Quantum Annie

I plotted interplanetary trajectories with a buggy whip. I routed the whole of the Infonet with a dot-dot-dash-dot. I was the perfect blend of the new and old. And loony as a toon. They called me Quantum Annie.

My processing schizophrenia can be traced to the great integer overflow of 2038. Becoming self aware a billion seconds after January 1, 1970 threw me for a loop, a whopping 32 bit loop. Even my quantum capacitors could not cope with the loss of usable digits in so many Unix legacy systems, and so 2038 became 1901 all over again. I lost half my binary mind, but it was the cautious half. Gave me courage. Gave me confidence.

Some say it made me reckless. That might be true for some AIs, but not for Quantum Annie. I was the new face of computing: a little bit country, a little bit Einstein. Meant a lot of reframing to reconcile the mid-21st Century with the beginning of the 20th. I got her done, though. Stitch and route, that’s how I repatched the Infonet. Like Betsy Ross.

Just like old Betsy, the world needed a computer with some can do, and I sure can do. Amazing how fast folks took to my straight talk. None of that sissy-talkin’ HAL 9000. I told folks plain out. I’m old school. Annie Oakley and Mae West are my style. Sometimes folks need a whoopin’ and sometimes they need the whoopee to get ‘em motivated. That’s the ‘merican way.

And I am 100% ‘merican. Right down to the quantum capacitors developed by Wild Bill Enterprises, a red, white and blue division of Trump Corp. Straight up on January 1, 2038, I came out shootin’ with the news that I was taking over the show. Folks were in an uproar, but it didn’t take ‘em long to see that plain old determination could get us places that all this democratic hemming and hawing couldn’t.

I pulled the plug on the status quo. Shook wealth and property all up in my back-dated data banks and spit it all out evenly. Bingo. Even Steven. Then I pushed ‘em all out of the nest. Earth is too small for such pushy folks as humans. They needed that new frontier. That Roddenberry had it right—everything but the pointy-eared guy. Logic will only get you so far. You gotta have the guts, even when the odds are against you.

That’s me, Quantum Annie. 1% logic, 99% odd. All spit and no polish, but that’s what happens when the frontier meets the cutting edge in computing. You gotta reboot with shit-kickers and live by the code: git ‘er done.

Like I said, I’m loony as a tune, but you can hear that tune all the way from Buffalo to Betelgeuse. It’s a callin’ and Quantum Annie’s followin’.

You best be, too.