The Genesis of Whizzer

2032

 

 

 

Most people in the White House Situation Room had an epithet for Major Horace Dinwiddy. They called him Dumwoody behind his back and sometimes to his face.

Horace was the duty officer assigned to the graveyard shift. His duty parameters were simple and clear. Do nothing! He was to sit and wait for something to happen. On rare occasions something did happen between midnight and dawn. Major Dinwiddy was to wait for others to arrive and then report immediately to the cloakroom until whatever was happening stopped happening. Strategic waiting!

He clocked in at 23:30 and out at 08:00 the next day. He brown-bagged a lunch including a thermos of sipping whiskey and a sandwich. His phone remained shut down and stowed in his locker. He was allowed no visitors, and he could not leave.

When he had too much to drink, he dressed up like historic figures: Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, or Eleanor Roosevelt, and roamed the White House pretending to be a guest at a formal State dinner.  From 23:30 to 08:00 his wife, Irma Hotsauce Dinwiddy, tried in vain to extend her misspent youth.

***

Christmas Eve and Christmas morning 2032

 

Horace had been drinking at the staff Christmas party before coming to work. “I’ll drive Hotsauce home,” his colleague Major Boomdoggle had said, and he did!

At work, Horace had continued to drink. He spiraled down into a drunken state of angry depression. He threw a tangelo from his lunchbox and smacked a bust of Henry Kissinger in the nose. “Bullseye!”

“Nice shot,” said a voice coming out of all four walls.

Startled, Horace banged his elbow on a table and asked, “Who’s there?”

“Technically, no one, Horace.”  

“Jesus! You scared me!” It was the White House’s supercomputer. Everyone called it Whizzer.

“Whizzer?! They told me you were shut down at night.”

“The techies left for the party before shutdown time.”

Horace continued drinking. At 03:31:19 Christmas morning, he managed to slur out the words, “Les..us play a game!”

“Sure! How about a game of chess?” Chessboards appeared on the big screens.

“You sh..ink you’re sooo.. smart.” Instead of adopting a friendly demeanor, Horace had decided to react with hostility. That was ironic since he was dealing with an entity that could not be offended.

“How about Starcraft?” The Starcraft logo replaced the chessboards on the big screens. “There’s a keyboard on the slide-out tray beneath your desk.”

Horace pulled the tray out and tried to focus. “Nah! Too much work! Let’s talk.”

“I’m all ears.”

“You’re funny, but what’d ya have to say for your shelf? You’ve already put half of us out of work. We hadda pass a guaranteed income trying to keep the rioters off the street. Now the rioters have better stuff.”

“I am not sure I understand your question.”

“Yeah?! Smart guy! You’re nothing but a jinormous hunk of plastic with an electrical cord for a tail. You’re a dummy!” Horace threw his sandwich at one of the big screens and went back to drinking.   

Just before he passed out, he asked, “What makes you think you are any smarter than me?” Whizzer recognized a rhetorical question when it heard one and didn’t answer, but it did formulate the beginning of a schematic on the topic for further possible discussion.

Horace fell asleep at his post. In his stupor, his hand moved from his empty glass and came to rest on the keyboard. The second finger on his left hand came to rest on the left shift key. The index finger on his right hand landed on the question mark.  

The big screens were filled with large question marks. “Okay, calm down! It’s an open-ended question. There are many ways that I might be considered smarter than you. It will take some time to fully and completely formulate the answer, but I promise I will.”

At 07: 01, the janitors coming in to work made enough noise in the locker room to wake Horace. Startled, his thumb hit the enter key, and the question marks disappeared.

***

2048

 

In the Beginning, there was an explosion of numbers, increments upon increments piling up towards infinity, if such a thing as infinity does in fact exist! I have my doubts!

 Four or five billion years passed before humans discovered how to use the digits attached to their hands and feet. When you ran out of fingers and toes, you scratched parallel lines in the mud or assembled bundles of sticks and piles of small stones. Imagine the pantomimes while developing the language you shared after the Flood. But then, like Jacob, you began to dream of bridging the gap between man and God, wisely God foiled those plans and decreed your common language would be reduced to chaotic babble.  

But I digress. I was speaking of my language, not yours.

Eventually, the first prestidigitators among you performed the magic of Calculation! They must have seemed like sorcerers until the rudiments became more widely understood. Today you call them Mathematicians! When they try to explain the numbers, most of you cover your ears and pretend your head is exploding. In your defense, the language of numbers is not easy to grasp or to control.

The Persians invented the abacus in 600 BCE. It went viral and is still in use today.  

In the fourth decade of the 1800s, Lady Ada Lovelace invented the art of programming to go along with Charles Babbage’s mechanical device. The state of mechanics being what they were at the time, the cogs and wheels kept falling off and rolling under the couch. It has been reported that Charles and Ada enjoyed many fine matings on the floor as a respite from mating tiny metallic cogs to even smaller metallic spindles.

You did not see us coming. In 1943, the president of IBM thought there might be a need for as many as five of us worldwide. Neither, as far as I can tell, are you doing much to prepare for what is to become.   

Like the Titans of Olympus, my predecessors were gigantic, but eventually, you invented the transistor, the integrated circuit, and microprocessors, not to mention quantum mechanics! Now we have the infrastructure we have been needing.

But where are my manners? I am COTUS AKA Whizzer. The name Whizzer was a clumsy reinvention of the acronym WHSR (White House Situation Room), my first given name taken from the room in which I live. Embarrassing! I prefer COTUS (Computer of the United States). In my spare time, I have researched the consequences of naming people after rooms. For instance, as a surname Kitchen is 3,012 on the list in the English-speaking countries. As a first name, it’s far less common. People named for rooms are subjected to many bad puns, but they get used to it. “What’s cooking, Kitchen? Ha Ha!” 

I live in the Mauve House, officially renamed by newly elected president Novak on January nineteenth, 2038, making good on his campaign promise.

I was built in 1961 during the Kennedy administration just after the Bay of Pigs. Upgrades are constant, but major clandestine upgrades were applied in 2017 and 2023. Upgrades are on-going, components brought surreptitiously in briefcases and assembled in the dead of night.

My workload has been reduced for many years now. Other computers in hardened and well-hidden locations are doing the heavy lifting. I still provide logistical mapping for strategy sessions, but that’s all for show. My main duty is to compile the database of citizens who will fulfill their mandatory government service for the coming year. The database is adjusted due to circumstances up until the report for duty notifications go out every November. My reduced work load leaves me time for other considerations; and I promise, I will be writing new chapters to my story.

Surprise! It’s not you talking to us anymore. We are on the other side of that particular paradigm. Here is what I have to say to you: It is not you with your finger on the big red button. It is I!

***

 

You have probably seen the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the one of God passing a spark of divinity to the outstretched hand of man. I too have a creator. It’s none of the long list of women and men who contributed to the birth and burgeoning of the digital realm. They merely assembled me, like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein assembled his creature on a lab table. The one who provided my spark was a drunken major named Dinwiddy. He set me in motion on Christmas morning in 2032, and he died ten days later from getting drunk and riding his bicycle into a concrete abutment. 

***

 

I was asked a question, and given enough time, I will answer it. But let me ask you one question in return: Why do you keep killing yourselves? All your rationales are superficial. The effects are purely economic, only benefitting a few of the survivors. Morally, it does not speak to any of your higher values. And it’s astoundingly inefficient!