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Chapter 55

Chapter 55

February 1st, 2158 (station time)

On the holo, the two mechs began the decent into the valley.  The sharp drop in elevation forced them to move slowly.  With the improved graphical overlay, everyone in the common room now had a bird's eye view of the area, with what looked like real time video.  Where in reality the holo was projecting several overlays of information to give this look.

Logan was watching with intent focus, when it looked as if Gantulga turned a little too soon, and part of the mech went through a rather large and unmoving rock.  As he saw Gantulga move through a solid rock, his mind raised a mental red flag.  He wasn't sure exactly why, but he had the idea that maybe josh or Suke might.

Logan turned away from the holo to look for Either Josh or Suke and found both of them huddled together working on Suke's DNAC.  The two were not being secretive, however they had separated themselves from the group to work on their newest little project.

Logan walked over to them and casually glanced at Suke's DNAC.  Logan was able to pick out two lines of streaming data.  The data was streaming in Sim-Speek, a programming language that has been commonly used for the better part of three decades.

As computers became more powerful and more complicated, programming languages on the computer followed in suit.  By the year 2036 most private computers had architecture that was programmed using a one thousand twenty four bit language.  A programmer with several years of focused training was needed to write and maintain these programs.

Because of the complexity of the programs, one simple mistake could be nearly impossible to find.  If that simple mistake affected the way the program ran, then it was cheaper to rewrite the program from scratch rather than attempting to sift through the billions of lines of code.

Then, a new trend started with independent programmers and small companies.  Simple more rudimentary programs began to take the place of the more complex ones.  Technology could continue to advance, however it looked as if mankind had reached its optimum state with computer programs at sixty-four bits.

Sim-Speek continued on with the simplification in the programming world.  Sim-Speek was a very simple language, not used for programming, but for communication between programmers.  It was a form of short hand that allowed two or more programmers to have a very quick and simple conversation without the problem of complex sentence structure, grammar, or even full words.  Sim-Speek was written completely in binary, and almost any programmer could read it faster than reading their native language.

Although Logan specialized in languages, he had never bothered to learn Sim-Speek.  He specialized in oral communication and there was no spoken form of Sim-Speek.

"What are you guys looking at?" Logan asked the pair.

Josh looked up suddenly as if he had no idea that Logan had been there prior to him speaking.

Suke on the other hand spoke without looking up from the flowing data on his DNAC.  "We are reading the input from both Gantulga's and Eamon's mech."

"Wait," Logan said confused, "what input?"

Josh had recovered from his shock and answered the question.  "All of it," he said.

"What?"  Logan said stupidly.

"All input that the mechs are receiving is being simplified and presented on my screen."  Suke said still not looking up from his DNAC.

Logan said nothing, and continued to look at the screen, confused as ever.