User:JohnB/Fanfiction/The Homecoming

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(This is a sequel to Cyreril in Wonderland.)

Master Cyreril materialized on the steps in front of Ald-ruhn-under-Skar, but his body size was about the same as that of a cave rat. Fortunately, there weren't many people out at this time of night. Still, he ran to where he would be less conspicuous, and there he changed into his gown and gulped down the "get larger" Alice pill. He grew to his normal size.

He headed over to the Guild of Mages and snapped his fingers when he saw Explorer, the house genius.

"Yes, sir," Explorer responded obsequiously as he approached.

"Over here," Cyreril told him indicating a table as far away from Edwinna as possible.

They sat down.

"Do these mean anything to you?" he asked Explorer taking the books from the plastic bag.

Explorer seemed transfixed by the plastic bag. There was only one place where that could have come from.

"Explorer, focus!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Does this mean anything to you?"

He paged through one coffee-table book, and they came to a two-page spread of the Grand Canyon.

"Quite a foyada, wouldn't you say?" Cyreril remarked.

"This isn't a foyada, sir," Explorer responded. "It's a river chasm."

"Really! Where?!"

"You tell me!"

Cyreril clapped the book shut and ran his finger back and forth over the title "ARIZONA".

Explorer shrugged.

"Ah, he was right," Cyreril responded. "You are a robot, and a rather dumb one at that."

(Note: if you think this concept comes straight out of the 2001 Spielberg movie AI, look it up in Article_26112 in the aptly-named cracked{dot}com to be assured that we're almost there.)

"I was programmed solely to navigate the flying saucer that brought the two astronauts here. I have a 3d map of the observable universe in my head, with which I took control of the steerage to get us past comets, asteroids, and rogue planets. Then after the saucer arrived, I was deemed redundant and was gifted to the Guild of Mages in Balmora. All the astronauts had to do to return to Earth was to run the coordinates in the main computer in reverse order, set the saucer on autopilot, then kick back and knit sweaters or play solitaire.

"However, I also knew too much about both of them because, during the long journey here, there was a lot of inter-personal sniping going on between those two. One or the other would take me aside and badmouth not only his counterpart but also the management in a way that could get both into really big trouble. I was finally deemed too dangerous to bring home only to spill the beans."

"So you were marooned on this backward planet! That must have hurt."

"Hurt?"

"Never mind. Apparently, now the Redguard wants you back, and I think we can return you the same way I got there. The question in my mind is why."

"Surely, even you must have thrown away something very valuable only to regret it later on."

"True. So how did you end up here in beautiful downtown Ald-ruhn?"

"The Balmora mages put their heads together to decide what to do with me. I couldn't work magic, so they transported me here to assist Edwinna in her research. A good thing, too, because she's somewhat sloppy at what she does."

A voice suddenly blurted from behind, "Did I hear somebody just use my name in tandem with the word 'sloppy'?"

"Ah, Edwinna, ha-ha-ha!" Cyreril chortled visibly shaken. "I didn't say anything! Did you?" he asked turning to Explorer.

"I said it," Explorer answered bluntly.

Cyreril winced.

"You were supposed to say 'No', you dunderhead!" Cyreril whispered through his cupped hand.

"Young man, I would advise you to keep your mouth shut from now on or I'll transport you back to the Balmora guild to clean toilets!"

Her gaze suddenly fixed on the plastic bag. She reached to touch it, but Cyreril grabbed it away and put it behind his back.

"It's getting kind of stuffy in here, wouldn't you say, Explorer? Let's head over to the Ald Skar Inn because there's something I need to discuss with you in private."

They walked together toward the business district.

"You know, what just happened back there," Cyreril told him, "is proof positive that the astronauts were right in disposing of you here. It's a good thing I'm not a mage because, if I was, I too would be in hot water right now. But I'm going to repair you."

"Are you going to turn me into a real person?" Explorer asked starry-eyed.

"I wish I could, but you know that can't happen."

"I wish it too because the way Edwinna calls me 'young man' is her only redeeming quality with me."

"Well, I'm going to do her one better. I'm going to transform you into a lean, mean computing machine."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two USB thumb-drives that were given to him by the Redguard. The first (marked 1) contained the installation files for a whole new operating system. The other (marked 2) contained the entire contents of the Golden Record carried by Voyager I (Youtube ROMKbthmyOU). The Redguard had told him this record was headed into oblivion as far as they could tell, which made its compilation a complete waste of effort. If by some luck intergalactic beings were to find it, would they be able to play it? After all, if Voyager I crash-landed in Morrowind, the benighted rubes there might take it for a frisbee-like toy and start tossing it around. The record could be put to better use to give Explorer a more decent education.

"We need a room for the day," Cyreril told Boderi Farano, the proprietor.

He led them downstairs to a vacant room, and Cyreril bade Explorer make himself comfortable in the bed because much of the time he was going to be in a state of suspended animation. Cyreril asked where the monitor was, and Explorer opened his shirt to show the screen on his chest. Cyreril leafed through the detailed instruction notebook the Redguard had prepared for him while waiting for his arrival on Earth.

The first instruction was a diagram of the cap coming off a USB drive and an arrow showing the plug going to the USB port. He examined the plug and found a slot near the monitor that looked just the right size to accommodate it. It was a tight fit, but it went in.

"Feel anything?"

Explorer shook his head.

"Then I guess we're doing it right."

The second instruction showed a finger pressing on the Start button and the monitor screen going black. The accompanying illustration showed the finger pressing a second time and the monitor lighting up again.

He held the start button down until the monitor went blank then pushed it again to restart. The monitor came on, but Explorer still lay on the bed like a corpse. The monitor asked for instructions and gave options, none of which Cyreril could read.

The third instruction was more complicated. The illustration showed "/boot--ext 4--format (with a tick in the box), /root--ext 4--format (with a tick in the box), /home--ext 4--format (with no tick)." Cyreril had to make sure that everything in the monitor was an exact copy of what was in the illustration. (Windows uses FAT, HPFS, and NTFS, but it is possible to use Extension 4 instead.)

(Technical note: I came to computers rather late in life, when I was 46 almost 20 years ago, and to claim my first computer was a Windows 98 IBM Aptiva means nothing compared with a friend whose first computer was an Amiga. Still, the Aptiva had a floppy drive that if I remember well was designated the D: drive, which is now the CD-ROM drive.

The Windows system used to have lettered drives A:, B:, C:, D:, etc. The A: and B: were floppy disc drives, one for uploading and the other for downloading. The C: drive was the guts of the computer, but A: and B: were superseded by the C: when uploading from floppies became obsolete.

The Linux system, on the other hand, has only three partitions, the /boot [which contains Grub, corresponding with the BIOS], the /root [which contains the kernel files], and the /home [which contains all the configuration files and personal folders]. There is also the Swap, which is a sort of run-off gutter where data from an overflowing system can be directed and integrated back into the system. It dates from a time when computers had RAM measured in MB. Drivers come in the Hardware category.

For simplicity's sake, this story assumes that Explorer already had three partitions in his system. Please bear with me on this.)

The fourth instruction was to click Install. Having done so, there was nothing more for Cyreril to do but wait.

Several hours later, Explorer was lucid again, but they weren't finished. Using the notes from the Redguard, Cyreril opened a terminal in the monitor and typed: "sudo apt-get rm -f everything-redguard-said && sudo apt-get rm -f everything-japanese-said". (It translates as "super-doer [admin] using apt to remove by force everything-XYZ-said", which would have to be the name of a folder.) He pressed Enter, and a long list of scurrilous comments about each other and their bosses was zapped out. Done. The Golden Record was installed last.

Now Explorer could return home using the "get smaller" Alice pill and the Ald'ruhn-to-Tucson teleportation amulet...and the astronauts could finally stop taking heat for having abandoned a valuable piece of hardware.