Free Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things by Carlos Bueno Page B

this
young lady’s Pass!”
    Approved, approved, approved, signed, and countersigned. Laurie was finally through the
turnstile.
    “I’m glad that’s over,” said Xor. “Now, where the heck is that
Byzantine Process?”

Chapter 16. A Change of Plan

    SECOND , the package’s directions read, DELIVER TO BRUTO
FUERZA, LOOKOUT HILL LIGHTHOUSE . Laurie and Xor couldn’t see any lighthouse, but
there was a cloud of dust rising from the hill.
    “You work for Winsome, eh? Right on time,” said Bruto when they arrived.
“I’m sorry to say we’re behind schedule. Our lighthouse isn’t finished.
We’ve been working double-time, day and night.”
    “Are you going to put the lighthouse on top of that castle?” Laurie asked.
    “Castle?” asked Bruto. “That is the
lighthouse.”
    Dozens of Green-Shelled Round machines were busy all around the enormous structure. They
looked just like Tinker’s turtle, but they were the size of a large truck. Instead of drawing
dots on paper, these turtles were laying bricks on top of bricks, making WALLs, STAIRs, and WINDOWs
right before Laurie’s eyes.
    “What are all those things coming out from the wall?” she asked, pointing to a
forest of supports and buttresses on one side of the tower.
    “We’ve had no end of problems,” said Bruto, shaking his head and spitting.
“The south wall was falling outward. So we had to shore it up. Then it started falling inward .”
    “Is that why you’re behind schedule?” she asked. There was something about
the scene that bothered Laurie, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It looked . . .
messy.
    “Things are always going wrong,” Bruto said. “Big ideas come with big risks.
But we can fix any problem with more power and hard work!”
    “You certainly have a lot of both,” Laurie said, with just a teensy tiny bit of
envy. The things she could do with all those turtles! “How do you teach the turtles to build a
tower?”
    “Here, let me show you.” Bruto led her to a tent nearby. A small army of people
was working around a table. “First we write the plans on paper.”
    BRICK-LINE :
    Lay a brick,
    move forward,
    lay a brick,
    move forward,
    lay a brick,
    move forward,
    . . .
    “That part makes a LINE of bricks. We stack a bunch of BRICK-LINES on top of each other,
and that’s how a wall gets built. To make the wall thicker, we just add more
commands.”
    BRICK-LINE-VERSION-TWO :
    Lay a brick,
    lay a brick,
    move forward,
    lay a brick,
    lay a brick,
    move forward,
    lay a brick,
    lay a brick,
    move forward,
    lay a brick,
    lay a brick,
    . . .
    “Wow, it just goes on and on and on,” said Laurie, flipping through the pages.
“It must have taken forever to write all of this.”
    “Big buildings need big plans. Big plans need big teams. It’s only logical,”
Bruto said. “Writing the plans wasn’t the worst part, though. We’re running out of
bricks!”
    “Really? But why?”
    “The first version wasn’t strong enough, and it fell down. So now I’m making
a tower twice as big, twice as thick, and twice as tall. Two times two times two is
eight.”
    “So it needs eight times as many bricks?” Laurie asked.
    “It’s just a matter of supplies.”
    “How do you know this version of the plan will work?”
    “We’re not a bunch of amateurs, girlie. We do extensive testing of our
algorithms,” Bruto said. “Take a look at this!” Off to the side was a table
covered with tiny turtles and tiny bricks.
    “Hey, they’re building a tower, too!” Laurie exclaimed. Sure enough, the
turtles were following the same plan as their bigger cousins.
    “We test new plans by building a scale model,” Bruto explained.
    “But, Bruto, the model doesn’t have the same extra stuff keeping the walls from
falling down.”
    “Some problems only show up in the full size. When that happens, we have to
adapt.”
    “Oh,” Laurie said. “But if the model is not the same as the real thing, how
can you be sure that—”

    They