for me. Boredom usually settles in nicely on the eve of the first day. So I’d left the Hotel Treetop, where the conference had been held, and had driven around the island. I’d stumbled upon Theo at a nudist beach right next to the sea, and we’d hit it off immediately.”
“Fenestra is a wonderful interlocutor,” affirmed Theotokopoulos Domenikos in a deep voice.
“After several hours of conversation,” continued Gates, “lasting well into the night, I knew I found the answer to our prayers.”
“You’re an atheist, Fenestra,” Theo said gravely.
“Elephants aren’t very good at figures of speech,” whispered Gates in Love’s ear. “They tend to confuse them with figure skating.”
“I heard that,” Theo said tweetingly.
“Damn those big ears of yours,” Gates returned good-humoredly, and tapped his friend on the trunk.
“So, how have you been, my good friend?” Theo inquired after the professor.
“I’ve been well, Theo.”
“How about Dorothy and the kids? Haven’t seen them in ages. Why, I bet young Billy is taller than my knee by now!”
“You got that right. How about you, Theo, still enjoying the warlording business?”
The elephant shrugged his shoulders, “I guess.”
“Guess?” asked Gates concernedly. “You used to love it.”
“I know, I know,” sighed Theo. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything. I’m really happy you helped me obtain this position, especially given the diminution in visas for foreign workers. But …” he murmured dreamily.
“But what?” prompted Gates. “Come on Theo, you can tell me everything. And Jennifer here is completely trustworthy.”
“Okay, Fenestra,” began Theo, seating himself on the large gray sofa in the rear of the room. “The thing is, these days I find myself thinking more and more of my childhood dream, and of my not having realized it yet.”
“What is your dream, Theo?” asked Love gently.
“I want to be a ballet dancer.”
Gates looked at Love; Love looked at Gates; both looked at Theo, who continued. “As a child growing up on the island of Crete, I took ballet lessons from Madam Bolshevikovina, the famous prima ballerina of the Off Broadway Ballet Company in Moscow. She’d retired to the island after a long and illustrious career. Of course,” he added quietly, “I had to keep this a secret. Had the other elephants in my herd found out I was studying ballet … Well, you know what I mean.”
“I sure do,” empathized Gates, who had been ridiculed by his peers when — at the age of ten — he’d decided to take football lessons. After two months, peer pressure had forced him to renounce football in favor of chess and computers.
“Kids,” sighed Love.
“Kids, indeed,” agreed Theo. “So there you have it. I still enjoy warlording, but ballet … Ah, if only I could go back to ballet dancing.”
“Theo, my friend,” said Gates gravely, “I’ll do anything I can to help you. But in the meantime we’ve got something a bit more urgent we’d like your help with.”
Theo regained his trunked posture. “Sure, Fenestra. I assume this is about the arms deal Mac foisted on de la Fesse, isn’t it?”
“How did you know?” asked Gates in amazement.
“An elephant hears things,” replied Theo plainly, flapping his ears.
Gates took out a sheaf of documents from his attaché case, and placed them on the small coffee table in front of Theo. The white elephant leafed through the pages rapidly, while humming a melancholy melody in Greek. After no more than five minutes — though definitively longer than four — he lifted his head to pass judgment monosyllabically. “Sleek.”
“What do you mean?” asked Love.
“This guy — Mac — knows his chess,” explained Theo. “You see, the arms deal looks perfectly kosher, capable of effecting some minor winnings — as indeed it has. But toward the middle game, things can get very hairy.”
“How hairy?” quizzed Love.
“As hairy as a fairy,” replied the Chess Warlord.
“Theo?” said Gates gently.
“Yes, Fenestra?”
“Remember that discussion we had on similes?”
“Why, Fenestra, you know I have the memory of an elephant.”
“Indeed you do. Anyway, we must reexamine the issue sometime soon.”
“Fine with me, dear Fenestra,” said Theo expectantly. “You know I’m a sucker for a good dialectic.”
Love was standing quietly to one side, reflecting on just how fairy the situation would soon get.
