Interrupt, p.26
Interrupt, page 26
He wondered if anyone was working on a speech recognition system that could be hooked up with a TDD, so that a deaf person could talk rather than type and the system would recognize the speech and print it out on the other end user's screen. Applications like TDDs always lagged the technology....
A ringing drilled into his thoughts, and he lunged out of the chair and grabbed for the phone. Feferman? No, he'd just left Feferman a few hours ago at the switch office, and they couldn't have any news yet, and he wasn't on call at R-TAC and no one phoned at this time of night unless it was bad news. "Hello?" His throat was dry.
"Gloria?"
Gloria. He let out a breath. Christ. "No, there's no Gloria here."
"Um, this isn't Gloria Meacham's number?"
"What number did you call?"
"I don't remember, I already closed the phone book. What number is this?"
"There's no Gloria Meacham here."
"Is this Fred?"
Andy sighed. "You got the wrong number. Look it up again."
"You're not shittin me? You sound like Fred."
"It's five o'clock in the morning," Andy said, "and—"
A slam, and dial tone filled his ear.
He replaced the handset gently in its cradle and cursed.
The telephone system was beautiful, it was a wonder of engineering design, it was an irreplaceable convenience, it was a lifeline, and it faithfully transmitted the utterances of genius and fool alike.
Andy returned to the brown leather chair, stretched out his legs, and folded his hands behind his head.
Fundamentally, a TDD speech recognition system was going to have to be able to analyze both discrete speech and continuous speech, and that would take a robust design, but...
Andy fumbled for the light switch and grabbed a pencil and paper.
CHAPTER 29
"FLAME ON ********** HEY troll u did good. Nice to cruise in a pristine network again—& thanks fr all the free calls & software & videos & bulletin board hookups, u saved the switches, u saved the highway, u saved democracy troll. May that hacker get HUNG and may u frever write clean code!!!!!! Be seeing u in the system. Zot. ********* FLAME OFF"
Andy pushed away from the terminal and spun his chair to face Amin.
Amin leaned one shoulder against the wall, slouching gracefully beneath the horsewhip.
"Then who is he?"
"He is Zot. What more can I tell you?" Amin steepled his hands.
Andy braced for the lesson.
"Andy, my chick, just be glad he's on our side."
THE END
Toni Dwiggins, Interrupt
