Algorithmic Behavior
Tablet 2:
Ellie,
It is possible you don’t remember me and probable you are asking yourself why I am sending you carefully packaged pieces of clay. This carefully wrapped piece of clay contains the answer. If you would like to write back, please do, since I am about to make a confession, and confessions that go unacknowledged can float in the air until you ingest them like bacteria and they make you sick. For your response, you are not obligated to use Sumerian envelopes; I know it is hard to find good clay (joke).
Here is my confession: If you have a 1 and a 1, and you put them together, you have a 1+1=2, or a 2=2.
I used to be a 1+0=1, but for about a month I have been a 1+1=2. Or maybe more like a 1+0.111=1.111.
What I am telling you is that I am pregnant. I can’t really talk to anyone else about my condition, but years ago, I could talk to you, so maybe I can talk to you now. There’s that cliché, “Some things never change.” Maybe our ability to talk is a subset of “some.”
Whenever Tam went to the drugstore to get migraine medicine, she felt that her privacy was being invaded. The cashier could see her haggard face and the rattling medicine bottle and infer too much about her. What right did he have to know she had a headache?
If she told someone about her pregnancy, the listener would know she was pregnant, simple as that. He or she would picture a growing group of cells in her abdomen. The listener would also think about her having sex and might also wonder how a quiet woman who wore a bun long after it had ceased to be a popular symbol of professorial severity had ever gotten into that situation.
Tam had gotten into that situation the same way she had gotten into other situations: replication. She knew that sex was what other people had, so she decided to have it for herself.
She watched the female graduate students lean in and touch Dr. Tom Carroway’s arm when they questioned him on the methodology of his latest paper about stochastic resonance. She noted the way they looked at his mouth while he said, “It was a silly little program, really. Only 10,000 silly little lines of code,” and the way they replied, “You know all of the undergraduates are in love with you.”
