My CS essay
I'm done with all my finals and all my projects and essays and everything!!!
now I need to start packing... :-\
Jason's fingers danced across the nav-panel as he watched the display. The needle-shaped SpaceCorpse seeker was fast approaching. He tore his gaze from the screen and looked back at his flight plan. His altered HyperDrive was still practically idiot-proof, but there was no need to test that now. Three minutes more to space warp, five minutes more for the seeker to catch up with him. He laughed nervously with relief. It was almost funny how this plan had seemed so perfect on paper, but more than most Jason understood what could go wrong with a plan. Ten seconds. He glanced back at the squat stack of Neoladium cubes, both to reassure himself that they hadn't gone anywhere, and to reassure himself that this wasn't a dream. He really had done it and - he glanced at the display - in two more seconds he would get away with it.
While mankind had yet to explore all the stars in the 23rd century, it was only a matter of time before their intrepid scout ships had established jump points from which you could go anywhere. The advent of the HyperDrive had made exploration easier to continue from the areas of space that had already been covered, as it could only be used when you could accurately pinpoint both starting point and destination. Still, being able to avoid the known parts of space had given mankind’s space program an incredible boost, and it was only a matter of time before the effects of that were seen. One of the more immediate effects had been an all-time low in space crime. Enough stories had circulated of would-be-thieves stealing priceless treasures or stacks of Neoladium from a planetary treasury, escaped by ship to a nearby inhabited area by standard drive - where the theft would be less important and the items could possibly be profitably disposed of - only to find a SpaceCorpse Hyper-Seeker ship waiting there, and several standard fighters moving into position around their ship. Escape by space warp was not possible, as the SpaceCorpse had set up all of the proper hyper-points, making it effectively impossible for anyone to pass through undetected, and the systems where hyper-points had not been set up yet were too far out to reach without hypering part of the way. All of mankind had gotten the picture: escape in space was simply not possible.
Jason let out a whoop! of delight as he looked at the new star configurations filling his view. Even with the assurances of his now very late partner, Apsyrtus, he had still had some tiny misgivings in those last few seconds. He and his partner had been planning this theft for months: carefully acquiring a small, fast rather illegal seeker-type ship; modifying it for greater speed and better weaponry; and making the final modifications that would ensure their success, altering the HyperDrive so that it would accept a well-defined current location, and would then jump to a completely random destination. Of course, this final modification would only be of use to Jason and his partner if, once there, they could define their location accurately enough to jump again, this time to a distinct destination that Jason's partner had spent so much time on. The definition of a hyper-point was usually not possible for a civilian, but Apsyrtus had compromised a SpaceCorpse planetary link as a child on a school visit, leaving an access point behind when he got "lost" looking for a bathroom. He had discovered, years later, that the SpaceCorpse had found a way to define a hyper-point in terms of the locations of the others near it - a more time-consuming method than normal, but one that he could use now that he had access to the zealously guarded secret definition files of the other hyper-points in space. On his own, this information would just have been another SpaceCorpse secret that he thrilled at knowing, but no more. With his friend Jason's help, he had begun to see it as Opportunity.
Jason, of course, had had no trouble seeing the possibilities in being able to define a hyper-point without SpaceCorpse knowledge, but had still had trouble seeing how to use it, as it was apparent from the file that if SpaceCorpse was following you closely, they could jump from a defined destination to an "empty space near that warp path" destination. Thoughts, plots and treasure plans had danced in his head for weeks, until Apsyrtus's tele-call. Apsyrtus’s caller had grabbed Jason's mindnet and roughly yanked until he had woken up, an effect he was sure Apsyrtus had had to modify the machine to produce. It had been worth it for the Idea. Apsyrtus had apparently been wondering for a while about the SpaceCorpse method for following someone to a destination unknown. Theoretically it should not have been possible, as the destination point could not be defined in advance for the machine. He had gone looking through the files for how. It hadn't been there. He had slid through layer after layer of security, nearly getting caught twice, looking for the secret, gathering scraps of documents and conversations all slowly making a picture that had shocked him. SpaceCorpse had lied. The HyperDrive needed to know where it was leaving, yes, but where it was going could be left as little more than instructions for random, empty space. Thus, the Plan had gotten a kick-start.
It was one thing, however, to be able to jump to random space, but an entirely different one to be able to jump from there again. There was no guarantee that the space they jumped to would be on file, or defined at all. For a month the plan lagged. Jason acquired the illegal seeker-type ship, equipped with a standard HyperDrive. With the technical details Apsyrtus had found, and his own mechanical abilities, he was easily able to modify the drive from the SpaceCorpse limitations. He still had nowhere to go in it, of course. Time dragged slowly by. Finally, in a moment of sheer drunken inspiration, he and Apsyrtus had realised how to proceed. Their thoughts had run something like this: 1) if SpaceCorpse can define locations in terms of other locations, then we can too. 2) if we could determine how far and at what angle we were away from the nearest hyper-point, we could define it and warp from there. 3) if we took data on all the nearest stars, and used all the existing star data, we could probably use the distance and size and brightness of the nearby stars to determine our location. Unlike most ideas brought on by a drunken stupor, this one still seemed reasonable the next day.
It had taken months to assemble the sheer volume of data necessary for the definition program. Apsyrtus had written the program himself, so there was no need to bring anyone else in on the Plan. Basically it would need to quickly find the two brightest stars, determine their distance from each other and their temperatures and sizes (luckily all part of previously written astronomical programs available to the public, so Apsyrtus did not have to write everything himself, or it could have taken years instead of weeks) and then search through the data in its memory banks for two stars that fit such a description. It would then be able to determine a circle of space the ship could be in. If those two didn’t fit any known data, it would have to move on to the next two. It would then perform the same process with successively dim stars until it had successfully pinpointed their exact location in space, then relate that to the nearest hyper-point and give that definition to the drive program. It was a beautiful plan. All they had to do was commit the theft, run for a bit, jump randomly several times to shake off the SpaceCorpse ships that would follow, and then jump one last time to their own predefined hideout, where they could wait for a few years planetside before unloading their loot on the market.
The theft had gone perfectly. There were thirty cubes of Neoladium in a pile in Jason’s ship to attest to that. Enough for three or four lifetimes full of everything wealth can buy. Especially if it didn’t have to be split between two people. Jason shook his head. Apsyrtus’s death had been the easiest part of the entire operation. The man had even been willing to teach Jason how to run all of the modified programs and everything, simply because Jason had asked “what will I do if you become unconscious during our flight?” Jason shook his head. Such naiveté was practically requesting genetic elimination.
The first random jump had proceeded well. Jason didn’t recognize the stars around him, but that was the best thing he could hope for. He had planned on making three random jumps, just in case the first one or two happened to be to a region of well-defined space. The program was doing its job; determining his location accurately enough, and had just given the information to the drive controller when the seeker popped in to his left. He laughed low and was still laughing when the next random jump point had been reached. He gloried in his feeling of power as the computer carefully determined where he was and jumped one last time. He was going to get away with it and the nearest pursuit was going to be left in the wilds of space with no way back. He looked around at the new backdrop of stars. The ships brain - the best he had been able to steal - continued searching. He could easily see the brightest star, off to his right in the starry blackness. The brain continued searching. He sat back and waited, thinking about all the things thirty cubes of Neoladium. He seemed to have thrown off the seeker, since none had materialized in this time. He grinned to himself as he thought of the ship stuck stranded in the middle of somewhere. He watched the brightest star. There was something odd… Now he was sure of it. It was getting brighter. He grinned, recognizing the brightening for the nova that it was. No matter, since it wouldn’t be matchable in the program, the computer brain should just move on.
It was four hours later and the brain was still searching. Jason was chewing his fingernails in the agony of waiting. Surely it shouldn’t have taken so long. The nova outside the ship had gotten so bright that he’d had to dim the panel. Still the computer searched.
Five days later, Jason’s fears had become almost certainties, and his mind was a half-crazed wreck of anguish and terror. Something had clearly Gone Wrong. The computer, blast its fibrous pathways to oblivion, was still patiently checking the two brightest stars against all known positions. The nova was a blinding light that was not where it should have been. And the computer searched. Endlessly. He laughed even as he shut off the oxygen flow and slowly died.
Could Jason only have seen and understood the code Apsyrtus had written, he would have discovered the problem. There, where Apsyrtus had said that the computer should move on if the first two stars were not found, was the loop with no termination that had it search endlessly, never realizing that it had failed completely. Utterly. Lost.
now I need to start packing... :-\
Jason's fingers danced across the nav-panel as he watched the display. The needle-shaped SpaceCorpse seeker was fast approaching. He tore his gaze from the screen and looked back at his flight plan. His altered HyperDrive was still practically idiot-proof, but there was no need to test that now. Three minutes more to space warp, five minutes more for the seeker to catch up with him. He laughed nervously with relief. It was almost funny how this plan had seemed so perfect on paper, but more than most Jason understood what could go wrong with a plan. Ten seconds. He glanced back at the squat stack of Neoladium cubes, both to reassure himself that they hadn't gone anywhere, and to reassure himself that this wasn't a dream. He really had done it and - he glanced at the display - in two more seconds he would get away with it.
While mankind had yet to explore all the stars in the 23rd century, it was only a matter of time before their intrepid scout ships had established jump points from which you could go anywhere. The advent of the HyperDrive had made exploration easier to continue from the areas of space that had already been covered, as it could only be used when you could accurately pinpoint both starting point and destination. Still, being able to avoid the known parts of space had given mankind’s space program an incredible boost, and it was only a matter of time before the effects of that were seen. One of the more immediate effects had been an all-time low in space crime. Enough stories had circulated of would-be-thieves stealing priceless treasures or stacks of Neoladium from a planetary treasury, escaped by ship to a nearby inhabited area by standard drive - where the theft would be less important and the items could possibly be profitably disposed of - only to find a SpaceCorpse Hyper-Seeker ship waiting there, and several standard fighters moving into position around their ship. Escape by space warp was not possible, as the SpaceCorpse had set up all of the proper hyper-points, making it effectively impossible for anyone to pass through undetected, and the systems where hyper-points had not been set up yet were too far out to reach without hypering part of the way. All of mankind had gotten the picture: escape in space was simply not possible.
Jason let out a whoop! of delight as he looked at the new star configurations filling his view. Even with the assurances of his now very late partner, Apsyrtus, he had still had some tiny misgivings in those last few seconds. He and his partner had been planning this theft for months: carefully acquiring a small, fast rather illegal seeker-type ship; modifying it for greater speed and better weaponry; and making the final modifications that would ensure their success, altering the HyperDrive so that it would accept a well-defined current location, and would then jump to a completely random destination. Of course, this final modification would only be of use to Jason and his partner if, once there, they could define their location accurately enough to jump again, this time to a distinct destination that Jason's partner had spent so much time on. The definition of a hyper-point was usually not possible for a civilian, but Apsyrtus had compromised a SpaceCorpse planetary link as a child on a school visit, leaving an access point behind when he got "lost" looking for a bathroom. He had discovered, years later, that the SpaceCorpse had found a way to define a hyper-point in terms of the locations of the others near it - a more time-consuming method than normal, but one that he could use now that he had access to the zealously guarded secret definition files of the other hyper-points in space. On his own, this information would just have been another SpaceCorpse secret that he thrilled at knowing, but no more. With his friend Jason's help, he had begun to see it as Opportunity.
Jason, of course, had had no trouble seeing the possibilities in being able to define a hyper-point without SpaceCorpse knowledge, but had still had trouble seeing how to use it, as it was apparent from the file that if SpaceCorpse was following you closely, they could jump from a defined destination to an "empty space near that warp path" destination. Thoughts, plots and treasure plans had danced in his head for weeks, until Apsyrtus's tele-call. Apsyrtus’s caller had grabbed Jason's mindnet and roughly yanked until he had woken up, an effect he was sure Apsyrtus had had to modify the machine to produce. It had been worth it for the Idea. Apsyrtus had apparently been wondering for a while about the SpaceCorpse method for following someone to a destination unknown. Theoretically it should not have been possible, as the destination point could not be defined in advance for the machine. He had gone looking through the files for how. It hadn't been there. He had slid through layer after layer of security, nearly getting caught twice, looking for the secret, gathering scraps of documents and conversations all slowly making a picture that had shocked him. SpaceCorpse had lied. The HyperDrive needed to know where it was leaving, yes, but where it was going could be left as little more than instructions for random, empty space. Thus, the Plan had gotten a kick-start.
It was one thing, however, to be able to jump to random space, but an entirely different one to be able to jump from there again. There was no guarantee that the space they jumped to would be on file, or defined at all. For a month the plan lagged. Jason acquired the illegal seeker-type ship, equipped with a standard HyperDrive. With the technical details Apsyrtus had found, and his own mechanical abilities, he was easily able to modify the drive from the SpaceCorpse limitations. He still had nowhere to go in it, of course. Time dragged slowly by. Finally, in a moment of sheer drunken inspiration, he and Apsyrtus had realised how to proceed. Their thoughts had run something like this: 1) if SpaceCorpse can define locations in terms of other locations, then we can too. 2) if we could determine how far and at what angle we were away from the nearest hyper-point, we could define it and warp from there. 3) if we took data on all the nearest stars, and used all the existing star data, we could probably use the distance and size and brightness of the nearby stars to determine our location. Unlike most ideas brought on by a drunken stupor, this one still seemed reasonable the next day.
It had taken months to assemble the sheer volume of data necessary for the definition program. Apsyrtus had written the program himself, so there was no need to bring anyone else in on the Plan. Basically it would need to quickly find the two brightest stars, determine their distance from each other and their temperatures and sizes (luckily all part of previously written astronomical programs available to the public, so Apsyrtus did not have to write everything himself, or it could have taken years instead of weeks) and then search through the data in its memory banks for two stars that fit such a description. It would then be able to determine a circle of space the ship could be in. If those two didn’t fit any known data, it would have to move on to the next two. It would then perform the same process with successively dim stars until it had successfully pinpointed their exact location in space, then relate that to the nearest hyper-point and give that definition to the drive program. It was a beautiful plan. All they had to do was commit the theft, run for a bit, jump randomly several times to shake off the SpaceCorpse ships that would follow, and then jump one last time to their own predefined hideout, where they could wait for a few years planetside before unloading their loot on the market.
The theft had gone perfectly. There were thirty cubes of Neoladium in a pile in Jason’s ship to attest to that. Enough for three or four lifetimes full of everything wealth can buy. Especially if it didn’t have to be split between two people. Jason shook his head. Apsyrtus’s death had been the easiest part of the entire operation. The man had even been willing to teach Jason how to run all of the modified programs and everything, simply because Jason had asked “what will I do if you become unconscious during our flight?” Jason shook his head. Such naiveté was practically requesting genetic elimination.
The first random jump had proceeded well. Jason didn’t recognize the stars around him, but that was the best thing he could hope for. He had planned on making three random jumps, just in case the first one or two happened to be to a region of well-defined space. The program was doing its job; determining his location accurately enough, and had just given the information to the drive controller when the seeker popped in to his left. He laughed low and was still laughing when the next random jump point had been reached. He gloried in his feeling of power as the computer carefully determined where he was and jumped one last time. He was going to get away with it and the nearest pursuit was going to be left in the wilds of space with no way back. He looked around at the new backdrop of stars. The ships brain - the best he had been able to steal - continued searching. He could easily see the brightest star, off to his right in the starry blackness. The brain continued searching. He sat back and waited, thinking about all the things thirty cubes of Neoladium. He seemed to have thrown off the seeker, since none had materialized in this time. He grinned to himself as he thought of the ship stuck stranded in the middle of somewhere. He watched the brightest star. There was something odd… Now he was sure of it. It was getting brighter. He grinned, recognizing the brightening for the nova that it was. No matter, since it wouldn’t be matchable in the program, the computer brain should just move on.
It was four hours later and the brain was still searching. Jason was chewing his fingernails in the agony of waiting. Surely it shouldn’t have taken so long. The nova outside the ship had gotten so bright that he’d had to dim the panel. Still the computer searched.
Five days later, Jason’s fears had become almost certainties, and his mind was a half-crazed wreck of anguish and terror. Something had clearly Gone Wrong. The computer, blast its fibrous pathways to oblivion, was still patiently checking the two brightest stars against all known positions. The nova was a blinding light that was not where it should have been. And the computer searched. Endlessly. He laughed even as he shut off the oxygen flow and slowly died.
Could Jason only have seen and understood the code Apsyrtus had written, he would have discovered the problem. There, where Apsyrtus had said that the computer should move on if the first two stars were not found, was the loop with no termination that had it search endlessly, never realizing that it had failed completely. Utterly. Lost.