Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things Read online

  But before she left, Laurie wanted to play with the Elegants. She approached them carefully, making soft “coo, coo” noises.

  “Are you a bird now?” Xor snarked.

  “Shush. I’m just trying to get their attention.”

  The Elegants didn’t seem especially scared or curious. In fact, they acted as though Laurie weren’t there. But their dancing always seemed to take them out of her path. When she walked along the shore, the little creatures drifted inland. When she went inland, they decided that under the trees was the place to be. Soon Laurie could see only a handful of Elegants, playing just outside of her reach. Oh, well, she thought.

  * * *

  With the balloon to guide them, Laurie and Xor found the hill easily enough. But when they arrived, nothing much was there. A large boat anchor was half-buried in the earth. A rope led up, and up, and up to a basket way above the ground, which itself was attached to the balloon. A couple of young Elegants were playing hide-and-seek under the trees. There were no buildings or people at all.

  “Are we in the right place?” Laurie wondered aloud. “Where is the lighthouse?”

  “Hey, Laurie, take a look at this.” Xor was clinging to a sign that read Please Ring for Service. A little bell hung below it. They looked at each other and shrugged. Xor gave it a whack with his tail.

  rang the bell, much louder than such a tiny thing should be allowed to.

  Xor was right next to it. The little lizard turned bright indigo and fell to the ground.

  Laurie had to cover her ears until the sound died away.

  When it was all over, the young Elegants were nowhere to be seen. Laurie gathered Xor in her hands. His skin was white and his eyes were rolling around in different directions.

  “Xor! Are you okay?”

  “I think so. That scared the blue right out of me!”

  A hissing sound from overhead made Laurie look up. An elevator box was lowering itself to the ground in front of them. They flinched as the door opened with a polite ding!

  Laurie picked up her package and, with a last look around, stepped inside. The door closed, and the elevator rose fast enough to make her toes crinkle and her stomach go roly-poly.

  When the door opened again, they were a hundred yards up in the air, inside the basket. It was like a little apartment. There was a desk, a bed, and some cozy chairs. A wrinkly-faced old man with a gray beard and pointy ears was smiling at her.

  “Is this . . . are you Fresnel Goodglass? I’m Laurie. I have a package for you.”

  “Yes, it is! Yes, I am! Yes, you are! And thank you!” the man said, taking the package. “Welcome to my Floating Lighthouse. What do you think?”

  “This isn’t a lighthouse,” Laurie said, testing the woven floor with her foot before getting off the elevator. “It’s a balloon!”

  “Sure, it’s a lighthouse. In balloon form. See the big light up there?” Fresnel asked. There was indeed a big lighthouse light hanging over them.

  “But where’s the long twisty staircase?” Laurie asked.

  “There is the elevator instead. Easier for my old bones.”

  “What about the lighthouse keeper’s room?”

  “You can just look over the side of the basket.”

  “And the tower?”

  “Don’t need it! Inessential!” Fresnel said. “The essential part of a lighthouse is the light, not the house.”

  Laurie wasn’t convinced. “You can’t just stick a light on a balloon and call it a lighthouse.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . it’s cheating,” she said.

  “Hmm. I think I see your point,” Fresnel agreed. “But as long as it works, the name doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does!”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed again. “But I am a terrible host! You must be thirsty after all that walking. Would you like some water?” Fresnel offered her a pitcher and glassware on a tray.

  “Oh yes, please.” Laurie took a cup and tried to fill it. The water splashed onto her shoes.

  “Hey! This cup has no bottom!”

  “That’s not a cup, dear child. It’s a glass,” he said.

  “This glass has no bottom. How am I supposed to drink out of it?”

  “On second thought, that’s not properly a glass,” said Fresnel. “It’s a mug. See the handle?”

  “Okay, this mug has—”

  “On third thought,” he said, stroking his beard, “it’s made of glass, but also has a handle. So perhaps we should call it a glass-mug, or a mug-glass . . .”

  “I don’t care what you call it!” Laurie yelled. “It’s got no bottom and the water . . . I mean, um, you called it a glass, but it doesn’t have . . . oh.” She turned bright red.

  Fresnel handed Laurie another mug-glass-cup. “You’re right again. Things are what they are, no matter what names people give them.”

  “But aren’t names important?” Laurie asked, checking her new glass-cup-mug carefully for holes. Luckily, this one had a bottom.

  “Names go only so far. And many names are actually the same thing in disguise.”

  “Really?”

  “Surely. Are you Laurie or Lauren?”

  “Well, both. But I like Laurie. When Mom is really mad, she calls me Lauren.” She put her hands on her hips and threw her head back. “Lauren Ipsum, come downstairs NOW!”

  Fresnel laughed like a horse would laugh, if the horse had heard the joke. “A full name is a powerful thing. But you’re the same person either way. And sometimes different things have the same name. You call your mom ‘Mom,’ but I call my mom ‘Mom,’ too.”

  “But I wouldn’t call your mom ‘Mom’!” said Laurie. How weird would that be?

  “There you go. It’s only logical. You have to look past the name to see things as they really are. That’s Fresnel’s First Law.”

  “You sound just like Eponymous Bach,” Laurie said.

  “Really? Well, I’m a Composer too,” said Fresnel. “I start with big ideas and make them smaller.”

  “Make them smaller? Why?”

  “Why not? Only people with small minds think Big Problems need Big Ideas.”

  Laurie wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “How do you make an idea smaller?”

  “By Decomposing. How would you talk about a lighthouse without using the word lighthouse?”

  “Well, it’s a tall white tower near the sea, with a room full of windows at the top, and a big light on top of that, and a long twisty staircase inside.”

  “That’s very good,” Fresnel said. “Now look at each part and see if it’s essential. If your tall-tower-by-the-sea-with-windows-and-big-light-and-staircase were pink, would it work just the same?”

  “I guess so. I’ve never seen a pink lighthouse,” she said.

  “Neither have I! But if everything already existed, life would be pretty boring. Why is your lighthouse tall?”

  “So boats can see you,” said Laurie. “A short lighthouse wouldn’t work so well. And you need the twisty staircase to get to the top.”

  “Why the light?”

  “The light is so the boats can see you at night.”

  “And the lighthouse keeper’s room?”

  “So you can see them.”

  “Ah, so,” said Fresnel. “My balloon has a light very high up so people far away can see it. I can look over the side and see them. I get to the top by elevator. The color doesn’t matter. It does everything a lighthouse does. Is it a lighthouse?”

  “It’s like a lighthouse,” Laurie admitted.

  “You drive a hard bargain! I’ll settle for ‘like a lighthouse,’” he said.

  “So that’s how you Decompose?”

  “That’s it, more or less. You take a big idea apart and see the why behind each part. Then you look for smaller ideas that do the same thing. For instance, what did you think of my little bell?”

  “Your little bel
l! That thing frightened the b—”

  “It needs some adjustments, I agree. But the idea is sound,” he said. “The essential part of a bell is the sound. Because the bell is way down on the ground, it needs a big sound so I can hear it.”

  “So why don’t you use a big bell, then?” she asked.

  “If I used a big bell, I’d need a big frame to hang it from, and a big ringer, and a big sign to go along with it. All the inessentials get bigger,” Fresnel said. “There’s no need to use a big, complex idea when a small, simple one will do.”

  “I wish I could tell Bruto that,” Laurie said, remembering the giant pyramid. “But he’s so far away.”

  * * *

  “Winsome, why am I delivering so many telescopes?” Laurie asked.

  Winsome’s expression turned stony. “It’s not nice to open other people’s mail.”

  “I’m sorry. Those packages are really heavy and I wondered what could be so fragile and expensive and important . . .”

  Winsome didn’t say anything. She pretended to be busy with ropes and anchors.

  Laurie pressed on. “Why telescopes?” “So the lighthouse keepers can see farther out.”

  “Why do they need to see farther out?”

  “Because the other lighthouses are too far away.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Laurie said. “Why do people in lighthouses want to see other lighthouses?”

  “Because it’s how we’re going to send messages. It’s the Lighthouse Network.”

  “Why do you want to send messages that way?”

  “Right now,” said Winsome, “if someone on Abstract Island wants to talk with someone on Data Island, they have to pay the Colonel and his Network of mail daemons.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Why build your own Network?”

  “Because I can. And because Colonel Trapp doesn’t want me to.”

  “Why doesn’t he want you to build a Network?” Laurie asked.

  “That’s Five Whys already, kiddo. Are you ready to go? The next stop is an easy one. You’ll like Ping. She lives in a treehouse!”

  Chapter 18. Many Hands Make Light Work

  Once the Doppelganger reached the next island, Winsome sent Laurie off on another delivery immediately. This telescope would be the last, but Laurie still wondered how on Earth they fit into Winsome’s plan.

  “Some things in life you just have to see for yourself!” Winsome said with a smile.

  Laurie found it hard to argue with the excitement in Winsome’s voice, so she just trusted the usual set of odd directions to lead her to an answer. Before long, she and Xor reached an enormous tree. A long, twisty staircase wrapped around the trunk and up into the leaves, and a young woman stood at the base.

  “Hello, Laurie! Glad you made it. My name is Ping Baudot. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Hello. Wait, how did you know my name?”

  “Oh, Fresnel told me all about you.”

  “Fresnel? He lives way over on Elegant Island!”

  “Yes, isn’t it wonderful? You and Winsome have been making lots of deliveries lately. The Network is getting quite big now! I can hardly keep up with all the chatter.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “You should be very proud. Here, let me help you with that.” Ping took the package and raced up the stairs, round and round the trunk of the tree. Laurie followed as best she could.

  When they arrived at the treehouse near the top, Laurie gasped in surprise. It was a tree lighthouse! Not only that, but the lighthouse keeper’s room was filled with telescopes pointing in all directions. A neat label was attached to each one.

  “Well? What do you think?” Ping said.

  “Why do you need so many telescopes?” Laurie asked.

  “See for yourself.”

  Laurie put an eye to the ‘scope labeled ELEGANT. A red, round splotch was hanging in the air. And was that a rope?

  “Hey, that’s Fresnel’s balloon! I can see him! He’s waving!” Laurie exclaimed.

  Laurie looked into other telescopes. Each one was pointed at a different lighthouse. The one for ABSTRACT showed the lighthouse keeper who didn’t say very much, up in his tall white tower by the sea, looking back through a telescope of his own. He didn’t wave. The BYZANTIUM telescope showed half a pyramid covered in giant mechanical turtles. Bruto was busy counting bricks.

  Ping put down the heavy package Laurie had delivered and released the latches. Inside was a squat telescope. “Excellent! I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “It’s for the Network, right? Will you show me how it works?” Laurie asked.

  “Of course,” Ping said. “Watch this.” She went to the middle of the room and turned a giant wheel until a red arrow pointed directly at Elegant Island. Then she pulled a lever up and down quickly:

  FLOP. FLOP. FLIP. FLOP. FLIP.

  FLOP. FLIP. FLIP. FLOP. FLOP.

  “Now look at Fresnel again,” she said.

  Laurie put her eye to the Elegant Island telescope. Fresnel had pointed his light at them and began blinking a message:

  FLOOSH. FLOOSH. FLASH. FLOOSH. FLASH.

  FLOOSH. FLASH. FLASH. FLOOSH. FLOOSH.

  “He answered back! What did he say?” Laurie asked.

  “Oh, he just said ‘hi.’”

  “All that just for ‘hi’?”

  “That’s how the Baudot Code works,” said Ping. “Sentences are made of words, and words are made of letters, right? In the same way, we make letters out of FLIPs and FLOPs. Like this.”

  01001 = L

  11000 = A

  10011 = U

  01010 = R

  01100 = I

  10000 = E

  “That’s pretty neat! But I still think it’s a lot of work just to say ‘hi.’” Laurie said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Ping said, smiling. “But now that the hard work of building the Network is finished, we can do something really interesting: use the Network to make itself better.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Well, I’m working on a way to use two colors of lights. Fresnel has an idea for a simpler Code that uses only four FLIPs or FLOPs, though I’m not too sure how that will work. We use the old Baudot Code to talk to each other about our ideas for new codes, and then try them out.”

  “So . . . you can use the Network to talk about how to use the Network?”

  “And you helped make it possible, Laurie, by delivering all of those telescopes. Now, the Network will only get better and better as we learn how to use it. We can already pass a message from one end of the Network to the other in just a few minutes! Even the Doppelganger takes a couple of days to deliver the mail that far. Everyone will want to use it once we work out the bugs.”

  “But . . . what about Winsome? Is she going to lose her job?” Laurie asked.

  “What? No, not at all! The Network was her idea.”

  “It was?”

  “Sure! All of us work for Winsome. She doesn’t want to spend her days hauling mail bags around. That reminds me,” Ping said, searching through a pile of paper, “Winsome says she has one more job for you.”

  “Oh! What is it?” Laurie asked.

  “She wants you to deliver this letter to a person on the other side of the Garden of Forking Paths.”

  There was no name on the envelope, but that wasn’t half as strange as some of the assignments Laurie had been given in her time on the Doppelganger. If she got it done quickly, she could come back here and play with the Network. “So how do I get to the Garden?”

  “You’re in a hurry, huh? I’ll show you where it is.”

  Chapter 19. Branching Out

  The Garden was surrounded by a hedge at least eight feet tall. The entrance was an archway cut out of the bushes. A wooden sign above the entrance read

  WELCOME TO THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS.

  “Here you go,” said Ping.

  Laurie was suddenly very worried. “Ping, is this a laba . . . laber . . . one of t
hose garden mazes?” Laurie had read stories about little girls and garden mazes, and they never ended well. Garden mazes were full of monsters and twisty little passages between you and the exit.

  “It’s not really a labyrinth. You can always find a way out,” said Ping. “Where you end up is a different story.”

  “Oh, good. After I deliver this letter, can I come back to the Treelighthouse? Maybe we can ask the Network about how to find Hamilton!”

  “That’s . . . a good idea. Yes. When you’re done, if you want, we can talk about it.”

  “Thank you! See you soon!”

  “Good-bye, Laurie. Take care of yourself.”

  Laurie and Xor stepped through the entrance into a kind of hallway made of more bushes. After a short walk, they found a small fountain with a sign above it.

  LEAVE A COIN. MAKE A WISH.

  Laurie dropped her last Fair Coin into the fountain, closed her eyes, and made a wish. She held her eyes closed for an extra moment just in case. But nothing exciting happened.

  She kept walking down the green hallway. There wasn’t much to see except hedges, and more hedges, and more signs that talked about the Garden.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  THERE ARE 16,777,216 PATHS THROUGH THE GARDEN.

  “Only 16 million? That’s nothing!” Laurie said. “Userland had millions of millions of millions.”

  ONLY ONE PATH PER VISITOR.

  “That’s okay. I want to get through here quickly.”

  ONLY ONE VISITOR PER PATH.

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  NO.

  “I wonder which path is the shortest,” Laurie said. The next sign answered her question.

  ALL PATHS ARE THE SAME LENGTH.

  “Then how do I know which one to take?” she asked.

  CHOOSE WISELY.