MIMSY
WERE THE BOROGOVES
Lewis Padgett, 1943
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There's
no use trying to describe either Unthahorsten or his surroundings,
because, for one thing, a good many million years had passed since 1942
Anno Domini and, for another, Unthahorsten wasn't on Earth, technically
speaking. He was doing the equivalent of standing in the equivalent of
a laboratory. He was preparing to test his time machine.
Having turned on the power, Unthahorsten suddenly realized that the Box was empty. Which wouldn't do at all. The device needed a control, a three-dimensional solid which would react to the conditions of another age. Otherwise Unthahorsten couldn't tell, on the machine's return, where and when it had been. Whereas a solid in the Box would automatically be subject to the entropy and cosmic ray bombardment of the other era, and Unthahorsten could measure the changes, both qualitative and quantitative, when the machine returned. The Calculators could then get to work and, presently, tell Unthahorsten that the Box had briefly visited 1,000,000 A.D., 1,000 A.D., or 1 A.D., as the case might be. Not that it mattered, except to Unthahorsten. But he was childish in many respects. There was little time to waste. The Box was beginning to glow and shiver. Unthahorsten stared around wildly, fled into the next gossatch, and groped in a storage bin there. He came up with an armful of peculiar-looking stuff. Uh-huh. Some of the discarded toys of his son Snowen, which the boy had brought with him when he had passed over from Earth, after mastering the necessary technique. Well, Snowen needed this junk no longer. He was conditioned, and put away childish things. Besides, though Unthahorsten's wife kept the toys for sentimental reasons, the experiment was more important. Unthahorsten left the glossatch and dumped the assortment into the Box, slamming the cover shut just before the warning signal flashed. The Box went away. The manner of its departure hurt Unthahorsten's eyes. ...He waited. ...And he waited. ...Eventually he gave up and built another time machine, with identical results. Snowen hadn't been annoyed by the loss of his old toys, nor had Snowen's mother, so Unthahorsten cleaned out the bin and dumped the remainder of his son's childhood relics in the second time machine's Box. According to his calculations, this one should have appeared on Earth, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, A.D. If that actually occurred, the device remained there. Disgusted, Unthahorsten decided to make no more time machines. But the mischief had been done. There two of them, and the first-- Scott Paradine found it while he was playing hooky from the Glendale Grammar School. There was a geography test that day, and Scott saw no sense in memorizing place names-- which in 1942 was a fairly sensible theory. Besides, it was the sort of warm spring day, with a touch of coolness in the breeze, which invited a boy to lie down in a field and stare at the occasional clouds till he fell asleep. Nuts to geography! Scott dozed. About noon he got hungry, so his stocky legs carried him to a nearby store. There he invested his small hoard with penurious care and a sublime disregard for his gastric juices. He went down by the creek to feed. Having finished his supply of cheese, chocolate, and cookies, and having drained the soda-pop bottle to its dregs, Scott caught tadpoles and studied them with a certain amount of scientific curiosity. He did not persevere. Something tumbled down the bank, and thudded into the muddy ground near the water, so Scott, with a wary glance around, hurried to investigate. It was a Box. It was, in fact, the Box. The gadgetry hitched to it meant little to Scott, though he wondered why it was so fused and burnt. He pondered. With his jackknife he pried and probed, his tongue sticking out from a corner of his mouth-- Hm-m-m. Nobody was around. Where had the box come from? Somebody must have left it here, and sliding soil had dislodged it from its precarious perch. "That's a helix," Scott decided, quite erroneously. It was helical, but it wasn't a helix, because of the dimensional warp involved. Had the thing been a model airplane, no matter how complicated, it would have held few mysteries to Scott. As it was, a problem was posed. Something told Scott that the device was a lot more complicated than the spring motor he had deftly dismantled last Friday. But no boy has ever left a box unopened, unless forcibly dragged away. Scott probed deeper. The angles on this thing were funny. Short circuit, probably. That was why-- uh! The knife snapped. Scott sucked his thumb and gave vent to experienced blasphemy. Maybe it was a music box. Scott shouldn't have felt depressed. The gadgetry would have given Einstein a headache and driven Steinmetz raving mad. The trouble was, of course, that the box had not yet completely entered the space-time continuum where Scott exited and therefore it could not be opened. At any rate, not till Scott used a convenient rock to hammer the helical nonhelix into a more convenient position. He hammered it, in fact, from its contact point with the fourth dimension, releasing the space-time torsion it had been maintaining. There was a brittle snap. the box jarred slightly, and lay motionless, no longer only partially in existence. Scott opened it easily now. The soft, woven helmet was the first thing that caught his eye, but he discarded that without much interest. It was just a cap. Next he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm-- much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example-- They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play. Scott was interested in their costumes, but fascinated by their actions. The tiny people were deftly building a house. Scott wished it would catch fire, so he could see the people put it out. Flames licked up from the half-completed structure. The automatons, with a great deal of odd apparatus, extinguished the blaze. It didn't take Scott long to catch on. But he was a little worried. The manikins would obey his thoughts. By the time he discovered that, he was frightened, and threw the cube from him. Halfway up the bank, he reconsidered and returned. The crystal block lay partly in the water, shining in the sun. It was a toy; Scott sensed that, with the unerring instinct of a child. But he didn't pick it up immediately. Instead, he returned to the box and investigated its remaining contents. He found some really remarkable gadgets. The afternoon passed all too quickly, Scott finally put the toys back in the box and lugged it home, grunting and puffing. He was quite red-faced byt the time he arrived at the kitchen door. His find he hid at the back of the closet in his own room upstairs. The crystal cube he slipped into his pocket, which already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad of tinfoil, a grimy defenses stamp, and a chunk of feldspar. Emma, Scott's two-year-old sister, waddled unsteadily in from the hall and said hello. "Hello, Slug," Scott nodded, from his altitude of seven years and some months. He patronized Emma shockingly, but she didn't know the difference. Small, plump, and wide-eyed, she flopped down on the carpet and stared dolefully at her shoes. "Tie 'em, Scotty, please?" "Sap," Scott told her kindly, but knotted the laces. "Dinner ready yet?" Emma nodded. "Let's see your hands." For a wonder, they were reasonably clean, though probably not aseptic. Scott regarded his own paws thoughtfully and, grimacing, went to the bathroom, where he made a sketchy toilet. The tadpoles had left their traces. Dennis Paradine and his wife Jane were having a cocktail before dinner, downstairs in the living room. He was a youngish, middle-aged man with gray-shot hair and a thinnish, prim-mouthed face; he taught philosophy at the university. Jane was small, neat, dark, and very pretty. She sipped her Martini and said: "New shoes. Like 'em?" "Here's to crime," Paradine muttered absently. "Huh? Shoes? Not now. Wait till I've finished this. I had a bad day." "Exams?" "Yeah. Flaming youths aspiring toward manhood. I hope they die. In considerable agony. Insh'Allah!" "I want the olive," Jane requested. "I know," Paradine said despondently. "It's been years since I've tasted one myself. In a Martini, I mean. Even if I put six of 'em in your glass, you're still not satisfied." "I want yours. Blood brotherhood. Symbolism. That's why." "Paradine regarded his wife balefully and crossed his long legs. "You sound like one of my students." "Like that hussy Betty Dawson, perhaps?" Jane unsheathed her nails. "Does she still leer at you in that offensive way?" "She does. The child is a neat psychological problem. Luckily she isn't mine. If she were-" Paradine nodded significantly. "Sex consciousness and too many movies. I suppose she still thinks she can get a passing grade by showing me her knees. Which are, by the way, rather bony." Jane adjusted her skirt with an air of complacent pride. Paradine uncoiled himself and poured fresh Martinis. "Candidly, I don't see the point of teaching those apes philosophy. They're all at the wrong age. Their habit-patterns, their methods of thinking, are already laid down. They're horribly conservative, not that they'd admit it. The only people who can understand philosophy are mature adults or kids like Emma and Scotty." "Well, don't enroll Scotty in your course," Jane requested. "He isn't ready for Philosophiae Doctor. I hold no brief for child geniuses, especially when it's my child" "Scotty would probably be better at it than Betty Dawson," Paradine grunted. "'He died an enfeebled dotard at five,'" Jane quoted dreamily. "I want your olive." "Here. By the way, I like the shoes." "Thank you. Here's Rosalie. Dinner?" "It's all ready, Miz Pa'dine," said Rosalie, hovering. "I'll call Miss Emma 'n' Mista' Scotty." "I'll get 'em." Paradine put his head into the next room and roared, "Kids! Come and get it!" Small feet scuttered down the stairs. Scott dashed into the view, scrubbed and shining, a rebellious cowlick aimed at the zenith. Emma pursued, levering herself carefully down the steps. Halfway she gave up the attempt to descend upright and reversed, finishing the task monkey-fashion, her small behind giving an impression of marvelous diligence upon the work in hand. Paradine watched, fascinated by the spectacle, till he was hurled back by the impact of his son's body. "Hi, dad!" Scott shrieked. Paradine recovered himself and regarded Scott with dignity. "Hi, yourself. Help me in to dinner. You've dislocated at least one of my hip joints." But Scott was already tearing into the next room, where he stepped on Jane's new shoes in an ecstasy of affection, burbled an apology, and rushed off to find his place at the dinner table. Paradine cocked up an eyebrow as he followed, Emma's pudgy hand desperately gripping his forefinger. "Wonder what the young devil's been up to?" "No good, probably," Jane sighed. "Hello, darling. Let's see your ears." "They're clean. Mickey licked 'em." "Well, that Airedale's tongue is far cleaner than your ears," Jane pondered, making a brief examination. "Still, as long as you can hear, the dirt's only superficial." "Fisshul?" "Just a little, that means," Jane dragged her daughter to the table and inserted her legs into a high chair. Only had Emma graduated to the dignity of dining with the rest of the family, and she was, as Paradine remarked, all eat up with pride by the prospect. Only babies spilled food, Emma had been told. As a result, she took such painstaking care in conveying her spoon to her mouth that Paradine got the jitters whenever he watched. "A conveyer belt would be the thing for Emma," he suggested, pulling out a chair for Jane. "Small buckets of spinach arriving at her face at stated intervals." Dinner proceeded uneventfully until Paradine happened to glance at Scott's plate. "Hello, there. Sick? Been stuffing yourself at lunch?" Scott thoughtfully examined the food still left before him. "I've had all I need, dad," he explained. "You usually eat all you can hold, and a great deal more," Paradine said. "I know growing boys need several tons of foodstuffs a day, but you're below par tonight. Feel OK?" "Uh-huh. Honest, I've had all I need." "All you want?" "Sure. I eat different." "Something they taught you at school?" Jane inquired. Scott shook his head solemnly. "Nobody taught me. I found it out myself. I used spit." "Try again," Paradine suggested. "It's the wrong word." "Uh... s-saliva. Hm-m-m?" "Uh-huh. More pepsin? Is there pepsin in the salivary juices, Jane? I forget." "There's poison in mine," Jane remarked. "Rosalie's left lumps in the mashed potatoes again." But Paradine was interested. "You mean you're getting everything possible out of you food-- no wastage-- and eating less?" Scott thought that over. "I guess so. It's not just the sp... saliva. I sort of measure how much to put in my mouth at once, and what stuff to mix up. I dunno. I just do it." "Hm-m-m," said Paradine, making a note to check up later. "Rather a revolutionary idea." Kids often get screwy notions, but this one might not be so far off the beam. He pursed his lips. "Eventually I suppose people will eat quit differently - I mean the waythey eat, as well as what. What they eat, I mean. Jane, our son shows signs of becoming a genius." "Oh?" "It's a rather good point in dietetics he just made. Did you figure it out for yourself, Scott?" "Sure," the boy said, and really believed it. "Where'd you get the idea?" "Oh, I--" Scott wriggled. "I dunno. It doesn't mean much, I guess." Paradine was unreasonable disappointed. "But surely-" "S-s-s-spit!" Emma shrieked, overcome by a sudden fit of badness. "Spit!" she attempted to demonstrate, but succeeded only in dribbling into her bib. With a resigned air Jane rescued and reproved her daughter, while Paradine eyed Scott with rather puzzled interest. But it was not till after dinner, in the living room, that anything further happened. "Any homework?" "N-no," Scott said, flushing guiltily. To cover his embarrassment he took from his pocket a gadget he had found in the box, and began to unfold it. The result resembled a tesseract, strung with beads. Paradine didn't see it at first, but Emma did. She wanted to play with it. "No. Lay off, Slug," Scott ordered. "You can watch me." He fumbled with the beads, making soft, interesting noises.  "Scotty," Paradine said warningly. "I didn't hurt her." "Bit me. It did," Emma mourned. "Paradine looked up. He frowned, staring. What in- "Is that an abacus?" he asked. "Let's see it, please." Somewhat unwillingly Scott brought the gadget across to his father's chair. Paradine blinked. The "abacus," unfolded, was more than a foot square, composed of thin, rigid wires that interlocked here and there. On the wires colored beads were strung. They could be slid back and forth, and from one support to another, even at the points of juncture. But-- a pierced bead couldn't cross interlocking wires.... So, apparently, they weren't pierced. Paradine looked closer. Each small bead had a deep groove running around it, so that it could be revolved and slid along the wire at the same time. Paradine tried to pull one free. It clung as though magnetically. Iron? It looked more like plastic. The framework itself-- Paradine wasn't a mathematician. But the angles formed by the wires were vaguely shocking, in their ridiculous lack of Euclidean logic. They were a maze. Perhaps that's what the gadget was-- a puzzle. "Where'd you get this?" "Uncle Harry gave it to me, "Scott said on the spur of the moment. "Last Sunday, when he came over." Uncle Harry was out of town, a circumstance Scott well knew. At the age of seven, a boy soon learns that the vagaries of adults follow a certain definite pattern, and that they are fussy about the donors of gifts. Moreover, Uncle Harry would not return for several weeks; the expiration of that period was unimaginable to Scott, or, at least, the fact that his lie would ultimately be discovered meant less to him than the advantages of being allowed to keep the toy. Paradine found himself growing slightly confused as he attempted to manipulate the beads. The angles were vaguely illogical. It was like a puzzle. This red bead, if slid along this wire to that junction, should reach there-- but it didn't. A maze, odd, but no doubt instructive. Paradine had a well-founded feeling that he'd have no patience with the thing himself. Scott did, however, retiring to a corner and sliding beads around with much fumbling and grunting. The beads did sting, when Scott chose the wrong ones or tried to slide them in the wrong direction. At last he crowed exultantly. "I did it, dad!" "Eh? What? Let's see." The device looked exactly the same to Paradine, but Scott pointed and beamed. "I made it disappear." "It's still there." "That blue bead.  Paradine didn't believe that, so he merely snorted. Scott puzzled over the framework again. He experimented. This time there were no shocks, even slight. The abacus had showed him the correct method. Now it was up to him to do it on his own. The bizarre angles of the wires seemed a little less confusing now, somehow. It was a most instructive toy-- It worked, Scott thought, rather like the crystal cube. Reminded of the gadget, he took it from his pocket and relinquished the abacus to Emma, who was struck dumb with joy. she fell to work sliding the beads, this time without protesting against the shocks-- which, indeed, were very minor-- and, being imitative, she managed to make a bead disappear almost as quickly as had Scott. The blue bead reappeared-- but Scott didn't notice. He had forethoughtfully retired into an angle of the chesterfield with an overstuffed chair and amused himself with the cube. There were little people inside the thing, tiny manikins which enlarged by the magnifying properties of the crystal, and they moved, all right. They built a house. It caught fire, with realistic-seeming flames, and stood by waiting. Scott puffed urgently. "Put it out!" But nothing happened. Where was that queer fire engine, with revolving arms, that had appeared before? Here it was. It came sailing into the picture and stopped. Scott urged it on. This was fun. Like putting on a play, only more real.  If he made a mistake, they waited till he'd found the right way. They even posed new problems for him-- The cube, too, was a most instructive toy. It was teaching Scott, with alarming rapidity-- and teaching him very entertainingly. But it gave him no really new knowledge as yet. He wasn't ready. Later-- later-- Emma grew tired of the abacus and went in search of Scott. She couldn't find him, even in his room, but once there the contents of the closet intrigued her. She discovered the box. It contained a treasure-trove-- a doll, which Scott had already noticed but discarded with a sneer. Squealing, Emma brought the doll downstairs, squatted in the middle of the floor, and began to take it apart. "Darling! What's that?" "Mr. Bear!" Obviously it wasn't Mr. Bear, who was blind, earless, but comforting in his own soft fatness. But all dolls were named Mr. Bear to Emma. Jane Paradine hesitated. "Did you take that from some other little girl?" "I didn't. She's mine." Scott came out from his hiding place, thrusting the cube into his pocket. "Uh-- that's from Uncle Harry."  "He gave it to me for Emma," Scott put in hastily, adding another stone to his foundation of deceit. "Last Sunday." "You'll break it, dear." "Emma brought the doll to her mother. "She comes apart. See?" "Oh? It… ugh!" Jane sucked in her breath. Paradine looked up quickly. "What's up?" She brought the doll over to him, hesitated, and then went into the dining room, giving Paradine a significant glance. He followed, closing the door. Jane had already placed the doll on the cleared table. "This isn't very nice, is it Denny?" "Hm-m-m." It was rather unpleasant, at first glance. One might have expected an anatomical dummy in a medical school, but a child's doll-- The thing came apart in sections, skin, muscles, organs, miniature but quite perfect, as far as Paradine could see. He was interested. "Dunno. Such things haven't the same connotations to a kid--" "Look at that liver. Is it a liver?" "Sure. Say I… this is funny." "What?" "It isn't anatomically perfect, after all." Paradine pulled up a chair. "The digestive tract's too short. No large intestine. No appendix, either." "Should Emma have a thing like this?" "I wouldn't mind having it myself," Paradine said. "Where on earth did Harry pick it up? No, I don't see any harm in it. Adults are conditioned to react unpleasantly to innards. Kids don't. They figure they're solid inside, like a potato. Emma can get a sound working knowledge of physiology from this doll." "But what are those? Nerves?" "No, these are the nerves. Arteries here; veins here. Funny sort of aorta--" Paradine looked baffled. "That… what's Latin for network? Anyway… huh? Rita? Rata?" "Rales," Jane suggested at random. "That's a sort of breathing," Paradine said crushingly. "I can't figure out what this luminous network of stuff is. It goes all through the body, like nerves." "Blood." "Nope. Not circulatory, not neural-- funny! It seems to be hooked up with the lungs." They became engrossed, puzzling over the strange doll. It was made with remarkable perfection of detail, and that in itself was strange, in view of the physiological variation from the norm. "Wait'll I get that Gould," Paradine said, and presently was comparing the doll with anatomical charts. He learned little, except to increase his bafflement. But it was more fun than a jigsaw puzzle. Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Emma was sliding the beads to and fro in the abacus. The motions didn't seem so strange now. Even when the beads vanished. She could almost follow that new direction-- almost-- Scott panted, staring into the crystal cube and mentally directing, with many false starts, the building of a structure somewhat more complicated than the one which had been destroyed by fire. He, too, was learning-- being conditioned-- Paradine's mistake, from a completely anthropomorphic standpoint, was that he didn't get rid of the toys instantly. He did not realize their significance, and, but the time he did, the progression of circumstances had got well under way. Uncle Harry remained out of town, so Paradine couldn't check with him. Too, the midterm exams were on, which meant arduous mental effort and complete exhaustion at night; and Jane was slightly ill for a week or so. Emma and Scott had free rein with the toys. "What," Scott asked his father one evening, "is a wabe, dad?" "Wave?" He hesitated. "I… don't think so. Isn't wabe right?" …"Wab is Scot for web. That it?" "I don't see how," Scott muttered, and wandered off, scowling, to amuse himself with the abacus. He was able to handle it quite deftly now. But, with the instinct of children for avoiding interruptions, he and Emma usually played with the toys in private. Not obviously, of course-- but the more intricate experiments were never performed under the eye of an adult. Scott was learning fast. What he now saw in the crystal cube had little relationship to the original simple problems. But they were fascinatingly technical. Had Scott realized that his education was being guided and supervised-- though merely mechanically-- he would probably have lost interest. As it was, his initiative was never quashed. Abacus, cube, doll-- and other toys the children found in the box-- Neither Paradine nor Jane guessed how much of an effect the contents of the time machine were having on the kids. How could they? Youngsters are instinctive dramatists, for purposes of self-protection. They have not yet fitted themselves to the exigencies-- to them partially inexplicable-- of a mature world. Moreover, their lives are complicated by human variables. They are told by one person that playing in the mud is permissible, but that, in their excavations, they must not uproot flowers or small trees. Another adult vetoes mud per se. The Ten Commandments are not carved on stone; they vary, and children are helplessly dependent on the caprice of those who give them birth and feed and clothe them. And tyrannize. The young animal does not resent that benevolent tyranny, for it is an essential part of nature. He is, however, an individualist, and maintains his integrity by a subtle, passive fight. Under the eyes of an adult he changes. Like an actor on-stage, when he remembers, he strives to please, and also to attract attention to himself. Such attempts are not unknown to maturity. But adults are less obvious-- to other adults. It is difficult to admit that children lack subtlety. Children are different from the mature animal because they think in another way. We can more or less easily pierce the pretenses they set up-- but they can do the same to us.  Iconoclasm is their prerogative. Foppishness, for example. The amenities of social intercourse, exaggerated not quite to absurdity. The gigolo-- "Such savoir faire! Such punctilious courtesy!" The dowager and the blond young thing are often impressed. Men have less pleasant comments to make. But the child goes to the root of the matter. "You're silly!" How can an immature human understand the complicated system of social relationships? He can't. To him, an exaggeration of natural courtesy is silly. In his functional structure of life-patterns, it is rococo. He is an egotistic little animal, who cannot visualize himself in the position of another-- certainly not an adult. A self-contained, almost perfect natural unit, his wants supplied by others, the child is much like a unicellular creature floating in the blood stream, nutriment carried to him, waste products carried away-- From the standpoint of logic, a child is rather horribly perfect. A baby may be even more perfect, but so alien to an adult that only superficial standards of comparison apply. The thought processes of an infant are completely unimaginable. But babies think, even before birth. In the womb they move and sleep, not entirely through instinct. We are conditioned to react rather peculiarly to the idea that a nearly-viable embryo may think. We are surprised, shocked into laughter, and repelled. Nothing human is alien. But a baby is not human. An embryo is far less human. That, perhaps, was why Emma learned more from the toys than did Scott. He could communicate his thoughts, of course; Emma could not, except in cryptic fragments. The matter of the scrawls, for example-- Give a young child pencil and paper, and he will draw something which looks different to him than to an adult.  Perhaps it is even three-dimensional. Babies think differently and see differently. Paradine brooded over that, reading his paper one evening and watching Emma and Scott communicate. Scott was questioning his sister. Sometimes he did it in English. More often he had resource to gibberish and sign language. Emma tried to reply, but the handicap was too great. Finally Scott got pencil and paper. Emma liked that. Tongue in cheek, she laboriously wrote a message. Scott took the paper, examined it, and scowled. "That isn't right, Emma," he said. Emma nodded viorously. She seized the pencil again and made more scrawls. Scott puzzled for a while, finally smiled rather hesitantly, and got up. He vanished into the hall. Emma returned to the abacus. Paradine rose and glanced down at the paper, with some mad thought that Emma might abruptly have mastered calligraphy. But she hadn't. The paper was covered with meaningless scrawls, of a type familiar to any parent. Paradine pursed his lips. It might be a graph showing the mental variations of a manic-depressive cockroach, but probably wasn't. Still, it no doubt had meaning to Emma. Perhaps the scribble represented Mr. Bear. Scott returned, looking pleased. He met Emma's gaze and nodded. Paradine felt a twinge of curiosity. "Secrets?" "Nope. Emma… uh… asked me to do something for her." "Oh." Paradine, recalling instance of babies who had babbled in unknown tongues and baffled linguists, made a note to pocket the paper when the kids had finished with it. The next day he showed the scrawl to Elkins at the university. Elkins had a sound working knowledge of many unlikely languages, but he chuckled over Emma's venture into literature. "Here's a free translation, Dennis. Quote. I don't know what this means, but I kid the hell out of my father with it. Unquote." The two men laughed and went off to their classes. But later Paradine was to remember the incident. Especially after he met Holloway. Before that, however, months were to pass, and the situation to develop even further toward its climax. Perhaps Paradine and Jane had evinced too much interest in toys. Emma and Scott took to keeping them hidden, playing with them only in private. They never did it overtly, but with a certain unobtrusive caution. Nevertheless, Jane especially was somewhat troubled. She spoke to Paradine about it one evening. "That doll Harry gave Emma." "Yeah?" "I was downtown today and tried to find out where it came from. No soap." "Maybe Harry bought it in New York." Jane was unconvinced. "I asked them about the other things, too. They showed me their stock-- Johnson's a big store, you know. But there's nothing like Emma's abacus." "Hm-m-m." Paradine wasn't much interested. They had tickets for a show that night, and it was getting late. So the subject was dropped for the nonce. Later it cropped up again, when a neighbor telephoned Jane. "Scotty's never been like that, Denny. Mrs. Burns said he frightened the devil out of her Francis." "Francis?  Like his father. I broke Burns' nose for him once, when we were sophomores." "Stop boasting and listen," Jane said, mixing highball. "Scott showed Francis something that scared him. Hadn't you better--" "I suppose so." Paradine listened. Noises in the next room told him the whereabouts of his son. "Scotty!" "Bang," Scotty said, and appeared smiling. "I killed 'em all. Space pirates. You want me, dad?" "Yes. If you don't mind leaving the space pirates unburied for a few minutes. What did you do to Francis Burns?" Scott's blue eyes reflected incredible candor. "Huh?" "Try hard. You can remember, I'm sure." "Uh. Oh, that. I didn't do nothing." "Anything," Jane corrected absently. "Anything. Honest, I just let him look into my television set, and it… it scared him." "Television set?" Scott produced the crystal cube. "It isn't really that. See?" Paradine examined the gadget, startled by the magnification. All he could see, though, was a maze of meaningless colored designs. "Uncle Harry--" Paradine reached for the telephone. Scott gulped. "Is… is Uncle Harry back in town?" "Yeah." "Well, I gotta take a bath." Scott headed for the door. Paradine met Jane's gaze and nodded significantly. Harry was home, but disclaimed all knowledge of the peculiar toys. Rather glumly, Paradine requested Scott to bring down from his room all of the playthings. Finally they lay in a row on the table, cube, abacus, doll, helmet-like cap, several other mysterious contraptions. Scott was cross-examined. He lied valiantly for a time, but broke down at last and bawled, hiccupping his confession. "Get the box these things came in," Paradine ordered. "The head for bed." "Are you… hup!… gonna punish me daddy?" "For playing hooky and lying, yes. You know the rules. No more shows for two weeks. No sodas for the same period." Scott gulped. "You gonna keep my things?" "I don't know yet." "Well… g'night, daddy. G'night, mom." After the small figure had gone upstairs, Paradine dragger a chair to the table and carefully scrutinized the box. He poked thoughtfully at the fused gadgetry. Jane watched. "What is it, Denny?" "Dunno. Who'd leave a box of toys down by the creek?" "It might have fallen out of a car." "Not at that point. The road doesn't hit the creek north of the railroad trestle. Empty lots-- nothing else." Paradine lit a cigarette. "Drink, honey?" "I'll fix it." Jane went to work, her eyes troubled. She brought Paradine a glass and stood behind him, furling his hair with her fingers. "Is anything wrong?" "Of course not. Only-- where did these toys come from?" "Johnsons's didn't know, and they get their stock from New York." "I've been checking up, too," Paradine admitted. "That doll"-- he poked it-- "rather worried me. Custom jobs, maybe, but I wish I knew who'd made 'em." "A psychologist? The abacus-- don't they give people tests with such things?" Paradine snapped his fingers. "Right! And say! There's a guy going to speak at the university next week, fellow named Holloway, who's a child psychologist. He's a big shot, with quite a reputation. He might know something about it." "Holloway? I don't--" "Rex Holloway. He's… hm-m-m! He doesn't live far from here. Do you suppose he might have had these things made himself?" Jane was examining the abacus. She grimaced and drew back. "If he did, I don't like him. But see if you can find out, Denny." Paradine nodded. "I shall." He drank his highball, frowning. He was vaguely worried. But he wasn't scared-- yet.  Paradine brought him home to dinner one night a week later. Holloway did not appear to watch the children, but nothing they did or said was lost on him. His gray eyes, shred and bright, missed little. The toys fascinated him. In the living room the three adults gathered around the table, where the plaything had been placed. Holloway studied them carefully as he listened to what Jane and Paradine had to say. At last he broke his silence. "I'm glad I came here tonight. But not completely. This is very disturbing, you know." "Eh?" Paradine stared, and Jane's face showed her consternation. Holloway's next words did not calm them. "We are dealing with madness." He smiled at the shocked looks they gave him. "All children are mad, from an adult viewpoint. Ever read Hughes' 'High Wind in Jamaica'?" "I've got it." Paradine secured the little book from its shelf. Holloway extended a hand, took it, and flipped the pages till he had found the place he wanted. He read aloud: "'Babies of course are not human-- they are animals, and have a very a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes; the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.'" Jane tried to take that calmly, but couldn't. "You don't mean that Emma--" "Could you think like your daughter?" Holloway asked. "Listen: 'One can no more think like a baby than one can think like a bee.'" Paradine mixed drinks. Over his shoulder he said, "You're theorizing quite a bit, aren't you? As I get it, you're implying that babies have a culture of their own, even a high standard of intelligence." "Not necessarily. There's no yardstick, you see. All I say is that babies think in other ways than we do. Not necessarily better-- that's a question of relative values. But with a different manner of extension--" He sought for the words, grimacing. "Fantasy," Paradine said, rather rudely, but annoyed because of Emma. "Babies don't have different senses from ours." "Who said they did?" Holloway demanded. "They use their minds in a different way, that's all. But it's quite enough!" "I'm trying to understand," Jane said slowly. "All I can think of is my Mixmaster. It can whip up batter and potatoes, but I can squeeze oranges, too." "Something like that. The brain's a colloid, a very complicated machine. We don't know much about its potentialities. We don't even know how much it can grasp. But it is known that the mind becomes conditioned as the human animal matures. It follows certain familiar theorems, and all thought thereafter is pretty well based on patterns taken for granted. Look at this." Holloway touched the abacus. "Have you experimented with it?" "A little," Paradine said. "But not much. Eh?" "Well--" "Why not?" "It's pointless," Paradine complained. "Even a puzzle has to have some logic. But those crazy angles--" "Your mind has been conditioned to Euclid," Holloway said. "So this-- thing-- bores us, and seems pointless.  A different sort of geometry from ours wouldn't impress him as being illogical. He believe what he sees." "Are you trying to tell me that this gadget's got a fourth dimensional extension?" Paradine demanded. "Not visually, anyway," Holloway denied. "All I say is that our minds, conditioned to Euclid, can see nothing in this but an illogical tangle of wires. But a child-- especially a baby-- might see more. Not at first. It'd be a puzzle, of course.  "Hardening of the thought-arteries," Jane interjected. Paradine was not convinced. "Then a baby could work calculus better than Einstein? No, I don't mean that. I can see your point, more or less clearly. Only--" "Well, look. Let's suppose there are two kinds of geometry-- we'll limit it, for the sake of the example. Our kind, Euclidean, and another, which we'll call x. X hasn't much relationship to Euclid. It's based on different theorems. Two and two needn't equal four in it; they could equal y, or they might not even equal. A baby's mind is not yet conditioned, except by certain questionable factors of heredity and environment. Start the infant on Euclid--" "Poor kid," Jane said. Holloway shot her a quick glance. "The basis of Euclid. Alphabet blocks. Math, geometry, algebra-- they come much later. We're familiar with that development. On the other hand, start the baby with the basic principles of our x logic." "Blocks? What kind?" Holloway looked at the abacus. "It wouldn't make much sense to us. But we've been conditioned to Euclid." Paradine poured himself a stiff shot of whiskey. "That's pretty awful. You're not limiting to math." "Right! I'm not limiting it at all. How can I? I'm not conditioned to x logic." "There's the answer," Jane said, with a sigh of relief. "Who is? It'd take such a person to make the sort of toys you apparently think these are." Holloway nodded, his eyes, behind the thick lenses, blinking. "Such people may exist." "Where?" "They might prefer to keep hidden." "Supermen?" "I wish I knew. You see, Paradine, we've got yardstick trouble again. By our standards these people might seem super-doopers in certain respects. In others they might seem moronic. It's not a quantitative difference; it's qualitative. They think different. And I'm sure we can do things they can't." "Maybe they wouldn't want to," Jane said. Paradine tapped the fused gadgetry on the box. "What about this? It implies--" "A purpose, sure." "Transportation?" "One thinks of that first, If so, the box might have come from anywhere." "Where-- things are-- different?" Paradine asked slowly. "Exactly. In space, or even time. I don't know; I'm a psychologist. Unfortunately I'm conditioned to Euclid, too." "Funny place it must be," Jane said. "Denny, get rid of those toys." "I intend to." Holloway picked up the crystal cube. "Did you question the children much?" Paradine said, "Yeah. Scott said there were people in that cube when he first looked. I asked him what was in it now." "What did he say?" The psychologist's eyes widened. "He said they were building a place. His exact words. I asked him who-- people? But he couldn't explain." "No, I suppose not," Holloway muttered. "It must be progressive. How long have the children had these toys?" "About three months, I guess." "Time enough. The perfect toy, you see, is both instructive and mechanical. It should do things, to interest a child, and it should teach, preferably unobtrusively. Simple problems at first. Later-" "X logic," Jane said, white faced. Paradine cursed under his breath. "Emma and Scott are perfectly normal!" "Do you know how their minds work-- now?" Holloway didn't pursue the thought. He fingered the doll. "It would be interesting to know the conditions of the place where these things came from. Induction doesn't help a great deal, though. Too many factors are missing. We can't visualize a world based on the x factor-- environment adjusted to minds thinking in x patterns. This luminous network inside the doll. It could be anything. It could exist inside us, though we haven't discovered it yet. When we find the right stain--" He shrugged. "What do you make of this?" It was a crimson globe, two inches in diameter, with a protruding knob upon its surface. "What could anyone make of it?" "Scott? Emma?" "I hadn't even seen it till about three weeks ago. Then Emma started to play with it." Paradine nibbled his lip. "After that, Scott got interested." "Just what do they do?" "Hold it up in front of them and move it back and forth. No particular pattern of motion." "No Euclidean pattern," Holloway corrected. "At first they couldn't understand the toy's purpose. They had to be educated up to it." "That's horrible," Jane said. "Not to them. Emma is probably quicker at understanding x than Scott, for her mind isn't yet conditioned to this environment." Paradine said, "But I can remember plenty of things I did as a child. Even as a baby." "Well?" "Was I-- mad-- then?" "The things you don't remember are the criterion of your madness," Holloway retorted. "But I use the word 'madness' purely as a convenient symbol for the variation from the known human norm. The arbitrary standard of sanity." Jane put down her glass. "You've said that induction was difficult, Mr. Holloway. But it seems to me you're making a great deal of it from very little. After all, these toys--" "I am a psychologist, and I've specialized in children. I'm not a layman. These toys mean a great deal to me, chiefly because they mean so little." "You might be wrong." "Well, I rather hope I am. I'd like to examine the children." Jane rose in alarm. "How?" After Holloway had explained, she nodded, though still a bit hesitantly. "Well, that's all right. But they're not guinea pigs." The psychologist patted the air with a plump hand. "My dear girl! I'm not a Frankenstein. To me the individual is the prime factor-- naturally, since I work with minds. If there's anything wrong with the youngsters, I want to cure them." Paradine put down his cigarette and slowly watched blue smoke spiral up, wavering in an unfelt draft.  "I'll try. That's all I can say. If the undeveloped minds have been turned into the x channel, it's necessary to divert them back. I'm not saying that's the wisest thing to do, but it probably is from our standards. After all, Emma and Scott will have to live in this world." "Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe there's much wrong. they seem about average, thoroughly normal." "Superficially they may seem so. They've no reason for acting abnormally, have they? And how can you tell if they-- think differently?" "I'll call 'em," Paradine said. "Make it informal, then. I don't want them to be on guard." Jane nodded toward the toys. Holloway said, "Leave the stuff there, eh?" But the psychologist, after Emma and Scott were summoned, made no immediate move at direct questioning. He managed to draw Scott unobtrusively into the conversation, dropping key words now and then. nothing so obvious as a word-association test-- co-operation is necessary for that. The most interesting development occurred when Holloway took up the abacus. "Mind showing me how this works?" Scott hesitated. "Yes, sir. Like this--" He slid a bead deftly through the maze, in a tangled course, so swiftly that no one was quite sure whether or not it ultimately vanished. It might have been merely legerdemain. Then, again- Holloway tried. Scott watched, wrinkling his nose. "That right?' "Uh-huh. It's gotta go there--" "Here? Why?" "Well, that's the only way to make it work." But Holloway was conditioned to Euclid. There was no apparent reason why the bead should slide from this particular wire to the other. It looked like a random factor. Also, Holloway suddenly noticed, this wasn't the path the bead had taken previously, when Scott had worked the puzzle. At least, as well as he could tell. "Will you show me again?" Scott did, and twice more, on request. Holloway blinked through his glasses. Random, yes. And variable. Scott moved the bead along a different course each time. Somehow, none of the adults could tell whether or not the bead vanished. If they had expected to see it disappear, their reactions might have been different. In the end, nothing was solved. Holloway, as he said good night, seemed ill at ease. "May I come again?" "I wish you would," Jane told him. "Any time. You still think-" He nodded. "The children's minds are not reacting normally. They're not dull at all, but I've the most extraordinary impression that they arrive at conclusions in a way we don't understand. As though they used algebra while we used geometry. The same conclusions, but a different method of reaching it." "What about the toys?" Paradine asked suddenly. "Keep them out of the way. I'd like to borrow them, if I may-" That night Paradine slept badly. Holloway's parallel had been ill-chosen. It led to disturbing theories. The x factor-- The children were using the equivalent of algebraic reasoning, while adults used geometry. Fair enough. Only-- Algebra can give you answers that geometry cannot, since there are certain terms and symbols which cannot be expressed geometrically. Suppose x logic showed conclusions inconceivable to an adult mind? "Damn!" Paradine whispered. Jane stirred beside him. "Dear? Can't you sleep either?" "No." He got up and went into the next room.  Through the open doorway Paradine could see Scott's dark head motionless on the pillow. Jane was beside him. He slipped his arm around her. "Poor little people," she murmured. "And Holloway called them mad. I think we're the ones who are crazy, Dennis." "Uh-huh. We've got the jitters." Scott stirred in his sleep. Without awakening, he called what was obviously a question, though it did not seem to be in any particular language. Emma gave a little mewling cry that changed pitch sharply. She had not awakened. The children lay without stirring. But Paradine though, with a sudden sickness in his middle, it was exactly as though Scott had asked Emma something, and she had replied. Had their minds changed so that even-- sleep-- was different to them? He thrust the thought away. "You'll catch cold. Let's get back to bed. Want a drink?" "I think I do," Jane said, watching Emma. Her hand reached out blindly toward the child; she drew it back. "Come on. We'll wake the kids." They drank a little brandy together, but said nothing. Jane cried in her sleep, later. Scott was not awake, but his mind worked in slow, careful building. Thus-- "They'll take the toys away. The fat man… listava dangerous maybe. But the Ghoric direction won't show… evankrus dun-hasn't-them. Intrasdection… bright and shiny. Emma. She's more khopranik-high now than… I still don't see how to… thavarar lizery dist--" A little of Scott's thoughts could still be understood. But Emma had become conditioned to x much faster. She was thinking, too. Not like an adult or a child. Not even like a human. Except, perhaps, a human of a type shockingly unfamiliar to genus homo. Sometimes Scott himself had difficulty in following her thoughts. If it had not been for Holloway, life might have settled back into an almost normal routine. The toys were no longer active reminders. Emma still enjoyed her dolls and sand pile, with a thoroughly explicable delight. Scott was satisfied with baseball and his chemical set. They did everything other children did, and evinced few, if any, flashes of abnormality. But Holloway seemed to be an alarmist.  He drew endless charts and diagrams, corresponded with mathematicians, engineers, and other psychologists, and went quietly crazy trying to find rhyme or reason in the construction of the gadgets. The box itself, with its cryptic machinery, told nothing. Fusing had melted too much of the stuff into slag. But the toys- It was the random element that baffled investigation. Even that was a matter of semantics. For Holloway was convince that it wasn't really random. There just weren't enough known factors. No adult could work the abacus, for example. And Holloway thoughtfully refrained from letting a child play with the thing. The crystal cube was similarly cryptic. It showed a mad pattern of colors, which sometimes moved. In this it resembled a kaleidoscope. But the shifting of balance and gravity didn't affect it. Again the random factor. Or, rather, the unknown. The x pattern. Eventually Paradine and Jane slipped back into something like complacence, with a feeling that the children had been cured of their mental quick, now that the contributing cause had been removed. Certain of the actions of Emma and Scott gave them every reason to quit worrying. For the kids enjoyed swimming, hiking, movies, games, the normal functional toys of this particular time-sector. It was true that they failed to master certain rather puzzling mechanical devices which involved some calculation. A three-dimensional jigsaw globe Paradine had picked up, for example. But he found that difficult himself. Once in a while there were lapses. Scott was hiking with his father one Saturday afternoon, and the two had paused at the summit of a hill. Beneath them a rather lovely valley was spread. "Pretty, isn't it?" Paradine remarked. Scott examined the scene gravely. "It's all wrong," he said. "Eh?" "I dunno." "What's wrong about it? "Gee--" Scott lapsed into puzzled silence. "I dunno." The children had missed their toys, but not for long. Emma recovered first, though Scott still moped. He held unintelligible conversations with his sister, and studied meaningless scrawls she drew on paper he supplied. It was almost as though he was consulting her, anent difficult problems beyond his grasp. If Emma understood more, Scott had more real intelligence, and manipulatory skill as well. He built a gadget with his Meccano set, but was dissatisfied. the apparent cause of his dissatisfaction was exactly why Paradine was relieved when he viewed the structure. It was the sort of thing a normal boy would make, vaguely reminiscent of a cubistic ship. It was a bit too normal to please Scott. He asked Emma more questions, though in private. She thought for a time, and then made more scrawls with an awkwardly clutched pencil. "Can you read that stuff?" Jane asked her son one morning. "Not read it, exactly. I can tell what she means. Not all the time, but mostly." "Is it writing?" "N-no. It doesn't mean what it looks like." "Symbolism," Paradine suggested over his coffee. Jane looked at him, her eyes widening. "Denny--" He winked and shook his head. Later, when they were alone, he said, "Don't let Holloway upset you. I'm not implying the kids are corresponding in an unknown tongue. If Emma draws a squiggle and says it's a flower, that's an arbitrary rule-- Scott remembers that. Next time she draws the same sort of squiggle, or tries to-- well!" "Sure," Jane said doubtfully. "Have you noticed Scott's been doing a lot of reading lately?" "I noticed. Nothing unusual, though. No Kant or Spinoza." "He browses, that's all." "Well, so did I, at his age," Paradine said, and went off to his morning classes. He lunched with Holloway, which was becoming a daily habit, and spoke of Emma's literary endeavors. "Was I right about symbolism, Rex?" The psychologist nodded. "Quite right. Our own language is nothing but arbitrary symbolism now. At least in its application. Look here." On his napkin he drew a very narrow ellipse. "What's that?" "You mean what does it represent?" "Yes. What does it suggest to you? It could be a crude representation of-- what?" "Plenty of things," Paradine said. "Rim of a glass. A fried egg. A loaf of French bread. A cigar." Holloway added a little triangle to his drawing, apex joined to one end of the ellipse. He looked up at Paradine. "A fish," the latter said instantly. "Our familiar symbol for a fish.  The basis of a rebus. A symbol, to us, means a lot more than what we actually see on paper. What's in your mind when you look at this sketch?" "Why-- a fish." "Keep going. What do you visualize-- everything!" "Scales," Paradine said slowly, looking into space. "Water. Foam. A fish's eye. The fins. The colors." "So the symbol represents a lot more than just the abstract idea fish. Note the connotation's that of a noun, not a verb. It's harder to express actions by symbolism, you know. Anyway-- reverse the process. Suppose you want to make a symbol for some concrete noun, say bird. Draw it." Paradine drew two connected arcs, concavities down. "The lowest common denominator," Holloway nodded. "The natural tendency is to simplify. Especially when a child is seeing something for the first time and has few standards of comparison. He tries to identify the new thing with what's already familiar to him. Ever notice how a child draws the ocean?" He didn't wait for an answer; he went on. "A series of jagged points. Like the oscillating line on a seismograph. When I first saw the Pacific, I was about three. I remember it pretty clearly. It looked-- tilted. A flat plain, slanted at an angle. The waves were regular triangles, apex upward. Now I don't see them stylized that way, but later, remembering, I had to find some familiar standard of comparison. Which is the only way of getting any conception of an entirely new thing. The average child tries to draw these regular triangles, but his coordination's poor. He gets a seismograph pattern." "All of which means what?" "A child sees the ocean. He stylizes it. He draws a certain definite pattern, symbolic, to him, of the sea. Emma's scrawls may be symbols, too. I don't mean that the world looks different to her-- brighter, perhaps, and sharper, more vivid with a slackening of perception above her eye level. What I do mean is that her though-processes are different, that she translates what she sees into abnormal symbols." "You still believe--" "Yes, I do. Her mind has been conditioned unusually. It may be that she breaks down what she sees into simple, obvious patterns-- and realizes a significance to those patterns that we can't understand. Like the abacus. She saw a pattern in that, though to us it was completely random." Paradine abruptly decided to taper off these luncheon engagements with Holloway. The man was an alarmist. His theories were growing more fantastic than ever, and he dragged in anything, applicable or not, that would support them. Rather sardonically he said, "Do you mean Emma's communicating with Scott in an unknown language?" "In symbols for which she hasn't any words. I'm sure Scott understands a great deal of those-- scrawls. To him, an isosceles triangle may represent any factor, though probably a concrete noun. Would a man who nothing of algebra understand what H2O meant? Would he realize that the symbol could evoke a picture of the ocean?" Paradine didn't answer. Instead, he mentioned to Holloway Scott's curious remark that the landscape, from the hill, had looked all wrong. A moment later, he was inclined to regret his impulse, for the psychologist was off again. "Scott's thought-patterns are building up to a sum that doesn't equal this world. Perhaps he's subconsciously expecting to see the world where those toys came from." Paradine stopped listening. Enough was enough. The kids were getting along all right, and the only remaining disturbing factor was Holloway himself. That night, however, Scott evinced an interest, later significant, in eels. There was nothing apparently harmful in natural history. Paradine explained about eels. "But where do they lay their eggs? Or do they?" "That's still a mystery. Their spawning grounds are unknown. Maybe the Sargasso Sea, or the deeps, where the pressure can help them force the young out of their bodies." "Funny," Scott said, thinking deeply. "Salmon do the same thing, more or less. They go up rivers to spawn." Paradine went into detail. Scott was fascinated. "But that's right, dad. They're born in the river, and then they learn how to swim, they go down to the sea. And they come back to lay their eggs, huh?" "Right." "Only, they wouldn't come back," Scott pondered. "They'd just send their eggs--" "It'd take a very long ovipositor," Paradine said, and vouchsafed some well-chosen remarks upon oviparity. His son wasn't entirely satisfied. Flowers, he contended, sent their seeds long distances. "They don't guide them. Not many find fertile soil." "Flowers haven't got brains, though. Dad, why do people live here?" "Glendale?" "No-- here. This whole place. It isn't all there is, I bet." "Do you mean the other planets?" Scott was hesitant. "This is only-- part of the big place. It's like the river where the salmon go. Why don't people go on down to the ocean when they grow up?" Paradine realized that Scott was speaking figuratively. He felt a brief chill. The-- ocean? The young of the species are not conditioned to live in the completer world of their parents. Having developed sufficiently, they enter that world. Later they breed. The fertilized eggs are buried in the sand, far up the river, where later they hatch. And they learn. Instinct alone is fatally slow. Especially in the case of a specialized genus, unable to cope even with this world, unable to feed or drink or survive, unless someone has foresightedly provided for those needs. The young, fed and tended, would survive. There would be incubators and robots. They would survive, but they would not know how to swim downstream, to the vaster world of the ocean. So they must be taught. They must be trained and conditioned in many ways. Painlessly, subtly, unobtrusively. Children love toys that do things-- and if those toys teach at the same time-- In the latter half of the nineteenth century and Englishman sat on a grassy bank near a stream. A very small girl lay near him, staring up at the sky. She had discarded a curious toy with which she had been playing, and now was murmuring a wordless little song, to which the man listened to with half an ear. "What was that, my dear?" he asked at last. "Just something I made up, Uncle Charles." "Sing it again." He pulled out a notebook. The girl obeyed. "Does it mean anything?" She nodded. "Oh, yes.  "They're wonderful stories, dear." "And you'll put them in a book some day?" "Yes, but I must change them quite a lot, or no one would understand. But I don't think I'll change your little song." "You mustn't. If you did, it wouldn't mean anything." "I won't change that stanza, anyway," he promised. "Just what does it mean?" "It's the way out, I think," the girl said doubtfully. "I'm not sure yet. My magic toys told me." "I wish I knew what London shop sold those marvelous toys!" "Mamma bought them for me. She's dead. Papa doesn't care." She lied. She had found the toys in a box one day, as she played by the Thames. And they were indeed wonderful. Her little song-- Uncle Charles thought it didn't mean anything. (He wasn't her real uncle, she parenthesized. But he was nice.) The song meant a great deal. It was the way. Presently she would do what it said, and then-- But she was already too old. She never found the way. Paradine had dropped Holloway. Jane had taken a dislike to him, naturally enough, since what she wanted most of all was to have her fears calmed. Since Scott and Emma acted normally now, Jane felt satisfied. It was partly wishful-thinking, to which Paradine could not entirely subscribe. Scott kept bringing gadgets to Emma for her approval. Usually she'd shake her head. Sometimes she would signify agreement. Then there would be an hour of laborious, crazy scribbling on scraps of note paper, and Scott, after studying the notations, would arrange and rearrange his rocks, bits of machinery, candle ends, and assorted junk. Each day the maid cleaned them away, and each day Scott began again. He condescended to explain a little to his puzzled father, who could see no rhyme or reason in the game. "But why this pebble right here?" "It's hard and round, dad. It belongs there." "So is this one hard and round." "Well, that's got vaseline on it. When you get that far, you can't see just a hard round thing." "What comes next? This candle?" Scott looked disgusted. "That's toward the end. The iron ring's next." It was, Paradine thought, like a Scout trail through the woods, markers in a labyrinth. But here again was the random factor. Logic halted-- familiar logic-- as Scott's motives in arranging the junk as he did. Paradine went out. Over his shoulder he saw Scott pull a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket, and head for Emma, who was squatted in a corner thinking things over. Well-- Jane was lunching with Uncle Harry, and, on this hot Sunday afternoon there was little to do but read the papers. Paradine settled himself in the coolest place he could find, with a Collins, and lost himself in the comic strips. An hour later a clatter of feet upstairs roused him from his doze. Scott's voice was crying exultantly, "This is it, Slug! Come on--" Paradine stood up quickly, frowning. As he went into the hall the telephone began to ring. Jane had promised to call-- His hand was on the receiver when Emma's faint voice squealed in excitement. Paradine grimaced. What the devil was going on upstairs? Scott shrieked, "Look out! This way!" Paradine, his mouth working, his nerves ridiculously tense, forgot the phone and raced up the stairs. The door of Scott's room was open. The children were vanishing. They went in fragments, like thick smoke in a wind, or like movement in a distorting mirror. Hand in hand they went, in a direction Paradine could not understand, and as he blinked there on the threshold, they were gone. "Emma!" he said, dry-throated. "Scotty!" On carpet lay a pattern of markers, pebbles, an iron ring-- junk. A random pattern. A crumpled sheet of paper blew towards Paradine. …He picked it up automatically. "Kids. Where are you? Don't hide--" "Emma! SCOTTY!" Downstairs the telephone stopped its shrill, monotonous ringing. Paradine looked at the paper he held. It was a leaf torn from a book. there were interlineations and marginal notes, in Emma's meaningless scrawl. A stanza of verse had been so underlined and scribbled over that it was almost illegible, but Paradine was thoroughly familiar with "Through the Looking Glass." His memory gave him the words-- 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Idiotically he thought: Humpty Dumpty explained it. A wabe is the plot of grass around a sundial. A sundial. Time-- it has something to do with time. A long time ago Scotty asked me what a wabe was. Symbolism. 'Twas brillig-- A perfect mathematical formula, giving all the conditions, in symbolism the children had finally understood. The junk on the floor. The toves had to be made slithy-- vaseline?-- and they had to be placed in a certain relationship, so that they'd gyre and gimbel. Lunacy! But it had not been lunacy to Emma and Scott. They thought differently. They used x logic. Those notes Emma had made on the page-- she'd translated Carroll's words into symbols both she and Scott could understand. The random factor had made sense to the children. They had fulfilled the conditions of the time-space equation. And the mome raths outgrabe-- Paradine made a rather ghastly little sound, deep in his throat. He looked at the crazy pattern on the carpet. If he could follow it, as the kids had done-- but he couldn't. The pattern was senseless. The random factor defeated him. He was conditioned to Euclid. Even if he went insane, he still couldn't do it. It would be the wrong kind of lunacy. His mind had stopped working now. But in a moment the stasis of incredulous horror would pass-- Paradine crumpled the page in his fingers. "Emma, Scotty," he called in a dead voice, as though he could expect no response. Sunlight slanted through the open windows, brightening the golden pelt of Mr. Bear. Downstairs the ringing of the telephone began again. |


Description: Get the HTML contents of the first element in the set of matched elements.
This method is not available on XML documents.
In an HTML document, .html()
can be used to get the contents of any element. If the selector expression matches more than one element, only the first match will have its HTML content returned. Consider this code:
$('div.demo-container').html();
In order for the following

's content to be retrieved, it would have to be the first one with class="demo-container"
in the document:

Demonstration Box

The result would look like this:

Demonstration Box

This method uses the browser's innerHTML
property. Some browsers may not return HTML that exactly replicates the HTML source in an original document. For example, Internet Explorer sometimes leaves off the quotes around attribute values if they contain only alphanumeric characters.
<!DOCTYPE html>

Click to change the html

to a text node.

This <button name="nada">button</button> does nothing.

Description: Set the HTML contents of each element in the set of matched elements.
htmlString: String A string of HTML to set as the content of each matched element.
function(index, oldhtml): Function()
A function returning the HTML content to set. Receives the index position of the element in the set and the old HTML value as arguments. jQuery empties the element before calling the function; use the oldhtml argument to reference the previous content. Within the function, this
refers to the current element in the set.
The .html()
method is not available in XML documents.
When .html()
is used to set an element's content, any content that was in that element is completely replaced by the new content. Consider the following HTML:

Demonstration Box

The content of

can be set like this:
$('div.demo-container')
.html('
All new content. You bet!
');
That line of code will replace everything inside

:

All new content. You bet!

As of jQuery 1.4, the .html()
method allows the HTML content to be set by passing in a function.
$('div.demo-container').html(function() {
var emph = '' + $('p').length + ' paragraphs!';
return '
All new content for ' + emph + '
';
});
Given a document with six paragraphs, this example will set the HTML of

to
All new content for 6 paragraphs!

.
This method uses the browser's innerHTML
property. Some browsers may not generate a DOM that exactly replicates the HTML source provided. For example, Internet Explorer prior to version 8 will convert all href
properties on links to absolute URLs, and Internet Explorer prior to version 9 will not correctly handle HTML5 elements without the addition of a separate compatibility layer.
Note: In Internet Explorer up to and including version 9, setting the text content of an HTML element may corrupt the text nodes of its children that are being removed from the document as a result of the operation. If you are keeping references to these DOM elements and need them to be unchanged, use .empty().html(string)
instead of .html(string)
so that the elements are removed from the document before the new string is assigned to the element.
<!DOCTYPE html>

Hello

<!DOCTYPE html>


Getting started with Skupper
Overview
To show Skupper in action, we need an application to work with. This
guide uses an HTTP Hello World application with a frontend service and
a backend service. The frontend uses the backend to process requests.
In this scenario, the frontend is deployed in the west
namespace, and the backend is deployed in the east
namespace.
While these instructions use this particular application for demonstration purposes, the steps are the same for any Skupper deployment.
Prerequisites
You must have access to at least two Kubernetes namespaces. In the
steps below, replace west
and east
with your chosen namespaces.
Each namespace can reside on any cluster you choose, and you are not limited to two. You can have one on your laptop, another on Amazon, another on Google, and so on. For convenience, you can have them all on one cluster.
Skupper works with any flavor of Kubernetes. Here are some of your options for setting up Kubernetes clusters:
- Minikube
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- IBM Kubernetes Service
- OpenShift
- More providers
These instructions require kubectl
version 1.15 or later. See the
kubectl installation guide for more information.
Step 1: Install the Skupper command-line tool in your environment
The skupper
command-line tool is the primary entrypoint for
installing and configuring the Skupper infrastructure. You need to
install the skupper
command only once for each development
environment.
Use the install script to download and extract the command:
curl https://skupper.io/install.sh | sh
The script installs the command under your home directory. It prompts you to add the command to your path if necessary.
For Windows and other installation options, see Installing Skupper.
Step 2: Configure access to multiple namespaces
Skupper is designed for use with multiple namespaces, typically on
different clusters. The skupper
command uses your
kubeconfig and current context to select the namespace
where it operates.
Your kubeconfig is stored in a file in your home directory. The
skupper
and kubectl
commands use the KUBECONFIG
environment
variable to locate it.
A single kubeconfig supports only one active context per user. Since you will be using two contexts at once in this exercise, you need to create two distinct kubeconfigs. You can then use the first kubeconfig in one console session, and the second kubeconfig in another.
Configure separate console sessions
Start a console session for each of your namespaces. Set the
KUBECONFIG
environment variable to a different path in each session.
export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config-west
export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config-east
Note: On Windows, use the set
command instead of export
:
set KUBECONFIG=%UserProfile%\.kube\config-<namespace>
Configure cluster access
The methods for logging in and accessing clusters vary by Kubernetes provider. Find the instructions for your chosen providers and use them to authenticate and establish access for each console session.
See the following links for more information:
- Minikube
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- IBM Kubernetes Service
- OpenShift
Set the current namespaces
Use kubectl create namespace
to create the namespaces you wish to
use (or use existing namespaces). Use kubectl config set-context
to
set the current namespace for each session.
kubectl create namespace west
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace west
kubectl create namespace east
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace east
Check your configurations
Once you have logged in and set the current namespaces, use the
skupper status
command to check that each namespace is correctly
configured. You should see the following output:
$ skupper status
Skupper is not enabled in namespace 'west'
$ skupper status
Skupper is not enabled in namespace 'east'
Step 3: Install the Skupper router in each namespace
The skupper init
command installs the Skupper router in the current
namespace.
Note: If you are using Minikube, you need to start minikube tunnel
before you install
Skupper.
Install the router
Run the skupper init
command in the West namespace.
$ skupper init --enable-console --enable-flow-collector
Skupper is now installed in namespace 'west'. Use 'skupper status' to get more information.
Now run the skupper init
command in the East namespace.
$ skupper init
Skupper is now installed in namespace 'east'. Use 'skupper status' to get more information.
Check the installation
To check the status of each namespace, use the skupper status
command.
$ skupper status
Skupper is enabled in namespace 'west'. It is not linked to any other sites.
$ skupper status
Skupper is enabled in namespace 'east'. It is not linked to any other sites.
Step 4: Link your namespaces
After installation, you have the infrastructure you need, but your
namespaces are not linked. Creating a link requires use of
two skupper
commands in conjunction, skupper token create
and
skupper link create
.
The skupper token create
command generates a secret token that
signifies permission to create a link. The token also carries the
link details. The skupper link create
command then uses the link
token to create a link to the namespace that generated it.
Note: The link token is truly a secret. Anyone who has the token can link to your namespace. Make sure that only those you trust have access to it.
Generate a link token
In West, use the skupper token create
command to generate a token.
skupper token create ~/west.token
Use the token to create a link
With the token in hand, you are ready to link the namespaces. Pass
the token from West to the skupper link create
command in East.
skupper link create ~/west.token
If your console sessions are on different machines, you might need to
use sftp
or a similar tool to transfer the token.
Check the link
Use the skupper status
command again to see if things have changed.
If the link is made, you should see the following output:
$ skupper status
Skupper is enabled in namespace 'west'. It is linked to 1 other site.
$ skupper status
Skupper is enabled in namespace 'east'. It is linked to 1 other site.
Step 5: Expose your services
You now have a Skupper network capable of multi-cluster communication,
but no services are attached to it. This step uses the skupper expose
command to make a Kubernetes deployment on one namespace
available on all the linked namespaces.
In the examples below, we use the Hello World application to demonstrate service exposure. The same steps apply for your own application.
Deploy the frontend and backend services
Use kubectl create deployment
to start the frontend in West.
kubectl create deployment frontend --image quay.io/skupper/hello-world-frontend
Likewise, use kubectl create deployment
to start the backend in
East.
kubectl create deployment backend --image quay.io/skupper/hello-world-backend --replicas 3
Expose the backend service
At this point, we have the frontend and backend services running, but the frontend has no way to contact the backend. The frontend and backend are in different namespaces (and perhaps different clusters), and the backend has no public ingress.
Use the skupper expose
command in East to make the backend
service
available in West.
skupper expose deployment/backend --port 8080
Check the backend service
Use kubectl get
in West to make sure the backend
service from East
is present. You should see output like this:
$ kubectl get service/backend
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
backend ClusterIP <IP_ADDRESS> <none> 8080/TCP 1m30s
Test your application
To test our Hello World, we need external access to the frontend (not
the backend). Use kubectl expose
with --type LoadBalancer
to make
the frontend accessible using a conventional Kubernetes ingress.
kubectl expose deployment frontend --port 8080 --type LoadBalancer
It takes a moment for the external IP to become available.
Now we're ready to try it out. Use kubectl get
in West to look up
the external IP of the frontend service. Then use curl
or a similar
tool to request the /api/health
endpoint at that address.
Note: The <external-ip>
field in the following commands is
a placeholder. The actual value is an IP address.
kubectl get service/frontend
curl http://<external-ip>:8080/api/health
Sample output:
$ kubectl get service/frontend
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
frontend LoadBalancer <IP_ADDRESS> <external-ip> 8080:30407/TCP 15s
$ curl http://<external-ip>:8080/api/health
OK
If everything is in order, you can now access the web interface by navigating to this URL in your browser:
http://<external-ip>:8080/
The frontend assigns each new user a name. Click Say hello to send a greeting to the backend and get a greeting in response.
Summary
Our simple HTTP application has two services. We deployed each service to a different Kubernetes cluster.
Ordinarily, a multi-cluster deployment of this sort means that the services have no way to communicate unless they are exposed to the public internet.
By introducing Skupper into each namespace, we were able to create a virtual application network that connects the services across cluster boundaries.
See the Hello World example for more detail.
The condensed version
curl https://skupper.io/install.sh | sh
export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/config-west
[Configure cluster access]
kubectl create namespace west
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace west
skupper init
skupper token create ~/west.token
kubectl create deployment frontend --image quay.io/skupper/hello-world-frontend
kubectl expose deployment/frontend --port 8080 --type LoadBalancer
export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/config-east
[Configure cluster access]
kubectl create namespace east
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace east
skupper init --ingress none
skupper link create ~/west.token
kubectl create deployment backend --image quay.io/skupper/hello-world-backend --replicas 3
skupper expose deployment/backend --port 8080
kubectl get service/frontend
[Look up the external IP of the frontend service]
curl http://<external-ip>:8080/api/health
[Navigate to http://<external-ip>:8080/ in your browser]
Cleaning up
To remove Skupper and the other resources from this exercise, use the following commands:
skupper delete
kubectl delete service/frontend
kubectl delete deployment/frontend
skupper delete
kubectl delete deployment/backend
Next steps
Now that you know how to connect services running on multiple clusters, here are a few more things to look at:


[1]
any little touch turns on the unit , even if it is in your pocket .
[2]
even if it is in your pocket and it in your pocket and you know it the unit is out of power .


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Overview
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Class
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Hierarchy For Package org.opensaml.xml.security.x509
Package Hierarchies:
All Packages
Class Hierarchy
java.lang.
Object
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
AbstractCredential
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
Credential
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
BasicCredential
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
BasicX509Credential
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Credential
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
KeyStoreX509CredentialAdapter
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Credential
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509KeyManagerX509CredentialAdapter
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Credential
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
BasicKeyInfoGeneratorFactory
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.keyinfo.
KeyInfoGeneratorFactory
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509KeyInfoGeneratorFactory
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
BasicKeyInfoGeneratorFactory.BasicKeyInfoGenerator
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.keyinfo.
KeyInfoGenerator
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509KeyInfoGeneratorFactory.X509KeyInfoGenerator
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
BasicKeyInfoGeneratorFactory.BasicOptions
(implements java.lang.
Cloneable
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509KeyInfoGeneratorFactory.X509Options
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
BasicPKIXValidationInformation
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXValidationInformation
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
BasicX509CredentialNameEvaluator
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509CredentialNameEvaluator
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
CertPathPKIXTrustEvaluator
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXTrustEvaluator
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
InternalX500DNHandler
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X500DNHandler
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXValidationOptions
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
CertPathPKIXValidationOptions
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXX509CredentialTrustEngine
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXTrustEngine
<TokenType>)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
StaticPKIXValidationInformationResolver
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXValidationInformationResolver
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509DigestCriteria
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.
Criteria
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509IssuerSerialCriteria
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.
Criteria
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509SubjectKeyIdentifierCriteria
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.
Criteria
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509SubjectNameCriteria
(implements org.opensaml.xml.security.
Criteria
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Util
Interface Hierarchy
org.opensaml.xml.security.credential.
Credential
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Credential
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXTrustEvaluator
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXValidationInformation
org.opensaml.xml.security.
Resolver
<ProductType,CriteriaType>
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXValidationInformationResolver
org.opensaml.xml.security.trust.
TrustEngine
<TokenType>
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
PKIXTrustEngine
<TokenType>
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X500DNHandler
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509CredentialNameEvaluator
Enum Hierarchy
java.lang.
Object
java.lang.
Enum
<E> (implements java.lang.
Comparable
<T>, java.io.
Serializable
)
org.opensaml.xml.security.x509.
X509Util.ENCODING_FORMAT
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Copyright © 1999-2014. All Rights Reserved.


Documentation / Getting started / Maven
Related: Trouble Shooting
Check installed maven version
mvn -version
If your installed maven version is older than 3.5.3
then it might not support
maven tiles. If that is the case upgrade maven or use the
maven plugin directly rather than the tile.
Add maven tile
Add the maven tile into the build / plugins
section of the pom.xml.
This performs enhancement of the entity beans, @Transactional methods and query beans at build time.
<plugin>
<groupId>io.repaint.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>tiles-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.12</version>
<extensions>true</extensions>
<configuration>
<tiles>
<!-- other tiles ... -->
<tile>io.ebean.tile:enhancement:7.4</tile>
</tiles>
</configuration>
</plugin>
Maven enhancement tile
The maven tile above will enhance the code at build time for both src/main
and src/test
. This is simpler than defining the plugin in the traditional (non-tile)
fashion and is the preferred approach.
If you want to specify the maven enhancement plugin in 'normal' non-tile fashion see maven plugin.


NeoLoad Test Report
Summary
Results summary
Statistics Summary
Hot spots
Errors
Alerts
General statistics
Transaction statistics
Execution context
Servers
Cloud
Populations
User Paths
Transactions
Pages
Media Contents
Push messages
Monitors
SLA per SLA Profile
SLA per User Path
Scenario
Main graphs
Average page response time
Average request response time
Average response time (Transactions)
Requests per second
Errors
Throughput
Response time against load
Distribution of Transaction Durations
Top 10 First Alerts
Top 10 First Alerts
Chart
Notes:
Displays the list of alerts on the monitored counters during the test.


This specifies the name of the bucket in which to store your build artifacts. You can view these by visiting the "Cloud Storage" section of the Cloud Console for your project. Acceptable values include things like:


All are welcome to join The Emperium but to do so you must join our recruitment discord.
Here, you will submit your application, and if it is approved, you will be interviewed by a recruiter. After the interview we will then decide if you are fit for The Emperium.
If you are not responded too within 2 weeks of submitting your application it is denied, feel free to re-apply every other week. If you are accepted you will be invited to The Emperium Discord.
The Emperium
Here, after you've been accepted as a recruit and given the rank Sigma, you will be able to chat with the other members of The Emperium.
This discord is the main way we communicate as a group so it's imperative that you are active in text chat and voice chat.


#include <mrPointCache.h>
Public Member Functions | |
| void | flush () |
| Flush (Clean) the cache. | |
| PointCache (bool clean=true) | |
| ~PointCache () | |
| void | insert (const miVector &P, void *data) |
| Insert user data into cache. | |
| void * | at (const miVector &P) |
| void * | operator[] (const miVector &P) |
| template<typename T> void | data (const miState *const state, T *data[3]) |
Protected Types | |
| typedef std::map< miVector, void *, lessXYZOp > | cacheType |
This can be useful to obtain some of the benefits of a SIMD architecture within mental ray, by using a backdoor. But it could have other uses, too.
Following is a description of usage for doing things that are usually (incorrectly) considered possible only on SIMD architectures. One of the big questions is whether you could do Du() or Dv() for any arbitrary expression, for example. The answer is usually, no. I'll now show you how.
When an object is to be rendered, displacement shaders in mental ray are executed first, before any surface or light shaders. A displacement shader is usually run on every point, before other shaders are called (or in portions of the object, before those triangles are shaded).
Thus, this gives you the chance to cache all those vertices and do some math or store some property. Note that displacement shaders are usually limited in not being able to raytrace (well, the mray manual says you can force mray to do it, but I have not tested this is safe).
Anyway, after caching this data in the displacement shader, it would then later be used by, say, the surface shader. This can be passed using any of the mray mechanisms (static variables, state->user, shaderstate, or mi_query() for local shader data ).
Then, in mrDerivs.h, functions such as DuDv() can take that vertex data and use it to interpolate and give you (partial) derivatives, as prman. These derivatives will of course be accurate up to your tesselation rate, just as Du() is accurate up to shading rate in renderman.
Note that it is important that you remember to flush this cache as it can grow to be quite big on complex scenes.
See gg_pointcache.cpp example in the sample shader library, which contains gg_pointcache_srf, gg_pointcache_dsp shaders.
Disadvantages of the method:
|
|
|
|
|
Constructor. Set Clean to true if PointCache should delete stored void pointers automatically. |
|
|
|
|
|
Retrieve user data for point from cache Will die if point is not in cache. |
|
|
Retrieve vertex data for vertices of current triangle from cache. |
|
|
Flush (Clean) the cache.
|
|
|
Insert user data into cache.
|
|
|
Retrieve user data for point from cache Returns NULL if point is not in cache. |


window.scrawl_Animation Class
window.scrawl
scrawlAnimation extension adaptions to the Scrawl library object
New library sections
- scrawl.tween - for Tween and Action objects
New default attributes
- Position.delta - default: {x:0,y:0,z:0};
- Position.deltaPathPlace - default: 0;
- Position.pathSpeedConstant - default: true;
Position.tweenLock - default: false;
Cell.sourceDelta - default: {x:0, y:0, z:0};
- Cell.sourceMinWidth - default: 0;
- Cell.sourceMaxWidth - default: 0;
- Cell.sourceMinHeight - default: 0;
Cell.sourceMaxHeight - default: 0;
PageElement.tweenLock - default: false;
Design.roll - default: 0;
- Design.autoUpdate - default: false;
Item Index
Methods
- addWithinBounds
- animationCellGet
- animationCellInit
- animationCellSet
- animationPositionClone
- animationPositionGet
- animationPositionInit
- animationPositionSet
- Cell.revertStart
- Cell.revertStartActions
- Cell.spliceCell
- Cell.updateStart
- Cell.updateStartActions
- Cell.zoom
- convertTime
- Design.sortStops
- Design.update
- Group.reverse
- Group.revertStart
- Group.updateStart
- locateTarget
- makeAction
- makeTicker
- makeTween
- newAction deprecated
- newTween deprecated
- Position.exchange
- Position.reverse
- Position.reverseActions
- Position.revertStart
- Position.revertStartActions
- Position.updateStart
- Position.updateStartActions
- setDeltaAttribute
Properties
Methods
addWithinBounds
-
a
-
b
A utility function that adds two numbers between 0 and 1, keeping them within bounds
Parameters:
-
a
Numberfirst number
-
b
Numbersecond number
Returns:
result of calculation
animationCellGet
()
private
Cell.get hook function - modified by animation module
animationCellInit
()
private
Cell constructor hook function
Adds a sourceDelta (sourceDeltaX, sourceDeltaY) Vector to the cell, used to give it a 'velocity'
animationCellSet
()
private
Cell.set hook function - modified by animation module
animationPositionClone
()
private
Position.clone hook function - modified by animation module
animationPositionGet
()
private
Position.get hook function - modified by animation module
animationPositionInit
()
private
Position constructor hook function
Adds a delta (deltaX, deltaY) Vector to the object, used to give an object a 'velocity'
animationPositionSet
()
private
Position.set hook function - modified by animation module
Cell.revertStart
-
[item]
Subtracts delta values from the start vector; subtracts sourceDelta values from the source vector; subtracts deltaPathPlace to pathPlace
Permitted argument values include
- 'x' - delta.x subtracted from start.x; deltaSource.x subtracted from source.x
- 'y' - delta.y subtracted from start.y; deltaSource.y subtracted from source.y
- 'start', 'target' - delta subtracted from start
- 'source' - deltaSource subtracted from source
- 'path' - deltaPathPlace subtracted from pathPlace
- undefined: all values are amended
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions
Returns:
This
Cell.revertStartActions
()
private
revertStart helper object
Cell.spliceCell
-
items
Perform a splice-shift-join operation on the <canvas> element's current scene
Argument is an Object in the form:
- {edge:String, strip:Number}
Permitted values for the argument Object's attributes are:
- edge - one from 'horizontal', 'vertical', 'top', 'bottom', 'left', 'right'
- strip - a width/height Number (in pixels) of the strip that is to be moved from the named edge of the <canvas> to the opposite edge
- shiftSource - boolean - when true, will automatically shift the sourceX and sourceY coordinates; default: false
Note that this function is only effective in achieving a parallax effect if the user never clears or updates the cell's <canvas> element, and takes steps to shift the cell's source vector appropriately each time the splice operation is performed
Parameters:
-
items
ObjectObject containing data for the splice operation
Returns:
This
Cell.updateStart
-
[item]
Adds delta values to the start vector; adds sourceDelta values to the source vector; adds deltaPathPlace to pathPlace
Permitted argument values include
- 'x' - delta.x added to start.x; deltaSource.x added to source.x
- 'y' - delta.y added to start.y; deltaSource.y added to source.y
- 'start', 'target' - delta added to start
- 'source' - deltaSource added to source
- 'path' - deltaPathPlace added to pathPlace
- undefined: all values are amended
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions
Returns:
This
Cell.updateStartActions
()
private
updateStart helper object
Cell.zoom
-
item
Zooms one cell in relation to another cell
Parameters:
-
item
NumberNumber of pixels to amend the zoomed cell's start and dimensions by
Returns:
This
convertTime
()
private
Convert a time into its component properties
Expected values:
- Number - time value in milliseconds
- String number+% - will always return a Number time value of 0
- String number+ms - returns a Number time value in milliseconds
- String number+s - converts and returns a Number time value in milliseconds
Returns:
[String timeUnit, Number timeValue]
Design.sortStops
()
private
Gradient builder helper function - sorts color attribute Objects by their stop attribute values, after adding the roll value to them
Returns:
Nothing
Design.update
-
[entity]
-
[cell]
Creates the gradient
This function replaces the one in the core module
Parameters:
-
[entity]
String optionalSPRITENAME String
-
[cell]
String optionalCELLNAME String
Returns:
This
Group.reverse
-
[item]
Ask all entitys in the group to perform a reverse() operation
Each entity will change the sign (+/-) of specified attribute values
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'deltaX', 'deltaY', 'delta', 'deltaPathPlace'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
Group.revertStart
-
[item]
Ask all entitys in the Group to perform a revertStart() operation
Each entity will subtract their delta values to their start Vector, and/or subtract deltaPathPlace from pathPlace
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'x', 'y', 'path'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
Group.updateStart
-
[item]
Ask all entitys in the Group to perform an updateStart() operation
Each entity will add their delta values to their start Vector, and/or add deltaPathPlace from pathPlace
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'x', 'y', 'path'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
locateTarget
-
OBJECTNAME
Locate a target object
Parameters:
-
OBJECTNAME
Stringstring of required target
Returns:
target Object; false if not found
makeAction
-
items
A factory function to generate new Action objects
Parameters:
-
items
ObjectKey:value Object argument for setting attributes
Returns:
Action object
makeTicker
-
items
A factory function to generate new Ticker objects
Parameters:
-
items
ObjectKey:value Object argument for setting attributes
Returns:
Ticker object
makeTween
-
items
A factory function to generate new Tween objects
Parameters:
-
items
ObjectKey:value Object argument for setting attributes
Returns:
Tween object
newAction
()
deprecated
Alias for makeAction()
newTween
()
deprecated
Alias for makeTween()
Position.exchange
-
obj
-
item
Swaps the values of an attribute between two objects
Parameters:
-
obj
ObjectObject with which this object will swap attribute values
-
item
StringAttribute to be swapped
Returns:
This
Position.reverse
-
[item]
Changes the sign (+/-) of specified attribute values
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'deltaX', 'deltaY', 'delta', 'deltaPathPlace'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
Position.reverseActions
()
private
reverse helper object
Position.revertStart
-
[item]
Subtracts delta values from the start vector; subtracts deltaPathPlace from pathPlace
Permitted argument values include
- 'x' - delta.x subtracted from start.x
- 'y' - delta.y subtracted from start.y
- 'path' - deltaPathPlace subtracted from pathPlace
- undefined: all values are amended
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'x', 'y', 'path'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
Position.revertStartActions
()
private
revertStart helper object
Position.updateStart
-
[item]
Adds delta values to the start vector; adds deltaPathPlace to pathPlace
Permitted argument values include
- 'x' - delta.x added to start.x
- 'y' - delta.y added to start.y
- 'path' - deltaPathPlace added to pathPlace
- undefined: all values are amended
Parameters:
-
[item]
String optionalString used to limit this function's actions - permitted values include 'x', 'y', 'path'; default action: all values are amended
Returns:
This
Position.updateStartActions
()
private
updateStart helper object
setDeltaAttribute
-
items
Augments Position.set(), to allow users to set the delta attributes using delta, deltaX, deltaY
The scrawlAnimation module adds a delta attribute to Cells and Entitys - this is an inbuilt delta vector which can be used to automatically animate the start vector of these objects - via the updateStart, revertStart and reverse functions - as part of the animation cycle.
Be aware that this is different to the Position.setDelta() function inherited by Cells and Entitys. setDelta is used to add a supplied argument value to the existing values of any numerical attribute of a Cell or Entity object, and is thus not limited to the animation cycle.
Parameters:
-
items
ObjectObject consisting of key:value attributes
Returns:
This
Properties
autoUpdate
Boolean
A flag to indicate that stop color shifts should be automatically applied
Default: false
shift
Number
A value for shifting the color stops (was roll in versions prior to v4.0)
Default: 0


| Criminalization |
0.36 |
0.5 |
| 2000 TIP protocol ratification |
0.42 |
0.5 |
| Regional density of criminalization |
0.30 |
0.3 |
| US pressure (Watchlist or Tier 3) / Lowest tier |
0.24 |
0.4 |
| In report |
0.74 |
0.4 |
| Reaction (no media) |
0.16 |
0.4 |
| Tier 2 |
0.37 |
0.5 |
| Watchlist |
0.16 |
0.4 |
| Tier 3 |
0.08 |
0.3 |
| Share of total trade with US |
0.12 |
0.1 |
| First demotion (t−1) |
0.09 |
0.3 |
| First demotion (t−2) |
0.08 |
0.3 |
| First demotion (t−3) |
0.07 |
0.2 |
| Share of women in parliament |
0.15 |
0.1 |
| Aid greater than $100 million |
0.20 |
0.4 |
| Tier 1 |
0.12 |
0.3 |
| US aid as share of total aid (logged) |
0.10 |
0.2 |
| Has BIT with US |
0.27 |
0.4 |


Module p.install
Part of
p1tr
P1tr installer - usually used when no config file is found.
Function
main
Everything is contained here.
def
main():
Everything is contained here. If install.py is run standalone a new config file gets created in the same directory. If P1tr is run without a config file in one of the searched directories this function is called before P1tr startup continues.