The Randomiser

By Aviel S., Tucson, AZ Jeff glanced at the piece of paper in his hand once more, as if to confirm that he had found the correct office. It was so con­fusing here - all the identical white halls made this branch of Heaven seem like a labyrinth. At last, Jeff decided that this was the right place, and he cautiously opened the door.

The room was not especially large, but it was impressive nonetheless. The walls were just as white as every other room in Heaven, but they seemed to have a subtle apricot tinge.

Distributed evenly throughout the room were six identical white desks, each with two people (one on each side). On each desk was a large screen displaying various statistics. In the centre was another workstation with multiple small screens.

The spotless marble floor reflected everything perfectly, ex­cept where a perfect red circle had been painted, along with the words "That which lives must die."

A man seated at the centre desk stood up as Jeff entered the room, while everyone else looked up to see what was happen­ing. He grinned and said in a deep, loud voice: "This must be the new techie! Hello to you. I'm Aldric, the head of the Mortal­ity Department."

"Hello to you too," Jeff responded hesitantly. "My name is..." he paused. "Jeff. That's right."

"Oh, you must still be disoriented from your arrival," Aldric observed. "You don't look like you could be older than, say, your teen years, so you must have had an unnatural death. That may have made the confusion worse - but it will pass after a while."

"I guess that's good. I don't really know why I'm here. Someone just handed me this paper and told me to come to this office."

"You've been assigned to the Mortality Department as a tech specialist. The note I received tells me that you were quite the computer aficionado in life. You must also enjoy it quite a bit, or you'd never have been assigned to this job. You're going to be caring for one of the most important machines in exis­tence!"

"Really?" Jeff's face lit up.

"We call it the Randomiser, and it is the technological mas­terpiece that runs everything you see around you." He raised his hand as if to indicate the strange screens, the endless streams of data, and the large monitors on the walls that dis­played maps of the globe. "The Randomiser is the dealer of death. It determines when it is time for a living human to die."

"You mean it just picks that at random?" Jeff asked, in­credulous.

"Nonsense! It requires careful calibration almost constant­ly. We tweak the machine to favour certain demographic groups when it selects who dies. For instance, the elderly are more likely to be selected. Someone near a burning building instantly has a much higher chance of death by fire. A smoker has a higher chance of fatal lung cancer. And all of this data is carefully tweaked every minute of the day."

Aldric led his new protege around the room, showing off the technology. The screens on the desks each showed a continent, listing the names of the deceased in rapid fire. The sixth desk handled island nations and the few souls living at the poles. Larger displays on the walls showed the overall mortality rate for the world and various countries, as well as which causes of death were most common. In the centre was that circular desk with the open interior, where a swivel chair rested. More screens were positioned on all sides of this desk.

"This is where you'll be working," Aldric explained, beam­ing. "I've been manning it since our last techie retired, but now it's all yours. I'll show you the ropes and then you can start working right away - adjusting the probabilities to accommo­date the constant changes in the world and such. All the infor­mation you could ever need is here on the screen - the rest is left to your wit and skill."

"Hang on a second - there's a manual override or some­thing, right?"

"Pardon me?"

"I mean, if God needs to take someone for some reason, whatever his reason is. I know you can't question that - he can do that, right?"

"Whatever for?" Aldric asked. "That system was revised centuries ago, and even then it didn't work. It hasn't been prac­tical since medieval times. With so many people in the world, it's all that the Randomiser can do to even keep track of them. How can you expect God to sift through all that each day? Be­sides, when he got bored... let's just say we had to take that little toy away from him."

"Well... then there's some kind of probability rule that fa­vours good people, right?" Jeff asked. "Aren't bad people more likely to die?"

"What difference does it make when they'll have an eternal afterlife anyway? No, it's totally random. No one dies for rea­sons like that anymore. Not everything can have purpose like that - when humans are so numerous, you have to leave it to chance, you see?"

"To... chance? But... but what if..."

"Hold on! I guess I wasn't clear enough, was I? We some­times target particular people, if it's really necessary." "Oh," Jeff sighed, some colour returning to his face. "Take your death, for instance. We needed a new techie!" Aldric laughed heartily. "So... does that about cover every­thing?" Aldric waited for an answer, but none came - his re­placement had fled the room.

b) Read the story again and answer the questions.

1. 'Techie'. What is the complete word for this job later in the story?

2. What does mortality mean: a number of births or deaths in a given period?

3. The word aficionado came from Spanish meaning a fan of bull fighting. What was Jeff an aficionado of?

4. Tweak means do something for (better) functioning. Who tweaks the Randomiser?

5. Protege is a person who is protected and helped by the pa­tronage of another person. What language do you think it came from?

6. From the idiom learn the ropes. What does it mean?

7. Fled means ran away, as from trouble or danger. What is the infinitive?

c) Discuss the questions 1-7 in pairs.

1. Why was everything around white? 2. What does this slogan make you think of? 3. Why did Jeff feel happy? 4. Does the Randomiser really work at random? 5. Why were there so many screens around? 6. Why is it important for Jeff to know there is a reason in dying? 7. Why did Jeff run away?

3. What do you think the Randomiser look like? Imagine you are a book illustrator. How would you illustrate the story? Describe the picture.

4. Role-read the story.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-10