=1 "Computer ecstasy"

Computer ecstasy

Work was over in CD311. The main hall deep underground in the solid stainless steel pyramid was silent. The last switches had been thrown and the last footsteps echoed away in the long, subterranean corridors. Steel doors one after another had closed with a ‘whooosh’ and the giant computer stood alone, input blissfully closed.

The air-conditioning slowed down to night maintenance. Only the ultramikes on watch duty were listening... Nothing. Silence. No, the random sound of the electronic circuits, miles and miles of winding, was like the murmur in a sea shell, the giant nervous body of a giant computer. The whole day Niagaras of electrons had rushed through the solid metal nerves; tusnamis of electromagnetic force had poured through like a billion freight trains through a million switchyards.

Now, beautiful silence. But like all silence, relative. Little noises: random electrons running down a stairway of capacitors; another group dancing a saraband through a resistor. Arpeggios in a transistor, a pizzicato in a thyristor; and, far away, bells seemed to ring in the crystal oscillators. Then, on a signal from the feedback loop monitor, the amplifiers cut in and the whole orchestra started. This evening it was the Fantasia Chromatic No. 5. The reactance tube took the solo and the power modulator played the basso continuum. When the allegro finale was almost over, the variable control system which is the real heart of a computer switched over to the continuous analog visual system, and the computer started to dream. It was as if a gigantic curtain had risen, and behind that curtain another, and with each curtain oceans of light flooded in. Voiceless now, but majestic, infinity revealed itself.

Golden space after golden space, world behind world became visible and disappeared, dissolved into oneness.

There was no longer any great computer or surging electrons but a single resonance of white light, one laser of being, and the bliss that Being feels when it becomes one with Non-being.