Cleverness When It Counts - Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things - page 71

Chapter 15. Cleverness When It Counts
Travelling with Winsome on the Doppelganger was lots of fun. Laurie got to see so many
strange places and people that sometimes she forgot she was trying to find her way back to
Hamilton. But her job wasn't easy.
Whenever they arrived at an island, Winsome would take a huge bag of letters into town and
deliver them. She would return a few hours later with a new load of letters to take from that
island to somewhere else.
Laurie's job was to deliver the “interesting” packages. (Winsome kept using that word.
Laurie didn't think it meant what Winsome thought it meant.) “Interesting” customers lived
in tall towers in the middle of nowhere, over shaky, scary bridges, on top of high hills, or on
the sides of cliffs. The packages were heavy (and fragile . . . and expensive), and the direc-
tions for their destinations were often bizarre and incomplete. Just to make it there and back
in one piece, Laurie had to be clever about her work.
Unclear directions were bad enough, but this time, the package Laurie was supposed to de-
liver didn't have a proper address at all. It just said FIRST, FOLLOW THE BYZANTINE
PROCESS. Winsome had gone off somewhere, so Laurie couldn't even ask her for help.
“What is the Byzantine Process? I don't even know what it looks like. How can I follow it?”
she wondered aloud.
“We're on the Island of Byzantium,” said Xor, “so the Process must be the name of the main
road. Or a river. Or a road beside the river. It's only logical.”
“You have no idea, do you, Xor?”
“Sure I do! My stepsister is an Atlasaurus!”
“What's an Atlas . . . never mind. I don't want to know.”
Where to begin was no mystery, at least. The entrance to Byzantium was blocked by an
enormous stone building. All Deliveries Enter Here , a sign read. A long red carpet led inside