I know it seems complex at first and why am I telling you about this now? I'm getting to the point, I assure you. I started out by drawing how a simple fax machine works. On the left side of the paper I drew a rectangle to represent a written page and showed it via an arrow going into another box labeled FAX. I also showed the page out of the other side of the FAX. This part of the drawing went from bottom to top. Page in at bottom of paper, FAX in the middle, and page out at top. Then I drew a horizontal arrow from the FAX on the left side of the page to a box in the center of the page labeled Router/Hub and then on to an identical FAX on the other side of the page. I drew the page coming out above the FAX on the right.
This was not enough to get the question right, of course. Much more detail would be required. So, I drew another level of detail showing the I/O input to the leftmost FAX renamed A. Box A was subdivided into three boxes: one box labeled RAM (for random access memory), a box labeled Algorithm, and one labeled Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). Then I penned in below the A the letters CPU for central processing unit. The Router box I renamed Box B stayed the same and then I gave another level of detail for the right FAX, now labeled C, which had a corresponding I/O box to its right. I then wrote a page each about the I/O, A, B, and C from the diagram.
On another page I drew an even deeper level of detail about each box and box within each box. To keep from boring you here I will just cut to the chase, since my actual response to the question contained ten more pages of circuit and chip and motherboard diagrams. I also drew some logic timing diagrams and bus and interconnect bandwidths per each pin. So I won't bother you with all that. But the point is that the data flow is slowed down every place there must be a wired connection. If somehow the data could be transferred from the RAM locations at each CPU directly to the RAM locations in the remote CPU, then a lot of time and therefore bandwidth could be saved. It's like taking a five-gallon bucket full of water, using a one-inch hose to transfer water from it into a one-gallon bucket, and then going from the one-gallon bucket to another five-gallon bucket again with a one-inch hose. It would sure be a lot faster if you could dump the water from one five-gallon bucket directly into the other five-gallon bucket, skipping all the in-between hoses and jugs.
I made a B in that class, which stands for "Better than needed to graduate." Larry showed up to shake my hand at graduation. He was the only person other than my instructors and a few students I had studied with that I knew. He was the only person there besides me that I had even had a meal with. I had wanted to bring Lazarus with me badly, but there was a no pets policy. That made me cry, but wouldn't it have made you cry? Laz was my only family. I told Larry as much, and I could sense he felt sympathetic for me.
"Larry, it's two fax machines on one board," I told him while he shook my hand and patted my back.
"What's a fax machine?" He looked puzzled.
"It's a machine that you put paper in and send it over phone lines to another one that prints out the paper, but that's not important right now." I chuckled my response.
"Steven, nobody likes a smartass," he laughed. "What are you talking about that is a fax machine?"
"The little circuit board is, well it's two of them actually. The I/O could be anything, a page of text for example. The data goes into the big chip on one side of the board, which is some sort of optical CPU. Then it is routed over via the little optical chip in the middle to the other identical optical CPU, and then out the other I/O device." I smiled triumphantly.
"Hmm . . . never thought of it quite that way." He tugged at his tie clip. "Then what are the other unknown chips on there? There are at least two others, right?" He smiled.
"I just figured . . ." I caught my tassel as it fell off my cap. "Uh, damn thing." I straightened it out and put my hat back on. "Uh, I just figured they supply the optical power. Am I right?"
"Why would I have two fax machines on one board, Steven?"
"Beats me. Maybe you're just playing around with an idea or something." I shrugged and that damned cap fell off again. Larry chuckled, so this time I just held it in my hand.
"When do you start back, Steven? It's about two weeks from now, right?" he asked me.
"Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Can I start earlier? I mean, uh, I'm not going . . . to . . . visit anybody . . . or anything." I looked down at my shoes for a second since I wasn't sure if I would tear up or not. "So, couldn't I just get started and get on with my life?" I asked.
"Sure, Steven." He paused. "That would be fine." Larry patted me on the shoulder, nodded, and left it at that.
"Thanks," is all I could manage to say.
"I will tell you this though—"
"Yeah, what's that?"
"You are about eighty percent right and I will tell you the rest when you get in the office. Helluva job! Let me buy you a beer, what d'you say?"
I took him up on it. Then I went home and Laz and I curled up on the couch and Sequenced for the first time in months. That was the extent of my graduation party. It was a good gesture for Larry to come to my graduation like that. Nobody else there knew me as more than some guy that was in one of his or her classes. Nobody, but Larry, knew me enough to shake my hand. That's the way it had been every birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas since . . . The Rain. I almost cried again, so I took another pill for it.
CHAPTER 5
The following Monday I went in to work and got reoriented and qualified as a full-time employee at an engineering pay scale. When I got through with all the paperwork, by lunchtime, Larry took me into a room with a combination lock on the door.
"Steve, sign this here and date it here," he told me and handed me a clipboard and pen.
"Okay, there. What is this room?"
"We call this, depending on the meeting, a SAP/SAR (special access program/special access required) room or a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility). I'll explain it once we are inside. Do you have a cell phone or beeper or anything?"
"Nope," I assured him.
He put the clipboard back on the wall, and turned over an eight-inch green door magnet that said closed over to the red side that said open. The magnet made a metal clanging metal sound when stuck to the door. "After you." He motioned his right hand to the door.
We got inside the room and he closed the door behind us. He walked over to a tote board on the other side of the room and pulled down a sign that said this room is now classified sap/sar and then he sat down. There was nothing fancy about the room. It was just a normal-looking conference room with cheap government-issue furniture, whiteboards on each side, and a large flat-screen television panel at the end. Larry turned the television on and fired up the laptop at the end of the table. The laptop had red and white stickers all over it claiming that it was authorized for classified material. And there were a lot of letters following the words top secret at the top and bottom of the computer screen.
Larry spent an hour explaining how the classified world and protocols work and at the end of his briefing had me sign some documents stating that I knew I would go to jail, be executed, and probably burn in Hell if I divulged any classified material.
"All right," he said. "Let's take a quick bathroom break, grab a soda or something, and we will talk about your little circuit." Larry loosened his tie a little and stretched. "You think this is exciting?" He smiled and raised an eyebrow at me.
"Well, it's pretty cool so far. But, I can't wait to see what this circuit is." I nodded at it.