Chap. 311 The Berry Code

Chap. 311 The Berry Code

“Hi, K’ndar! I was just about to call you.”

K’ndar entered Jansen’s office. The data tech had half a dozen open notebooks piled on her desk.

“You must have been thinking extra loud, because the thought hit me that you might want to talk,” he said.

“I do. Remember I said I’d build a matrix for you? To catalog Pern’s trees?”

“Yes. Although I’m not sure what a matrix IS.”

“You’ve been working with one all this time, on the survey. The forms you filled in on the datalink? Lats, longs, time of day, location, observations? That’s a matrix.”

“Ah. I wondered what to call it.”

“I’ve got it fairly well constructed. I think in a day I’ll have it finalized. Then I’ll download it to your datalink, and then you’ll use it for collecting tree data.”

“Now I know why I wanted to talk to you first. I am a bit fuzzy on just how to do this. Plus, I need to talk to Raylan.”

“Aye. He’s in with Admin’s Chief of Operations right now. That’s HIS boss.”

“It can wait til tomorrow, if need be. I just want to get a feel on what he wants me to accomplish.”

“Remember that strange dragonrider, L’ichen, who turned in all that incredibly detailed data on plants and flowers? That’s what we’d like. Same thing, but on trees.”

K’ndar groaned. He remembered the tiny, precisely written notations the dragonrider had made, filling up notebooks with excruciatingly detailed data. “Uh. That’s extremely tedious work, I might be doing this for the rest of my life,” he said. Nor did he have any desire to have anything to do with the taciturn L’ichen. “Has he ever returned?”

“No. At least, not that I know of. Elene hasn’t seen him. But I can’t emphasize enough the quality of his data. It was scientific to the extreme. His matrix was perfectly adapted to his needs, the code all neat and tidy. I am plagiarizing from it hand and hoof. Whomever built his matrix was a master coder. Honestly, K’ndar, it was so well built that all you’ll need to do is enter data. No thinking needed.”

“I can do no thinking. It’s the thinking I worry about. I’ll need to take soil samples, describe the biome the tree is living in, epiphytes, parasites, life cycles, seed production, reproduction, symbiotic relationships, for Pern’s sakes, stop me. There’s a hundred things about a tree, and there must be hundreds of native species.”

Jansen grinned. “Calm down. What we’ll probably be looking for is the basics. Average height, biome can be as basic as ‘savannah’ or ‘rain forest’. Does it have leaves or spikes, is it a skybroom or a redtree or a chezznut. Some of them have Latin names, but in general, if anyone had ever actually listed the different species of Pern’s trees, those data have been lost. Once again, you get to name them.”

“My imagination isn’t that fervid, my friend.” He shook his head. “I’ll manage, somehow. In fact, I think what I’ll do is find Rand, the forester, who brought in the musk lizard? I think a week training with him and your matrix will help me a lot. Rand’s a good bloke who knows his forest. There were things in the rain forest that perplexed me. This will give me a chance to investigate it further.”

“There’s the spirit!”

“So, you said you’ve not finished creating it, but show me how to use the matrix.”

She indicated a chair at the back of the workspace. He pulled it over next to her.

“Okay, now, see here, it says “Scientific name. Don’t worry about that if there isn’t one, that’s what meetings are for. You’ll just put in ‘unk’ for unknown. Next is common name, and again, if there isn’t one, make one up. It can even be as simple as ‘tree 123.’ You will mark the tree with a number. Over here, see? This will be left blank, if you take a photo of the tree, and I hope you do, you’ll put the word ‘tree 123’ in it and the matrix will automatically assign an index number to it. I’ll take the photo out of the camera’s brain. Don’t worry, K’ndar, this matrix is very forgiving. It can be cut to fit, like a boot. Here, I’ll show you the code.”

She stared at the screen for long moments.

“I started working on this this morning, using L’ichen’s matrix. We scanned in his data verbatim, then the database shuffled it around for use for everyone. The code, though, your average user doesn’t need to do anything with it. Usually it takes a while for the database to, um, digest the code and turn it into something like a matrix. This time it didn’t take any time at all! L’ichen’s matrix was so well designed, it’s as if the database already knew it.

I know you’re not a tech, but see here?” she pointed at a spot on the screen. “The database “fixed” this field here. I’d put in one field, and the database changed it. I didn’t tell it to do that. It works better, honestly, but I don’t know why it did it.”

She typed quickly and the screen changed to a line of characters that made no sense to him whatsoever. It was an orderly mass of symbols, numbers and letters. Here and there were words.

“I have to work with THAT?” he said, aghast.

Jansen giggled. “Oh, no, no, no. This is called ‘code’. It’s a recipe, as it were, it’s how one builds a program that tells the database what to do.”

“And you understand it? It’s gibberish!”

She laughed again. “Yes, I understand it. I can read it. I don’t expect you to. This matrix will make it so that you don’t have to do anything but enter data and I know you can do that. Oh, hello. This is odd.”

She pondered the screen for a long moment.

“Odd? Odd? It’s ALL odd, as far as I can see.”

“Yes, odd. See this line here?” she said, pointing at a symbol on the screen. “When I built it this morning, I typed in one symbol, but the database says no, that’s not right, it insists it should be this one.”

“I really don’t understand this, Jansen,” he said, hoping she really meant he didn’t have to learn what looked to be insect tracks.

“I know, I know,” she said, only half with him. The screen started to move at a fast clip, line after line. Finally she stopped.

“Where are his markers? Why didn’t he put in a marker?” she muttered, under her breath.

“Is something wrong? As if I could even tell?” he said.

“No, but something’s strange, K’ndar. I almost always create a certain marker, it doesn’t show up on the matrix or have anything to do with the workings of the program. It’s my way of knowing that I’ve checked this part of the code. See, right here? That’s my work. But I didn’t build this, this is L’ichen’s code. Why is MY marker in his code? Why didn’t he make his own? Didn’t he see it?”

“I’m confused. I’m just a biologist, Jansen.”

“Okay, let me simplify it for your biologist’s brain. Let’s say you and I are baking bubbly pies. You always put seven berries on top. I always put ten berries on top. So when we see a line of pies, your seven berry pie immediately tells everyone who made it. This is similar. This is L’ichen’s matrix, supposedly. This marker here, it should be seven berries. But no, this clearly shows ten berries.”

“It’s clear as mud to me. Don’t bother explaining it, I won’t understand it.”

Her eyes grew big with an epiphany. “Oh, my stars. Wait.”

The screen scrambled into a complete morass of symbols, numbers and words.

Finally it stopped moving and she stared at it. “I’ll be switched,” she finally said, “there it is. No wonder it was so easy.”

“I am totally lost, Jansen. Is something wrong?”

“No. No, by the stars, no. This proves it. Proves it!”

“WHAT!”

“Remember we thought that L’ichen’s from the future? This proves it.”

“How?”

“K’ndar, the time travel implications make my head swim, but this code? It’s ten berries, throughout. Look,” she said, scrolling quickly, “There’s my ten berry marker. Here, here, here. They’re my markers, throughout the program. They’re everywhere I would normally mark. This matrix is MINE. I BUILT it, I’m building it as we speak. L’ichen used MY matrix. I’ve been copying my own work.”