The Edge | Episode 16 | Persistence Is Not Futile, or, Many Processors Make Light Work

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“Professor,” purred King’s favourite voice, “I’ve finished with those files you wanted ....”

“Ah, yes, very good, very good!” He reached for his tab, and moved away from the desk he’d been hunched over for the past few hours.

Now, he sat back in his ergonomically designed chair, and put his feet up on the edge of the bed. The tab lit up at his touch, and he began receiving his files.

Things really were going well. Shah was happy enough in his place, since the party a few months back, the results were flooding in, and, most importantly, the folks back home were lapping it all up.

He let the tab rest on his lap for a moment, and leaned back, eyes closed. He felt a smile spread on his face. Persistence. That’s what it was about. Never giving up on your dream, overcoming the obstacles one way or another, and pure, simple hard work.

He returned to his image review, and his mind wandered. None of these images would be remotely interesting to the layperson, and he was primarily interested in images that might have broad appeal. Nothing jumped out at him as fitting that bill, but it would be difficult to predict precisely what the public found interesting. Several of his favourite images, of one star or another, had failed to interest or excite, and this worried him. The ultimate success of the project relied on—depended on—being able to predict the people’s preferences. Perhaps the images had simply been too similar to each other? After all, one star that was the fictional location of a fictional planet looked much like any other, didn’t it? He’d thought such fiction had had broader appeal. Everyone loved the Star Empire universe, watched its grand events, played in its virtual playgrounds, and even created their own content for the franchise. He knew people who had immersed themselves in it—but perhaps that was the problem, and fans were simply too engrossed in their own important little games?

Bored of nearby stars, he shifted to a different set of results: galaxies. Everyone loved a spiral galaxy. Here, indeed, were some spectacular images. Spectacular enough that he could make them last for quite a while.

But even the spectacular didn’t appeal to him at the moment. He keyed in new parameters, and sent off a new request to the array. The request would be given priority over any job from home, and would even bump down any job from Shah--but Shah wouldn’t mind, even if he noticed. Good chap, Shah. This was one of the perks of heading a project—your merest whim had priority over everyone else’s needs and wants.

It wouldn’t take too long to get the results, a matter of minutes. Already, he imagined, a swarm of space-faring telescopes had turned at his command, and studiously focussed and gathered the radiations he’d asked for. The observations themselves would take the longest portion of the time, as different wavelengths required different lengths of time in order to collect useful amounts. When the observations were completed, each part of the array would send its data to the computer, where state-of-the-art processing power would make light work of it.

He smiled at that. His little pun.

Bored of spiral galaxies as he was, sorting through images of them was preferable to simply sitting idle while he waited.

“Professor,” purred the computer, sooner than expected, “your next set of files are ready to view.”

“Ah, excellent, my dear.”

Eagerly, he switched to the new data set.

The first image was utterly disappointing. At these energies, the whole universe was a vague haze with almost no variation. It would take false colour processing to make this one interesting. Easy enough to do, later. It might even be banal enough to be popular.

The next few images were more of the same, and he filed them carelessly into a folder labelled “Action Required — Non-Urgent”.

And then came an image that floored him. He stared, forgetting, for a while, where he was or what he had been doing.

Not a human face, as such. But a face. A symmetrical and recognizable face. A face of some kind of creature. Eyes were the first part that you saw, that you couldn’t help noticing. Dark pools with a single point of light at the centre of each. Between them, a long aquiline nose, leading to a grim mouth, lips pursed in determination, or concentration. The chin, a little pointy, and cheeks that would imply a meagre diet if this were a human face. The ears weren’t clearly visible as anything but bright-ish blobs, but then the round curves of animal horns or some kind of headdress curled and snaked around the face, making him think of the hair of a medusa.

It was the face of God! And He ... well, He wasn’t human, after all. The face, it had to be said, looked like Herne the Hunter, like a goat, like the Devil.

The devil? Preposterous! It must be an artefact of the process. He swiped to the next image, but the same features could be seen there, and in the next few energy ranges as well.

One way to find out, King thought.

He ran the observation again, focusing tightly on these energy ranges. While he waited he sat and stared at the ominous face. It didn’t look cruel, or gleeful, but simply determined, as if caught in some kind of moment of great effort.

“Your urgent files are ready, Professor,” purred the computer.

King was so focussed he didn’t even respond, but if the computer was offended in any way, there was no sign of it.

The new files were sharper, clearer, crisper. And the image was still there, but in greater detail.

It was confirmed.

But now what? He could hardly show the world that God was the Devil. It would turn the world upside down. There was a time when religion had been losing its grip on humanity, but those days were gone. It was amazing what a few wars could do, really.

The Pope, in particular, would not be happy. Indeed, he didn’t seem to be a happy man.

The answer was clear. He would have to sequester these images. Not destroy them. They were too important for that, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. But he also couldn’t just leave them lying around where just about anyone might find them.

*

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