Jonathan: “Hello, my name is Jonathan, and I am a young-earth atheist.”
Suzy: “What do you mean?”
Jonathan: “I believe the Earth is five point seven thousand years old, but I do not believe in a personal or theistic god or gods. Not any sort of god really.”
Suzy: “What do you mean?”
Jonathan: “In the beginning, the earth formed itself through natural processes that are yet to be completely determined; although scientists have some good ideas about much of it, and much research is being done. Then, the animals all appeared out of the earth, including humans; except the first humans were a tiny-bit ape like in the beginning, for the first century or so. All of this can be explained without any need for an intervening agency.”
Suzy: “Explain more please.”
Jonathan: “The first ape-men, pre-humans migrated from China to Greece, where Plato was born. Plato started a rumor that a man named Homer wrote a book called The Iliad and another called The Odyssey. Those ape-men who stayed put, slowly evolved into Chinese and other Asians. An unknown man from somewhere in China made up stories about an ancient man named Confucius.
The rest is history. For example, Alexander the Great was of course a real man, as were Julias Cesar, Richard Nixon, and Jesus.”
Jonathan gazed into Suzy’s eyes and she melted. She did not understand everything Jonathan was explaining to her, but she knew he must be very intelligent – perhaps he was a genius. After all, he knew so much about Plato and Confucius.
He seemed to know so much about absolutely everything! Besides, she thought to herself, look at those dreamy eyes and big, strong hands! His voice was so pleasant too, she realized and openly smiled at him.
Suzy made love to Jonathan that night. Eventually, Suzy and Jonathan got married and had eleven children together – seven girls, three boys, and an unusual apeish-faced, hermaphrodite name Abraham Gail was the youngest.
Suzy decided not to bare any more children just shortly after beholding Abegale. Abe-Gale was the nickname that everyone called “it”; except for the youngest brother Josh, who called it Hermy when no one else was around – this always caused Abraham Gail to laugh in a weird high-pitched nervous laugh, followed by a queer looking grin-frown.
Jonathan did not seem to care one way or another about having more children. He neither loved nor hated any of his children really. He was always so busy “getting ready” for his classes. Jonathan taught a history class at the local community college and pretended to always be busy preparing for the next week’s lectures. He would lock himself in his office each evening, but he never would discuss what activities he did there.
Jonathan always owned the very latest high-tech laptop. The computer’s screen was ultra thin, detachable, with hi-resolution. The screen was not always utilized away from the office, since it had projection capabilities built into the main unit. His newest laptop had a small quantum processor built in, along with a grid of thousands of nanoprocessors that seemed to do that job very well. Without the screen, the device was fairly small, and could be detached and stored inside two vest pockets, if desired. One thin pocket for the power supply and one for the device itself.
He owned the latest true-surround-sound, noise canceling, yet tiny, and wireless headphones that formed a seal around the outer curve of each ear when worn. Jonathan had a second and third pair for any “guests” that may come into his office.
Included in his office were the very latest multiple ultra-high-definition cameras that were mounted all over the office room and barely visible to the human eye. Each camera contained a processor within it and would cancel itself out from the other cameras, so that they did not appear in any images or videos taken from within the room. The cameras were tiny. High-definition, three-dimensional imaging was possible with this arrangement, and Jonathan did occasionally show this off to his family.
No one outside of the family was ever permitted to see Abegale, so Abegale spent a great deal of its time reading books in the dimly-lit basement and surfing the Internet – with good two or three-year-old workstations discarded into the basement by father. Abraham Gail had learned to read adult-level books by age three and enjoyed being by “herself” most of the day (Abraham Gale looked “boyish”, was rather chubby, and yet preferred wearing pink colored, feminine clothing). Abegale especially enjoyed reading and learning all about the sciences of cosmology, biology, chemistry, and nuclear energy.
Abegale loved networking the old dicarded workstations together to create very powerful machines. After many years, as an early teen, she had networked five of her father’s old machines with eleven others from her sibling and mom’s old machines. She managed to get free time sharing on hundreds of other machines while they were not in use.
Abegale grew up very quickly to become a great, albeit secretive self-made scientist. Abegale invented a time machine that made use of certain network looping within a cluster of quantum processors and utilizing complex self-modifying software code. Abegale entered the time machine when she turned 17; going back five point seven thousand years in time. Abegale took cells from each sibling, from skin cells she discovered on her pink poodle skirt that had just been returned from the dry cleaners on the thirteenth, and from several (seventeen) animals before departing. No one ever saw Abegale nor the machine ever again.
In time, even Abraham Gail’s own mother, father, and siblings had mostly forgotten about their youngest sibling. From time-to-time, Josh would whisper a rhyme he had long ago made up about Hermy…
Hermy the Gale, looks like a male whale…
….but even that was forgotten by Josh by the time he left home.
Young, eleven-year-old Jacobal Lectomen set the still crude Child’s Toy prototype down and the story abruptly came to a halt. However, Jacobal accidentally started up the music mode (the controls were still not optimally designed for the boy’s young hands).
Suddenly music began playing in his head. Startled by the unexpected, high-decibel event, Jacobal’s heart momentarily raced due to a brief and minor adrenaline rush:
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D ‘n A Mutations I 12:07
{Opens in a different window or tab so you can listen and continue reading}
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The exhilarated Jacobal mentalmarked to the toy’s lead engineer Francis:
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Very impressive intelligent toy for an alpha version, but obviously it needs work! The story is a bit odd for a young child and I can see how some parents may take offense if they misunderstand or take the story out of context. I am not sure they will like it or pick up on the irony. It did make me laugh though! 🙂 Perhaps you can find a way to adjust the levels for the owner’s age?
The devise seems better at music and poetry. Perhaps you can leave out the story-telling with the first release.
I nearly had a heart attack when I set the thing down. Music started playing in my head (presumably it has the standard wireless protocols). It should not play anything until the users makes the request! I do like the fact that it does not require headphones, assuming you have reasonable head gear implants – which everybody over seven has – hmm, except for those kooky Luddite kids of course, and kids whose parents can’t afford this type of toy in the first place.
On the other hand, the music is interesting, but needs a little work in the transitions, it is a little long, and it ends oddly. I appreciate the DNA pun in the title, given that the music is mostly “played” in various D and A scales and that the music gradually changes over time. It never ceases to amaze me that machines can create music, stories and poetry – all from scratch (all be it still a bit too crudely for my taste).
The interface is still not working for me. It would be really cool if your partners could come up with a way to economically improve the interface so that it neatly fits anyone’s hands as soon as they pick it up. I have seen that there are some newer and better techniques for doing just that- I read something about it in the SciNet News site, but I did not get a chance to view the technical details on it.
When do you think you will have these bugs fixed for me to try again? It’s cool being a beta tester. I love this new technology! I want to work with artificial systems like you when I finish up school … if I can ever get myself motivated to study … heehaw
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Francis responded after a few moments:
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Great feedback – as always. Please let us know if you have anything else to add. Do you know if you pressed any keys before the music started? I have never seen that happen before.
For your efforts, we will continue to send you more free stuff to play with. Remember not to show anyone these prototypes. Spies are everywhere 😉 Some of our competitors hire kids like you to spy on us…Seems that everybody is doing that these days … take care good buddy…oh, and we deposited your bonus today, for your previous excellent “work”, into the account you sent us.
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Related post not listed in the menu:
screw-the-authoritarians
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Upgrade01A 
October 22, 2011
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