Excerpt: Powers of Belief

"A gift? For me?" Mona "the Dozer" Mueller slowly opened the plastic bag and unfolded a black T-shirt that she strongly suspected wasn't her size. The front of the shirt read, "MORE THAN JUST SOFTWARE--IT'S MAGIC!"

"A souvenir from the conference," Jim Smithson, Sub-Director for Base Software, said.

"So it was a good week away from work for your people?"

"It was wonderful." Smithson almost seemed to swoon at the memory. "We got these in a session on 'Software Sorcery.' They had a test to determine what kind of Software Magic you practiced." He pulled off his sport coat, revealing a black t-shirt underneath. On the back it said, "SOFTWARE WIZARD."

"How nice," Mona said flatly.

"Everybody tested out as something different," Smithson said, oblivious to Mona's dismissive look. "Rick's a knight-wizard, Sally's a third-order mage of software necromancy--that's bringing code back from the dead..."

"I thought we called that 'fault recovery,'" Mona said, flipping her gift over. "So let's see what that makes me..."

"You're the Queen, of course," Smithson said quickly.

"Queen of the, what's the word, 'Ordinaries'? What powers does that give me?"

"Umm, in the magic realms, none. That's why you have wizards to help you."

Mona again turned the shirt over in her hands, again said nothing.

"Of course, as royalty you have great powers in the non-magical world. As Queen, you could have us all executed and stick our heads on pikes as a warning to others. Not that much different from the real world, is it?" He half-chuckled at his little joke, as if inviting Mona to join him.

She didn't. "Don't give me any ideas," she said, without a hint of humor. Then she half-folded the T-shirt and carefully draped it over the screen of her desktop computer.

She turned to face Smithson, and there was cold fire in her blue-gray eyes. "Now that we aren't being watched, let's get down to business."

"What do you mean, not being watched?" Smithson's eyes flicked between Mona and the covered monitor.

"Oh, come now, Mister Smithson," she said, and her voice was as cold as her gaze. "We both know your people have hacked into my computer, turned on the videoconference camera, and are probably watching this meeting right now."

Smithson turned white. "Uhh--" was about all he could get out.

Mona nodded icily. "To be fully honest--something you ought to try someday--I wasn't completely sure you knew about it. But judging by your expression, now I know. You've been watching my office for some time, haven't you."

"No," Smithson sputtered. "They set it up just before the delivery review; they wanted to know if you were making any deals with Division Sixty."

"That is none of your business," she said sharply. "You are a sub-contractor, and even if the Chairman's office did shove your 'universal base system platform' down my throat, you have no right to tap into my private business." She stood over Smithson, looking down at him. "Never underestimate the Queen, Mister Software Wizard. I may not be a magician, but I've got some damn good software people on my staff. While you and your department were spending fifty thousand dollars of my money playing Wizards and Dragons in San Francisco, I was having some of them do a little looking around. Would you like to know what we found?"

Smithson said nothing; he just stood like a deer in the headlights.

Mona stepped back and shoved a wheeled chair in his direction. "Have a seat, Mister Software Sub-Director." She picked up a remote from the corner of her desk and stabbed a button. A wall-sized screen lit up. "I'd offer you popcorn to go with the show, but it's a bit early in the morning." She clicked the remote, and the first page of a software listing appeared on the screen. It began, "WELCOME TO ALIEN: IN THE BASE SYSTEM, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR SCREAMS!"

Smithson jerked upright in his chair. "That's supposed to be a black box module," he protested. "Where'd you find that listing?"

"As I said, I may not have any magicians in my division, but I have some damn good programmers. At least as good as the people in your department who hacked my computer. And I don't believe in this black-box nonsense; I've found too many black boxes that have a boxing glove on a spring inside." She clicked the remote again, and a page of dense, small print appeared. "Let's see what's in the box I've given you a million dollars for."

She clicked the remote a couple more times, flipping to various pages in the listing. "Tell me, Mister Smithson, what programming language is that? I don't recognize it, and neither do any of my engineers."

Smithson stared at the listing, but said nothing.

After a few seconds, Mona advanced the listing further--it looked no different--and continued, "Most of the words are gibberish, though one of my people--a guy who came into programming after getting a doctorate in mythology--recognized the names of several obsolete deities amidst the nonsense. A few obscure Norse gods, a number of South American spirits, some demons from obscure medieval cults..." She clicked the remote and the screen went blank. "Do you know what we didn't find? Any useful software! As far as we can tell, this whole thing's just an interpreter for somebody's private programming language. It's as if your people wanted to make sure they'd have lifetime job security by writing code that nobody outside your shop can even read, let alone maintain and evolve."

"It's..." Smithson started to say something, but then slumped in his chair as if afraid anything he said would just make the situation worse.

"It's nothing," Mona said. "When we first found it, we thought maybe it was an incredibly clever virtual machine system, something that'd make it possible to write all the Base System Platform itself in just a few concise statements. We sort of expected something like that--you are part of the Forward-Looking Advanced Software Lab, after all--but when we deciphered some of the stuff, we found the elements of your gibberish language corresponded one-to-one with the elementary functions of any general-purpose language. This language of yours doesn't do anything but obscure the code."

She paused for a second, and lifted a corner of the souvenir T-shirt. "Maybe this software really is magic," she said thoughtfully. "It's nothing but smoke and mirrors and illusions. That sounds like magic to me." She turned, and clicked the remote again. A slide entitled "FUNCTIONAL TEST RESULTS" appeared on the screen. "We did some black-box testing, too; in fact, that was the first thing we did, and it was the results of those tests that made us go find a copy of your source code." She clicked the remote, and a list of specific functions appeared. Next to each function was a big red "X" and the words "FUNCTIONALITY NOT PRESENT." She clicked the remote one more time, and the screen went blank. "Do you see what we found? We're eighteen months into a two year project, we get our first delivery from you, and there's not a single functionality actually working. And when we look at the code, we find a fantasy programming language that doesn't do anything more than disguise the fact that there's no 'there' there."

Mona walked over to her desk and nudged a little yellow bulldozer model back and forth. "Do you know where I got my nickname, 'Mona the Dozer'? It's not because I sometimes nod off in meetings--though I do, because there's no point in staying awake when the presenter obviously has nothing to say." She gave Smithson a few seconds to think, and then slowly shake his head. "Do you know what this is?" she asked, picking up the model. "It's a Caterpillar D-9." She turned it around till the blade was pointed directly at Smithson. "And that's where I got my nickname. Somebody gets in my way, and they're going to feel like one of these has just run over them." She put the model back on the desk. "And let me tell you, I'm starting to think you and your department are in my way."

Smithson sagged in his chair. "What are you going to do?"

"Right now? Nothing. You made this mess, or you let it happen; I don't care which. You get one chance to fix it. You can start by firing whoever came up with that idea of writing your own fantasy programming language. Then you can get this software written right--and I'll send some people over to show you what 'right' means, if you're not sure."

Smithson nodded. "You're not taking this to the Chairman's office?"

"Not if you straighten this mess out. As entertaining as it might be to watch the executives tear you to pieces, it wouldn't get my project done. But I guarantee, if you screw it up again, you'll wish I'd just handed you over to the CEO. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let's bring your people back into the meeting." She lifted the T-shirt from the monitor. "Welcome back, Software Wizards! Before we end our meeting, I just wanted you to know the Queen of the Ordinaries knows a magic trick, too. Watch me make something disappear!" With an underhanded lob she'd perfected in years of pitching corporate beer-league softball, she tossed the shirt into the fireplace on the far wall of her office.* "Abra-cadabra!" she said, clicking a remote control that started the gas log. With a loud woosh the log lit, incinerating the shirt. "Now get to work before I do the same thing with your budget. The Queen has spoken!" She pressed a key on the computer, and its screen went blank. "Just a little something I had my people set up--your little spy hack is gone for good." She walked the still-dazed Smithson to the door. "And do me a favor," she said in a soft, almost kind, voice. "The next time you spend my money to take your people to a conference, make sure it's about software and not magic, would you please?"

Smithson nodded, and slowly left the office.

Mona sat behind her desk, both tired and invigorated from the confrontation. She looked at the fireplace, at the ashes of the T-shirt, and muttered, "Magic, ptui! Everyone knows there's no such thing!"

*In case the reader is wondering why a middle-manager would have a fireplace in her office, the answer is that Mona had it specially installed. For precisely the use to which she is now putting it.