Episode 15

Spot and Professor Neinstein had collaborated on the android's original blueprint, so they must have had more expertise than Weasel realized. Well, if the android could understand complex matters, then it was up to Weasel to keep him in the loop. 'All right, I will explain,' Weasel said. 'Spot and Professor Neinstein and I have spent the last three years building a series of machines that are capable of screening 100 trillion alternative universes an 2,000 dimensions for probable threats to the lifeforms on planet earth in any of those universes and dimensions, because what happens in one could affect the others, including the one that Spot and Neinstein live in. Anyway, as far as our machines can determine, no one else, in any other universes or dimensions, has come up with anything comparable.'

Irving Sprilznick, who was listening in on this exchange, was getting very bored. Why did Spot and Professor Neinstein and Extraterrestrial Weasel have to keep throwing their genius-level inventions in his face? What was next? The android, which had been invented to help the blind professor get around now that Spot was no longer his seeing-eye dog, didn't need to know much, but these inventors had over-designed him. If this kept up, Sprilznick was going to have to resign from the board of Deus Ex Machina. Nevertheless, he needed to support the effort for now. 'It is terribly important that we try to keep our edge,' he said, embarrassed that he had let them down earlier this morning. 'We never saw the HTTP tribe coming. This might mean that they have expert cloaking abilities. Or, they might be playing some kind of trick on us.'

'Could that mean that Nebraska is right where it has always been, but we can't see it for some reason?' the android wondered.

'Bingo!' Weasel exclaimed. How was it possible that a mere machine had come up with a scenario that none of the other Deus Ex machina board members had managed to think of? And now Weasel thought of yet another possibility: suppose that one of us has been helping our adversaries? This made Weasel uneasy. The android smiled; maybe he was on his way to real sentience. Weasel was now sure that he was not only empathic but also maybe telepathic. What Weasel did not realize was that the android was about to demonstrate a talent of even greater significance.

Paulh

22.04.24 Front Page

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