Author's Note:

Title is a random reference to a line in Shakespeare's Richard III:

"A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

Apparently, I'm feeling inspired and can thus bang out the next chapter really quickly. It's probably helped by the fact that I've already been reading up stuff/materials for weeks, I just don't know how to put it into the story until recently. Don't expect this stroke of good fortune to last, though.

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Riddles - My Kingdom for a Computer

Anthony's computer fever dreams do not survive contact with Reality. Fortunately, Thomas has an Idea.

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Their visits to the library had become a lot more productive with slightly modified notice-me-not charms. It was better for whichever librarian on duty to not notice that the books and papers they requested had been asked for by kids that are not even in primary school yet. Now, it became a lot easier to use with both of them owning wands, enabling them to request a lot more (it was tiring to do wandless magic when you're a kid without enough fine control yet). He had even modified their memories to recall the requesters as young men, completing the illusion.

Thomas had never thought he'd be happier seeing a pile of books and published papers delivered his way.

The comfortable silence that reigned as they both lose themselves in their respective readings heralded a productive and peaceful afternoon. Or so Thomas had thought. Apparently, he thought wrong.

"Thomas," Anthony said.

"Yes?"

"Where's St. John's College?"

He tried to convince himself that the question was a perfectly normal one. There was something uncomfortable nagging at the back of his head, though.

"It's one of the colleges in Cambridge," it was one he was familiar with only because he'd been reading up on John Dee, Royal Wizard to Elizabeth II's court. He was an alumnus of the college.

A spark grew in Anthony's eyes. "It's the Cambridge that you've told me about? One of the great centres of learning in this country?"

There really was no way to avoid answering the question. And here he had hoped he could stop raising any unreasonable hopes.

"Yes," he reluctantly answered.

"I hear Oxford also has an excellent library."

He left the paper he was reading with some reluctance (Kurt Gödel's Theorem IV was fascinating). It was one he had waited for several weeks too, because this library wasn't actually large enough to have something so new (it was published in 1931) and so esoteric in its own inventory.

"Anthony, what is this about—"

"You have a great idea. I need to make my own computer."

He should get a prize for this, he thought—he didn't groan or followed his initial urge to cover his face with his hand. He took a careful breath instead and squarely met his brother's gaze.

"Alright. What has this got to do with Cambridge? Or Oxford?" Thomas asked.

"Leslie Comrie graduated from King's College and if he can build his own rudimentary computer, I bet I can too. All I need to do is figure out what he knows and use that."

Thomas shot his hand out instead as he gestured to the paper that Anthony was holding.

"Let me see that."

Anthony handed it over to him without complaint and he began to read. His brother was barely still, though. He was walking back and forth, excitement thrumming under his skin. Leslie J. Comrie, HM Nautical Almanac Office at the Royal Greenwich Observatory…hmm, actually a reasonable position to require increased computing ability—he moved on to check the title after that. On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation—

"Oh, I know! We should visit the Greenwich Observatory!"

He almost groaned. Morgana's Tits.

Thomas bit back a curse and interfered. "No, we're not visiting the Greenwich Observatory—not yet. Do you even know what his so-called computer looks like?"

"The algorithm is right there."

That brought Thomas' attention right back to the paper. Sure enough, there was the algorithm that needed to be run. Yet since creating tables of the moon was what sounded like the job for something named 'nautical almanac office', that algorithm had certainly existed and refined for years if not decades. It all depended when the office was made in the first place. What was more important was whether it was automated.

He had a feeling his brother still underestimated just how un-automated everything is here.

"There's several off-the-shelves machines involved here. He didn't really make anything new because he was also aiming for cost effectiveness." Thomas said as he scanned through the article. Government procurement budget being what they are, he wasn't surprised. Heck, even Fudge still underfunds the DMLE (and as a consequence, Auror training). That's when he'd heard that Voldemort was back and on the rise.

"Yes, still, I want to know which machines he used and how he put them together." Anthony pointed out.

Well, that was the rub, isn't it? It's not 'put together' in any way Anthony was thinking. It's certainly nothing like the droid prototypes Anakin is working on.

The thought passed in a flash in Thomas' mind. It would be hard to notice if they had their minds open to each other, much less when they're putting up walls for privacy. He desperately tried to search through whatever basic programming knowledge Anakin had passed to him during all those hours in Watto's shop.

"You've once told me that one of the basic principles of computer programs is branching, right? If it can only receive several orders in a list, run through all of them and then spit them out, they're just dumb calculating machines. They become so much more once you can put conditionals in them. If result is negative, execute subroutine A, if result is zero or positive, execute subroutine B."

Anthony nodded. "Yes. And Loops."

Well, he can't exactly be relied to remember a lot of those extraneous details about programming. "And loops, of course. While x is still under 100, keep running the subroutine. Usually every time that subroutine is run, x is added by 1 and gets closer and closer to 100."

"Yep."

Now, for the bad news, Thomas grimly thought.

"That's just it, Anthony. These machines can only be programmed with a few branches, if they can even take branches at all. These are just…" he sighed. "These just aren't the computers you're looking for. Not yet."

Anthony shook his head. "No, that can't be. Look at the algorithm again, it clearly has them…"

Thomas only gave him a long, unreadable look, waiting until his brother trailed away into silence. "Well, you know what the oldest meaning of the word computer means, right?"

"What does that have to do—"

There really was no kinder way to put this. Thomas went in with the cold hard truth.

"They use clerks, Anthony. The branching points of the program? Clerks. The loops? More clerks. They just need to sit next to the machine, wait until it spits out the result from the last run, and then decide what subroutine needs to be run next based on the answer. Or keeps feeding it last operations input until the n-th iteration is achieved in a manual loop."

Hadn't he crushed the lives and dreams of enough Aurors foolish enough to think they can take him without appropriate back up? He'd even straight out cracked someone's spine under his booted heel and laughed at the screams of the man's family. Now, Anthony's dreams fell apart, his bright blue eyes turning as sombre as England's January skies. For some unfathomable reason, the sight did not give him any joy at all. It wasn't just the lack of joy that disturbed him, it was the bile he could taste welling up inside.

It's probably the magical connection, he thought to himself. Of course it was. They were more attuned to each other's extreme emotions than anyone.

"Look, maybe you shouldn't try to keep up with what's already extant in this world right now." Thomas hurriedly replied as his mind raced ahead. "You should dream bigger. Look ahead to the next jump in technology after this one. These computers are certainly still too big, right? It's a far cry from the handheld technologies of the Republic."

"It's still going to be more than a generation behind what we have there." Anthony replied with uncharacteristic bitterness.

"Then find out. It's not as if you can't look it up on the HoloNet."

That sentence brought a sharp look from his brother, but he was adamant.

So far, it had been an informal rule of theirs to not cross worlds. Thomas now was of the opinion that the rule had outlived its usefulness; he ruthlessly discarded it the same way he discarded other useless things in his prior life.

"Read it. Try constructing some prototypes. Carry the memory with you back here." He commanded, with more confidence than he felt. "I dare you to tell me that it can't be done."

Anthony's eyes were bright blue fires of hope once more.

"Of course it can be done. But you don't think…?"

"What?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Are we supposed to do it, though? I mean, two worlds?"

It was Thomas' turn to shrug this time. "If we're not supposed to do it, why give us two lives to live? Why make us live it interleaved with each other. Of course we're meant to do it."

Anthony was eyeing him sceptically. It was certainly for a good reason, as Thomas was straight out cajoling his brother with his oratory skills there and sheer guts and self-confidence. Yet he could feel his brother's opinion shifting slowly, regardless whether he wondered if Thomas was bluffing or not. For him, that was good enough.

Anthony stared at the piles of readings that Thomas had now made obsolete in one stroke. Clearly, he wasn't looking forward to returning all of that at once.

"Well, I can't do anything about it until next week." Anthony complained.

"Just read something entertaining for now, then."

He ignored his brother's annoyed look as he returned to the paper 'On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I' that he had abandoned earlier. Mission accomplished and now he can get back to his own reading. Thomas blocked out the world as he immersed himself formal systems, much more content now as he realised that his discomfort was also due to the churning emotions that Anthony was experiencing.

Thomas didn't really pay attention when his brother huffed loudly and started returning his pile of books and papers. He certainly didn't look up when Thomas went back and forth to find new materials to read. He was already engrossed in an idea that would be known Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem in the later years, a principle that would shake mathematics as it showed that no mathematical system will ever be Complete/Perfect.

This was also the reason why he didn't notice Anthony somehow procuring a large map of Great Britain for their corner of the library, as Anthony tried to locate a place that had been piquing his curiosity ever since Thomas wrote that fake letter from their mother.

Little Hangleton.

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Author's Note:

The paper by Kurt Gödel that Thomas was reading does exist. On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I became one of the revolutionary works in mathematics. Wikipedia informs me that the Roman numeral I in the title was on purpose, because he was afraid the ideas was hard to stomach that he'd had to clarify and defend them in a second paper. To his surprise, they were a hit, and that second paper was never written.

The paper by Leslie J. Comrie that Anthony was reading also exists. On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation actually details one of the earliest and revolutionary uses of business machines of the era for scientific computing. His other contribution was that he did construct it from off-the-shelves machines instead of having a custom-built one. Unlike some other pioneers of the era, it wasn't as if he was sponsored by IBM who would gladly bankroll any machine he needed to build to his own specifications.

And yes, John Dee is an alumnus of King's College, same as Comrie.

Last, to kainee:

So, when Real Life doesn't get in the way, I either reply to your messages or stop and write when I have the inspiration for it. Well, here it is! Another chapter, albeit back to the shorter ones like before.

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