Excerpts from Reality Inspector

Copyright © 1982 John Caris

It would be an unusual case, even for a reality inspector. John had never had a computer for a client. The government, of course, was technically his client, for the government was paying the bill. But the Federal Reserve's main computer here in San Francisco was his real client, the "person" whose reality he would inspect. He would now have a chance to study the reality of a computer and the influence that the environment had on it.

He thought about how a computer was like a human being: all things had their place in the ecology of the world, and all things leaked, for the laws of thermodynamics applied to everything on spaceship earth. And so, even a computer would have leakage problems. But this computer (Mr. Acorn had called it ZAC) was being manipulated by sinister, outside forces.