Esme woke knowing tnat this was not her own bed. It was somehow softer and she knew that its bolster or mattress contained the downey breast feathers of the Eider Duck This was the famous feather bed, the ultimate. And these were not her normal night clothes. She could feel a scallop-edged nightcap like Miss Muffet’s, a long chemise that her fingers told her was figured down the front , ankle-length drawers and bed socks. Between her legs there seemed to be a pocket filled with wadding. She knew by feel without seeing that these must be of the finest materials. She was rich.
She was still somewhat confused but gradually came to realise that she had somehow become Lord Byron’s daughter the Countess of Lovelace and that this room was in Horseley Towers. But who was Lord Byron? The room was pitch black with the shutters and windows closed tight and the rattle of her breath told that this was a sick room and that she was a very sick woman. Yes, a grown woman! That in itself was the worst shock. She also knew that there would be straw spread on the street below to dampen the sound of passing iron-shod wheels on the cobbles and her personal maid Adele would be close at hand to come instantly at her call.
“Who is there?” It was not so much a voice as seemingly a call from within her head. She had heard no-one enter the room.
“Who else could it be but me?”
“And who is me?” asked that strange interrorgator.
“Your mistress of course. The countess” returned Esme getting exasperated.
“No you are not the countess! I am the countess and you are some sort of visitor. You had to explore with your hands to find out who you are. I know who I am. And I take it that you are really a young person. The shock when you found yourself a grown woman was what woke me up, It had taken ages to get to sleep. What do you normally call yourself?”
“Esme.”
“I suppose I’ll have to say welcome Esme although it’s a sick body that you’ve joined but that’s my history since about age eight. It’s been just one malady after another. If anything is about I’ll catch it. It seems though that you’ve entered my mind as well although your mind is somehow closed off to me.–Which is a pity.–So tell me what your interests are. By the way just call me Ada.”
“Well Ada I’m interested in heaps of things but to tell you about them I’d have to explain a whole world that has changed beyond what you can even imagine. A world that would seem fantasy to you. But I do like the one thing that hasn’t changed. Maths!”
“Ah yes! The enchantment of numbers. That purest of the sciences. That’s my love also sure enough. Stick to it, my dear, and it will open up the widest of vistas for you. You’ve heard of me then?”
“No! Actually I hadn’t. Not until I’ve now met you or at least strangely become part of you. And somehow through you I’ve met all the people that you’ve met. Our tutor Mary Somerville for instance. I hope I can call her ‘our tutor’. You loved her. Now I love her. And of course Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, the engineers Wheatstone and Faraday, author Charles Dickens, and our old friend Charles Babbage. I should tell you now Ada that that Analytical Engine of his is never going to be finished. I’ve seen pictures of it in a museum. A first but an idea before it’s time. That’s something I know from my time that you obviously don’t know.”
“Drat!! And as you also know, I’ve been writing instructions for it to plot Bernoulli Numbers and now you tell me that I’ve been wasting my time.–I must admit though that I did have a some slight doubts but Charles seems to have swept us all along with his enthusiasm and clouded our collective thinking.—A Differential Engine I could readily understand and accept. That’s maths. An Analytical Engine did have me a trifle worried.—Analysis surely means taking notice of circumstances or facts and then making decisions based on them. In other words thinking! I had difficulty in seeing that any collection of gears could ever be able to think but—others apparently could.—So—-more fool me!”
“Ada. You’re not the only one to be led astray by other people’s puffery. Me too I’m afraid. So—let’s put it this way. The ultimate goal. I know that we’ve been interested in Jaquard Looms and have visited a number of them. They’re a very clever device–Joseph Marie Jaquard is a genius–but once programmed every run of the loom with that program produces the same raised pattern. But imagine now a loom that is aware of public tastes and their gradual shift and continuously alters it’s output to suit. A thinking loom.”
“My dear child, you have the wildest imagination. But that’s the word we’re looking for ‘AWARE’.”
“Ada. Can I blow your mind then with the idea of semi-aware machines that can talk to other semi-aware machines even though half a world away?”
Dreams are always outside our control and sometime during the conversation Esme drifted away. She woke the next morning to find herself in her usual bed and in her normal night attire but the dream had stayed strong with her. What a strange dream it had been. A pitch black room, nothing to see, and finding herself in someone else’s body and mind exchanging thoughts with the woman owner that she could not see but who was really herself.
But dreams are not real and her Ada Lovelace and all those other people could not be real. It was as her imaginary Countess had said. She must have ‘the wildest imagination.’