Difference between revisions of "Rise of Glie Chapter 32"

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Previous: [[Rise of Glie Chapter 32]]: Sixty Thousand Transistors
+
Previous: [[Rise of Glie Chapter 31]]: They Don't Fall
  
 
== FHD Remix: The Rise of Glie ==
 
== FHD Remix: The Rise of Glie ==
  
Chapter 33: Take Your Best Guess
+
Chapter 32: Sixty Thousand Transistors
  
Jabez pushes the blade carriage on the saw, keeping a careful eye on the disk he slicesAs he pulls back the blade, it moves almost imperceptably for the next sliceThe white coveralls he is wearing has the gloves for the wings tucked inside the back of the suit, since he doesn't have wings.
+
"Well," Bangou says as she pours over the thick pile of paperShe finds an early page in the ream sized stack and shoves most of it away, keeping a small sheaf, "The top page says the logic section is not binding on usI know I can do better than that."
  
"Thanks for your help," Fushoku says, "The rest of us have decided to combine lunch and afternoon break to save a cleaning cycle. It'll start an hour later.  Is that alright with you?"
+
"How?" Fushoku asks.
  
"Well," Jabez carefully takes another slice of the transistor crystal, then says, "I'm getting kinda hungry, but considering what these things bring in and how many we need to make, yeah, I'm fine with it."
+
"We design a logic section that can do the few basic operations we need very well," she explains, "and then we translate our more complex operations into sequences of the basic operations.  Here's an example," she points in the first section that she has decided to keep.  Flipping over one of the logic pages to a blank side, she copies the instruction, "Add the value at this address to the value at this address and store it in this address, all memory addresses."  She continues, writing the steps under the old instruction, "We write a fast register onto the chip, and load the first value into it directly.  Next, we take the second value and write it through the add logic into the register, so the register now holds the sum.  Finally, we write the sum in the register to the third memory location."
  
"Jabez," Fushoku whispers, "Our yield jumped from 25% to 60% since you started working the saw. Do you have any idea why?"
+
"I just make the things," Fushoku groans.
  
"I guess I'm just good at it," Jabez whispers back playfully.
+
"Yeah, and what did you call that stuff again?" she asks pointing at a plastic jar on the workbench.
  
Fushoku follows the tilt of his head and sees another saw blade resting against the hutch of the bench.  He then looks at the blade on the saw and realizes that Jabez has installed his own, brand-new diamond saw blade, absent of the microscopic wood dust they usually come with.  "Thank you," he says, "Remember your pen at lunch; I want to keep it."
+
"Hydrochloric acid," he answers, "does it matter?"
  
Stone Mill has been retrofitted with a clean room, and the other workers, both human and haibane, have interrupted their work on the third windmill generator, cleaned out Kenny's entire inventory of plastic sheeting, and wrapped up everything to make this half of Stone Mill cleaner than it has ever beenThe sheeting separating the transistor half of Stone Mill from the idle generator half (and the little lunch room) billows with a filtered blower blowing clean air into it.  It is Jose's blower, with Haoto's electrostatic filters on both the intake and exhaust.
+
"That's the whole point, isn't it?" she says, "The Saviour brought us all to this world because no one person can do it allEach of us has our part."
  
Fushoku stayed up late the night before to run a batch of metal gate transistors, 435 of which fit on a wafer.  Instead of just one, ninety-three worked, and he cheered ... but the thought that so many more of the tiny devices must function to make a microchip out of them was sobering. Also, he can't sell them to the Toga like this, since they don't meet the junction transistor specification.
+
"Yes," Bahitsu says over their shoulders, "and I just learned mine was called thermodamnamics." he giggles.
  
That morning, Bangou rides with Washi as they drive the cart along the southern path.  Kenny leads his "paving crew" somewhat to the north, tiling a shorter route over the mud flats, which will also become Glie's new Main Street once the city moves back towards the geographic centre of the walled area.
+
"That's thermo''dy''namics, boy!" Teacher Shoukai bellows from across Stone Mill's machine hall.
  
As they approach, a crow sitting in a potted tree next to the tent flying the small grey triangular flag from its centerpost caws four times as though to announce the cart's approach.  As though answering it, a Toga emerges from the tent a few seconds later.
+
Fushoku and Bangou glance at each other and say almost in unison, "Must be an English word."
  
When they get there, Washi sells the four batches that they are carrying to the camp, along with four blocks of red colored high density polyethylene plastic.  The Toga have their own metal cans and lead wires.  Bangou is surprised to realize that, from her dreams alone, she is fluent in the sign language that they use.
+
They return to their work.  Bangou is grinding away at the circuit layout for a memory chip, stooped over a ledger-sized paper with her drafting tools.  "How wide are these things again?" she asks.
  
"We have a gift for your Ashfeather Number, if you have one," the Toga signs.  He presents a small wooden box.
+
"Fifty micrometres," Fushoku answers.
  
"We do," the Communicator signs, "I'm not sure how you find out, but I'll make sure she-"
+
"That's too big," she groans, "I can only get sixteen latches on a chip.  We'll have to make them smaller as soon as we can."
  
He suddenly feels a bump on his shoulder.  The crow shifts its weight nervously on its branch in the little tree.
+
"That ain't in the next hour," Fushoku grumbles, "They're giving me enough trouble as it is."  He cranks a handle on his gangly looking machine, and an almost needle like scalpel blade cuts a tiny slit through an inticrately lined brass plate just twenty five millimetres in diameter, "I wish we had a computer to run this tedious thing ... Between the boredom and the cramps, it's a wonder I get any of them right."
  
"I am Ashfeather Number," she signs from the Communicator's side, having silently disembarked from the cart when the conversation turned to her.  She bows graciously, then signs, "Thank you very much."
+
"The problem is, that we won't know if any of them are right until we actually build them," she says, "I find glitches every time I go through a desk run."
  
The Toga seems rather taken aback, perhaps even alarmed.  The Communicator is quite stiff.  Bangou can hear his wings creaking.
+
"Will the one I'm making right now have any glitches you haven't noticed?" he asks.
  
Washi rushes Bangou back to the cart.  "Bangou, you have to realize there are ''reasons'' we have rules," he growls.
+
"Probably," she says ruefully, "Sorry."
  
"I'm sorry," she squeaks.
+
"Ah," Stanley says from behind them, "They said I could always find you here."
  
"Only official Communicators are allowed to speak to the Toga," he clarifies, "You know that.  But I guess, since you've learned their language ''somehow,'' I should explain why."
+
Fushoku turns, noticing Aware right behind the human mayor, "What's up?"
  
He starts up the cart as he begins, "The Toga have ingrained in their culture privacy and anonymity.  They are more comfortable ''not'' knowing the individual identities of the people they are dealing with."
+
Stanley sits down, "The boys are telling me that some of the stuff you've asked for can't be done until," he takes a breath, "you actually start making these things so they can use them."
  
"Sounds like they have trouble trusting their trading partners," she observes.
+
"Great," Fushoku grunts, "How are we going to build them?"
  
"Yeah, well I can't blame them," the Communicator huffs.
+
Stanley hands him a couple of pages, "This is the electrostatic, air cleanliness, and zone temperature we are building right now.  It won't get any better than that. But..."
  
Bangou thinks that might be referring to her, but that thought immediately becomes uncomfortable. "Who do you mean?" she begins to ask, and then quickly retreats, "Never mind."
+
Fushoku looks at the pages in disappointment.
  
"I think you understand more than you let on," Washi says, "Do you know what the wall is for?"
+
"Here's the idea," Stanley begins, "Of course, once you make a few early models that we can use to control equipment, we'll need to upgrade the equipment with them, and then you can make better chips."
  
"Not exactly," she says.
+
"There's no way we can do that without a massive hit in downtime," Fushoku concludes, "I mean unless we built another-" he catches Stanley smiling.
  
"Take your best guess," Washi instructs.
+
"Another Wire Factory," Stanley concludes, "next to the one we're building right now.  That way one will be running, and one will be upgrading.  The steel structure won't go obsolete, of course, but your specification here," he points, "that screws with the brick and mortar, insulations, wiring, and even that funky stuff the Toga offered us called ''drywall.''  I don't see any other way."
  
"Protection?" she asks.
+
Fushoku looks back at him in surprise, "You're willing to build us haibane ''another'' nest?"
  
"Good answer," the Communicator intones, "Don't you think the Toga would like to protect their best friends from that enemy?"
+
Stanley nods.
  
"We are their best friends?" Bangou asks.
+
"The Toga are scrambling for your polyethylene cased junction transistors," Aware says, "''far'' more than I've told you before. You could run that oven twenty-four-seven, have every single one work and they ''still'' wouldn't be sated.  We're asking you to make enough so that we can buy the steel for the second-" he pauses, "''wing'' of Wire Factory."
  
"Absolutely," Washi affirms, "Don't you also think, that living outside the wall..."
+
Fushoku takes the purchase order from Aware's hand, glances at it, then hands it back.  "Six weeks," he says flatly, "Bahitsu'll tell you the rest."  He gets up from his bench, glancing at Bangou, he says, "It's more exciting than this, anyway."
  
"Mostly," she fills in.
+
"And maybe I'll find some of those glitches I haven't noticed," she says, "especially if you can save me a few leftovers," she nods to Aware's paperwork.
  
"Mostly," Washi confirms, "that they too would need protection from whatever we need protection from?"
+
"Um ... make that ''seven'' weeks," Fushoku says to Aware and Stanley as they start to turn, "That'll include the replacement of every radio in Glie," he announces.
  
"Oh, that's silly," she says, "If they can't trust whoever's outside, how do they conduct..." her speech slows to an eerie crawl, "...trade?"
+
"Why?" Bangou asks.
  
"I think that settles the reason about official Communicators," he says, "So what did they give you?"
+
"We can't have anything new," Fushoku says, "including transistors."  Nodding to Stanley, he says, "Haoto and I will get started right away."
  
"Oh?" she realizes she's still holding the wooden box.  Inside, wrapped in a silvered plastic, are dozens of tiny metal cans, each with three wires sticking out of them at one end, through a red plastic plug.  Two hundred.  She closes the box.
+
"Thanks," Stanley answers.
  
"How did you learn their language?" Washi asks.
+
"Fushoku," Aware says, "That computer isn't ''yours,'' you can use new transistors in it. Besides, there are only about two hundred transistors in Glie, the Toga said that computer will need at least fifty thousand."
  
"The Saviour teaches me in my dreams," she says softly, near tears, "as a ''computer'' language."
+
"We're not making it out of transistors," Fushoku explains, "We're going to be making it out of Wire Factory's microchips.  We need the transistors to test circuit designs."
  
"Interesting," Washi says, "Anyway, keep up the good work, and give my regards to Stone Mill."
+
Aware glances at his purchase order as though it might have an error, then asks Fushoku, "Only seven weeks?  Are you sure you read this thing right?"
  
She smiles, and waves goodbye in Toganese.
+
"Sixty thousand transistors," Fushoku nods, "And I'd love it if you'd sign us for the overtime."
  
"You're keeping them really busy," Washi signs in Toganese as she departs the cart at the camp.
+
--------
  
"So, what's it like over there?" Fushoku asks.
+
"We've approved the order for sixty thousand transistors," the Communicator signs to the Toga visiting from outside the Wall.  "Your shop here in Market Square, will it be doing assembly?"
  
"I don't know," Bangou says, "I spoke out of turn and blew it."
+
"How long until the first batch of crystals for that order?" the Toga asks.
  
"Oh, you know the Toga don't speak," Fushoku says, "Why bother trying?"
+
The Communicator pats the cart next to him, "The first two batches are right here.  Our plant is trying for delivery in 360 batches, at an average of nine per working day."
  
"It's a bit worse than that," she says, then signs in Toganese.
+
"''Really?''" he signs with trembling hands, "What about the computer?"
  
"Ashfeather Number," he tries to work out, "very much?"
+
"Nothing on that, yet," the Communicator replies, "They are working on a design we will build in our new factory, which is expected to go into operation in the spring."
  
"I am Ashfeather Number," she says with a blush, "Thank you very much."
+
"That is well," the Toga replies, "We can do the assembly of computers ourselves once we have the transistors, especially if you can really make nine thousand a week.  If it's alright with you, I'll be the only one leaving this week, while the rest of us stay here to attach the leads to these batches and the rest as they come.  You'll be needing more fuel, I assume."
  
"For what?" he asks.
+
The Communicator doesn't respond.
  
She opens the box and wrapper and shows him.
+
"The plastic we use to encase the transistors uses fuel, does it not?"
  
"Wow," he gasps.
+
"Oops," the Communicator signs.
  
"That's quite a cry from the campfire kiln four years ago," Aware says.
+
He turns about and calls, "Feather Aware, did you remember to tell Kenny about the transistors?"
  
Next: [[Rise of Glie Chapter 34]]: Kagami's Bird
+
"Yes," he runs up to Washi's side, "His estimate was slow in coming, and we barely-"
 +
 
 +
"We don't have time to translate it," the Communicator intones as he takes it, then signs to the Toga, "Can you read this at all?"
 +
 
 +
The Toga tucks it into his robe and replies, "Perfectly, I guess that will be all for today."  He turns towards the gate to brief the other Toga.
 +
 
 +
The Communicator seems quite perplexed as the Toga animatedly discuss the paperwork they've just received.
 +
 
 +
"Bangou translated it for us," Aware explains, "Don't ask me where she picked it up; I haven't the faintest idea."
 +
 
 +
Next: [[Rise of Glie Chapter 33]]: Take Your Best Guess
  
 
[http://haibaniki.rubychan.de/wiki/Rise_of_Glie Back to Rise of Glie main directory]
 
[http://haibaniki.rubychan.de/wiki/Rise_of_Glie Back to Rise of Glie main directory]

Latest revision as of 10:12, 27 January 2016

Back to Rise of Glie main directory

Previous: Rise of Glie Chapter 31: They Don't Fall

FHD Remix: The Rise of Glie

Chapter 32: Sixty Thousand Transistors

"Well," Bangou says as she pours over the thick pile of paper. She finds an early page in the ream sized stack and shoves most of it away, keeping a small sheaf, "The top page says the logic section is not binding on us. I know I can do better than that."

"How?" Fushoku asks.

"We design a logic section that can do the few basic operations we need very well," she explains, "and then we translate our more complex operations into sequences of the basic operations. Here's an example," she points in the first section that she has decided to keep. Flipping over one of the logic pages to a blank side, she copies the instruction, "Add the value at this address to the value at this address and store it in this address, all memory addresses." She continues, writing the steps under the old instruction, "We write a fast register onto the chip, and load the first value into it directly. Next, we take the second value and write it through the add logic into the register, so the register now holds the sum. Finally, we write the sum in the register to the third memory location."

"I just make the things," Fushoku groans.

"Yeah, and what did you call that stuff again?" she asks pointing at a plastic jar on the workbench.

"Hydrochloric acid," he answers, "does it matter?"

"That's the whole point, isn't it?" she says, "The Saviour brought us all to this world because no one person can do it all. Each of us has our part."

"Yes," Bahitsu says over their shoulders, "and I just learned mine was called thermodamnamics." he giggles.

"That's thermodynamics, boy!" Teacher Shoukai bellows from across Stone Mill's machine hall.

Fushoku and Bangou glance at each other and say almost in unison, "Must be an English word."

They return to their work. Bangou is grinding away at the circuit layout for a memory chip, stooped over a ledger-sized paper with her drafting tools. "How wide are these things again?" she asks.

"Fifty micrometres," Fushoku answers.

"That's too big," she groans, "I can only get sixteen latches on a chip. We'll have to make them smaller as soon as we can."

"That ain't in the next hour," Fushoku grumbles, "They're giving me enough trouble as it is." He cranks a handle on his gangly looking machine, and an almost needle like scalpel blade cuts a tiny slit through an inticrately lined brass plate just twenty five millimetres in diameter, "I wish we had a computer to run this tedious thing ... Between the boredom and the cramps, it's a wonder I get any of them right."

"The problem is, that we won't know if any of them are right until we actually build them," she says, "I find glitches every time I go through a desk run."

"Will the one I'm making right now have any glitches you haven't noticed?" he asks.

"Probably," she says ruefully, "Sorry."

"Ah," Stanley says from behind them, "They said I could always find you here."

Fushoku turns, noticing Aware right behind the human mayor, "What's up?"

Stanley sits down, "The boys are telling me that some of the stuff you've asked for can't be done until," he takes a breath, "you actually start making these things so they can use them."

"Great," Fushoku grunts, "How are we going to build them?"

Stanley hands him a couple of pages, "This is the electrostatic, air cleanliness, and zone temperature we are building right now. It won't get any better than that. But..."

Fushoku looks at the pages in disappointment.

"Here's the idea," Stanley begins, "Of course, once you make a few early models that we can use to control equipment, we'll need to upgrade the equipment with them, and then you can make better chips."

"There's no way we can do that without a massive hit in downtime," Fushoku concludes, "I mean unless we built another-" he catches Stanley smiling.

"Another Wire Factory," Stanley concludes, "next to the one we're building right now. That way one will be running, and one will be upgrading. The steel structure won't go obsolete, of course, but your specification here," he points, "that screws with the brick and mortar, insulations, wiring, and even that funky stuff the Toga offered us called drywall. I don't see any other way."

Fushoku looks back at him in surprise, "You're willing to build us haibane another nest?"

Stanley nods.

"The Toga are scrambling for your polyethylene cased junction transistors," Aware says, "far more than I've told you before. You could run that oven twenty-four-seven, have every single one work and they still wouldn't be sated. We're asking you to make enough so that we can buy the steel for the second-" he pauses, "wing of Wire Factory."

Fushoku takes the purchase order from Aware's hand, glances at it, then hands it back. "Six weeks," he says flatly, "Bahitsu'll tell you the rest." He gets up from his bench, glancing at Bangou, he says, "It's more exciting than this, anyway."

"And maybe I'll find some of those glitches I haven't noticed," she says, "especially if you can save me a few leftovers," she nods to Aware's paperwork.

"Um ... make that seven weeks," Fushoku says to Aware and Stanley as they start to turn, "That'll include the replacement of every radio in Glie," he announces.

"Why?" Bangou asks.

"We can't have anything new," Fushoku says, "including transistors." Nodding to Stanley, he says, "Haoto and I will get started right away."

"Thanks," Stanley answers.

"Fushoku," Aware says, "That computer isn't yours, you can use new transistors in it. Besides, there are only about two hundred transistors in Glie, the Toga said that computer will need at least fifty thousand."

"We're not making it out of transistors," Fushoku explains, "We're going to be making it out of Wire Factory's microchips. We need the transistors to test circuit designs."

Aware glances at his purchase order as though it might have an error, then asks Fushoku, "Only seven weeks? Are you sure you read this thing right?"

"Sixty thousand transistors," Fushoku nods, "And I'd love it if you'd sign us for the overtime."


"We've approved the order for sixty thousand transistors," the Communicator signs to the Toga visiting from outside the Wall. "Your shop here in Market Square, will it be doing assembly?"

"How long until the first batch of crystals for that order?" the Toga asks.

The Communicator pats the cart next to him, "The first two batches are right here. Our plant is trying for delivery in 360 batches, at an average of nine per working day."

"Really?" he signs with trembling hands, "What about the computer?"

"Nothing on that, yet," the Communicator replies, "They are working on a design we will build in our new factory, which is expected to go into operation in the spring."

"That is well," the Toga replies, "We can do the assembly of computers ourselves once we have the transistors, especially if you can really make nine thousand a week. If it's alright with you, I'll be the only one leaving this week, while the rest of us stay here to attach the leads to these batches and the rest as they come. You'll be needing more fuel, I assume."

The Communicator doesn't respond.

"The plastic we use to encase the transistors uses fuel, does it not?"

"Oops," the Communicator signs.

He turns about and calls, "Feather Aware, did you remember to tell Kenny about the transistors?"

"Yes," he runs up to Washi's side, "His estimate was slow in coming, and we barely-"

"We don't have time to translate it," the Communicator intones as he takes it, then signs to the Toga, "Can you read this at all?"

The Toga tucks it into his robe and replies, "Perfectly, I guess that will be all for today." He turns towards the gate to brief the other Toga.

The Communicator seems quite perplexed as the Toga animatedly discuss the paperwork they've just received.

"Bangou translated it for us," Aware explains, "Don't ask me where she picked it up; I haven't the faintest idea."

Next: Rise of Glie Chapter 33: Take Your Best Guess

Back to Rise of Glie main directory