Near the end of the semester Larry called me up and told me that he had kept my desk just as I had left it and that my Top Secret security clearance had been granted! I was thrilled since I hadn't expected to be cleared, my parents and everyone I ever knew being dead and all.
I couldn't wait to get back to work on that circuit, but I had to focus on finals first. I hadn't cried since that first day on the job months before and I had only felt sad a little the night I got the call about the security clearance. The reminder of my family must have done that. My new headshrinker was doing a pretty good job with me and I was down to half the dosage that I had started with of the new drugs. The only bad side effect was the insomnia. The pills kept me awake until about three every morning and then I would be up again by seven. The good side effect was that I had lost another ten pounds. Things had not looked up for me so much in the three and a half years since The Rain.
I hadn't been worried at all about my final exams since I only had two 'real' classes. The other two liberal arts/humanities classes were a waste of time and a joke all in one. The final exam for the Advanced Microprocessors class was simple, to the point, and interesting as hell. The exam read simply,
I know it seems complex at first and why am I telling you about this now? I'm getting to the point, I assure you. I started out by drawing how a simple fax machine works. On the left side of the paper I drew a rectangle to represent a written page and showed it via an arrow going into another box labeled FAX. I also showed the page out of the other side of the FAX. This part of the drawing went from bottom to top. Page in at bottom of paper, FAX in the middle, and page out at top. Then I drew a horizontal arrow from the FAX on the left side of the page to a box in the center of the page labeled Router/Hub and then on to an identical FAX on the other side of the page. I drew the page coming out above the FAX on the right.
This was not enough to get the question right, of course. Much more detail would be required. So, I drew another level of detail showing the I/O input to the leftmost FAX renamed A. Box A was subdivided into three boxes: one box labeled RAM (for random access memory), a box labeled Algorithm, and one labeled Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). Then I penned in below the A the letters CPU for central processing unit. The Router box I renamed Box B stayed the same and then I gave another level of detail for the right FAX, now labeled C, which had a corresponding I/O box to its right. I then wrote a page each about the I/O, A, B, and C from the diagram.
On another page I drew an even deeper level of detail about each box and box within each box. To keep from boring you here I will just cut to the chase, since my actual response to the question contained ten more pages of circuit and chip and motherboard diagrams. I also drew some logic timing diagrams and bus and interconnect bandwidths per each pin. So I won't bother you with all that. But the point is that the data flow is slowed down every place there must be a wired connection. If somehow the data could be transferred from the RAM locations at each CPU directly to the RAM locations in the remote CPU, then a lot of time and therefore bandwidth could be saved. It's like taking a five-gallon bucket full of water, using a one-inch hose to transfer water from it into a one- gallon bucket, and then going from the one-gallon bucket to another five-gallon bucket again with a one-inch hose. It would sure be a lot faster if you could dump the water from one five-gallon bucket directly into the other five- gallon bucket, skipping all the in-between hoses and jugs.
I made a B in that class, which stands for 'Better than needed to graduate.' Larry showed up to shake my hand at graduation. He was the only person other than my instructors and a few students I had studied with that I knew. He was the only person there besides me that I had even had a meal with. I had wanted to bring Lazarus with me badly, but there was a no pets policy. That made me cry, but wouldn't it have made you cry? Laz was my only family. I told Larry as much, and I could sense he felt sympathetic for me.
'Larry, it's two fax machines on one board,' I told him while he shook my hand and patted my back.
'What's a fax machine?' He looked puzzled.
'It's a machine that you put paper in and send it over phone lines to another one that prints out the paper, but that's not important right now.' I chuckled my response.
'Steven, nobody likes a smartass,' he laughed. 'What are you talking about that is a fax machine?'
'The little circuit board is, well it's two of them actually. The I/O could be anything, a page of text for example. The data goes into the big chip on one side of the board, which is some sort of optical CPU. Then it is routed over via the little optical chip in the middle to the other identical optical CPU, and then out the other I/O device.' I smiled triumphantly.
'Hmm . . . never thought of it quite that way.' He tugged at his tie clip. 'Then what are the other unknown chips on there? There are at least two others, right?' He smiled.
'I just figured . . .' I caught my tassel as it fell off my cap. 'Uh, damn thing.' I straightened it out and put my hat back on. 'Uh, I just figured they supply the optical power. Am I right?'
'Why would I have two fax machines on one board, Steven?'
'Beats me. Maybe you're just playing around with an idea or something.' I shrugged and that damned cap fell off again. Larry chuckled, so this time I just held it in my hand.
'When do you start back, Steven? It's about two weeks from now, right?' he asked me.
'Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Can I start earlier? I mean, uh, I'm not going . . . to . . . visit anybody . . . or anything.' I looked down at my shoes for a second since I wasn't sure if I would tear up or not. 'So, couldn't I just get started and get on with my life?' I asked.
'Sure, Steven.' He paused. 'That would be fine.' Larry patted me on the shoulder, nodded, and left it at that.
'Thanks,' is all I could manage to say.
'I will tell you this though—'
'Yeah, what's that?'
'You are about eighty percent right and I will tell you the rest when you get in the office. Helluva job! Let me buy you a beer, what d'you say?'
