Solid State Rhyme: A Novelette (Mandate) by Harbour J.S

Author:Harbour, J.S. [Harbour, J.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Daniel wasn't sure what to do next. Should he leave the system alone to see what happens? Should he create some new programs for the system? It was only Monday night, but he had no intention of going out. Actually, he wouldn't mind playing InterWorld again at the arcade to see what his fellow Knights of Honor were up to, but he was just too excited about his artificial life forms. Daniel examined one of the most recent generations by capturing a micro as it came out of Memphis, before it passed into the quad pool where Pharaoh would eventually pick it up.

Daniel sent the micro to the printer. It was less than a page in length, spilling out its guts to hard copy. It was definitely unreadable in machine language. He would need to see the micro-program source code. Daniel sent the micro's code through a translator. It was similar to a disassembler but based on his emulation engine. The micro's quad-functions were converted into human-readable instructions. Daniel sent it to the printer. The disassembled code listing was ten pages in length.

Daniel wasn't prepared for this revealing discovery. His three programs were designed to create simple, basic micros. This micro was complicated! It fascinated him that the listing he held in his hands represented a functional program, evolved over a stretch of uncounted billions of generations. He wasn't even sure what this micro could do. He transferred the micro to an isolated copy of the simulation and ran it.

It didn't do anything. At least, nothing Daniel could see. He ran a debugger and watched the micro running through its instructions. Some of them made sense, in a logical way. But, overall, Daniel just couldn't comprehend it. Compared to a quad, it was incredibly complex. He recognized sections of code that appeared to jump back into the program in certain places. This seemed to indicate that the program was capable of recursion. There were sections of code that could modify properties inside a quad-function, but he couldn't find any references outside the scope of the program itself. In other words, it was self-contained. It did not call upon the resources of the operating system or any external functions. Daniel couldn't tell how any of the code could possibly work. It was just so convoluted, so complex. It looked like random nonsense to his trained eyes.

Daniel continued to watch it run through the debugger for a while. It seemed to be doing things at times: counting, looping, comparing, and copying bases. Of course, running at such a slow speed, in order for Daniel to watch through the debugger, meant that he couldn't see what the micro-code was trying to do. It would have to run at full speed in order to reveal its functionality.

Daniel turned off the debugger and let the micro run naturally. In a period of about ten minutes, as Daniel watched, it gradually slowed its activity (whatever that was), until it finally came to a disturbing halt. Then, it either just stopped all activity or it might have died.

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