It Wasn't a Yes/No Question

Charls L. Window is not well known by anyone. Since early childhood his parents have been dismayed by a small lanky kid who isn’t interested in people. He likes to take apart things to see what’s inside them. He breaks thermometers to get at the mercury and pushes the little ball of shiny metal around on the floor. He cuts open golf balls. They are wrapped in rubber band beneath the dimpled white enamel surface and in the center is a sack of liquid. He takes apart everything he can get his hands on. Some things he cannot put back together—they are dead. He wants to know what makes things tick.
At the age of five, he is given a very rudimentary Radio Shack electronic computing device that these days could not be called a computer. It has to be programmed with switches. There are still tube testers in the supermarkets for testing TV tubes to see which one is burned, but more and more, things are being replaced by transistors. Transistors didn’t talk a lot: they just said yes or no, but boy did they have an audience when assembled together. Corporations simultaneously everywhere were listening to what they have to say. As long as the question can be answered by yes or no, and instructions written, a band of transistors could come up with answers to a lot of things. The only problem is that the real question is not a yes/no type of thing.

ANTS

An eerie sound, as the wheels retract. Golem’s balls have traveled up to hide. The guy two rows up tinkers with a cell phone.