Диана Дуэйн - High Wizardry

"Syntax error 24," said the computer, "rephrase for-"

"You can take your syntax errors and. . never mind!" Dairine said. "What's wrong with you?

Diagnostic!"

"External input," said the computer. "Nontypical."

"What is it? Some kind of broadcast?"

"Negative. Local."

It happened right after it linked to the geothermal power, Dairine thought. "Check your link to the planet," she said.

"Affirmative. Positive identification. External input. Planetary source."

"Are there people here?" Dairine said, looking around hurriedly.

"Negative." The computer's screen kept filling up with 1's, clearing itself, filling with 1's again.

She held still and forced herself to take a deep breath, and another. The computer wasn't broken, nothing horrible had happened. Yet. "Can you get rid of all those ones?" she said to the computer.

"Affirmative."

The screen steadied down to the last she had been looking at. Dairine stared at it.

This unique structure becomes more interesting when considering the physical nature of the layering.

Some 92 % of the layers consist of chemically pure silicon, predisposing the aggregate to electroconductive activity in the presence of light or under certain other conditions. This effect is likely to be enhanced in some areas by the tendency of silicon to superconduct at surface temperatures below K. There is also a possibility that semiorganic life of a "monocellular" nature will have arisen in symbiosis either with the silicon layers or their associated "doping" layers, producing Dairine sat there and began to tremble. It's the planet, she thought. Silicon. And trace elements, put down in layers. And cold to make it semiconduct.

"It's the planet!" she shouted at the computer. "This whole flat part here is one big semiconductor chip, a computer chip! It's alivel Send it something! Send it some 1's!"

The computer flickered through several menu screens and began filling with 1's again. Dairine rolled from her sitting position into a kneeling one, rocking back and forth with anxiety and delight. She had to be right, she had to. One huge chip, like a computer motherboard a thousand miles square. And some kind of small one-celled-if that was the right word-one-celled organism living with it. Something silicon-based, that could etch pathways in it-pathways that electricity could run along, that data could be stored in.

How many years had this chip been laying itself down in the silence, she wondered? Volcanoes erupting chemically pure silicon and trace elements that glazed themselves into vast reaches of chip-surface as soon as they touched the planet: and farther down, in the molten warmth of the planet's own geothermal heat, the little silicon-based "bacteria" that had wound themselves together out of some kind of analogue to DNA. Maybe they were more like amoebas than bacteria now: etching their way along through the layers of silicon and cadmium and other elements, getting their food, their energy, from breaking the compounds' chemical bonds, the same way carbon-based life gets it from breaking down complex proteins into simpler ones.

It was likely enough. She would check it with the manual. But for now, the result of this weird bit of evolution was all that really mattered. The chip was awake. With this much surface area-endless thousands of square miles, all full of energy, and connections and interconnections, millions of times more connections than there were in a human brain-how could it not have waked up? But there was nowhere for it to get data from that she could see, no way for it to contact the outside world. It was trapped. The

1 's, the basic binary code for "on" used by all computers from the simplest to the most complex, were a scream for help, a sudden realization that something else existed in the world, and a crying out to it. Even as she looked down at the screen and watched what the computer was doing, the stream of 1's became a little less frantic. 111111111, said her own machine. 111111111, said the planet.

"Give it an arithmetic series," Dairine whispered.

1, said her computer. 11. 111. 1111. 11111.

1. 11. 111. 1111. 11111.

"Try a geometric."

1. 11. 1111. 11111111. 1111111111111111.

I. 11. 1111. 11111111-

Oh, it's got it," Dairine said, bouncing and still hugging herself. "I think. It's hard to tell if it's just repeating. Try a square series."

II. 1111. 1111111111111111-

III. 111111111. 1111111111111111111111111-

It had replied with a cube series. It knew, it knewl "Can you teach it binary?" Dairine said, breathless.

"Affirmative." 1. 10. 11. 100. 101-

Things started to move fast, the screen filling with characters, clearing itself, filling again as the computers counted at each other. Dairine was far gone in wonder and confusion. What to teach it next? It was like trying to communicate with someone who had been locked in a dark, soundless box all his life. . "Is it taking the data?"

"Affirmative. Writing to permanent memory."

Dairine nodded, thinking hard. Apparently the huge chip was engraving the binary code permanently into itself: that would include codes for letters and numbers as well. But what good's that gonna do? It doesn't have any experiences to make words out of, no reason to put letters together to make the words in the first place… It was like it had been for Helen Keller, Dairine thought: but at least Helen had had the senses of touch and taste, so that she could feel the water poured into her hand while her teacher drummed the touch-code for water into it. It has no senses. If it did.

"Can you hook it into your sensors?" she said to the computer.

The computer hesitated. It had never done such a thing before: and when it spoke again, its syntax was peculiar-more fluid than she was used to.

"High probability of causing damage to the corresponding computer due to too great a level of complexity," it said.

Dairine breathed out, annoyed, but had to agree. Anything able to sense events happening forty trillion miles away, no matter how it managed it, was certainly too complex to hook directly to this poor creature right now. And another thought occurred to her, and her heart beat very fast. Not sensors, then. Senses.

"Can you hook me to it?" she said.

This time the hesitation was even longer, and Dairine stared at the computer, half expecting it to make an expression at her. It didn't, but the speech of its response was slow. "Affirmative," it said. "Triple confirmation of intent required."

"I tell you three times," Dairine said. "Hook it to me. Tell me what to do. It has to get some better idea of what's going on out here or it'll go crazy!"

"Direct physical contact with surface," the computer said. It sounded reluctant.

Dairine dusted her hands off and put them flat on the glassy ground.

She was about to open her mouth to tell the computer to go ahead, do what it was going to: but she never got the chance. The instantaneous jolt went right through her with exactly the same painless grabbing and shaking she had felt when she was seven and had put a bobby pin in the electric socket.

She convulsed, all over: her head jerked up and snapped back and she froze, unable even to blink, staring up into the golden-veiled blaze of the barred spiral, staring at it till each slight twitch of her eyes left jittering purple-green afterimages to right and left of it; and somewhere inside her, as if it were another mind speaking, she could hear her computer crying 110010 01011110000100! 11001001011110000100! at the frantic silence that listened. Light, light, light-

And the reply, she heard that too: a long, crazed string of binary that made no sense to her, but needed to make none. Joy, it was simply joy, joy at discovering meaning: joy so intense that all her muscles jumped in reaction, breaking her out of the connection and flinging her facedown on the glazed ground.