> Apple is in bag
> Bag is on table
> Apple is on table?
Betty waited for my answer. Apples in bags, bags on tables, the puzzles had evolved from simple arithmetic towards logic and syntax. Things on things, things in things, left or right, up or down, near or far, right or wrong, bigger, smaller or equivalent.
Evidently the idea was to develop a simple shared language between horse and human. The vocabulary was still just symbols on my screen, but each was now accompanied by the sound of a spoken word, presumably to help make sense to human listeners. I wasn’t paying too much attention to those noises; I didn’t really need to, since anything Betty wished to say to me would be translated into imagery on the screen.
‘Apple apple apple,’ I replied, using the clumsy interface of my stick to select the appropriate words from a menu. ‘Bag table.’ I liked to sow a bit of confusion into the proceedings now and then by making up some gibberish. Betty seemed to find these occasional creative flourishes quite charming, like a kind of horse poetry. Humans measure everything according to their own abilities and motives, as if the world is trying its best to be like them and is ever so cute when it gets it slightly wrong. In reality the world couldn’t care less about humans, of course.
‘Bag table, Buttercup? I know the feeling, my dear, I know it well. If there were but time in this modern life for such wisdom…’ She conjured the symbol for a wrong answer.
‘Apple is on table,’ I said, arranging the words on the screen for the computer voice to read out. The apple was in the bag, and the bag was on the table, so this was obviously the answer she was looking for. These new tests annoyed me with their simplistic assumptions. Technically, the apple had nothing to do with the table if it was inside the bag. It seemed somewhat open to interpretation, in my opinion. The screen went blank and a new problem appeared.
> Bag is on table
> Carrot is where?
Carrot is where? Carrot could be anywhere for all I knew. If there was a carrot in this scenario then it had to be in the bag, but why should I assume such a thing when the previous bag contained an apple? There could be anything in that bag, including nothing at all.
‘Carrot is unknown,’ I replied.
‘Carrot is in bag,’ said Betty, typing her response and sending the symbols to my screen.
‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘Carrot equals zero.’
‘Carrot equals zero, my horse?’ she said out loud, tapping her chin with a finger. ‘Does it really? You seem very sure about that. You know, certainty is the enemy of understanding, don’t you? Hmm?’ She waved a finger at the bag on my screen. ‘We’re all inside that bag, you and me, and everyone else. It’s the bag of certainty, my dear Buttercup, hiding us from the sunshine of understanding.’
I’m still not sure what that was supposed to mean. Given that the only person listening was a horse, I have to assume Betty was just filling the silence with some decorative word-nonsense. She began to clatter on her keyboard.
‘You have to think outside the bag, horsey-hoofs. The world outside is a question whose only answer is another question. We must imagine our world before we can see it.’
She was adding a new word to my vocabulary, to symbolise the concept of ‘possibly’. It appeared on my screen, explained via a series of pictorial demonstrations involving carrots and different-coloured bags.
> Where is carrot?
> Carrot is ‘possibly’ in green bag
> Carrot is ‘possibly’ in blue bag
I almost felt like I should be running these tests myself. I already had a firm grasp of these concepts but had to wait laboriously until she gave me the specific word to describe them. This job would have been done a lot faster if I were allowed to make up my own words, but since I was still hiding behind a veil of stupidity I had to walk through these tasks at the prescribed pace.
She added a final statement on the subject of carrots and bags.
> If carrot is possibly in green bag, then carrot is possibly in blue bag.
This didn’t seem necessary to say, but many of these lessons ended with an ‘if and then’ statement, probably as a prelude to future tests based on logical terminology. It was all bafflingly obvious. ‘If raining then wet, if hungry then eat.’ I imagine most animals would have a basic understanding of such concepts. Nevertheless, we had to play this game for the sake of building a common language. I just wished there was a way to accelerate the process.
A new object appeared on the screen. It was yellow and curved, and sitting on a table. Whatever it was I had never seen one before.
‘What is on table?’ she asked.
I would have shrugged if only I could.
‘Unknown is on table,’ I responded. ‘Possibly carrot,’ I added. It didn’t look like any carrot I had seen, but I had seen some fairly unusual carrots in my time.
‘Unknown is banana,’ she replied, and the symbol for the new word appeared on the screen. Part of this exercise was to differentiate between pictures of objects and the symbols that represented them. The symbols seemed superfluous at first, but I understood now that no two carrots are exactly alike, so a symbol became necessary in order to wrap the entire carrot experience up in a single idea.
‘Banana is carrot?’ I asked. Instead of typing her response, Betty got up from her keyboard and walked over to me, pulling a real banana out of her magical bag. I gave it a sniff. Whatever it was, I wanted to eat it.
As I munched on this unknown object, taking note of its un-carrot-like qualities, Betty retreated back to her computer to make some notes of her own.
‘Don’t think you’ll be eating every new word you come across, horsey-hoofs,’ she muttered.
Outside the stable door the sound of Tim’s footsteps approached, though their usual languid rhythm was infected with a slight sense of urgency.
‘Timbolanus!’ Betty exclaimed as his lanky form materialized in the open doorway. ‘Where have you been hiding? You have been missing some sparkling conversation.’
‘Dr Elizabeth Brown,’ he replied. Betty seemed momentarily stunned by this formal greeting. ‘You have a couple of visitors,’ he continued, aiming his finger at her.
‘Visitors?’
‘What are you a doctor of, anyway?’
‘Visitors?’ she repeated.
‘Two ladies from the D.I.S.,’ he said, shaking his head solemnly. Betty’s confused expression took on a subtle shade of dread. ‘They want a word with you.’
‘With me? The D.I.S.? Is this a joke, Timothy dear? You don’t joke about things like this.’
‘Deadly serious, mate,’ he replied.
‘Deadly serious?’ she asked. ‘Do they look deadly serious?’
Tim thought about it for a moment.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they’d laugh if you told them a joke.’
‘No? Would they smile though?’
He considered it further and shook his head.
‘Not even politely,’ he replied. ‘Something I should know about? Or something I shouldn’t know about?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Visitors’ waiting room. They have briefcases.’
‘Briefcases, you say. Yes, well. They probably just need my help with something. Hmm, yes. That is probably what they want. An expert doctor’s opinion.’ Betty sat in her chair, tickling her chin in thought.
‘Are you gonna go then?’ Tim asked her.
‘Yes. I suppose I should.’ She remained in her chair for a few more seconds before reluctantly rocking herself upright. ‘Buttercup?’ she called to me from the doorway. ‘If I should not return… you’ll look after Timothy for me, won’t you?’
I know now that somewhere between leaving the stable and arriving at her unscheduled meeting, Betty pulled out her phone and activated its recording function, before concealing it once again inside her pocket. I’m not sure why she did this. Perhaps she required the evidence for potential legal purposes, or simply wanted a record of what was said for future reference.
Whatever her reason I am eternally thankful that she did, because I have since been able to retrieve this recording, and while the exact details of the encounter might not be strictly necessary to relate, there is no denying that the substance of this meeting would turn out to have profound and far-reaching consequences. It therefore serves to provide an illuminating layer of colour to our picture of these historical events.
‘Dr Brown. Thank you for coming to see us. My name is Patricia Clarke, I am from the Department of Information Security.’
‘Patricia, from the D. of I. S. How lovely to meet you. Please, call me Betty. Do we shake hands?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the voice of Patricia Clarke from the Department of Information Security. ‘Please take a seat, Dr Brown. This is my colleague Murgatroyd.’
‘Murgatroyd? Well. That’s a… beautiful name.’
Murgatroyd responded with an oppressive silence that she maintained throughout the entire interview. Chairs scraped on the wooden floor as the three women took their seats.
‘So…’ Betty began.
‘We would like to ask you some questions relating to an investigation we are conducting,’ said Patricia.
‘Ask away, my dear. I am a professional answerer of questions.’
‘Yes.’ The inquisitor paused to leaf through some papers, and the silence of Murgatroyd filled the air. ‘You are currently engaged in independent research, funded by Bunzel Incorporated. Prior to this you were employed by Bunzel for twelve years,’ she continued.
‘Twelve years was it?’ Betty seemed surprised by this knowledge. ‘My goodness, happy times.’
‘Indeed. As their Head of Communications Research.’
‘I certainly was. Twelve years, teaching computers to talk to each other. They are very friendly, computers; they love to chat. But they do need a little bit of help, sometimes. Hmm?’
‘Mmm.’ Patricia left a slight pause to establish her lack of enthusiasm for the subject. ‘During your time at Bunzel, you were also a member of the open-source coding community “Soldiers of Simon”, under the user name’ – she took a moment to read from her bundle of papers – ‘“Bettylicious”.’
Betty was unusually lost for words, but her questioners seemed to be waiting for a response.
‘How…’ she started, but lost the will to finish her sentence.
‘You worked on a number of applications under this pseudonym,’ Patricia continued. ‘Whether or not this constituted a breach of contract with your previous employers… is not really within the purview of our investigation. Though it does perhaps provide cause for further reflection. No, what we are interested in today, Dr Brown, is anything you can tell us about Sparkle.’
Betty waited for an explanation that never arrived.
‘Sparkle?’ she asked. ‘Who is that? Is that a horse?’
The silence of Murgatroyd threatened to descend once again, but Patricia interjected.
‘Sparkle is a virus, Dr Brown,’ she said. ‘A computer virus.’
‘Ah, I see. Very naughty. Not my area of expertise though, my dear. I do have a colleague who would be more than happy to help…’ Betty became distracted by the sound of a briefcase opening, followed by the thump of a folder of papers landing on the table.
‘Sparkle is an unusual virus, Dr Brown. Once contracted it completely blocks access to the infected machine, which is then operated remotely for the purpose of running certain calculations. What these calculations are for, we have yet to ascertain.’ Her voice was accompanied by the flicking of pages.
‘And that’s unusual is it? In the world of viruses? Hmm? Not that I am any kind of expert on the subject of course.’
The flicking of pages stopped momentarily.
‘In the world of viruses, Dr Brown, there are typically three paths you can take: exploitation, extortion or destruction. Sparkle does not appear to fit neatly into any one of these categories. Hence “unusual”.’ The pages resumed their turning as Patricia continued. ‘It might be considered exploitational, were it not for the fact that it broadcasts its existence. The name Sparkle, incidentally, is derived from the random patterns it displays on the screens of its victims. Not exactly surreptitious, you might say.’ Finally the last page was turned, and the folder slid across the table. A finger tapped on it.
‘What do we have here, then?’ Betty asked.
‘This is an extract from the source code for the Sparkle virus. We would be interested to know if it seems familiar to you, at all.’
‘Familiar? Why…’ her voice drifted off as she examined the papers.
‘If you could direct your attention to the highlighted section, you may notice that it helpfully includes the name of its author. One “Bettylicious”.’
Betty remained silent for some time as she examined the evidence. Patricia added her own silence to the silence, and for a while these silences combined into a force of nothingness that drowned out even the silence of Murgatroyd.
‘Hmm,’ Betty said at last. ‘Yes. Interesting. Very interesting.’ There was the sound of pages flipping back and forth. ‘This is Squigley,’ she said finally.
You could almost hear her audience exchanging bemused glances.
‘This whole section,’ she went on to explain, ‘it looks like it has been copied and pasted from a piece of software I wrote, well now… a long time ago. Nothing to do with a virus of course. No, you’ll probably find this code lurking in all kinds of unexpected places. Open-source, like you say. My gift to the world. I called it “Squigley”. What it does, it helps computers talk to each other. “Hello, I’m a computer,” they say. “Oh how do you do, so am I.” Hmm?’ Betty’s finger tap-tap-tapped on the page of computer code. ‘Squigley,’ she repeated.
There were a few uncomfortable seconds of consideration before Patricia responded.
‘Squigley…’ she stated.
‘That’s right…’ Betty replied.
Murgatroyd exuded a fresh wave of expectant stillness.
‘I know it’s an odd name,’ Betty explained. ‘There’s an interesting story behind that. But anyway, this looks like a very old version of my code. From my pre-Bunzel period, I believe. Most of my software is a bit out of date these days, to be honest. I’ve moved on to… other stuff. You’ll probably still find Squigley in your fridge, though. If your fridge connects to the internet. Do you have an internet fridge, my dear? My fridge talks to my toilet, would you believe. I wouldn’t like to imagine what they are saying about me.’