Stark Industries, Monday

[endsthegame]

It was a new semester and a new batch of students, so Ender brought out the HELP WANTED sign and left it near the front window. Underneath, he quickly doodled in a (Stark Industries is a technology firm) to make things clearer (and next to it, ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED).

Satisfied, he went back inside and booted up the holographic projector.

Today, apparently, the annoying fruit would be kumquats. They'd already had that one before, so Ender wasn't worried.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[momslilassassin]

"Ho, Ender," Ben said, popping into the shop at the usual time, coffee and Chinese food in hand.

[endsthegame]

"Ho, Ben," Ender said, looking up. "Don't suppose I could make you run 'educate the new arrivals' with me."

[momslilassassin]

"Will there be charts and graphs involved?" he asked. "And snacks?"

Ben had excellent priorities.

[endsthegame]

"Plenty of charts and graphs," Ender promised, "But if you want snacks, run down to Turtle and Canary's. I haven't got anything."

[momslilassassin]

"I can do that," Ben replied. "Are you going to hold a presentation in a common room or something?"

[endsthegame]

"Let me guess," Ender said, raising his eyebrows. "You didn't check the sign when you came in. Though that isn't a bad idea, depending on who our newbies are this term."

[momslilassassin]

"My new little sister is a telepathic alien who doesn't know how she got here," Ben answered helpfully. "And I read the sign."

He just hadn't paid that much attention to it.

"All questions asked? If I want to know where babies come from, will you tell me, or forward my inquiry to Petra?"

He thought he was funny, yes.

[endsthegame]

Ender snorted. "I'd hack into your email account, and forward it to Bean," he said, "And then I'd monitor your intellectual discourse. Where is she from?"

[momslilassassin]

"She didn't say," Ben replied. "She knew the name Earth, though she thought of it as being part of a different alliance. Most of my time was spent trying to explain how the school had known she was coming even though she hadn't."

[endsthegame]

Where had they heard that one before? "And isn't that a mystery for the ages."

[momslilassassin]

He smiled. "And that's pretty much what I told her. Her name's Cally. I think you'd like her."

[endsthegame]

"I just might talk to her," Ender said, wryly, although honestly, Ben should've known he'd do so the moment he used the word 'alien'. "See how she's fitting in."

[momslilassassin]

That might have been why Ben had led with "alien". Maybe. "Have you seen any other new kids who seem interesting yet?"

[endsthegame]

"None so far, though I think I saw someone with green skin in the distance - which as far as Fandom goes, isn't that interesting."

[momslilassassin]

"It'd be nice to have an alien-looking alien around," Ben replied, grinning. "This place looks too human."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

Help wanted, technology... all questions answered.

William had been intent on finding a decent teahouse (not that he'd ever been to one before, mind, but the idea seemed oddly appealing now that he was out on his own) when he passed by Stark Industries and saw the sign.

"Hello?" he called out, taking off his hat as he entered the shop.

[endsthegame]

"Hello," Ender echoed, from his station behind his laptop. The laptop, incidentally, shut almost immediately, and the boy himself rose up to his full height. "Can I help you with something...?"

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"When you say all questions answered," William started. "How do they record the images that are shown on the 'television', if they're not photographs?"

[endsthegame]

"I can't tell you that off the bat, but I can tell you TV and other kinds of moving pictures run off of subsequent images, twenty-five or so to a second," Ender said, entirely unfazed by the question or the suddenness of it. "So kind of like photographs, after all, but not entirely. Would you like me to look it up for you?"

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"Yes, please, if you could," William replied emphatically. "I'm afraid my grasp of electronics is... somewhat limited, which is unfortunate, seeing as how integral the technology seems to be in- this time." He felt absurdly proud of himself for managing to make that statement in all seriousness, even with the minor verbal stumble.

[endsthegame]

"You wouldn't be the first, and you won't be the last," Ender said, matter-of-factly, and smiled, and motioned at his laptop with one arm. "Has anyone told you about computers yet?" he asked, with honest curiosity.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"Not beyond the fact that they're important. The concept seems similar on the surface to that of an Analytical Engine, but that was deemed far too costly and impractical to produce, I don't know how the leap was made from that piece of machinery to one of... those," he eyed the laptop warily.

[endsthegame]

"Over a great deal of time," Ender assured him, but he walked straight past his laptop because of it, reaching to pick up a tiny object. "Though the biggest revolution probably came in the 1950s, with the advent of this." He held up the microchip. "It enables computers to do the kind of things Babbage could have only dreamed of - we figured out how to use the calculations such an analytical engine produced to show images, among other things."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"You're telling me that," he arched an eyebrow at the tiny object, "does more than an entire roomful of machinery could do, in my time?" Miniaturisation, it seemed, was indeed the key to the future.

[ooc: and now i must flee to woooork.]

[endsthegame]

"Yes," Ender said, offering it to him. "And it's faster and cheaper to produce. It operates based on semiconductor materials."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

Will took it eagerly, turning it over to examine it from every possible angle. "It would explain the phones," he mused. He'd followed their development up to 'car phones' easily enough (though the vehicles themselves were a matter he would need to explore in depth at a later date), but he had the sense when reading about true mobile phones that he was missing a key piece of information.

[endsthegame]

"At its root, it works with the simplest of questions," Ender said, keeping a close eye on him as he examined it. "Yes or no. One or zero. Every iteration of the question is one bit. Bits make up a byte, bytes make up a kilobyte, a thousand kilobytes makes up a megabyte, and so on. Your Analytical Engine managed about twenty kilobytes in data. These chips allow us to go as far as a terrabyte."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"Fascinating," William had to admit, handing it back. "I'll have to examine one of these computers in more detail." When he had the funds to procure one.

[endsthegame]

Ender smiled slightly, and put it aside. "Of course, over time, people began to realise that the exchange of information that happened in a computer at such a speedy rate could be amplified and exploited if you extended it to other computers. A network, as they call it. Eventually, they established a network that any computer in the world could join, as long as they had the right cables."

He sat down behind his laptop, and pushed it open again. "That's how we get the internet," he said, "I have a feeling you might be using it a lot, from here on in."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"We have... something like that, back home," William admitted. "Not quite so sophisticated of course, but one could view the telegraph system as a network."

[endsthegame]

"It's a little like that, except that the internet is publically accessible to everyone, at any time, and the information stays where it is for anyone to find." A beat. "So not that much like it."

He pulled up a browser and input the link for Wikipedia. "This is an encyclopedia."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

It didn't look like much, William decided. Just a picture surrounded by a list of languages. Still, he knew enough by now to know there was probably something about the setup he was missing, and that was terribly bothersome. "How does one page through it, with no pages to speak of?"

[endsthegame]

"You don't have to page; you use hyperlinks, which will take you to another page. You see this symbol?" He pointed to the cursor on his screen. "You move it by using this device," and he shifted the mouse, "...over a hyperlink, like this, and then you touch the button, and it takes you to the next page."

Which he did, accordingly.

To something about horses.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"And that's all-" he reached out to tap the casing on the laptop "-in here, or is this information you're accessing from elsewhere in the network? And these 'hyperlinks', then, those are the ones that show up in colour? How do they show up in colour?" Back home, they were still attempting (and mostly failing) to master the art of colour photography.

[endsthegame]

"Elsewhere in the network," Ender answered, smoothly. "Any page you open on the internet itself will be coming from another public computer - a 'server', we call it. And hyperlinks are usually in colour, and underlined--" he pointed at the one neatly linking to an article on the uses of horse dung, "... and they use code for that." A beat. "To make the right colours light up in the screen."

Just in case that was what he'd been asking.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

It had been, in part. William made a mental note to investigate this code once he'd done a bit more research on computers. "And how does the screen display such colours?" he asked. "Is it the same mechanism as a television?"