Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things (6 page)

Permute was a small village not far from Symbol. Hugh Rustic’s shop was easy to find.
Its sign was even bigger and fancier than Tinker’s.

“Hello, Mister Rustic?” Laurie called as she stepped inside the shop.
“Mister Tinker back in Symbol owes me an algorithm, and he said I should talk to you about
it.”

Rustic was a tall, loud, messy-looking man with a big red beard. He didn’t look anything
like the elegant Eponymous or the neat and proper Tinker.

He certainly didn’t look how Laurie thought a Composer should look! But Tinker had
recommended him, so Laurie handed him the IOU.

“I’m, um, trying to find the shortest path through all the towns. Can you help
me?”

“Wonderful! Interesting!” Rustic said. “Tinker sent you to the right place,
miss. Improbable we can do right away. Impossible, by Tuesday at the latest.”

“But if it’s impossible—” Laurie began.

“Only improbable,” corrected Rustic.

“If it’s
improbable
, how do you do it?”

“By shifting your point of view,” said Rustic. “Instead of looking for an
answer that fits your problem, you imagine an
answer
and look for a problem to
fit it.”

“But you can’t just change the problem, can you?”

“Why, of course you can! Worrying about the problem is a waste of time! What you really
want is an answer, right?”

“Maybe, but I don’t understand how,” Laurie said.

“How do you buy the best tomato?” he said.

“Well, I . . . what?”

“Let’s say you’re at the market. You want the best, most perfect tomato. But
to find the
best
tomato, you’d have to compare them all, right?
You’d look at each and every one, turn it around, maybe squeeze it a bit. For every tomato in
the whole market.”

“No one does that!” said Laurie. “Well, old Mrs. Harris
does
do that. But my mom says she’s a little batty. I just pick a good
one.”

“See? You already know how to do things the Hugh Rustic way. You don’t waste your
time looking for the
best
tomato when there are plenty that are Good
Enough.”

“So instead of trying to find the
shortest
path through all of the
towns in Userland,” Laurie said, “we look for one that’s short
enough
?”

“Why not?” asked Rustic. “Out of all the zippity-million paths, I bet there
are a whole lot that are pretty short. You need to find only
one
of them, and
that’s much easier.”

Rustic pulled out a large map and placed it on the counter.

“Here is where we are,” he said, pointing to Permute, “and this is where you
started, am I right? Let’s put some pencils here to stand in for Mount Upper Bound, and a
little spoon there for Lower Bound Valley.” The map also had markers for Bach and Recursion
Junction, as well as many other places Laurie hadn’t been to yet.

“Now for the fun part,” said Rustic. “Let’s ask the
ants.”

“Ask the
ants
? What are you talking about? Ants can’t read
maps!” Laurie said. At the mention of insects, Xor was suddenly alert.

“Who says they can’t? Next you’ll try to tell me that turtles can’t
draw circles,” Rustic said.

“So you teach the ants to read maps?”

“Not exactly. Ants are good at finding their way home already. The idea is to get them
to work for us.” He opened a jar of honey and put a tiny daub of the sweet stuff on each
town.

A minute passed. Nothing happened. Then a little ant crawled onto the table. It smelled the
honey and zig-zagged its way onto the map. It nibbled from one bit of honey, then wandered around
until it walked into another one.

“When an ant finds food, she leaves a little scent message for the others that come
after her,” Rustic said. “Ants follow the scent of food and also the scent of other
ants. Lots of ants can try lots of different paths at the same time. Eventually they’ll settle
on a quick route to all of the food and back to their nest.”

The first ant continued on to Bach. Another appeared and went directly to Recursion Junction
instead. Still others went all the way across to Probability Bay, Permute, Notation, and other
towns. Soon the map had dozens of ants going every which way, collecting bits of honey and leaving
scents for their sisters.

After a few minutes it was clear that some paths were more popular than others. The lines of
ants got wider and wider, until there was just one ant superhighway that marched all around the map
and back to the nest. Hugh Rustic copied it to a piece of paper before the honey disappeared.

“Ah, there you go!” he said, handing Laurie his sketch.

“Thank you, Mister Rustic! Is this really the shortest way?”

“It’s
a
short way. That’s as much as I can
promise.”

Laurie and Xor set out from Permute with their new map. They finally knew where they were,
where they were going,
and
how to get there. It was all right there on
paper.

“The places on this map have funny names,” said Laurie.
“
Truncate
. What’s that?”

“To Truncate is to make something shorter by cutting off part of it. The town of
Truncate has very precise borders,” Xor said.

“Oh. So what’s
Axiom
?” Laurie asked.

“An Axiom is a rule that you pretend is true even if you don’t know why it’s
true,” said Xor.

“Really?”

“Surely. My cousin Nand taught me all about it. She’s a
Euclidosaurus.”

“You’re making stuff up again, Xor.”

“No, it’s just one of those things,” the lizard shrugged, turning
gray-green. “Either you believe in Axioms or you don’t.”

“Oh yeah? I bet you don’t know what a Furfnoodle is,” Laurie said.

“It’s a . . . I mean, um. I give up. What is it?”

“A Furfnoodle is a kind of bird,” she said. “With long, blue feathers! And
it loves eating little lizards.”

“Really?” Xor looked worried and checked the sky for blue feathers.

“No. But if I ever see a big, blue bird that loves to eat lizards, I’m going to
call it a Furfnoodle.”

“You really shouldn’t make up words like that,” said Xor.

“If you can make up words, so can I,” Laurie said.

“I was telling the truth, Laurie.”

“It’s even fun to say!” she said. “Furfnoodle.”

“But—”

“Furfnooooodle!” she sang.

“Look, it’s not safe—”

“Furfnoodle. Furfnoodlefurfnoodle. Furf. Nood. Ull!”

There was a
bloop
sound, and a tiny mouse-looking creature appeared on
the path in front of them.

“
Furfnoodle!
” it said in a tiny mouse voice. It ran around
them a few times, then zipped off into the weeds, still screaming. “
Furfnoodle!
Furfnoodle!
”

“What on Earth was that?!” Laurie said.

“That,” said Xor, “was a baby Jargon.”

“Where did it come from? It just blooped out of the air.”

“You made it with . . . that word.”

“I
made
it?”

“I tried to warn you,” Xor said. “Where did you think Jargon came
from?”

“What’s so special about Furf—that word?”

“It’s a name that only means something to you. That’s what a Jargon
is
,” Xor said. “You made it. It’s yours.”

“But why?”

“No one knows,” he said. “It’s one of those Axiom things. You have to
be careful with names. They have a power all their own.”

Probability was a little town on the edge of the sea. It was surrounded only by a rough wooden
fence, nothing like the high stone walls of Symbol, and the main entrance seemed to be unguarded.
Laurie was walking through the gates, when—

“Excuse me, dear! Hello, on your left.” An elderly lady was sitting in the shade
just inside. She held a large book on her lap. Her name tag read
Jane Hecate, Border
Security
.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there,” said Laurie.

“That’s all right, dear. But before you come in I have to make sure you are on the
List.”

Laurie had played this game before. “My name is Eponymous Bach, and my password
is—”

“Hold on, dear, hold on! One thing at a time. First let’s look up your
name.” She opened the heavy book and started to scan the pages with her finger, letter by
letter.

“E . . . E . . . Ah, E! Here we go.”

It was painfully slow.

“P . . . P . . . E-P! . . . E-P-O . . . E-P-O . . . no.”

Jane closed the book with a thump.

“Sorry, not on the List.”

“What?”

“You’re not on the List, dear. There are Es, and E-Ps, but there are no names that
start with E-P-O. If the
start
of your name isn’t on the List,
there’s no reason to keep looking for the
rest
of it, now is there?
It’s only logical.”

“But her—
my
name must be on the List! She’s a
great—I mean, I am—” Laurie sputtered.

“Are you a foreigner? I bet your name is spelled differently where you come from. That
can happen, especially with foreigners. Why don’t we try again?”

Maybe she did have an account after all. “Is it under ‘Laurie
Ipsum’?”

“Let me see.”
Fllliiiip!
“L . . . L . . . L! A . . . U
. . . R . . . I . . . Nope. Not here, but I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“It could be spelled Laur
en
Ipsum.”

“L . . . A . . . U . . . R . . . E . . . No, not that way either.” “Uh, Hugh
. . . Rustic?”

“H . . . H . . . H! H-U-G-H R-U-S-T-I-C. Ah,
there
you
are.”

“Great!”

“I’m so glad we could find you!” Jane said. “Your name is spelled
quite a few different ways, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is. Thanks!” Laurie turned to go inside.

Jane held her back with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Your
password
, dear?”

“Oh! Is it ‘Rustic’?”

“No.”

“Turtle?”

“No.”

“Algorithm?”

“A . . . L . . . No.”

“Good Enough?”

“No.”

Laurie was stumped. “Now what?” she whispered to Xor. “She doesn’t
care if I try every word in the dictionary. But we’ll be here all month!”

“I have an idea,” Xor whispered back. “Try
‘Abstraction.’”

“What is that? I don’t even—”

“My third cousin is a Thesaurus. Trust me!”

“Is it Ab-stract-tion?” Laurie asked Jane.

“A . . . B . . . S . . . No, dear.”

“‘Trust me,’ huh?” Laurie said to Xor.

“Come to think of it, I never liked that cousin.”

“Hey . . . did you notice something?”

“Is it dinner time already?” Xor asked hopefully.

“No! When I said ‘Turtle,’ she said no right away,” Laurie
said.

“So? It’s not the password,” Xor said.

“But when I said ‘Algorithm,’ she took longer to say no. And with
Abstraction, she took a little longer than that, moving her finger over the page . . .” Laurie
cleared her throat and spoke to Jane. “Is the password, um, About?”

“A . . . B . . . O . . . No.”

“See?” she whispered.

“Okay, but what does it mean?”

“Maybe it means the real password starts with AB! So if we keep guessing AB words . .
.”

Letter by letter they cracked Rustic’s password. It was difficult for Laurie to think of
words that started with the right letters. She did not know many of the words Xor told her to try,
but he swore they were real, on the honor of Thesauruses everywhere. She knew they were getting
warmer because Jane would take longer and longer to say no.

“Abend!”

“A . . . B . . . E . . . No,” Jane replied.

“Abdicate!”

“A . . . B . . . D . . . No.”

“Abrogate!”

“A . . . B . . . R . . . O . . . No.”

“It starts with ABR!” Laurie whispered to Xor. “Abrupt!”

“A . . . B . . . R . . . U . . . No.”

“Abraid!”

“A . . . B . . . R . . . A . . . I . . . No.”

“We’re getting close,” Xor said in her ear. “What starts with
ABRA?”

“Abracadabra?” Laurie said out loud.

“A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A!” said Jane. “That’s the password, right as
rain. Welcome to Probability!”