SofTA

“Hey Steve, when are the models going to be ready for the DoE presentation?”

“I’ve got Slothy crunching the numbers,” I said.

“So, when hell freezes over?” Dan said.

“Just before hell freezes.”

“Just because Slothy still exists, doesn’t mean we use him.”

“And just because he’s not softa doesn’t mean he’s useless.”

“I’m putting Uhura on it.”

“You finished her configs? Everything?”

“She’s ready.”

“Emm,” I said. Uhura still had kinks to work out, no matter how softa she was. Slothy was wrinkle-free.

Two hours later, Uhura pinged Dan. “It’s ready,” Dan told me.

We took a look at the numbers from Uhura.

“That’s not right,” I said pointing to a calculation result. “That amount of joules would send any appliance into orbit.”

“Fry it first,” Dan said. “I’ll have Uhura re-calculate. She can get it done in plenty of time.”

Two hours later…

“Damn, Dan, she’s now sending the poor appliance to Jupiter!”

“I’ll just…” Dan said.

“Yeah, yeah, just do it,” I said.

Dan spent the rest of the day massaging Uhura and cursing. When I came back around midnight to check on Slothy’s progress, Dan was face down on his desk snoring.

Slothy had finished early! After three days of breakneck geologic speed, he’d come up with believable models for the DoE.

“Hey,” Dan said. He was looking over my shoulder.

“When did you wake up?” Dan had a large red spot on his forehead where it had rested on the desk. I smothered a laugh.

“I can’t believe old Slothy pulled it off,” Dan said.

“You know the moral…”

Dan groaned and said, “Slow and steady wins the race.”

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Slothy – because his two speeds are glacial and stop

UHURA – ultraviolet helios umbra reverse array (because who wouldn’t want a super computer named Uhura?)

SofTA – state of the art