“Tom, I was already practicing on one of the big machines
next door when they moved me, and I was starting to make progress. Can you get me moved back over there, or can
you get me an interface for over here?”
“I’ll have to check, Bob.
I’ll see what I can do.”
I knew Tom was good to his word, but it might take several
minutes. I don’t like to just sit and do
nothing, not when I’m here being paid to work.
I can daydream at home.
Right in front of me on my desk was, of all things, an
electric typewriter. I’ve probably
mentioned this before, but I’ve gotten more practical use out of my typing
class than all the other high school classes.
The only sheet of paper I saw in the whole room was the one in my
typewriter. The room itself, though
older and obviously smaller than the room next door, was kept in good
repair. It looked to have been cleaned
within an inch of its life; if there was any more paper here, it was well
hidden.
So I typed some practice lines. None of this silly “quick brown foxes come to
the aid of their country” practice stuff would do. I thought, how about a fake weekly report?
Tue.: 812 units (Eric’s last day; party ensued)
Wed.: 1204 units (made up for Tuesday)
That’s as far as I got.
Right then, a young woman (who looked like she could have
been my daughter’s twin), walked into the room and stood at my left. “Tom said to give you this, and you’ll need
to work from here for now.”
The interface was a combination face mask and goggles, with
what looked like a chin guard. So I put
it on, and was surprised to see a power on light and the outline of a keyboard
appear a few feet in front of me.
Surprised and relieved. I was
concerned that the image might appear right on the goggles, far too short a
distance for me to focus.
“Okay Bob, first look towards the blank wall straight
ahead, it’s less distracting. Next, what
you’re going to want to do is reach your fingers to the chin piece. Watch the keys in the image in front of you,
and touch your fingers to the home row keys, just like back in typing class.”
When I touched the chin piece, I saw an image of my
fingers. When I was positioned on the
home row, red dots of light appeared on my “fingernails”.
“Hold that steady until it registers.”
The red dots disappeared.
“Now, set your password.
The first letter is your initial.
The next bit you choose, five or six characters, something you can
remember. Then the numbers…18614 for
today. That will change fairly often,
and we’ll tell you. And that’s it. I see you’ve been practicing. Cute.”
She flicked the top left corner of my typewritten page with
her finger (snap!) and my fake report text went away somehow. She pushed the typewriter towards the back of
my desk. “Use the space in front here.”
“So I don’t have to tap the chin piece now?”
“No, just at the first of the shift to register. Touch the top of the desk. The interface assumes left pinkie = a, left
ring finger = s, left middle finger = d, and so on. Touch typing, right? Stretch your fingers out to reach the other
letters, numbers, symbols and like that.
All you need is a light touch. In
fact, if you watch the experienced people, they’re pretty much motionless. They stretch their fingers to reach the letters and
numbers, but they hardly move their hands at all. You’ll pick up on it fast.”
She added, “Not everything you key in will make sense, not
consciously. Don’t worry about that, it
will be all right anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you might type, ‘It will be orange except when it’s
level’. That’s one I did yesterday. And there will be small stray groups of
letters and numbers. It might actually
be ‘except L5X when it’s NY30*T level’.
Don’t do any editing, leave all that it; it’ll be used. Remember, you now have access to a slightly
different part of your mind. Things you
don’t realize.”
I recalled their motto, “Not knowing, you know”. And I wondered how it was that I had this
“slightly different mind access” here; maybe they put something in the
water. Or in the vending machines. Probably both.
“Computers don’t have minds like that, so we people have to
be involved. Just go flat out as fast as
you can. Have no doubts.”
“Oh, one more thing.
Sometimes you’ll see an image in front of you, like an aerial photo in
3D. Let the lights appear where they
need to be. You’ll find your fingers are
typing five digit numbers. Don’t fight
it and don’t stop, that’s good raw data the computer needs.”
“So, you okay to start?”
“I’m good.”
It took me a while to get up to speed. The first line was gibberish.
Eiouy ert6pip wopo
ty7upwen i0p-sjhe0 uit6pj tpy
euiop; t ws0elmj t08ul;j0w tgujppw 8-
The second line, more gibberish. At least, mostly.
9078 John we’re up w0[j0] top without mph pjs-e7u parent day.
Bjhpdf took down pi’;’ west pocket
u
Then something interesting.
“Your Calcium number will not double.”