"Hope he remembers to chicane round the riding school on final," muttered Alex Ridgeway. "We don't want the horse brigade whinging."
Harry England laughed. "I wouldn't worry about that, Todds. He'll have the circuit in his nav system. It alerts him if his track error is greater than the width of a gnat's cock." The nickname was a corruption of "Toddler", deriving from Alex's youth relative to most of the others in the self-styled Senior Gentlemen Aviators Group. His sixtieth birthday would not arrive for another two years.
"I don't think the horses get upset," commented Alex. "It's just an excuse for Lady Pompous to have a go at us."
"We'll keep her sweet," said Harry. "I know you don't want her reporting us to the fun police."
The three men were standing by the engine cowling of a light aircraft, Harry's yellow Piper Cub, parked close to the hedge marking the boundary of the farm strip. Alongside the Cub sat Paul Beaufort's Tiger Moth, reflecting the summer sunlight from its taut silver fabric covering. Yellow bands on its wings and fuselage completed the reinstatement of the livery it had worn seventy years earlier when it saw service in the Royal Air Force, introducing enthusiastic young trainee pilots to the delights of flight. Like the Tiger, the Cub was even older than the men standing alongside. While the wartime wooden de Havilland biplane was being glued together at the Morris Motors car factory in Oxford, England, welders working for the Piper Aircraft Corporation in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, USA, were fabricating the Cub's steel fuselage frame.
"Well, Madam Pompous can't object to the Gypsy in my Tiger," said Paul, referring to the engine which dragged his old biplane through the sky. He grinned at his friends. "It's a damn sight quieter than the flat fours you lot disturb the peace with."
"How many are we expecting today?" asked Harry, changing the subject.
"I think Thomas told the pub there'd be nine or ten of us, give or take," replied Alex, checking his watch. Menu options at their chosen watering hole ranged from light and healthy to calorie-laden banquets but, as ex-professionals, the fliers were careful to avoid alcohol passing their lips.
"Lefty is hoping to make it but he said he might show up late."
"Horace is coming, isn't he?"
"He said he'd pitch up."
After jinking round the riding school the red RV banked to align itself with the runway. It landed on the narrow strip and taxied towards the parked aircraft, blasting its tail round with a burst of throttle to position itself neatly alongside the Cub. The pilot cut the engine and opened the canopy. He took off his headset, releasing a mane of grey hair, through which he ran a hand.
"Evening all," called James Woodley to the friends sauntering towards him. "Give us a hand to push this wreck back a bit, would you." He took a sniff of fresh air. "Bloody rapeseed," he complained. "Hate it."
"Morning, Einstein. Yes, bit sickly, isn't it?" agreed Harry. "Half the country's yellow at the moment."
James climbed out of his cockpit and Paul and Harry helped him push the little sportplane back a few feet to leave more manoeuvring space for later arrivals.
"What's the point of it anyway?" continued James. "No doubt Thomas and the other farmers get huge subsidies for growing it."
"They make some of it into fuel," said Harry. "Biodiesel."
"Dirty fuel," said James. "Not like petrol." He tapped the fuel tank in the RV's wing. "Clean and pure."
Alex laughed. "Don't let Raza hear you say that. It's what his Cessna runs on."
The three looked up, hearing the engine of another approaching aircraft. Their eyes tracked the Pitts biplane as it joined the circuit, white paintwork enlivened by red and purple stars adorning its wings and tail.
"It's Bob," said Harry. "How come he's not inverted?" The pilot of the Pitts was well known for his predilection for aerobatically throwing the aircraft around.
"He's probably worried his wallet might fall out if he goes upside down," offered James. "Though I suppose that would give him an excuse for not paying for his lunch."
The Oakhill Farm airstrip sat on top of a slight rise in the agricultural land lying to the west of Towcester. The farm belonged to Thomas Shilling, whose Jodel 1050 sat in a hangar close to one end of the 600 metre grass runway. Alex Ridgeway's gyrocopter shared the accommodation, along with a dismantled Auster and two flexwing microlights. The strip's elevated topography guaranteed good drainage during rainy spells, which meant that pilots could land and take off there when other grass airfields were muddy or waterlogged. Oakhill was therefore a frequent venue for the Senior Gentlemen Aviators Group lunches. Any puddles on the pathway leading from the farm to the White Boar pub in the village of Hartwell half a mile from the strip were easily circumnavigated.
According to the spreadsheet on Harry England's laptop there were thirty-seven members in the SGA Group. As founder of the group, administrative duties fell within Harry's bailiwick. The task was not onerous, little more than notifying the members of venues chosen for the fortnightly fly-ins. A form of democracy guided the selection procedure in that any member of the group could suggest an airfield or airstrip to drop in on. In practice, the duty of selection usually fell to Harry or one of a half dozen others prepared to make the effort. At the opposite end of the enthusiasm spectrum were to be found several members who never showed up at all. Harry was reluctant to delete them from the spreadsheet in case there were genuine reasons for failure to attend or to communicate. Thus came about the "grey list", those whose names Harry had literally greyed out on the spreadsheet.
The group's name was inaccurate in that one member was both youngish and female, a black girl named Henrietta Ingram. Paul Beaufort had asked Harry England if Henrietta could be admitted since she was a keen amateur pilot who happened to have saved the life of his daughter after a boating accident. The two women had been sailing together when a gybing boom had knocked Nellie off the boat. Henrietta, a GP, had pulled the unconscious girl out of the water, resuscitated her and sailed the yacht single-handed to shore, where the paramedics took over. A later conversation with Henrietta revealed that she owned a Piper Super Cub. A grateful Paul, after clearing the notion with Harry, invited her to join the group.
As the minutes ticked by the Oakhill congregation swelled. Thomas Shilling walked across from his farm house to greet his guests and two more aircraft arrived, Raza Dalal in his Cessna 180 and Jean-Pierre Thomson, another RV owner.
Harry looked at his watch. "Half twelve," he said. "Shall we set off for the Boar? Lefty and Horace'll know where we are when they get here."
The circle of eight men metamorphosed into a loose column which shuffled towards the gate at the corner of the field and then split into subgroups following the path to Hartwell. Topics of conversation as they walked included surgical operations, children, grandchildren, the profitability (or otherwise, according to Thomas) of cultivating rapeseed and the incompetence of the government and institutions various. And reminiscences about the good old days in the airlines.
Most of the SGA members were retired airline pilots, including the group now heading for the Boar, apart from Alex, who still flew Boeing 777s part-time, and Thomas Shilling, owner of Oakhill Farm and its airstrip. They frequently commented on their good fortune, being generously paid to fly airliners during the golden age of aviation. Stopovers abroad often meant several days relaxing in first class hotels. At the end of it all arrived the final salary pension, protected against inflation, of course.
At work Alex, approaching retirement, would frequently detect resentment from his younger copilots, who would tell him how lucky he was, working in the years before the accountants had bumped up productivity demands. The youngsters pointed out that line pilots now did fifty percent more duty hours, without a commensurate uplift in pay. These days, stopovers amounted to little more than check in to the hotel, bite to eat, few hours sleep, bite to eat then back to the airport. Retirement age kept creeping upwards, with pensions moving in the opposite direction. In response Alex could only shrug and sympathise.
Approaching quieter airports in his Triple Seven in good weather he would occasionally surprise his flight deck colleagues by knocking out the autopilot and autothrottle twenty or thirty miles from landing and taking over manually, hands on the control wheel and thrust levers and feet on the rudder pedals. By contrast, when it was their turn, the "computer kids" (as Alex dubbed them) often let the automatics do the work all the way down the approach until a minute before touchdown. Although he had never heard it with his own ears he knew that he was one of the "old farts" sharing the enviable domain at the top of the seniority list according to those languishing in the nether reaches of the list.
An ironical epithet in the view of Harry England's wife, Mary, who had commented that "juniority list" would be more fitting for the SGA, noting that despite their advancing years she often thought the members guilty of childishness. As did other long-suffering partners she conferred with, she told Harry. Challenged to give examples she offered obsession with little aircraft, finding feeble excuses to avoid domestic duties and inventing daft nicknames for each other.
"Not childishness, dear," Harry had said in defence of himself and his chums. "More a bloke thing. It's what men do. They're called hobbies, and they keep us out from under your feet when you're pottering around the house."
"By pottering, you mean, cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking and all the rest of it?"
"Er . . . I do the cooking sometimes, don't I . . . and garden stuff, mowing the lawn, zapping the weeds and so on."
"True enough," conceded Mary. "You're better than your lazy friends who pay other people to do chores like that."
"There you are, then."
"But what about the silly names? Don't forget I almost refused to marry you after you joked that I would be 'Merrie England ' after we got hitched."
"Ah . . . but you couldn't resist me could you?"
"Your redeeming feature—your modesty."
An impartial observer might have sided with Mary England on the topic of nicknames. And a statistician might have noted that the incidence of nicknames was perhaps higher in the SGA group than in the population at large.
So Alex Ridgeway was "Toddler" or "Todds" to his fellow pilots. Paul Beaufort, owner of the tip-toeing Tiger Moth, had no objection to "Dickie". The derivation was founded in the expression "dicky bow", meaning bow tie, as worn with formal dinner attire. Paul was not quite so fond of "Windy", an allusion to the Beaufort wind scale. He might be an Old Fart, he would say, but he didn't yet suffer too badly from flatulence.
Irony sometimes influenced the choice of SGA nicknames. The birth certificate of one of today's late arrivals declared his name as Bertrand Wright, but for him the SGA pilots had merely appropriated the tag "Lefty" which had followed him around since his secondary school days. He was the only SGA member without a current partner. Agnes, his wife of more than forty years, had died the previous year. She had often been the passenger in his Chipmunk aircraft, sitting behind him in the tandem cockpit. These days the rear seat was usually empty. Lefty's friends in the SGA had helped him to get over his loss and some of the wives and partners had tried to find a new lady companion for him, thus far without success.
The noise abatement technique Thomas had devised minimised the complaints from Fiona Wheeler, owner of the Towcester Equestrian Centre, situated on the centreline of the approach. One couldn't describe the relationship between Thomas and Mrs Wheeler as cordial, more cautious understanding, and certainly an improvement on the previous bitter fights that had almost resulted in a legal battle.
"The farm was here before you brought your horses here."
"The riding school was here before you turned the farm into an airport."
And so on.
"She's a miserable cow," Thomas used to complain to his flier friends. "She's one of these hags who hates the idea of anyone enjoying themselves. Unless they're prancing around on her stupid nags, of course."
A courtroom battle looked inevitable until Thomas went round to the riding school one day with a bunch of flowers, a bottle of Chardonnay and a map. On a table he unrolled the map, which showed the local area, including the Oakhill Farm runway and the centreline extending from it over the equestrian centre. Another line, drawn by himself in red ink, deviated from the centreline around the sensitive area. Fiona picked up a pen and drew an amendment dragging the new routing a bit further away and so she and Thomas were able to shake hands on a deal acceptable to both parties.
Thomas ruled that all pilots visiting Oakhill should be briefed on the noise abatement procedure. When an east wind blew the demands were even more rigorous. Aircraft taking off were instructed to roll into a right turn as soon as they were safely airborne to take the noise of engines running at full throttle away from the riding school.
Infringers were told they must apologise in writing to Fiona and were barred from using the strip again until Thomas judged their guilt expiated. And so airstrip and equestrian centre reached a workable modus operandi. And neutral courtesy rather than enmity now defined the relationship between Thomas and the school proprietor. No one uttered the word "cow" anymore although variations on "pompous" occasionally passed the lips the aviators.
Whenever Oakhill was selected as a venue for the SGA Thomas would pop round to the school first thing with a smile for the proprietor, reinforced with a bottle of wine. Relaxation of the rules meant that he no longer had to supply a list of pilots' names and aircraft registrations. Standard landing fee was £5 and after an SGA fly-in Thomas would take the proceeds to Fiona as a donation for her favoured animal charity.
Several of the members owned RV aircraft of various types. The series had been designed by the American Richard Van Grunsven as kits for homebuilders. They were popular for their ruggedness, aerobatic capability, performance and sleek appearance. Two of the SGA pilots had built their own RVs. It had taken Jean-Pierre Thomson ("JP" to his pilot friends) seven years to assemble his RV6, while another member had needed almost a decade before his RV8 was finished to his satisfaction.
James Woodley had acquired his red RV7 from the machine's builder as a replacement for his veteran Bolkow Junior. Part of the deal when he sold the Bolkow was to retain ownership of its registration, Golf November Echo Romeo Delta for transfer to his new toy. "Everyone calls me 'nerd' so it'll do as a reggie for my plane so people know who owns it," he had often explained to curious observers.
Alternatives to "Nerd" were "Doc" or "Einstein" or sometimes "Albert". After achieving a first class honours degree in maths at Cambridge University James had gone on to complete a Doctor of Philosophy course in computer programming, sponsored by Airbus Industrie, who were designing computers signalling the fly-by-wire control systems intended for their proposed new airliner, which would eventually become the A320. Every time the Woodley Transintegration Hysteresis Mitigation algorithm was inserted into a computer program anywhere in the world Airbus, as copyright owner, earned a fee, a part of which was passed on to its inventor.
During his PhD course James was invited to the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse to meet other scientists and engineers working on airliner system designs. While he was there he was invited to take part in an experimental flight on an A300 in which the fly-by-wire system would be installed for testing. On the way back to Toulouse airport the pilot had invited James to take the copilot's seat for a go at the controls.
James was hooked. He asked his manager at Airbus whether they would pay for him to train as a pilot. "Non, ce n'est pas possible," came the reply. Undeterred, as soon as he was back in England he started applying to airlines offering sponsorship and was accepted by British Airways. By good fortune his pilot training was scheduled to start not long after his PhD thesis was completed, meaning that he could finish his association with Airbus with a clear conscience as he had fulfilled his obligations to the manufacturer.
Like many of his colleagues James's enthusiasm for little aircraft had run parallel to his airline flying and typically he could be found in the flight deck of a Boeing 747 one day and the cockpit of his Bolkow Junior the next. The RV that he now flew in his retirement was unique in the world. James had designed an autopilot for it which would not only fly the flight plan programmed into it from the GPS but was also capable of automatic landing when the GPS position was accurate enough.
"But . . . why?" his friends would ask.
"To prove I could do it," came the reply.
James's friends had long since given up asking him to explain the computer programming algorithm bearing his name as they couldn't understand the answer. Their eyes would glaze over soon after they heard "it artificially mitigates hysteresis in control systems". But in the early days of personal computers his expertise was highly sought after by friends struggling with Microsoft's operating system.
"Ah, that sounds like a Gypsy," said Paul Beaufort now as the pilots reached Hartwell High Street and turned towards the White Boar. They all stopped and looked up. The Chipmunk was manoeuvring to avoid overflying the village.
"Good man, Lefty," said Alex, waving at the aircraft, although its pilot was probably too far away to spot his friends. "I'm sure he'll remember the horses, too."
"Reasonable turn out," said Gerald Dillon, owner of the Pitts biplane. "Eight of us—ten when Horace and Lefty show up. Shall we tell them the new rule?"
"What rule is that, Bob?" queried Harry.
"Last one to arrive pays for lunch," grinned Gerald. "Bob" was how he was known to the SGA pilots and to most other friends and relatives. His wife, always a stickler for correctness, preferred "Gerald". Never "Gerry". "We don't want people thinking you are a chamberpot," she would say.
Just before the SGA group reached the pub the buzz of a flat four engine above them announced the approach of Horace Hawksworth's Condor, completing the expected lunch complement. The eight men looked up to watch the little yellow and blue two-seater follow the Chipmunk into the Oakhill circuit.
Although Mary England was frequently dismissive of the nicknames the pilots gave each other she herself had coined an epithet for the SGA group as a whole, after enduring a long discourse amongst them about how the world was in a mess and how it should be put right.
"Yes,"
she would confirm when asked
about her husband's involvement with the group. "He started the whole
thing. He started 'Grumpair'."
The Woodley Algorithm, like nearly all of the world's current computer programs, included sub-routines that had been copied from earlier universal computer programs, which in turn had borrowed them from their more basic predecessors. The histories of the processes could be traced back through several generations of software, which meant that the operating systems of the latest generations of computers were peppered with chunks of program code that dated back many years.
The assumption among writers of software was that incorporation of ancient sub-routines was acceptable without detailed analysis because their efficacy had been proven over the decades in thousands of subsequent computer programs.
The assumption was almost always valid. Almost always.
In
the antediluvian years when some of
the SGA pilots had not yet left their teens most computer program
initiation sub-routines included self-termination sequences, whose
purpose was to deactivate the software after a certain date, either for
protection against copyright infringement or to induce programmers to
periodically review and update their work to improve efficiency. The
most commonly used initiation sub-routine was popular because it
inhabited the public domain and was therefore free of copyright
complications. All that was needed was to include "INITNORM" at the
start of programs. The sub-routine complied with the then standard
practice of restricting names to eight characters to reflect the
limited
capabilities of computer memories. Succumbing to natural human
laziness, very few current programmers bothered to check the content of
INITNORM. Had they done so, they would have discovered among the lines
of code:
360
IF VAL(d$) < 2025168 THEN GOTO 390
370
SEND "PROGRAM TERMINATED 6/16/25"
380
STOP
390
nq4 = (VAL(c$))*f4
Decoded, the instructions to the
computer were to check the date the program was being used. The "$"
character meant "string", the sequence of numbers defining the date.
"VAL" referred to the numerical value of this input. The initial
compiler of INITNORM had asked his manager whether they should specify
a date for deactivating the sub-routine. At first his manager told him
he needn't bother but then he had a rethink. "I suppose we should stick
something in just to be on the safe side." He shrugged, waved his arms
vaguely. "Fifty years? We can always change it later if we need to."
The programmer had taken the instruction literally. Consulting his desk calendar he noted that June 16th 1975 was the 168th day of the year. Half a century on would therefore be the same date in the year 2025. So for step 360 in the sub-routine he typed in 2025168. So any program involving INITNORM would cease to run on that date and send a message to that effect to any connected printer or monitor.
Early in the year 2018 Joe Hochdorfer, a 16-year-old American computer technology student, chanced upon the self-termination code in INITNORM and found himself in a dilemma. Exhaustive searching on the internet showed that no one else seemed to know that many of the world's computer programs would simultaneously stop working on a specific day a few years later. Should he report his find to higher authority, as any decent human being would in the interests of protecting society at large, or should he exploit his discovery for personal financial gain? He considered the latter choice would bring him certain advantages, including the respect of the girl he had been trying to impress and who so far seemed impervious to his attempts to win her affection. With a few thousand bucks he could buy a veteran Ford Thunderbird to take her out for a burger . . . and in return . . .
The
plan did not go smoothly for Joe.
Despite his ingenious electronic trail elimination tactics the
anonymous email to the Department of Defense offering to sell vital
information to prevent the world's computers shutting down was easily
traced back to him by experts whose genius surpassed his own. After
initial friendly overtures designed to confirm that the kid was not
wasting their time the questions from the two government agents sent to
interview him turned hostile, spiced with threats of punishment if he
failed to reveal what he knew. Partly out of panic, partly out of
resentment, Joe told the agents he had made a mistake in his
interpretation of a program he had found randomly in a computer
magazine. As a diversion, he even showed them a print out of code which
he said had led him to his erroneous conclusions. In fact the print out
related to an innocuous program calculating tidal movements at various
coastal locations. Joe's hope that the government wouldn't bother him
further was fortunately fulfilled although his assumption that they
would sooner or later uncover the flaw in INITNORM themselves turned
out to be false.
After retiring from airline flying Senior Gentlemen Aviators Group member Horace Hawksworth had also spotted opportunities in the burgeoning IT industry. But in contrast to James Woodley, who had benefited from composing esoteric complex modifications to software programs, Horace's intuition had sent him in the opposite direction.
It had all started when his wife came storming into his study at home one day to complain that something was emitting electronic beeps in the kitchen and she didn't know which of the appliances was responsible and would he please get off his arse and find out what the beeps meant and how to turn off the bloody noise. The cooker and fridge-freezer could be eliminated from the list of culprits because they beeped at D sharp and B flat respectively (Rita Hawksworth was blessed with perfect musical pitch) and the offending tone was sounding the F natural note two semitones higher than the cooker.
The source of Rita's displeasure was eventually traced to the dishwasher and Horace switched it off at the mains, after which he and his wife spent a while unsuccessfully trying to find the instruction manual. A search for a copy on the internet proved more fruitful, although Horace resented the £3.99 cost of the download. It turned out that the beeps (two sequences of four) signalled that one of the rotor arms in the dishwasher was fouling an object and thus being prevented from turning.
"Well, that's stupid," scoffed Rita. "The bloody thing is empty and it's not being used."
"Yes," agreed Horace, "it's a false warning."
"Anyway, I always physically check the rotor arms for free movement before starting the wash program, just like you've always said. I don't need the bloody machine to tell me that."
"I'll poke around inside and see if I can isolate the warning circuit without destroying the rest of the electronics," said Horace. "Not so easy, these days. If the control circuits go tits up you're expected to buy a whole new machine. If I can't sort it I'll give James Woodley a call. He'll know what size hammer to hit it with."
The pilot was himself the victim of misbehaving hardware not long afterwards. For reasons known only to itself his car radio suddenly switched itself to maximum volume, blasting out the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" at head-exploding decibels. Frantically Horace pushed the on-off icon on the control screen, on which a sad-faced crying emoji immediately told him "Function not available".
Wincing from the assault on his auditory senses, Horace pulled the car into a lay-by and switched everything off. "You Really Got Me," continued Ray Davies defiantly at window-rattling volume. The pilot got out of the vehicle and walked away sufficiently far to enable him to hear the responses of the car dealer he called on his mobile, who told him how to do a complete system reset. Fortunately the next track on Horace's playlist was Lulu's bluesy version of "Drown In My Own Tears" which his ears—stuffed with wads of rolled-up paper hanky—could tolerate as he fiddled with the touch screen.
When he told his wife what had happened she said: "It's absurd. Computer programs and phone apps these days are like naughty children or disobedient pets."
"What do you mean?" Horace had queried.
"You think you've got them set up the way you want but then they suddenly misbehave or change for no apparent reason. Like the sodding dishwasher."
"It's the Chinese," joked Horace. "Or the Russians. Sabotaging our IT systems, according to some conspiracy theorists."
"Can't think why the Chinese would want to mess up the dishwasher. Or the radio in your car," said Rita. "Why can't radios be like they used to be. Actual buttons. On-off, volume, tone, and half a dozen buttons preset to your favourite stations."
"Good point, Reet," replied Horace. "How many people need a graphic equaliser in their car music systems when the subtleties of timbre are usually swamped by road noise? What we need rather than more complication is more simplicity. I'll have a word with James—he might have a few ideas. He could design control circuits mimicking how they used to be, such as in push-button radios. We could make a prototype or two, see if it's workable."
"He might object to the idea, though," said Rita. "The stuff he does is so complicated you need a science degree to understand it. He might think it heresy to set off in the opposite direction."
But when approached by Horace, James's face lit up with enthusiasm.
"It's brilliant!" he exclaimed. "Digital Retro! Specially invented for old duffers like you, Horace! I'll start work on the radio right away. How about we call it 'Rita' as an acknowledgement to your missus."
"Why not," replied Horace. "I'll knock up a box out of wood as a mock-up and you can sort out the electronics."
And thus was born the concept of Little No Beep Electronics. After constructing the wooden prototype "Rita" to prove the concept, Horace bought a 1960s Bush portable radio from an internet auction site, pulled out its innards and replaced them with the circuit boards designed by James. The Bush featured classic rotary off-on-volume, station tuning and tone controls and five preselect buttons.
"What was that '208' button for?" asked Rita, watching her husband delicately applying his soldering iron in his workshop.
"Yes, had me stumped too," replied Horace. "Then one of the lads remembered it was the wavelength of Radio Luxembourg, which used to blast out continuous pop music when the BBC wasn't allowed to because of musicians' union objections or some such nonsense. We didn't have commercial radio stations in those days."
There were three concessions to modernity in the new device. Rather than adjusting a mechanical variable condenser the rotary tuner found the next station electronically, dependent on frequency for FM transmissions and on alphabetical listing for DAB services. The rotary tone controller allowed selection of extra treble or neutral or extra bass and a small liquid crystal screen showed a readout of station information.
James Woodley's conversion to simplicity was proved when he suggested that Little No Beep Electronics should market a simple operating system for laptop computers, leaving out the ever-more-elaborate bells and whistles plaguing current document and spreadsheet software.
"It'll be more like using an old typewriter," said James when challenged for an explanation, "but obviously without the need for Tippex for correcting errors. We'll get the thanks of all those millions of miserable people hunched over keyboards everyday cursing their computers because everything's TFC."
"Meaning . . . "
"Too effing complicated."
"And
while you're at it, how about
simplifying websites," suggested Rita. "They're far too busy and
distracting when all you want to do is pay a bill or book a theatre
ticket. User-friendly websites! That's what we need!"
"A strange name," commented Henrietta Ingram when she heard about the enterprise. "Little No Beep? I get the 'No Beep' but why the 'Little'?"
"It's a play on words," came the answer. "You know, the nursery rhyme . . . Little Bo Peep . . . has lost her sheep . . ."
But Henrietta's puzzled look planted the seeds of doubt in Horace's mind and he began to cast around for an alternative. His wife came up with the answer, showing him a name and logo she had drawn on a piece of paper. And so the new project was brought into the world calling itself "Simpel", thereby avoiding the likelihood of baffling younger folk who might not have heard of the unfortunate shepherdess.
The opinions of other SGA members when they heard of Horace's venture were mixed.
"Good idea! You'll rake in the dosh! When can I buy shares?"
"Where will you make these radio things? How can you compete against the Chinese? What about advertising and promotion? Who's going to buy them?"
Which led to the unavoidable subject of finance. Horace and James didn't feel brave enough to sink large sums into an enterprise which might or might not survive in an uncertain business world, and rather than taking the world by storm it began to look as if Simpel Electronics might be grounded by lack of funding.
Then fellow SGA member Raza Dalal came up with a solution. His cousin, Vinod Kapoor, who had made millions as a facilitator in the Bollywood film business, was scouting for promising looking start-ups to invest in and Raza convinced him that Simpel was just the ticket. A deal was struck, with most of the funding coming from Vinod and the remainder from Raza himself, Horace and James.
And so with Vinod at the helm Simpel Electronics offered itself to the world. After a hesitant start, sales of "Rita" radios began to pick up nicely and other products were being introduced to the market. The lady who had inspired the eponym thought she would channel any profits coming her way to various Developing World charities but kept this decision secret from everyone except her husband.
Raza was a retired Airbus A340 Captain whose Cessna 180 taildragger graced most of the SGA fly-ins. The ribbing from others over his predilection for "old American spam cans" had transmuted into respect when he announced that he had built a dedicated workshop at his local airfield for the purpose of constructing a miniature single-seat Lancaster bomber therein.
"That's impressive."
"How will you get plans?"
"Wood or metal or plastic?"
"What engines will you use?"
The Lancaster would be roughly the same dimensions as the Cessna, explained Raza. Most of the structure would be composite. A chum who was an aeronautical engineer would do the stress calculations. The rudder pedals would be positioned in the bomb aimer's station and the pilot's head in the cockpit canopy. The engines would be electric motors and a sound system would generate an authentic Merlin howl augmented by amplifiers.
Now, anyone accessing Raza's "Plastic Lanc" website would see that the airframe was almost complete. The engines were installed and had been run. At full tilt the Merlin noise generators could be heard from the other side of the airfield.
If
no problems arose first flight was expected in the not too distant
future.
Harry and Mary England lived in the village of Scepyke, approximately
halfway between Henley-on-Thames and Maidenhead. There was little to
distinguish Scepyke from the many other small settlements in the rural
Home Counties, except that at its western outskirts was to be found the
prison of the same name.
The first known references to the village of Scepyke dated from the twelfth century. The name "Sceapwyke" was to be found on a map showing the land owned by the Earl of Buckingham, a dot marking a tiny settlement between two chalk stream tributaries of the river Thames. Scholars of Old English would have recognised the etymology of the name, from "sceap", meaning "sheep" and "wyke", a farm or community.
Even amongst the older long term residents there was disagreement about how the name of their village should be pronounced. The majority, including Harry and Mary England, favoured "Skeppick" although a few dissenters insisted that "Skeepick" more accurately reflected the historic roots. From the lips of visitors not familiar with the village and those passing through, the variation "Skeepike" was often heard, while jokers wanting to tease the inhabitants would toss in "Septic" or "Sheepdip".
The prison, which dated from Edwardian times, lay just outside the village. It was classed as Category C and housed roughly two hundred inmates. On several occasions the authorities had had to reassure the worried local residents that none of the prisoners were murderers or terrorists. According to Mary England, who was a volunteer literacy and numeracy tutor at the prison, most of the inmates were incarcerated for drug offences. Non-white prisoners outnumbered white by a ratio of about three to one.
Mary's sessions at HMP Scepyke usually took place on the afternoons of Tuesdays and Fridays. As a volunteer she was not bound by contract and the prison education managers were happy to offer her flexibility when required.
One Tuesday afternoon the Englands were lunching at home. Both still favoured written diaries over personal electronic organisers and between mouthfuls of food upcoming diary entries were being reviewed and synchronised.
"Are you prisoning this afternoon?" asked Harry.
"Yes," answered his wife.
"Good stuff . . . how's NP doing now? Still happy with his situation?"
"Seems to be. We've given up trying to persuade him to request his release."
Among the inmates at Skepyke Prison was Nguyen Phu Huong, a Vietnamese serving a four year stretch for computer fraud. Among the notes in his personal file was the comment that it was likely that the perpetrator of the offence was in fact Phu Huong's brother. Whenever asked about the truth of the matter his reply was always a terse "no comment" in accented English. Opening up a little to Mary during a lesson one day he told her his brother was a troubled character who would not have coped with prison life. As the older sibling Nguyen had a responsibility to protect him, he told Mary.
"Even if that means serving his prison sentence?"
"No comment!"
"If there's sufficient evidence you might be entitled to release."
"What does it mean, what you say?"
"Sorry, NP. If we can show you didn't do bad things they might let you out."
"But would Ton Duc go to jail? He not good in jail."
"I don't know."
"I stay here."
Further research showed that NP's grandfather was French and had taught a little of the language to his grandsons. Although the elder sibling's English language skills were weak his IT aptitude was anything but. He frequently found himself asked to sort out problems with the prison's computers.
A recent project for NP was writing an article about the history of software after one of his tutors suggested that IT journals might be interested in the topic. There was a complication—the prisoner's poor command of English. Mary had worked out a solution. NP would type the article in his native Vietnamese language on the prison computer. Prison rules did not allow handing over of flash drives so NP would print out a copy for Mary to take home so that Harry could process the text through optical character recognition software and Google Translate to generate a version in English.
"Of course I can check the grammar and spelling," Mary had said to her husband later on after bringing the article home, "but I haven't got a clue about the technical stuff so I can't tell if I'm correcting it properly."
"Why not let James Woodley have a look?" Harry had suggested. "He'd know if it was OK."
"Good idea. When we've translated the text you can send it to him in an email."
"OK, let's do that."
"Just remind me—when's the next Grumpair?"
"Third Weds will be the seventeenth, won't it."
"OK. My friend Gina will be staying here with us then, remember."
"Yes, I've just written it in my diary, haven't I. We're lunching at White Waltham that day. You could bring her along if you want."
"I'll give it some thought . . . though coming all the way from NZ to meet a bunch of miserable old sods might not be an ideal day for her."
"Cheeky mare!"
"Come in James. Are you OK? You sounded quite agitated on the phone."
"Like I said when I called, it might be something important."
James Woodley had driven to the Englands' house late morning and Mary invited him to join them for lunch.
"Nothing grand, James. Pork pie and salad."
"Thanks—sounds good."
"I gather it's computer stuff you're discussing with Harry so I'll leave you to it. As you know, I consider myself semi-detached from the modern world of digital complication."
"No, it concerns you, Mary. It's the article written by the prisoner you sent me to check."
Harry's wife raised her eyebrows quizically. "OK."
James waved the printout in his hand. "There might be a problem here. A big problem."
"Go on," said Harry.
James flicked through the stapled pages and found the one he was looking for. He pointed to a paragraph of script which was entitled INITNORM.
"Your prisoner—what's his name?"
"We call him NP," said Mary.
"Well, he's made a statement here which needs sorting out—pronto."
James explained that, if NP's analysis was correct, the vast majority of the world's computers would shut down on the 16th of June 2025.
"Wow," said Harry. "Is he right?"
"What do you mean, 'majority'?" added Mary.
"That's part of the problem," came the reply. "Every program would need to be checked to see if INITNORM was part of the sequence."
"Bloody hell!"
Harry tapped the page. "Would it be easy to fix?" he asked. "Is there some way an amendment could be circulated?"
"Massive task," said James. "Think of all the computers in the world that would need reprogramming."
"What about critical systems?" said Mary. "Medical equipment and so on."
"And aircraft," added Harry.
James pointed to the text. "Was it just spelling and punctuation you corrected?" he asked Mary. "None of the tech stuff?"
"No . . . I was careful that nothing was changed."
"OK," said James. "I think I'll need to talk to your NP as soon as poss. I must find out whether he knows what he's talking about. If he's right we'll need to alert the authorities somehow."
"Do you want me to set up a visitor's permit for you?"
"ASAP, Mary."
"OK, I'm going in tomorrow. Shall I take you in if they let me?"
"Deffo."
A perfect day for messing around in little flying machines. Cloudless blue skies and light winds. The thermometer stood at a pleasant 25 degrees. Apart from one or two of the easily-offended brigade the residents of the village of Cox Green did not mind the continual buzz of engines above them as the steady stream of aircraft flew round the circuit at White Waltham.
In the airfield's restaurant two tables had been set aside for the Senior Gentlemen Aviators Group. It was Gerald "Bob" Dillon's turn to organise lunch and a good turnout was expected. Bob's Pitts biplane was based at White Waltham so he'd driven to the airfield from his home in Maidenhead. Most of the other pilots had flown in and Bob had asked the restaurant manager to expect sixteen for lunch, two tables of eight. Harry and Mary England and their friend from NZ would be joining them shortly.
Out on the airfield the Grumpair fleet was parked in two lines amongst the other visiting and locally based aircraft. Several RVs, Horace Hawksworth's Condor and Henrietta Ingram's Super Cub were positioned next to each other. The other line included Thomas Shilling's Jodel and the Chipmunk of Bertrand Wright. At the end sat Paul Beaufort's silver Tiger Moth.
In the restaurant at one of the reserved tables Henrietta called across to Raza Dalal.
"So how come you didn't bring your Lanc, Raza? We were looking forward to seeing it again. Not your boring old Cessna."
Raza Dalal shook his head. "Anywhere else but here, I would have done. But the runways here are too rough. The Lanc's gear is quite delicate."
It was a frequent complaint of pilots operating at White Waltham. Buried under the grass runways were strengthening mats of steel mesh, installed during the Second World War to allow use by heavy military aircraft. Over the years the mesh had deformed, distorting the grass surface above them. Aircraft undercarriage structures took quite a pounding from the uneven surface. According to the airfield's owners removing the mesh would have been technically too difficult and expensive.
Several of the Grumpair pilots had seen Raza's miniature Lancaster in action and were full of praise for its looks and sound. The bomber had also featured in a TV show and its pilot was now a minor celebrity. Two film companies making war films had already approached him with invitations to participate. The amplified artificial engine roar was probably realistic enough one producer had told him, but the purists might want to dub on the sound of real Rolls-Royce Merlins when it came to editing the productions.
At the other table the discussion came round to the Great Computer Scare That Never Was, as James Woodley had dubbed the incident triggered by the article written by the prisoner in the village where the Englands lived.
"So how did it get sorted?" asked Paul Beaufort.
"Harry's wife fixed it up for me to go to the prison the next day," answered James. "I was quite agitated, as you can imagine. The idea that most of the world's computers would shut down didn't bear thinking about. But NP, the prisoner, came in to the room with a smile on his face, like he wasn't bothered about anything.
"As soon as he sat down opposite Mary and me I launched into a spiel about how serious the situation was. To my annoyance he was still smiling and I wondered whether he'd understood what I'd said—his command of English wasn't the best."
"So how did you get the message across?" asked Thomas.
"I couldn't think of what to say. Then NP's grin broadened and he said: 'It not matter'. So then I got angry and told him it did bloody matter. Mary must have sensed my frustration, 'cos she reached across to put her hand on the prisoner's. She smiled and quietly asked NP why it didn't matter.
"NP had brought in some sheets of paper in with him. So he picks up a page and says 'Teacher not have all pages. Teacher not have this page'."
James took a sip of lemonade. "It seems that when Mary brought the original document for me to check she'd somehow left some of the pages at the prison. Anyway, NP points to the text on the page and says 'It not matter' again. I looked at what he was showing me and it only took a few seconds to realise its significance."
"What did it say?" asked Paul.
James brought his phone out of his pocket and held it up. "We weren't allowed to take these into the prison so I couldn't take a photo until I'd brought the remaining pages home." He flicked through the images on his phone and found what he was looking for, expanding the image with his fingers. The others leaned in to observe what appeared to be lines of data. Frowns of puzzlement crept onto several brows.
"Of course!" laughed Paul. "Or rather, clear as mud!"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" joked Bob Dillon. "It's the formula for calculating which horse is going to win the three thirty at Chepstow tomorrow. How much should I bet?"
James
pointed to a line of text, which
said:
175
VAL(d$) = VAL(d$) - 10^6
"OK, Einstein," said Paul. "Explain it
to us in language us thickos can understand."
"It's simple," said James. "The date string that shuts down the program is a seven figure group—2025168. That's the one hundred and sixty-eighth day of the year 2025."
"Y . . . e . . . s . . . "
"Right. This line subtracts ten to the power six from the operating date figure."
"So . . . " suggested Thomas, "that would be 1000 years, wouldn't it?"
"Who's a smartypants then," commented Paul, to general amusement.
"Correct, " nodded James. "So when the program is running this line subtracts 1000 years from the date it's actually running, which means—"
"—the shut down won't happen till the year 3025," said Thomas.
"So the prisoner was right then," added Bob. "It doesn't matter at all."
"Well, not for another millenium, anyway. So I apologised to NP and he graciously acknowledged. He also pointed out . . . look at these lines of code, chaps . . . they all start with a sequential number ending in zero, except for this one. So you've got 150, 160, 170, then this one—175—then 180 and so on."
"I'm frightened to ask," said Paul, "but what's the significance of that?"
"Oh, no!" joked someone. "Don't encourage him!"
"It's dead easy," said James. "When writing programs people assign these multiples of ten to the code lines so that extra steps can be inserted later if required."
"So that 175 line is a later insertion, then."
"I reckon so. One of the early lines would be an input of actual date of operation—probably inserted automatically. The way the program was originally written meant shut down in June 2025. Some one must have stuck the 175 line in later to delay the shut down date."
"Why?" asked Thomas.
James shrugged. "So they didn't have to worry about changing things in the future, maybe."
"So why didn't they just choose a later date for the shutdown instruction, rather than a include a correction?"
James shrugged again. "We'll never know. That's the problem with computer programs—they're so complex people have forgotten about the subroutines that were included in previous versions. Things got changed, things got inserted, things got added . . . no one person can see the whole picture . . . ah . . . hi there, Harry."
Harry England and his wife were approaching the lunch party, accompanied by another woman who looked about the same age as them. She was tall and slender with her gray hair tied in a bun and a friendly smile on her lips.
"Sorry we're late, people. Domestic duties got in the way," announced Harry.
"Domestic duties, Harry?" joked Raza. "Surely that's women's work!"
"Very funny," countered Mary with a grin. "Now, you all know that I'll ban Harry from attending future Grumpair lunches if you don't behave like gentlemen."
"Sorry, Your Highness," came back Raza with mock contrition. "Please don't punish Harry. You can punish me if you like!"
"Enough childish banter," said Mary. "Let me introduce you to Gina, my friend from New Zealand. She's staying with us for a while. I've warned her about you lot so she's ready to ignore your drivel."
Some of the pilots began to rearrange the chairs so that the three newcomers could sit together at one of the tables.
"Good God! . . . I don't believe it! . . . Gina Drummond!"
Lefty Wright had stood up and was staring at the antipodean visitor, who raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth in surprise.
"Bertrand? . . . Bertrand Wright . . . is that you?"
"It most certainly is, Gina."
The other diners stopped their chat and looked at the two of them, realising that an event of some moment was taking place.
"Do you two know each other?" asked Mary, as surprised as the others.
"We were at school together," said Gina. "Primary school."
"Gordon Court Primary," said Lefty. "About a thousand years ago. So we were . . . what . . . ten, eleven years old."
Gina grinned. "He was a tearaway, a right hooligan."
"No change there, then," said one of the others, to general laughter.
"I was smitten," said Lefty quietly, still staring at Gina.
"Is that why you were always annoying me and my friends?"
"I was trying to make an impression."
"You succeeded!"
Lefty swept his hand through the air. "I tell you, chaps, I was madly in love with this girl. I was devastated when we finished at Gordon Court. I never saw her again." He looked at Mary's friend. "I was told you'd gone away so I couldn't keep in touch."
"My dad's job in England had finished," said Gina, "so we went back to NZ."
"Where do you live now?" asked Henrietta.
"South Island," came the reply. "I've got a house on the coast a few kilometres south of Greymouth. I'm Gina Churchward now."
"What does your husband do?" asked Lefty. "Or is he retired?"
"He was a design engineer. But he died a few years ago. I see the family quite a lot but I live on my own."
"So you've got kids, then?"
"Yes," said Gina. "Three kids, four grandkids, a dog and two cats."
"What did you think of Lefty when you were at school with him," asked Raza.
Gina looked puzzled. "Lefty?"
"Lefty Wright," explained Mary. "I told you about their silly nicknames, didn't I."
"So come on," persisted Raza. "what was he like?"
Gina smiled. "I liked him a lot, even when he was being irritating and puerile. I was sad that we lost touch."
"We like him too," said Thomas, calling over from the other table, "even though he's still irritating and puerile. Even more so now he's a widower. Agnes is no longer there to stop him making an idiot of himself."
"We're all agreed on that!" added Paul, the other pilots laughing in concurrence.
"How did you become friends with Mary then, Gina?" asked Lefty.
"Andrew . . . my husband . . . was asked to come over to the UK to head up a project . . . oh, quite a few years back."
"That's right," said Mary. "You turned up thirty odd years ago, didn't you. I first met you at the tennis club, wasn't it? We used to meet regularly on social occasions."
"Yes, and our kids went to the same school as Mary's. We lived here for several years then went back to NZ."
"But we always kept in touch," said Mary.
Lefty steadied himself with a hand on a chair back and creakily lowered himself on to one knee. He looked at the New Zealander wistfully.
"Amazing! Gina Drummond . . . will you marry me?"
Gina again opened her mouth in shock. All conversation ceased and an expectant air filled the room.
"I mean it," said Lefty. "Will you marry me?"
A smile crept on to Gina's lips. The smile broadened into a grin.
"Probably!"
"Bloody
good!" grinned back Lefty as a round of applause started,
accompanied by cheers. "Bloody
great! Now . . . will someone help me back on my feet!"
© J Evans 2023