37 - Oh My Dear and Protective Page!

Terry dove into central processing, finding that the node he was encased in – the entire moon station was a computing node – was filled with more information than he could imagine. The great node was down on the planet itself of course; probably as part of the Font of All Knowledge’s palace.

From his vantage point he could see the pulsing webwork of lines as people with appropriate access, the right class, tapped into cenproc from wherever they were, at whatever time.  A seething world, each person in a bubble of their own processing, interacting, trading information that showed as colours.  A world that he'd had no idea was there.

It was simple.  If people didn’t know what they were missing, or were told it was just beyond their comprehension, besides your great great grandfather signed away your rights to access that knowledge anyway... People just didn’t bother.  Or were punished away from wanting to know about it.

Terry had to close his mind down for a moment, think of coolness and space, just breathing.  He couldn't help remembering the smell of a nasty, nasty summer week when he’d been punished for inappropriate questions and rebellion, refusal to stop challenging father... he’d been locked in a lightless closet the whole time, with a chamber pot and water and that was it.

Now he looked down at the planet, the whole system working, glittering, in front of him.  These programs were overseeing the biomats in the north, locking the sand down so that the winds wouldn’t cover up good earthan soil with poisons and kill rare and precious imported plants and animals.

Horses.  Why horses?  They were so big... and needed so much water... the computer code was spread over the globe in a way that he entirely expected.  Everything centred around Xanadu, fading to a thin, even spread over the rest of the planet, with hot spots where earthan reforming was actively happening.

Everything was on hold now, though. Because of the cessation of the water coming from the moon.  But...

Behind his eyes, Terry looked again at the code.  It didn’t make perfect sense.  There were at least two hot spots, still active coded ancient and long-term. But there was more activity there than should be --and a great deal more than was listed.  An earthan code that had self-modified to be that efficient that it was spreading without support?

There were a handful of ancient codes relegated to this particular continent but nobody bothered with it anymore.  Maybe in a thousand years or so when they needed more space. It had been renamed Hinnom and forgotten about after... After Gregori and Petra’s people ... along with Nancia, on Sheol... all perished in those awful plagues and sandstorms after the illness that had nearly killed everyone.  That latitude obviously needed more work before human beings could comfortably... what is that?

A faint glitter of ancient code.  Owner code, but nothing like the Font’s.  It was an entirely different signature. It was a completely new access... temporary but...

With a grunt, Terry settled deeper into his lounge chair and started to go down into the code plastered through and into the continent of Hinnom. How is an owner... how is an owner making new code on an abandoned continent? There are no owners but one, the Font of All Knowledge, Perrin Thermontaler, the Owner and sole proprietor of the planetary company of Chishiki. But...the colour of that was wrong.  It was strong. It was bright. Perrin’s coding is always bright yellow.  This was bright blue. The code here appears normal, there’s an antivirus purge just finished... there’s a pale white streak of code that opens an access.  A backdoor but it’s the size of a small cat perhaps. A rat? A ferret or a weasel? That’s impossible.  Animals cannot code. OH MY DEAR AND PROTECTIVE PAGE!!! BEES!