"Ok Mark let's get this thing booted up.", he said placing the gloves on his hands making sure every finger fit properly and adjusting the goggles around his eyes also placing his headphones properly around his ears. "I know we're sitting right next to each other but it is just better with these on.", he was talking about the headphones, so I put everything on a little anxious to see what was in store, to actually touch and see the working programs of the computer. I had always wanted to try this program out but the program was way to expense for me to buy just to try it.
When I placed my goggles on I saw just white light everywhere. "Is it supposed to just be all white.", I said, hoping everything was working properly.
"Just a second it's loading up. Oh yeah I gave you my old skin to use, we'll see about building you your own skin later.". He said. The skin he was referring to was what we would see as our bodies in the 3d world of the computer program.
"Ok you should start seeing something now," he said with a little enthusiasm in his voice, "let me know if it's coming up ok." As he was talking I started to see colors slowing fading into the white, then everything became very clear. The world was finely detailed, it looked like an old west town with dirt on the ground and wooden buildings and we were standing right at the entrance to the town. There were several windowless buildings lining both sides of the street, there were large 3 story buildings, regular single story buildings and a few small shacks.
"Wow this is really cool, what are all these buildings and…", I paused as I looked at my companion. "What are you wearing!", I asked.
"What, oh these, they're western clothes, look at what you are wearing.", he said.
I looked down and noticed what I was wearing, "This looks like the clothes Clint Eastwood wore in his first movies.", I said rather surprised at the skin he gave me.
"Yeah I really liked those movies.", he said as he walked towards the town.
"Obviously", I murmured as I followed closely behind. He was wearing a black hat and an all black long sleeve shirt with brown pants, around his waste I noticed a holster with a gun that resembled an old revolver. "I wonder what that's for." I thought still following trying to get beside him.
"Ok let me explain what we are seeing here. These buildings are basically folders of the file system inside they can contain rooms, hallways, storage bins, safes, papers and a number of different robots or programs working inside. You see, the computer will generate programs as robots some are large and don't move, some have wheels to move them around or hands to grab things. Whatever the program does the computer will generate its look based on that.", he said pointing at the buildings and a small metallic robot rolling across the street with a number of papers in its hand.
"And the rooms inside the building, those are more folders and those can have programs in side of them.", I said as I watched the robot open a door of a building and roll in.
"Exactly", he said grinning.
"What about the gun on your belt. Is that just part of your skin." I asked curiously.
He took the short, fat barrel gun out of its holster and spun it around his finger a few times. "This is one of our weapons or tools , it is used to remove files. Notice you have one too, along with a number of cartridges you can load into it.", he said as he placed the gun back into the holster.
I lifted up my tunic to the side, which was draped over my entire body, and revealed my own gun with cartridges that resembled large shot gun shells in a leather looking belt running across my chest. "Oh yeah." I said, taking the gun out to inspect it more closely.
"Right now the cartridge to remove things is loaded, it will remove whatever you point and fire at. There are also cartridges that will remove groups of things, for example point it at a robot and fire and it will remove that robot and any similar robots in a room. There are a number of other cartridges some I developed myself. Oh yeah we only have access to use them inside certain buildings. The owner of the machine we are in only gave us certain access. And currently we are outside, at the root part of the system that is why it looks like we are outside. I hope this is all making sense, it kind of threw me off the first time I used the system.", he said as we continued to make are way through the small town. "Lets find that post office", my gun toting, hat wearing companion said.
The dirt streets were clean of any debris and the buildings were very tidy. What would you expect from a computer? There was a continual porch on both sides of the street in front of every building. The sky was blue and bright and not a cloud anywhere. As we were walking I asked Dr. Gehtle, "Is this how the system represents every computer?".
"Pretty much. You can write your own environment programs, but no one usually does.", he said as we stopped in front of a building. "Here it is, the post office.". I looked at the sign at the top of the building "S-mail" it read. This is the program that I wrote the fix for, I know it in and out, should be simple enough I thought. As we walked onto the porch Victor inspected the outside of the building. We both walked in through the front wooden red stained door. The front room was empty and there were about 5 wooden red stained doors in a row on the opposite wall from the front door and there was a thin layer of dust on the floor, a single dim light with a green glass looking shade hung from the ceiling. "Well which one do we go into?", he asked me while he looked at all the names on the doors.
"Well what's wrong with the email system", I asked.
"The owner told me that the email is coming in very slow and takes a few days to a week for a message to makes it way to a user.", He replied.
"Ok then lets check out the queue.", I said as I opened the door that took us to the where the queue should be. We walked into a small hallway with another series of doors. Then went to the outgoing messages room. When we walked in we could see the problem. There was a small gray robot in a room that had about 10,000 envelopes stacked on an old wooden desk. The robot was picking one of the envelopes up at a time with its small arm and then rolling over on its one wheel to a small metal tube that had a black sensor of some sort above it that was mounted into the wooden wall. The sensor projected a small red laser beam and scanned the envelope. A few seconds later a red light appeared above the sensor and the robot placed the envelope back on the desk and tried the next message.
"It seems that there is quite a back up of messages and for some reason the sensor can't figure out where to send some of these .", I said as I made my way to the desk stepping out of the way of the little robot who was taking another message to the sensor. "I am going to try a quick test.", I told Dr. Gehlte. I picked up an envelope and change the outgoing address to my personal account, I set it in the pile so that the mail robot would pick it up next. "Ok, lets see if it can send this message", I said as I stepped back and watched the robot pick up the envelope I just changed and place in front of the sensor. This time a green light lit up and the email was sucked though the tube directly below the sensor. "Well everything is working properly, where are all these emails coming from?", I asked as Dr Gehlte and I looked through the messages. "It looks like it is some kind of spam message, they are all different except the return path, some foreign country. This may be an attack of some sort.", I said.
Dr Gehtle picked up another envelope and said, "You're right so what can we do?". As he was talking another large batch of envelopes spewed on the table from a metallic tube directly over the desk, all coming to rest in an organized fashion.
"This world is very interesting.", I said picking up a few of the new emails and checking to see if they were the same type. "Well I can make a quick band aid that will monitor the desk here and destroy any of the messages that have the same return path in them. Then we will have to figure a way to stop or block these unwanted email higher up.", I said watching more envelopes fall from the tube.
"Ok get started, I will contact the owner and let him know what we are doing.", He said as he left the room and walked outside.
I started to build my robot. I decided to use one of my gun cartridges, which looked like a shotgun shell, as a base and I then created a sensor and a small stand for it. Next I set it to review all envelopes that fell on the desk and if it that foreign address appeared in the message the robot was to blast the envelope away with a small blaster tool I created, it started to take shape. It stood about waste high and was thin and gray except for the cartridge that was dark red.
I completed the robot and set it on the floor and aimed it at the desk, it started working immediately scanning and blasting the envelopes away. When a message was blasted it appeared to be on fire, burning blue, but the flame did not spread to any other messages that were on the desk. It was very interesting to see a program I created and how it interacted with other robots or objects for the first time. Dr Gehtle was right this was a lot better than just using a terminal program.
"Wow, that little bot is working great, it made quick work of that mess and it also looks like the mail bot is getting the good messages out now. The owner said he just started getting some email from about a week ago. Good job Mark." He said as we watched the two robots do their work for a few minutes.
"Well like I said this is only a band aid. We are defiantly going to have to have a look at the security of this town.". I said turning to Dr. Gehtle.
"Ok we're going to have to go check with the port guard, that's the robot that controls everything that comes in and out of this town." He said as we exited the building and headed down the street towards a rather small building on the edge of town. "How do like this so far Mark?", He asked as we walked on the dirt street getting our boots dirty with dust.
"I like it so far. I think you're right this is a lot better than terminal", I admitted.
"You know Mark I would rather be in this world than the real one, stuff just makes sense in here and if it doesn't you change it.".
End of Part 2. Stay tuned, next month will bring Part 3!
Tools/Weapons
Gun - Used to remove objects. Looks and works much like a real gun. Guns can take many different shapes. The user can also use different cartridges for different types of removal processes. Users can even customize any cartridge to suit their need.
About the Author
Tom Ham has been programming on and maintaining Linux servers for over 4 years. You can reach him at tom AT generalministries DOT com.
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