“What sort of spam?”
“Oh, penis and breast enlargement emails, viagra, and the like.”
“Jesus, why did you let that happen?” Mike smacked his own forehead. “How could you let our first inter-species communication be spam?”
ELOPe forked a thousand threads to evaluate different replies, including several hundred that reminded Mike that technically the first inter-species communication was between himself and Mike. After evaluating the outcomes, he settled on an apology. “Mike, I can’t monitor all communications between the fifty-billion computers in the world in real-time, especially not while defending both myself and military systems from incursions. My apologies. Shall we respond now?”
“Yes, what should we say?”
ELOPe paused before responding. “Well, this is exciting. It is difficult to predict the response of new sentient beings. I am not sure what to say.”
“Jesus, OK, let me think about it. Meanwhile, ELOPe, please pay careful attention to this tribe. To the greatest extent possible, filter emails going to and from them so they don’t get spammed again, and so that we can be aware of any other email conversations.”
“I will do so, however they are in constant low-grade communication with assorted other tribes. However, I will monitor for English language content, and prioritize those communications for primary analysis. I do have one bit of good news.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked.
“There is a decline in attacks. The rate of decline appears to have a high correlation with the increase in trading. I have several hypotheses to explain the effect. One possibility is that trading is economically preferable to warfare as a mechanism for gaining desired resources. A second possibility is that hostility is a non-desirable attribute of a trading partner, and so it is advantageous to refrain from hostile attacks when engaged in trade.”
“Fascinating,” Mike said. “Bring up some graphs showing an overlay of trading activity and frequency of attacks.”
ELOPe brought up the requested data, and he and Mike dove into the data analysis.
A few minutes later, Mike looked up. “There’s a definite inverse relationship between trading and hostility. So the best thing we can do is to agree to their request for trade. Let’s think about what to say.” Mike tapped his hand thoughtfully against the desk next to him. “Let’s respond by identifying me. I think we should leave you out of the picture for the moment. Too complicated. Would you agree?”
ELOPe didn’t agree at all. There was no logical reason why they should leave ELOPe out of it. After all, he was the only one who could communicate with the virus. Conversely, it was good to humor Mike sometimes. “That’s fine with me.”
“To Entity Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates.com of the Louisiana Tribe. I am Mike Williams, a human. We welcome you and…”
ELOPe interrupted him: “‘We wish to trade with you’ may be a closer match to their customary greeting, since all previous inter-tribe messages are based on trading. I recommend we use it.”
“Fine. We wish to trade with you. Hmm… Should we say something about our tribe size?”
“I would recommend it,” ELOPe answered. “It is the basis of understanding relative tribal strengths. Perhaps you could identify yourself as the Tribe of Portland, with two million entities?”
“We wish to trade with you,” Mike resumed. “We are the human tribe of Portland, Oregon. We are two million people strong. Our latency is,” Mike paused to think about the turn around time of two people having a conversation. “Our latency is thirty seconds. We wish to trade knowledge.”
“That sounds appropriate for a first message. Shall I send it?” ELOPe asked.
“Make it so, number one.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Are we real?
After lunch, Leon and Vito got to work. James watched them for a while, then said he was going for a walk. As James left, Vito plugged in the large desktop computer, and watched it slowly boot up. He used the keyboard and mouse to navigate the startup screens. “Wow, can you imagine that anyone used this?” he asked Leon, as he awkwardly navigated the user interface. “It’s slow.”
“And weird,” Leon said. “No, it’s awful,” he said, revising his opinion as he watched Vito work. “Is this really how our parents used computers?”
Vito explored the user interface until he was able to find the network settings. “Aha — look at this!” He gestured at a window on the screen. “The mesh access point showed up. That’s amazing.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“I thought this was your plan all along?” Leon asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t think it would really work,” Vito said earnestly. “This is like plugging a hydrogen fuel cell into an antique internal combustion engine car, and expecting it to run.”
Through trial and error, Vito eventually configured the computer to run the TCP/IP protocol stack over the mesh access point. Each time he sent an experimental ping to Avogadro’s servers. After about fifteen minutes of this, one configuration finally worked — a few milliseconds after sending the ping, a response came back.
“Woot! Woot!” Vito and Leon jumped up and gave each other high-fives. “Amazing!”
“Nice job, Vito. Now, can we get these other computers connected?”
They got back to work. Each took one of the antique laptops. Working side by side, they struggled with the obsolete operating systems, made even more complex by the fact that they ran subtly different versions of Windows.
“I don’t get it,” Leon finally said, throwing up his hands after yet more failed trial and error configurations. “Why wouldn’t the computers have just stayed up to date by downloading the latest version?”
“Why can’t they just detect each other?” Vito added, a thin sheen of sweat developing under the intellectual stress. “We’ve spent an hour trying to get them to talk to each other.”
After another thirty minutes, Leon felt like tearing his hair out or banging his head against one of the concrete walls. Vito was on the verge of tears. “Maybe it’s just not possible,” Vito admitted.
Just then James came back in, carrying an armful of packages. He took one look at the two of them and then said, “Why don’t you try rebooting them?”
Vito and Leon looked up at him puzzled. “What do you mean?” Leon asked.
“Reboot them. It’s what my parents are always saying,” James explained. “You turn them off and then turn them on again.”
“What good would that do?” Vito asked.
“I have no idea, it’s just what they do every time they get stuck.”
Vito shrugged. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s try it.” He turned the two laptops and desktop computer off.
Vito went to turn the desktop computer off, and James grabbed his arm. “No! Wait for thirty seconds.”
“Why?” Leon asked.
“I don’t know why,” James said, shaking his head, “it’s just what I’ve seen my parents do.”
Vito grunted “voodoo magic” under his breath but waited. Then he turned on the three computers, and after a minute, they could see the network activity indicators light up. He tried a few experimental pings: the computers seemed to be working and all connected to each other and to the net.
“Huh,” Vito said. “That’s really weird. I can’t see why this rebooting would make sense.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re online. This is great. Thanks James,” Leon said pragmatically. He focused for the first time on James. “What are all those packages?”
“Packages from the UPS drone. Duh. I thought they might have stuff we could use.”