(3 of 10)
I get home and count the beans: 3,101. Multiply by 8 to get the number in a cubic foot: 24,808. Now I just need the number of cubic feet in Soldier Field. My nephews are sprawled like pithed frogs before the HDTV, teaching themselves physics by lobbing antimatter bombs onto an offending civilization from high orbit. I prance over the black zigzags of the control cables and commandeer a unit.
Up on the screen, a cartoon elf or sprite or something pokes its head out from behind a window, then draws it back. No, I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic -- this is the much-hyped intelligent agent who comes with the box. I ignore it, make my escape from Gameland and blunder into a lurid district of the Metaverse where thousands of infomercials run day and night, each in its own window. I watch an ad for Chinese folk medicines made from rare-animal parts, genetically engineered and grown in vats. Grizzly-bear gallbladders are shown growing like bunches of grapes in an amber fluid.
The animated sprite comes all the way out, and leans up against the edge of the infomercial window. ``Hey!'' it says, in a goofy, exuberant voice, ``I'm Raster! Just speak my name -- that's Raster -- if you need any help.''
I don't like Raster's looks. It's likely he was wandering the streets of Toontown and waving a sign saying WILL ANNOY GROWNUPS FOR FOOD until he was hired by the cable company. He begins flying around the screen, leaving a trail of glowing fairy dust that fades much too slowly for my taste.
``Give me the damn encyclopedia!'' I shout. Hearing the dread word, my nephews erupt from the rug and flee.
So I look up Soldier Field. My old Analytic Geometry textbook, still flecked with insulation from the attic, has been sitting on my thigh like a lump of ice. By combining some formulas from it with the encyclopedia's stats . . .
``Hey! Raster!''
Raster is so glad to be wanted that he does figure eights around the screen. ``Calculator!'' I shout.
``No need, boss! Simply tell me your desired calculation, and I will do it in my head!''
So I have a most tedious conversation with Raster, in which I estimate the number of cubic feet in Soldier Field, rounded to the nearest foot. I ask Raster to multiply that by 24,808 and he shoots back: 537,824,167,717.
A nongeek wouldn't have thought twice. But I say, ``Raster, you have Spam for brains. It should be an exact multiple of eight!'' Evidently my brother's new box came with one of those defective chips that makes errors when the numbers get really big.
Raster slaps himself upside the head; loose screws and transistors tumble out of his ears. ``Darn! Guess I'll have to have a talk with my programmer!'' And then he freezes up for a minute.
My sister-in-law Anne darts into the room, hunched in a don't-mind-me posture, and looks around. She's terrified that I may have a date in here. ``Who're you talking to?''
``This goofy I.A. that came with your box,'' I say. ``Don't ever use it to do your taxes, by the way.''
She cocks her head. ``You know, just yesterday I asked it for help with a Schedule B, and it gave me a recipe for shellfish bisque.''