One More Thing - Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things - page 109

Chapter 21. One More Thing
It was a dark and foggy night, many months after Lauren Ipsum had gone back home to
Hamilton. A lighthouse flashed. Flashed. Flashed. Flashed.
The flashes didn't carry any messages this night. The fog was too thick to send signals, so
the Network was down. The powerful lights were needed for their original purpose: to warn
boats away from dangerous rocks.
As it happened, only one boat was around, and it didn't need warning. It was exactly where it
was supposed to be.
The Jargonaut was the boat, and Kevin Kelvin was its captain. The boat was large and flat
and plain. Near the front was a little cabin where Kelvin lived. The rest of the deck was taken
up by a crane and a winch—a machine built to wind wire in or out. A wire led from the crane
and into the water, looking like a large fishing pole. Belowdecks was mostly a hold for tons
and tons of coiled wire.
It wouldn't be accurate to say that the Jargonaut was a gigantic boat with a winch attached to
it. That might give you the wrong impression. It would be better to describe it as a gigantic
winch with a boat attached to it. Its entire purpose in life was to play out and wind up miles
of heavy wire.
Inside the cabin, Kevin Kelvin rubbed his hands together to keep them warm. A thermometer
hung from a peg near the door. It read a chilly 273. Brrrrr! Now, 273 degrees might sound
pretty hot to you and me, but this thermometer didn't measure in degrees Fahrenheit or
Celsius. It was on the Kelvin Scale, one of the captain's many inventions. The Kelvin Scale
starts at Absolute Zero, the coldest that any cold thing can possibly get. And 273 Kelvin isn't
much better. It's about the temperature of an ice cube. Brrrrr!
The thermometer said a lot about the kind of person Kevin Kelvin was. He was a Composer,
and a wickedly smart one. He never let a good idea escape without putting his name on it.