I made one other discovery that day, not long after lunch ended. Among the CAD files for the brain designs were the masks used for burning the circuits of every electronic component in the design. Several were relatively new -- newer than most of the other filesthat collectively made up the brain designs; not by coincidence were they also the extra control circuitry that had been addedto the brain by GENOM. But those that didn't lay out GENOM's additions were among the oldest files in the set, suggesting that they hadn't changed since the original designer had finalized his prototype. I had been running a simulation of one of these chips, displaying its results using both a schematic and a projection of the final physical circuit. I was tracing the path of a particularly osbcure signal when something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye -- something that had gone by a little too fast for me to actually see what it was, but not so fast that I couldn't realize that I had just seen something that seemed out of place.I suspended the sim and then stepped backwards through the signal's path until I saw it again -- a couple of little swirls in the circuit material, bright against the dull black substrate on which they rested, and unconnected to anything else. I dragged a zoombox over it and maximized the selection. Yeah. Just what I thought they were.Two romanji letters, in a cursive font, written in (virtual) precious metal: "KS"."It would appear," I said to the silent and empty lab without looking up from the screen, "that our mystery genius signed his work."Then I sat back from the monitor array and wondered what manner of interesting information that little tidbit might lead me to.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.