day 04 of 30

jedc20051104a
20051104 jedc nanowrmo2005

Time began to pass for Idealiana as in a haze. Sameness of her surroundings both made her lose awareness of herself as separate from the Haremspace Model 14a Version 2. Its built-in instructions led her every moment’s activities; it kept her physically in shape, yet made no place for her emotions nor her beliefs and dreams. She could change channel on the Television, and access a selected few website data sources; otherwise, she had no way to use free will, and so it began to fade over the months. She produced a daughter, which she named Donna Bullguarde; and that kept her out of the digestion vats for now. Part of her mind lived in a dream land of her own making to some extent; otherwise, her mind was occupied with following the home care instructions of the Haremspace living quarters environment. No other living thing there, no pets, no houseplants, just her and now her baby daughter; and the rare short visits by Rationallo.

Her memory of her life as a top manager for 3Musketeers at headquarters manufacturing plant, making sure the sliding armature segments were made correctly and in correct quantities on time, sometimes recurred as in a dream when awakening in the morning, but quickly faded as irrelevant to the demands of Haremspace’s instructions to get get up and get on with the day’s routine: change the diapers, clean the floor, use the ski machine for exercise, watch TV one hour, etc.

It was during one of those TV watching hours that her favorite program, one that she and Artisiana had sometimes watched at lunch break back in her former life, that she began to notice a painting on the wall of the soap opera. The painting was only in the background, part of the stage scenery, yet it looked a bit odd, not quite at the proper slope for its wall position. Looking rather dreamily more carefully at it, what was it ... an object instead of a flower vase... it was a... it was a sliding armature segment! What? What was it doing there? The soap-opera continued on as always; the people did not ever refer to the paintings on the wall.

She began to look forward to that picture on the wall of the soap opera set during her hour of TV watching. Each day the camera would briefly pan past that wall; and each day the armature segment was there, but was in a slightly different position each day. She wrote down each day which of the three positions the picture was in, and looked for a pattern in it all. Two positions were used most of the time, the third one only rarely, yet it occurred regularly, always after the same number of days had passed. Several months of this data collection passed, when she suddenly recalled the ASCII symbol code had that many bits in it. Accessing the web database, she found the ASCII code; and assigning bits 1 and 0 to the two more frequent picture positions, one of the two possibilities made intelligible words. Among them was the name of her former friend and coworker, Artisiana. What was going on? It was unlikely that anyone but her would have noticed the background photo as being a sliding armature segment, nor would notice its shift in position, the flow of the soap opera’s drama being the focus of attention of the show. Somebody knew she was here, and it was probably Artisiana! That girl had been outside the building when it was destroyed, and she may have seen the abduction of Idealiana and her secretary. And now was attempting to communicate with her. How could she communicate back?

She could not use e-mail, and there was no phone. And what would she say? She did not even know where her Haremspace living environment was located. Maybe the info that she was alive and in a Haremspace would be useful to that resourceful Artisiana gal.

What were her options in life? Besides to either make babies or go to the digestion vat. She could choose the TV channel she watched; she could look at a few website databases. The TV ratings would log how many people watched each program, yet hers would be one of billions. The web sites would also record how many visits were made to a site, too. Some would also show how many visits total were made to its website. Could she see the results of her own visits to web pages?

She found a website which gave rather dull statistics about TV shows, including her now extra interesting soap opera. It had a visit counter which she could observe. By logging on and off the page, she could see it increment. She could make a deliberate effect on the outer world!

So each day, right after the soap opera’s camera panned past the significant wall picture and she got its position identified and recorded, she would log on and off that website several times rapidly. 5 times to indicate an ASCII start signal; 4 times to indicate a “1” bit, and 3 times to indicate a “0” bit. She had sent the words “sliding armature segment” only once when the pattern of TV show wall picture changed from its routine. The new message, which took 3 weeks to send, was “Hi, how are you?” Idealiana sent back the message, "Haremspace Model 14a Version 2."

Idealiana began to dare to think that this egg-laying hen in the chicken coop might have a different fate than the others.

The next message was “Ours don’t slide well and they collide, how to fix it?” That Artisiana gal was resourceful, but practical, too. Maybe she wasn’t on a rescue mission after all, maybe she just needed info.

Idealiana thought back to the “disaster” that destroyed the 3Musketeers headquarters. All the engineers, designers, technicians, even assemblers would have perished, the engineering and production documents destroyed too. They must have started almost from scratch to re-create the means to make the sliding armature segments.

She wasn’t cognizant of the engineering details of all the designs and processes, although she had, at least at one time, a firm grasp of how they all interacted. How could she help them, in five easy words?

She sent back the message: “Show Rationallo advantage of setting me free.”