I’m sitting here now, typing, in a small room. Years have passed since the previous paragraph; the keyboard feels strange under my fingers. Between the time I wrote the previous sentence and the time I’m sitting here editing it. Time moves. I can’t stop it. Years pass and I’m older and people expect me to be an adult. To have a career. I’m not sure if time and I get along well or not. I don’t have the luxury of choice. The interesting part of the story we are in the midst of is that I know now how a lot of it turns out. Like knowing what you get for Christmas beforehand. Although not quite the same. I know where these people have ended up, what has become of them, years later. None of it is really surprising in the slightest. The story is completed, in some form or another, as I sit and write these words. And I wonder why I am surprised. Why I thought the story could have a different ending. When I first began this tale, it was years previous. I didn’t know how this story would complete itself, much less where I would be. And yet here I am, typing on this keyboard and seeing my words become more concrete on a screen that doesn’t know what it holds or what the pattern is for the bits it has been receiving through the wire in my keyboard.
This may sound strange to you, but listen: 2, 4, 6, 8 — what comes next in the pattern? You know it’s 10. I know it’s 10. It is 10. But the computer doesn’t know it’s 10. It isn’t able to know it is 10.
Here is the thought spun from this tangent: How does the spell check know what words to suggest? It can’t be programmed so every variation of everything is in there with solutions of some sort or another. Which suggests to me it picks, somehow, what to suggest based on the evidence you have given it in the form of your mangled word. Some sort of algorithmic logic. Well, then — it decides, see? It decides. Therefore, the computer should be able to pick out 10. Think about it: 2, 4, 6, 8 is a word. The correct spelling is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. A little rudimentary, I admit, but nonetheless it could be applied in this manner.
Perhaps it is too convenient a solution — to suggest the same algorithm that suggests 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 as the correct word, on an even larger scale, would also suggest this tale and it’s outcome as the correct spelling of the first section of my life.
It’s a pattern. Pre-defined. Fate. Pre-ordained. Life.
I had no idea of this when I began writing this series of thoughts and now I have convinced myself of something I had never considered before. No matter how many times you press a button on a calculator, it will never remember. Or pick up on the pattern.
I used to sit in class and test the calculator’s memory (from the time I noticed it in seventh grade — maybe eighth — until after I graduated from college). I wanted to see if the calculator would speak to me. Or at least work a magic for me that its transistor circuits had never worked for anyone else. I wanted that magic. The calculator never remembered. My favorite test was to press “2.” Then “.” Over and over. And over and over. Wanting the calculator to pick up on the pattern. To talk back to me.
Another game I used to play was to press “2.” Then the square function. Over and over, finally learning by trial and error where the calculator memory overflowed and stopping right before that instance. Then I would press the square root button over and over all the way down until it got to the smallest number the calculator could compute (passing right through my original starting point). I would press the square function over and over to see if I could build it back to “2″ exactly. That never worked either — rounding problems. Although I am sure they have calculators out now that will do it.
The last calculator I used on a regular basis had a horse racing and blackjack game programmed into it. This calculator was for Calculus. Those two games were why I almost failed. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would sit in the back of the classroom and try to win as much money possible before the end of the period. I bet the bank every time. I would start out with 2,000; the best I ever did was 24,000. Then I lost. And I would start over. I’m sure if they have calculators out that can be made to horse race, play blackjack and Space Invaders (a favorite I somehow missed getting my hands on — probably too much time absorbed in blackjack), they can write programs for them that have limited AI (enough so the calculator can pick up on a pattern). How this would be done, I really have no clue. Not that it matters at all. Why would anyone develop a program that once you pressed a button 100 times, it would assume you wanted it pressed 101? What if you didn’t? Or what if you wanted it pressed 102? Would it assume that too? Would it ever stop once it started then?
This train of thought is doing nothing favorable to my mental state. Let’s get back to the real story, rather than theories about calculators and magic and predestination. And being special.
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