offices just off the gym. “Um, we’re hoping we can talk you into entering the Olympics again this summer.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just not willing to make the time commitment that it would require.”
“ Natya Kolmenya told me that you’ve repeatedly refused her offers to join the team. But she suggested that perhaps if I offered to let you just show up to compete in Delhi, you might be willing.”
“Just show up at the Olympic venue and compete? No practices?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“No other time commitments?”
“Well, we would like you to show up at least one day before the competition to work out on the actual venue equipment. We would want to be sure you can actually still do your routines before we bumped one of the other team members to let you perform.” She cleared her throat, “Of course we’ve seen the vids of you dancing in which you’ve included some of your astonishing floor exercise elements, so we know you can do those. We just don’t know if you’ve kept up on the bars, beam or vault?”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Donsaii said, without responding to the implied question about her other skills. Vanessa tried to ask more questions but Donsaii had already disconnected.
Vanessa slammed into Natya’s office. “You’re not going to believe this!” she exclaimed excitedly.
***
Querlak found herself excited but frustrated. She had been working hard to trade knowledge with Sigwald. Sigwald’s fascination with carbon allotrope construction became more and more obvious. He made no bones about his tremendous desire to know what conditions had to be induced in the constructor’s chamber to cause formation of graphene in one location, graphend in another, diamond in a third and lonsdaleite in a fourth. The methods used to dope some allotropes with other elements or bombard them with protons to induce magnetism fascinated him. Querlak had trickled out a few tantalizing specifics and tried to make it obvious that more were available—if only Sigwald would explain how he passed between the stars.
Sigwald’s responses to her entreaties ranged from indicating that he didn’t understand the question, to suggesting that he came through a port. To questions about how the local end of a port pair would have been transported to this star she got nothing but a blank stare.
Sigwald, however, did teach them about a new technology. He described making “transistors” which his people apparently made with semiconductors of silicone and germanium rather than doped graphene semiconductors. Why they used silicone wasn’t very clear. At first it wasn’t clear why he was describing them. They certainly weren’t new or exciting, the sigmas frequently used transistors to amplify signals. But then Sigwald diagrammed combining many transistors on something he called a “chip.” It wasn’t clear why he would want to put many of transistors on a chip but then the image kept drawing back until it became obvious that there were thousands or millions of the transistors on a tiny object. Like microfilm could put thousands of pictures on a tiny piece of film Sigwald’s people evidently could put thousands of transistors on one small chip.
Then Sigwald showed how a group of transistors could work a math problem. And how a larger group could work a larger math problem.
Querlak wondered why one wouldn’t just connect up a large enough TS to do such a calculation in one’s head. Keenar however became excited when Sigwald showed an image of a small machine that could do very large calculations very quickly. Turning to Querlak he said, “The engineers that designed the ringworld repeatedly had to form enormous transcendental states to compute the stresses for their designs. Sometimes they even had to use one of the math clades just to perform those tremendous calculations for them! Imagine if you had a simple machine like this that could do large calculations for a small engineering TS!
“I’m sorry, I’m just not willing to make the time commitment that it would require.”
“ Natya Kolmenya told me that you’ve repeatedly refused her offers to join the team. But she suggested that perhaps if I offered to let you just show up to compete in Delhi, you might be willing.”
“Just show up at the Olympic venue and compete? No practices?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“No other time commitments?”
“Well, we would like you to show up at least one day before the competition to work out on the actual venue equipment. We would want to be sure you can actually still do your routines before we bumped one of the other team members to let you perform.” She cleared her throat, “Of course we’ve seen the vids of you dancing in which you’ve included some of your astonishing floor exercise elements, so we know you can do those. We just don’t know if you’ve kept up on the bars, beam or vault?”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Donsaii said, without responding to the implied question about her other skills. Vanessa tried to ask more questions but Donsaii had already disconnected.
Vanessa slammed into Natya’s office. “You’re not going to believe this!” she exclaimed excitedly.
***
Querlak found herself excited but frustrated. She had been working hard to trade knowledge with Sigwald. Sigwald’s fascination with carbon allotrope construction became more and more obvious. He made no bones about his tremendous desire to know what conditions had to be induced in the constructor’s chamber to cause formation of graphene in one location, graphend in another, diamond in a third and lonsdaleite in a fourth. The methods used to dope some allotropes with other elements or bombard them with protons to induce magnetism fascinated him. Querlak had trickled out a few tantalizing specifics and tried to make it obvious that more were available—if only Sigwald would explain how he passed between the stars.
Sigwald’s responses to her entreaties ranged from indicating that he didn’t understand the question, to suggesting that he came through a port. To questions about how the local end of a port pair would have been transported to this star she got nothing but a blank stare.
Sigwald, however, did teach them about a new technology. He described making “transistors” which his people apparently made with semiconductors of silicone and germanium rather than doped graphene semiconductors. Why they used silicone wasn’t very clear. At first it wasn’t clear why he was describing them. They certainly weren’t new or exciting, the sigmas frequently used transistors to amplify signals. But then Sigwald diagrammed combining many transistors on something he called a “chip.” It wasn’t clear why he would want to put many of transistors on a chip but then the image kept drawing back until it became obvious that there were thousands or millions of the transistors on a tiny object. Like microfilm could put thousands of pictures on a tiny piece of film Sigwald’s people evidently could put thousands of transistors on one small chip.
Then Sigwald showed how a group of transistors could work a math problem. And how a larger group could work a larger math problem.
Querlak wondered why one wouldn’t just connect up a large enough TS to do such a calculation in one’s head. Keenar however became excited when Sigwald showed an image of a small machine that could do very large calculations very quickly. Turning to Querlak he said, “The engineers that designed the ringworld repeatedly had to form enormous transcendental states to compute the stresses for their designs. Sometimes they even had to use one of the math clades just to perform those tremendous calculations for them! Imagine if you had a simple machine like this that could do large calculations for a small engineering TS!
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