IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 58

too, could not resist the magnetic
force. It was exhausting work. The
only amelioration was that they
couldn't be separated because
they were still conjugated; when
Psi had to jump up on the step, Phi
had to jump down, and vice versa.
By some miracle, they could also
talk to each other, which was a
great comfort. Most, or perhaps all,
of the other electron-slaves around
them also possessed the gift of
speech; their constant murmurings
were clearly audible.
As Phi and Psi were to discover, the official language throughout Turingia was bit-language,
whose spoken form was bit-talk or,
more colloquially, digi-chat, which
the colonized electrons, too, were
compelled to speak. The language
consisted merely of bips and bops,
so a single typical word could look
like "bip-bip-bop-bip-bip-bop-bopbip-bip-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bipbip-...," going on almost forever and
thus exceeding powers of human
comprehension. Who could understand a conversation between two
electrons such as:
"Bip -bip -bop -bip -bip -bip -bip b op - b op - b op - b op - b op - bip - bip
bip-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bip-bip
bip-bip-bip-bop-bop-bop-bop-bopbip-bip bop-bip-bip."
"Bip-bop-bop-bop-bop-bip-bipbop-bip-bip-bop bop-bop-bop-bopbop-bip-bip."
"Bop-bop-bip-bip-bip-bip-bop
bip-bip-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bipbip bop-bop-bop-bop."
"Bip-bip-bop-bip-bip-bop-bopbip-bop-bip-bip."?
Even this bit-conversation has
been drastically shortened so as
not to burden the reader unduly with its normal, inordinate
length, for bip-bop binar y language is tedious in the extreme.
Even to say "Good morning," for
instance, requires endurance:
"Bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-

bip-bip-bip-bop-bop bip-bip-bopbip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bop-bop-bipbop-bip-bip-bip-bop-bip-bop-bopbip-bip-bip-bip-bop-bip-bip-bip."
The electrons themselves had
learnt through the knowledge of
compilation they had gleaned during their own incarceration in the
colony of Turingia how to translate these bip-bops into any arbitrary human language, and soon
detected that our two human-cumelectron captives spoke English. For
their sake, the continual bip-bopping jabber going on in the background as a continual murmur was
translated when communicating
with fellow electrons. After a time,
however, even Psi and Phi developed some facility with bit-talk.
There were myriads, indeed trillions and trillions of bitified electrons, all forced to perform binary
jumping-work in Turingia under the
force of the magnetic field incessantly moving to and fro, revisiting them, just as the algorithmic
bit-string dictated. It was a miserable slave's life for the electrons,
perhaps even worse than having to
swim in an electric current under
the compulsion of a potential difference, commonly known as a
voltage. It was hard to weigh the
alternatives against each other.
Both were unnatural compulsions.
At least, as an electron in an electric current, you could just flow
along with the crowd in a stream,
whereas in a binary-string copulator
you were incessantly being forced
to jump up or down, hither and
thither, under strict discipline.
Every now and again, a captive electron had the opportunity
of migrating to another step in the
same bit-string copulator or even to
another copulator altogether, which
provided some small relief from the
monotony. Unfortunately, the relief
was short-lived because the work
was everywhere the same: jumping
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

up, jumping down or sitting still.
Psi and Phi had seen a foretaste of
this fate in the Simple Harmonic
Oscillators in Matta Matta jumping
on their pogos, but in that case they
were performing creatively, making music, evoking a mood. Fellow
electrons told them they all had a
natural inclination toward making
music, not only for themselves, but
also to beguile human beings by
attuning them. Here it was a barren, joyless, monotonous slog. As
electrons, Psi and Phi were indeed
akin to simple harmonic oscillators with just two energy eigenlevels. They needed no nourishment
apart from the shots of force-field,
often in the form of so-called quark
pies, that simultaneously compelled
them to work. Resistance seemed
not merely futile, but impossible,
for how were you as a bitified electron to resist a magnetic force-field?
Your very essence was to move
under the compulsion of a changing force-field, and the magnetic
trolley gliding back and forth overhead at a wondrously high speed
was just such an accelerating magnetic force-field obeying the electromagnetic equations. How to rebel
against an equation formulating a
law of nature? The magnetic trolley was like a foreman giving commands to the electrons, but it, too,
was, in turn, a slave driven by the
electrons of an electric current executing under compulsion precisely
each step of the algorithm by commanding the magnet to move to
the next predetermined electron
with the predetermined digital command. The entire set-up was a kind
of labour-camp hell, apparently
with no escape.
Phi and Psi thought back wistfully to the Electron Liberation
Standstill campaign, in which Roger
had also been involved, having not
appreciated at the time its serious import or even, in a sense, its
∕

december 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015