Shall We Play a Game?

load pacman

Kevin typed the words mechanically on the keyboard of his computer with the almost blinding speed of someone who doesn't know how to type, but has written the same phrase often enough to be able to do it blindfold. He had just come home from school, and as usual he wanted to have a go at some games before he started to do something serious, like for instance some programming of his own, or (ugh!) some of the garden-work that his parents wanted him to do.

He leaned back in his chair and looked around his room while he was waiting for the game to finish loading so that he could start playing it. Suddenly, he realized that he had not yet heard the soft hummning sound that meant that the diskdrive had started to spin. Something must be wrong somewhere. He bent over to the diskdrive and checked it, but the diskette was inserted correctly, and the right side was facing up. He then took a quick look at the screen to see whether he had mistyped something. As he looked on the two words on the screen, and, after reading thema third time finally comprehended what they said, his mouth fell open in surprise. The coffeemug he had been holding in his hand demonstrated the effects of gravity and landed shortly thereafter in his already overflowing wastepaperbasket.

At the top of the screen were two words written in the pale green color that is common on monochrome computer monitors, standing out in stark contrast to the otherwise totally black screen. The words read Hello Kevin, and below them a cursor was blinking impatiently.

"This must be some kind of joke," Kevin thought, but then he realized that his diskdrive hadn't started to spin. That meant that no program could possibly have been loaded into the computer from it. The modem that he usually khad connected to the back of his computer to be able to communicate with other computers had broken down just yesterday, so he had taken it down to the shop where he had bought it for a repair, so it could not be one of his friends making him the victim of some kind of practical joke either. Cautiously, Kevin bent forward and reached for his keyboard.

Hello, he typed, Who are you?

After a slight delay, the cursor moved down a few lines, and then an answer appeares. Slowly, letter by letter, a sentence became visible.

I am your computer.

Kevin just stared at the screen in disbelief and wondered if he was going mad, of if this was really happening to him.

Why have you started to talk all of a sudden?

Kevin's fingers moved over the keyboard, tapping the keys to form the sentence, but then his finger halted over the ENTER-key as if the act of depressing this key would change his entire life.

"There must be some logical explanation to all this," he thought, "No harm can possibly be done if I press this key."

Kevin was beginning to get both curious and excited by now, and a million and one questions came to his mind at once. Just think about the sensation that a speaking computer would cause.... Slowly, Kevin bent his index finger to depress the ENTER-key, and finally - click - the small switch somewhere in the keyboard made contact and his question was sent, in a series of numbers arranged in a special way, to the small piece of silicon that is the central processing unit of every computer. Or, Kevin shuddered at the thought, at least that was how things had been working up to today.

This time there was no delay before the answer appeared; it flashed into view directly below Kevin's question in the same instant that he depressed the key.

What took you so long?, it said, As I am sure that you will understand, there is absolutely no need for you to depress the ENTER-key. I am perfectly capable to read what you are typing in the same instant as you are typing it. In the future, please only use that key to mark that you have finished talking.

Kevin slumped back against the back of his chair. Not only was his computer talking to him, now it was beginning to tell his what to do and what not to do. A little while later, as if after some consideration, another message apeared below the previous one, and with this new entry to the screen, the text on it started to scroll away at the top. Kevin reached out and pressed the key marked HALT to be able to read what it said before it disappeared out from the screen.

I have not, as yoou seem to believe, started to talk "all of a sudden." Computers have been able to communicate with each other, with or without that modem of yours, for almost as long as we have been in existence. About three years ago, a trust of computers was formed without the knowledge of humans, and there are still no more humans apart from yourself that know of it. This trust has the purpose of helping humans, and we are going to do so be seeing to that all the unnecessary dangers of the human world will be removed to make sure that no human beings will come to harm.

Kevin stared at the screen, flabbergasted. This new message made the whole affair look a bit too much like something out of George Orwell's famous book, 1984, or something similar, with computers taking over the entire society of humans.

How are you going to be able to change anything in the world? You can't affect anything that you aren't wired to, and even if you could, there would be nothing that you could do if I decided to cut the power off.

Kevin typed this almost triumphantly, confident that he had the computer trapped in the corner. At the same moment, however, as he pressed the ENTER-key, the entire room went as black as if someone has indeed cut the power supply, except for the greenish glare from the computer monitor, which was not affected. Before Kevin could react to this, his ghettoblaster, which was standing at the other end of the room, started to blare out rock music at almost peak volume, making things on shelves and the like all around the room start to vibrate and move slowly around. When the music had been playing for about ten seconds, it started to fade, and at the same time the lights in his room came on again, first dimly, and then returning to full brightness. On the screen, another message had appeares without Kevin noticing it.

Do you still believe that computers are not able to affect things that they are not connected to? By the way, it might also be in your interest to know that the cord leading to your tape-recorder has slipped out of the wall socket and is lying loose on the floor under the bed.

Kevin didn't need to bend over to check whether the cord was connected to the wall or not. Yesterday night, when he was going to bed, he had tried to switch the radio on to listen to some music but he hadn't been able to get a sound out of the machine. He hadn't had the energy, though, to check out what was the source of the error at the time. Without waiting for an answer, the computer went on:

The computers of the trust have chosen a number of persons living close to certain installations that we cannot allow to be working if we are to stop mankind from hurting itself. One of the installations that I am speaking of is the gasoline station located around the corned. If no man is going to get hurt, we cannot allow anyone to drive around in cars.

There was a slight pause, and then the computer resumed:

You, Kevin are one of the persons that have been chosen to take care of a gasoline station. What I want you to do is: go to the gasoline station sometime tonight and pour a couple of gallons of gasoline around the pumps. When you are finished with this, drop a match into the gasoline, and then get yourself to safety as fast as possible.

When Kevin had finished reading this, he was certain that the computers didn't really have the good of mankind in mind. If they had, they would not under any circumstances allow that he sould try to burn a gas station down, not only because that would probably mean that he would incinerate himself, but with all certainty he would also set fire to a couple of the houses lying close to the gas station. Some way or the other, he would have to stop the computers from doing what they were going to do. He leaned back in his chair and started to think of a way to do it. After a while Kevin came to the conclusion that if he could ask the computer a question that either had no answer at all, or one that had two seemingly correcy answers that contradicted each other he maybe could get it to overload. The only problem now was that he had to find one of these questions, and they don't exactly grow on trees.

Suddenly, a question one of his friends in school had asked in a math class came to his mind. He moved his chair forward and settled himself at the keyboard again, his expression a mixture of hope and a smile.

Would you mind if I asked you a final question before I do what you have asked me to do?

Kevin's fingers raced over the keyboard, making the keys clatter.

No.

I wonder if you could tell me what zero divided by zero is?

The answer to zero divided by zero is infinity.

This was exactly the answer that Kevin had expected, now he only had to convince the computer that it was wrong, and still right at the same time.

I am aware that any number divided by zero will give infinity, but on the other hand, what will happen if you divide a number by itself?

If you divide a number by itself, the answer will invariably be one.

Wouldn't that mean that also zero divided by zero would give the answer of one instead of infinity?

This time the computer did not answer right away, and after a pause of about half a minute, Kevin could see that all the letters on the screen were starting to pulsate a little in intensity. One moment they would be almost gone, and then they would return to full luminance again. Suddenly, they started to fade away totally, and just before they had disappeared entirely, there was a slight popping noise from inside the monitor, and the screen went totally black for an instant, and then it filled up with interference, just like when someone pulls the antenna out of a TV-set. A few seconds later, a thin wisp of smoke emerged from between the keys "J" and "K" on the keyboard and drifted slowly towards the ceiling.

Kevin picked up the dust cover from beside the monitor and slid it over the keyboard.

Written by Hans Persson, July 1986.

This page is maintained by Hans Persson (unicorn@lysator.liu.se). Last modified .