NOT A SERIOUS STORY
(C) SERGEY NOVIKOV
It was the second day since Andrei stopped understanding anything.
His old Speccy hung stubbornly, not responding to Reset.
It hung non-standard, even more strange: the curb of the ship
blinked angrily, and across the screen, at a speed inaccessible to ROM
printing procedure, machine code crawled. About the fact that this is an assembly
ler, Andrei did not guess right away, or rather only yesterday
ra. The call to the tracing paper looks painfully unrealistic for rubbish.
lator and calculation of the sine in it, and all this in a cycle and with me-
changing parameter. But he understood the main thing only now. Andes-
Ray knew what this code looked like, he just couldn’t figure it out for a long time
believe. It was still the same calculator placed by the computer
ter into the upper memory area. But what shocked him:
it was changed, or rather modified, or rather remade by us -
only that he became almost unrecognizable. And Speccy about him
was growing! He addressed what had already been done, continuing the understandable
only him a job.
Andrey stood up. Hiroshima's poem was persistently buzzing in my head.
baht “Well, now work for me,” Andrey thought,
- “And so instead of synapses, caffeine chains in the brain”...
He touched the power supply and decided that it would last until morning.
no, besides, there won’t be long left. Howusually, without removing clothes
Yes, Andrey fell on the bed and fell asleep.
A terrible squeak woke him up. "What the hell, mother fuck-"
in, through four fences with two legs and one extra end-
"- Andrei swore and reached for the alarm clock. But for example
he quickly mortally insulted a small harmless creature,
who, with amazing dedication, diligently every morning
became the target of a well-thrown pillow or a sharply lowered
fist. The alarm clock had nothing to do with it, it was silent like Bryansky
partisans in the dungeons of the Gestapo. The TV speaker was cracking.
For some reason, this no longer surprised Andrei. Speccy was clearly not si-
flax in music, but the ears of the Andes, having been in not such troubles,
Ray immediately sensed the computer's affinity for pentatonic scales.
“Nerussian lump,” Andrew Hack swore in Caucasian
accent and reached for the phone. "Mike? It's me on-line, yes
I know it's still half past seven. I'm like that myself. Do you remember yesterday
did you tell me? You yourself are nonsense, he already added to the BEEP procedure
fought! You yourself are just a glitch! Come on, get your relics out from under
warm blanket and blow to me. Don't forget to turn on the afterburner, otherwise
You’ll miss how he tinkers with TR-DOS... Well, that’s it, I’m waiting.”
“Well, we waited,” said Mike, who is far from computer
Terov people, such as parents, are cruelly mistaken, called
get out of here Misha.
“What did you want? Thirst for communication,” Andrey answered, “No-
why, in a year he will demand a female Z-80 and a feed
increasedtension intravenously, although he can smoke it
it will be, go and understand it..."
It was day 28 of the epic with the incomprehensible Speccy. On the 5th day he
finished with ROM, system variables and screen area.
Realizing that he had nothing more to do, Speccy deigned to replace
It seems that for some reason it has a keyboard and a screen. Having done
conclusion that he is not alone in the universe, the Z-80 gave out a terribly universal
salized cursor in the form of an "underline" icon and became
wait. It took about half an hour until I had overcome all the reactions
inhibition in the imperfect brain of two Homo Sapiens formed
there was an idea about the possibility of communication. The first timid attempts
Andrey's sides understand each other (such as: "Yes! Yes! PC
is the ASS!", "Amiga rulez" and "Spectrum forever!") called
a violent reaction from the computer and a burning smell from the power supply.
After visual and olfactory review of the latter,
friends came to the conclusion that he had already passed pre-climactic
period, menopause, beginning of old age, its end, first degree
insanity and is about to die. This prompted them to abandon
refueling with FUEL, expressed in 5 bottles of beer per pen-
rally, and run to the store for five very non-standard
1 volt batteries with a charger. The process of re-
Switching to autonomous power supply did not take much time. Re-
the guys exposed the ends (in the sense of wires, not what you think
Mali), parallel to the old man's power supply, they turned on the battery
tori and,solemnly promising him a lifelong pension (in the form of
changing fuses), cut off the cord connecting it to
computer. The poor fellow immediately demanded his due pension,
mafora with flashes of exploding capacitors and burning components
resistance, and happily gave up the ends (those same bare-
nye).
Then things went uphill. Despite the hysterical blinking
curb and the onset of anaphylactic shock, when pressed
"BREAK" button, friends quickly managed to put it in
dependence on the machine code of the assembler command, at the same time absolutely
Lutely accidentally proved the Pythagorean theorem, forgotten back in school.
le. Then, a little longer, they explained the concepts of affirmation,
question and the influence of the radius of the point in the exclamation mark on
the length of his wand, simultaneously inventing the ternary ("Yes", "No",
"Not sure"), quaternary ("Yes", "No", "Rather yes than
no”, “Rather no than yes”) and fivefold (“Yes”, “Yes”, “So
exactly”, “No”, “Not at all”) of the system.
And now they were sitting stupidly staring at the burning
screen, a question that has been bothering the computer for a long time: “LD HL,
DE?...".
"That's it, that's enough!" - said Mike - “We need to teach him English-
mu." - and looked at Andrey with hope. But since in
there wasn't a single English-speaking person except Jim
Morison, grinning in concentration from the wall, then training
had to start together with a large English-Russian dictionary and
English textbook for 7th grade."Mike? That's it! Memory's out!" - Andrey, as always, does not
worried about long introductions over the phone. - "Okay
even though he thought of warning us, we would never have
tagged... How is it HOW? Charming inscription 'Out of memo-
ry'. I taught him English myself. I understand that you are already all
I gutted my ATM for RU-5. Come to me, instead-
we'll think about it. You don't know how to think for yourself! That's it, I'm waiting."
Based on materials from the newspaper ZX Pilot-35
Prepared by Alexey Shirokov aka ASH
Ufa, 04/05/2000
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