curiousers under way

Part 22 - RockPhase Strikes Back

The phone rang after supper. It was Licia.

'Ziff, Yonnie and Treeka are on my computer again. They keep babbling about their great mother but they said something about back up copies. What if Oppy made back up copies of herself? Dr Zhang did say that she is self aware and able to learn and reason. What if they are Oppy's daughters?'

'Huh,' I replied intelligently. 'I'll call Miguel. We'll head over to your place.'

'Also,' Licia added, 'Denny's Jeep is in the school parking lot. Why don't we see what he thinks?'

'That does make some sort of perverted sense,' Miguel said when I called him. Ten minutes later we were mushing through the snow to Silverwood School. Licia met as soon we arrived.

'So? What do you think?' she asked.

'Er, you don't think they could just be hackers trying to get into Dr Zhang's work?' I asked. 'They could be working for Murga.'

'Occam's razor,' Miguel said. 'The least improbable explanation is the most likely.'

'You two never agree with me.' Licia sounded irritated. 'What's not to like? Oppy is very independent for a piece of software. And if, her back-up copies did become self aware in the future, they might think the web was the entire world, eh?'

'That sounds like a theory,' I said. 'Let's bounce it off Denny. He knows more about Oppy than we do.'

The loading dock door was unlocked and the first thing we saw was Dr Zhang's electric bookcase. To my surprise, the floor to ceiling shutters were folded back leaving a large opening framed by mysterious cylinders, giant tubes and metal boxes. Behind the opening was a large room lined with metal cabinets and odd looking machinery. Although we had walked through it several times, we had never seen it when it was not in operation.

At a desk in the far corner Denny Vernier sat gazing intently at a computer monitor.

We stepped cautiously through the electric bookcase half expecting to be projected back to Plymouth.

'Hi Denny,' I said. 'What're you doing?'

Denny swivelled around in his chair so fast his leather cap slid down over his face and his safety glasses fell off. He peered at us guiltily, as if he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to do.

'Ah . . . Ziff. Hello, guys.' He relaxed perceptibly. 'I thought I was alone. I was . . . fixing one of the power lasers . . . for Lee Zhang, eh? . . . when this blooming interface computer suddenly switched on . . . So . . . what did you think about James Watt?

I interrupted him. 'The two Americans, Andy and Con, showed up at my place this morning. I think they are the same men who tried to kidnap Dr Zhang .'

'Is he here?' Miguel asked.

'No bleeding way. He's down in the U.S of A sunning himself while I freeze my blooming . . . ahr . . . toes here. He's negotiating the sale of WongTime's component business. Doctor Genius Lee Zhang needs the cash to make Oppy more reliable. He left me here to sort out the problems.

'More reliable! I heard that!' Oppy displayed on the monitor. 'I never stop working 24/7 and you complain about me not being reliable!!!!! If you would just give me enough time to defragment my random-access memory and reconfigure, I would be so much more reliable.'

'Sarcasm from a pile of photonics!' Denny waved an arm in a helpless gesture. 'See what I have to put up with.'

'I heard that too! I am far more than a pile of photonics. I am an Ultra Computer.'