DIARY OF A PROGRAMMER 
CHAPTER III
C. A. Rumbaut

(c) copyright 1992, C. A. Rumbaut. Originally published in Unshaved 
Truths #3.

"Welcome to Enchiridion," he says, smiling, "I'm David Engels."
	I want to shout victory for finally finding something real, something 
concrete to blame for my condition. I have seen nothing yet that undeniably 
connects this place with the mental turbulence I have endured for these past 
few months, but I am sure this is it.  I want to find out what they are up to, 
what they are about, what they have tried to do to me.  I also want to slap 
this guy in front of me.  The isn't-this-great affectation in his voice, the 
affable so-glad-to-see-you grin and the baby-fat face rub me the wrong 
way.  I bet he has no idea of the suffering he and his outfit have put me 
through.  
	I don't slap him, but I do not shake his outstretched hand.
	"We are a corporation, among other things," he says, unfazed by my 
simmering hostility.  "Some of our most important research and 
development are conducted in this plant.  We have various areas of interest, 
but the most intense focus relates to cybernetics research.  Let me show you 
around."
	As he leads me down a hallway with no pause in his patter I make a 
note of the colored, textured strips on the floor.  I feel like Hansel in the 
forest dropping bread crumbs to secure an escape route. 
	"Robot leads," he explains, as if I had asked him a question about 
the strips.  He can read my mind, I thought for a moment.  On second 
thought I figure that he's just caught me looking at the floor.  On my third 
and sobering thought I realize he may have the most direct access into my 
mind of anyone on the planet, including my psychic mother.
	"We are involved in ground-breaking work in an area best described 
as the intersection of hardware, software, and wetware;" he continues, "and 
we are drawing a lot of attention for it."
	"From whom?"  I consider myself well-read on the trade mags and I 
had never heard of Enchiridion.
	"Our customers," Engels says, his tone of voice adding "of course".  
"We deal with some of the larger computer firms, as well as some 
government  agencies such as the Secret Service.  Overseas our best cus-
tomers, interestingly enough, are manufacturing companies."
	We go into a large room.  I have yet to see a window.  There are a 
half dozen people at work around several desks and tables.  I see keyboards, 
monitors, computer towers, assorted electronic peripherals. One large area 
of a wall catches my eye.  It seems to periodically turn from a plain wall 
into some sort of projection screen.  I can't see any source of light; it must 
be  within the wall.  A picture emerges of what I take to be neural networks.  
It fades away, then a microphoto of computer chip circuitry appears.
	"We have a couple of projects in development here nicknamed HIS 
and HERS.  HIS stands for Human Instruction Set, our attempt to 
deconstruct the basic human thought processes into their most atomic parts.  
HERS stands for Heuristic Entity Relationship Structures..."
	"I'm familiar with the term," I cut him short.  "Why the secrecy?"
	"Secrecy?"  He stops, mulls over an answer.  "We don't think of 
ourselves as particularly secretive. As I mentioned, we have a variety of 
customers, and they keep up very closely with what we do.  In fact we 
advertise our products and services within certain circles.  I think I know 
what you are referring to.  It's true you won't find us in the mainstream 
press.  But every corporation creates its image and draws its veil according 
to its needs.  We make our existence known rather selectively, and that 
provides us with the working room that we require."
	"Look," I say, "I got into this building by chance using some special 
code on a state agency elevator. I've been working in that agency for five 
years and I never knew there was this operation adjacent to us.  Why isn't it 
common knowledge?  What makes you think I'm not going to tell every-
one?"  I feel my civility evaporating as my voice rises.  "And what kind of 
experiment have you people been subjecting me to?  Why was it done 
without my consent or even my knowledge?  Do you people even know 
what you're doing?"
	This last sentence I throw out to the faces in the room that are now 
all turned toward me.
	Engels takes a deep breath, then says, "Please don't get upset.  I am 
trying to explain who we are and what we do.  We want to provide you 
with any information you want.  I believe it's time you met Ms. Vega; she is 
leader of the project to which you refer.  She can answer your questions in 
that regard.  This way."
	Now that he has dropped the friendly voice and welcoming manner 
he turns all business.
	"It is true", he says, "that the passage from the state agency is not 
commonly known.  Then again, the state employees have no reason to want 
to come in here.  Of course, certain executives and technicians are aware of 
the arrangement, and they respect our interests.  For us, being adjacent to a 
large agency offers certain advantages, as we shall explain."
    
We walk up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, past a break room.  As I 
glance in I see a group of workers having a lively conversation.  Almost all 
of them wear white, with distinctive bands of color on the cuffs or at the 
collar.  We go on, then pass through an open door into what seems from 
the outside to be a darkened room.  Once inside, though, the room is lit and 
the noise from the hallway disappears. The door must consist of an 
electronically maintained invisible barrier.  The room has windows, but 
blinds obstruct the outside view. 
	A slender woman in a white smock is looking at some printouts.  
Engels clears his throat to make our presence known and says, "This is 
Maureen Vega, project leader for TIBS."
	"'Reen?" I ask incredulously as she turns towards us.  Engels falters 
before introducing me, throwing a questioning glance first at her then at me.
	She smiles and lowers her eyes for a second.  "Yes," she says 
simply, "How've you been?"  I take her hand briefly and our eyes meet.
	I did not recognize her right off, she seemed so out of context.  Was 
this the woman with whom I had danced years and years ago in her living 
room as her husband strummed flamenco chords on the guitar?  Was this 
the dark-haired, dark-eyed waitress who bewitched me into a brief, 
intoxicating affair that I have always regretted?
	Engels breaks in brusquely, "You know him from before?  Why 
wasn't I told about this?  Vega, I don't like it;  doesn't this compromise our 
results?"
	"No, it doesn't," she answers him immediately.  "Look, I understand 
your concerns because I had those same concerns when we first found him.   
My knowing him had nothing to do with his selection.  I was delighted 
because I knew we had found exactly what we were looking for, and I was 
not about to allow my previous relationship with him to derail the project.  
Besides, I told Mangino everything from the start."
	"I see. Well maybe I'll just take it up with her.  He's yours."  With 
that Engels turns and leaves, disappearing as he walks through the door-
field.
	"Office politics...," Maureen says to me apologetically, "Even in a 
place like this you can't get away from it."
	"And just what is this place?  And how did you ever wind up here?"  
Those are only the first two of a hundred questions popping in my mind.
	"This place ... this place is incredible," whe starts, with a tinge of 
awe in her voice.  "It's cutting edge in a dozen major areas.  Look, you 
knew me, what, ten years ago?  I was a waitress, period.  I knew zip about 
computer automata, subliminal psychology, neuro-linguistics, and various 
other areas that I'm now well-versed in.  I got all that here with accelerated 
learning techniques.  I'm learning more all the time, and we in Enchiridion's 
research arm are making fantastic discoveries.  Storage media, for example:  
mankind is producing an exponentially increasing amount of information.  
Storage capacity for even small enterprises are into gigabytes and terabytes.  
How do we, globally, store all this data and yet have it available for easy 
access?  The answer is we don't store it all because a lot of it is garbage or 
at least irrelevant.  What isn't needed should be filtered out.  Well, that's 
exactly how the human mind works.  The mind turns out to be the ultimate 
storage medium."  She is picking up steam as she talks.  I have seen her 
intensely excited like this before, but never about anything even remotely 
like data storage capacity.
	"I can't believe that you have been in charge of experimenting with 
my mind."  As I say that I realize that I'm illustrating her point, throwing out 
all the irrelevant stuff she's saying to get to what I need to know:  how I fit 
in.
	"It does seem strange on the surface," she says, "but to me it makes 
perfect sense.  We found a lot of psi patterns in your brain waves.  
Knowing you, that doesn't surprise me."
	"What kind of patterns?"  I find myself getting interested.
	"Psi, the greek letter; let me explain. There are certain brain patterns 
that are produced when the mind is most receptive to storing information.  
When our subjects reach the mental state corresponding to these patterns, 
they can take in unheard-of amounts of information.  But that is only the 
first half of the process.  The second half is retrieval, and what we are 
interested in is enriched retrieval.  That is, what is retrieved comes with a 
multi-dimensional set of associations pertinent to the purpose of the 
retrieval. You can think of it as retrieving information loaded with meaning, 
which as the coffee ad lady used to say, is the richest kind."
	OK, I'm intrigued.  I'll shut up and listen.
	"We have found that optimum enriched retrieval happens when a 
person produces a distinctive pattern of brain waves and concomitant 
physiological readings, which we call the psi pattern.  This pattern is quite 
different from that produced in the storing phase. It is not an easy pattern to 
discern, and only through statistical analysis of a large enough data set did 
we pinpoint it.  Still, the pattern was produced in the laboratory; we couldn't 
bank on it until we could see it produced "in the field".  That field, it turned 
out, became your state agency.  Once we fitted their desktop computers 
with our receivers we could eavesdrop on the brain waves of the whole 
place.  Eventually we found subjects who produced clear and consistent psi 
patterns.
	"It is within this group that we have been conducting research to 
determine what is going on mentally when the psi patterns are produced, 
how much creativity is involved, what reactions to external stimuli are 
during this state, etc.  In turns out these people are what we call head-
scratchers.  When they reach an impasse in problem-solving where there are 
no obvious solutions they pause and "scratch their heads", at least 
figuratively.  That's when we get psi patterns.  Mental and physiological 
activity actually seems to decrease at this point, as if the subject was 
daydreaming.  But then it shoots up suddenly. We believe enriched retrieval 
happens then, supplying the solution to the problem at hand.  The premium 
head-scratcher of the group, of course, is you."
	"Do you know what you put me through?"  I say this to connect 
with the 'Reen I used to know, not the fevered clinical researcher she has 
turned into.  "Do you know you've been driving me crazy?  Do you really 
know what you're doing?"
	"Look, I want you.  We need you.  You're the only one who'll do."  
Her words and mine are like an echo of words we exchanged ten years 
before.  Back then what she wanted was between my legs. Now it was 
between my ears.  I stood up, about to say something.  Instead, I ran.

(to be continued...next installment in Unshaved Truths #4)
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