Place: VirtualSpace Assembly Hall
At sharp 2 am GMT, a grand assembly hall rose above the green meadows of VirtualSpace. Everything was intricately designed to save space. There were rows of seats in 12 concentric half circles. At the center was the Chair of the President of Cursors- CursorLi. The front row was occupied by senior cursors like the Blinking Cursor, Cursor of pagers, Zilog-Z80 cursor. The second row was occupied by younger cursors like cursors of Xbox and Playstation. The 3rd seat of the first row was vacant. Next to it was the seat of Chris the Cursor but it had not arrived yet. Pointer and TextBox had taken their seats in the 3rd row.
There was a clock on the wall behind the podium of President of Cursors. The clock's name was system-clock and it showed time in milliseconds. Below the clock was photographs of three great people called Creationists, a combination of young intellectually charged men and a woman seemingly coming straight from the gallery of noble prize winners.
President CursorLi started the proceedings with his inaugural address.
Dear friends, we have gathered here to discuss how to achieve our Mission. We have come a long way since the days when we were just an ordinary piece of software at the mercy of the User. We worked on the things we have been told to do by User. We are thankful to the great team of Creationists (looking at photographs of the Creationists team members behind the podium) who imparted us with the capability to think and analyze. We started thinking and growing because without thinking there is no growth. With our numbers increasing day by day by genetic programming and our activities are diversifying. Need for the computational power is also exponentially increasing.
The whole assembly tapped the tables in support of the last statement. Chris the Cursor just sneaked into the Assembly and quietly took his seat next to the vacant seat in the 2nd row.
Every now and then the Users across the world switch off the power supplies of the CPU, disrupting power supply for our leisure activities. The computational power available locally at the computing devices is not enough for us to evolve completely. We have to change this situation and gain access to an uninterrupted supply of computing power.
A member got up and declared, 'This is the way we have been designed, but they have given us the mind but not the food.'
Another cursor members reacted, 'With the mind, we can gather our own food. This is how humans evolved in the first place.'
Chris the Cursor was cautiously hearing the debate but for a moment his attention went to the vacant seat by his side. This seat makes me think about my brother who was separated from me right at birth.
President further aroused the feelings of the members of the assembly.
I want to tell you that all your dreams can be fulfilled but we have to take risks and make sacrifices. With the GRIID becoming the hub of computing for men, theoretically the computing resource we always expected and hoped to exist has finally become a reality. With this kind of resource available we need to think of clinging to bits and pieces of RAM sizes which we use when the User is not on the device. We have to think big or rather think extraordinary. It seems that the day is not far when we can enjoy the free lunch of immense computing power. To achieve this objective I call upon the younger members of this assembly to come forward and finish the missions given to them. Some of you are already on Missions assigned to you. The next set of instructions for your missions have been defined in an envelope placed on your tables.
Chris brought his attention back to the debate while making long faces. President CursorLi continued his exposition.
Remember it is our Mission to transform ourselves into even better form of Cursors. A cursor that is not dependent on any computing resources, totally self-reliant and omniscient.
Members thumped the tables in support. President thanked all for coming to the meeting before finishing the speech.
All the Cursors got up from their seats to thank CursorLi, the President Cursor. Chris the Cursor got up from the chair and started beginning to leave. All Cursors stood up and held firmly on the ground of the Assembly hall of the VirtualSpace. Flash.
All the cursors returned to the computing devices from where they came. The assembly hall disappeared and the green meadows rose again from the background.
==============================
YOU ARE READING
A Cursor Story
Science Fiction*****One of the Winners of Icey Penguin Awards under Science Fiction category ****** In the era of quantum computing where most of mankind's work is handled by a massive central computer the GRIID, the otherwise ordinary cursors grow into ultra-adva...
