Location: Council Room, Volta S.A. Factory (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Date: December 1988
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Alexandre de Vigan)
The month of December 1988 froze the Parisian suburbs under a thin film of frost. The cold was biting the high metal-framed windows of the Ivry-sur-Seine plant. But inside, in the council chamber of Volta S.A. upholstered in dark wood, the temperature seemed to have risen several degrees, weighed down by an electrical voltage.
Alexandre de Vigan stood at the end of the long mahogany table. For the first time since he left the London investment banks to join this crazy adventure, the financial shark had slightly sweaty hands. In front of him lay a thick black-covered binder, stamped with the silver "V" of the company.
Around the table sat the other three pillars of the empire: Karim Belkacem, the technical director with features drawn by exhaustion; René Castella, the old production manager, his eye squinted behind his glasses; and, at the end of the table, Lazare Bonaparte, hieratic, silent, his hands crossed under his chin.
"Gentlemen," de Vigan began, his voice vibrating with an excitement he struggled to contain. "The internal audit is over. We are meeting for the official closing of our 1988 fiscal year. I have distributed the summaries to you. And I must admit that, in my entire career as a financial analyst, I have never had the honour of presenting such a violent balance sheet. »
René Castella opened his file. He adjusted his glasses. As soon as he reads the first page, the old production manager turns pale and swallows painfully.
"Let's resume in order," proposed de Vigan, leaning with both hands on the table. "Division One: Our Historical Base. The professional market, institutional and security. »
He pointed to the first column of figures in his own document.
"What Lazare has set up with the banking consortium, the French state and the Ministry of Defence is a real sovereign rent. We have sold tens of thousands of V-1 hardware encryption modules. But genius does not lie in the material; it resides in the software. VoltaOS's annual operating licenses, charged on a per-workstation basis to ensure data inviolability, generate recurring cash flow. That's money that falls every month, without us having to make a single additional industrial effort. »
Karim nodded, proud to see his source code turned into ingots.
"To this," continued the salesman, "is added the capitulation of Bull and Olivetti. They pay us a flat margin of twelve percent on every computer sold in Europe to use our kernel and work around the mistakes of Intel's American processors. If this B2B division alone is consolidated, Volta S.A. posted a net profit of two hundred and thirty million francs for 1988. »
An admiring hiss escaped Karim's lips. Two hundred and thirty million francs of pure profit. For a company that didn't even exist on paper three years earlier, it was a rise that defied all the laws of economic gravity.
"That's exceptional, Alexander," admitted the chief engineer.
"That's a nice appetizer, Karim," corrected De Vigan with a predatory smile. "Turn the page. Division Two: The Entertainment, Arcade, and Creator Market. The Asian tsunami. »
The silence grew heavier. At the back of the room, Lazarus did not blink. The engineer of the future already knew these figures by heart, but he let his sales director orchestrate the revelation to strike the minds of his staff.
"The agreement we signed in Kyoto this spring sent shockwaves through the world," de Vigan said, his eyes burning with ambition. "The Japanese manufacturer, terrified that we would offer the exclusivity of our graphics coprocessor to its competitors for home consoles, locked in its contract. To guarantee their supply, they pre-purchased and pre-paid us for a first firm batch of one hundred thousand SONG chips for their development kits and the pre-production of their future 16-bit machine. »
De Vigan pointed his Montblanc pen at Castella.
"Our partners at VLSI Technology in Taiwan are working at full speed to melt them. Thanks to the optimization of the architecture, the gross margin on each chip is close to seventy percent. But the real masterstroke does not stop at Japanese shows. »
He slid his finger along the next accounting line.
"The robbery of arcades. Sega, Namco and Capcom ended up giving in to our superiority. In the past six months alone, they have purchased thirty thousand VESLA/SONG universal motherboards. René, your assembly lines here in Ivry have worked miracles to keep up with the pace. Hardware sales in the Arcade division reached four hundred million francs net. »
The sales manager let the enormity of the sum float in the air, then added the final blow.
"And that's not counting software royalties . Lazarus was right. By providing our API, we have become the customs of the global video game. Every European, American or Japanese development studio that sells a game cartridge using our math libraries pays us a tithe of eight percent. The invisible toll is in place. And the whole world is currently in the process of paying for it. »
De Vigan took a long dramatic pause. He looked at each of the men present, soaking in their amazement, before announcing the final number, the one that would redefine their lives forever.
"Gentlemen. After subtracting corporate taxes, full payment of our Taiwanese subcontractors and amortisation of our fixed costs... Volta S.A. closed 1988 with cash reserves amounting to one billion one hundred and forty million francs. »
René Castella dropped his pen on the wood of the table. The sharp sound cracked like a gunshot. The old production manager took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, unable to assimilate the magnitude of the number.
One billion francs. Cash, available immediately.
They were no longer a rebellious start-up. They were no longer brilliant tinkerers lurking in the red suburbs. They had become a titanic financial dragon, generating more cash flow than most of the historical flagships of French industry, all without having any bank debt.
"And that brings me to the question of distribution and ownership," de Vigan went on delicately, putting on his business lawyer's hat.
He opened the last page of the report, that of the register of shareholders. Unlike traditional conglomerates, often diluted by dozens of fundraisers and controlled by sprawling boards of directors, Volta's capitalization table was feudally simple and brutal.
"It is important to publicly recall how our capital is structured today, in the face of this colossal valuation," said de Vigan, his gaze sliding towards Karim, then towards the CEO. "Mr. Bonaparte, you have refused any entry into the capital of foreign investment funds. You've retained absolute control. You own, in your own name and via your personal holding companies, eighty-four per cent of the shares of Volta S.A."
Lazarus bowed his head very slightly, acknowledging this mathematical hegemony. He was the sole master aboard this billion-dollar ship.
"Karim," de Vigan continued, turning to the technical director. The engineer looked up at him with big round eyes. "As a co-founder in the shadows, the first believer, and the first software architect, you own ten percent of the capital of this company. If we were to go public tomorrow, at the current valuation of our cash flows, that would make you a man worth several hundred million francs. »
Karim Belkacem turned pale. He was short of breath. 26 years old, a former university laboratory rat used to making ends meet, he had just hit the reality of his situation. He looked at his own hands, the ones that had typed the lines of code for the GUI until dawn. They had just turned into solid gold.
"As for the remaining six percent," de Vigan concludes, pointing elegantly to Castella and himself, "Lazare had the foresight and generosity to freeze them in a pool of stock options, reserved for senior executives and key engineers in our plant. With more than a billion in the bank, the exercise value of these options has just been multiplied by fifty. The hundred employees of this factory, from the cleaning technician to the quality manager, are going to have a very, very merry Christmas. The spirit of loyalty is locked in for the coming decade. No one will ever leave us for the competition. »
De Vigan closed the file with a theatrical gesture. A smile of pure contentment splitting his shark face.
"The question that arises now, Mr. President, is that of the allocation of the net result. Such a profit allows us to distribute absolutely historic dividends. We have the opportunity to reward the creators of this empire. I propose that you convene an extraordinary general meeting next week to record the distribution of at least three hundred million francs in dividends. »
Karim raised his head. In the engineer's mind, suddenly there were visions of villas in the south of France, of Italian sports cars, of the definitive shelter of his entire family. René Castella, for his part, was already thinking about the golden retirement he could offer his wife.
All eyes were turned to the end of the table. To the Titan of Ivry, the undisputed ruler, the owner of the eighty-four percent. If he approved, Lazarus would instantly become, in pure cash, one of the richest men in Europe.
Lazare Bonaparte had not blinked. His dark angelic face expressed neither the intoxicating joy of new wealth, nor the arrogant intoxication of power. He set the figure of one billion inscribed at the bottom of Vigan's document, like a general contemplating the exact number of ammunition he had before launching a suicide assault.
"There will be no dividend," Lazarus declared.
The voice was calm, flat, devoid of all emotion. But she carried such absolute authority that she instantly froze the smiles of de Vigan and Karim. The temperature of the room suddenly seemed to drop to join the frost of the Parisian rooftops.
"Excuse me?" stammered de Vigan, breathless, convinced that he had misheard. "Lazarus is the classic custom! It's the reward for risk! You cannot hoard more than a billion francs in the company's accounts! Punitive taxation on undistributed or unreinvested profits will murder us! »
"I have no intention of letting them sleep in a current account to fatten the taxman, Alexander," Lazarus cut him off rudely, rising from his seat.
He buttoned up his suit jacket, imposing his stature on the entire room. In an instant, the sixty-year-old engineer, who had returned from the hell of a future war, completely obliterated the features of the young man of nineteen.
"Do you really think that I set up this global extortion operation on video game consoles to buy me villas on the French Riviera?" growled Lazare, his dark gaze sweeping over his lieutenants. "Do you think I made Karim sweat all night on assembly code so that we could parade in Porsches through the streets of Paris, while the Americans prepare their world hegemony?"
Lazare approached de Vigan. He put his two clenched fists on the heavy black backrest, leaning over the table.
"I told you this summer on the roof of this factory, gentlemen. This money is not a profit. This money is not loot. This money is a war chest. And the war of sovereign computing is excruciatingly expensive. This billion... We are going to burn it to the last cent on the first of January. »
The Builder straightened up, his eyes shining with a ferocious ambition that far exceeded the petty bourgeois considerations of his employees. The total war economy had just been officially decreed. The Asiatic recreation was over. It was time to melt the weapons to bring down America.
Location: Presidential Office, Volta S.A. Factory (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Date: December 1988 (In continuity with the Board of Directors)
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte and his lieutenants)
The silence that had fallen on the board of directors chamber, after Lazare Bonaparte had confiscated the billion francs in profits, had a mineral density. The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. The promise of historic dividends, villas on the Riviera and Italian sports cars had just evaporated under the dark and merciless gaze of the Titan of Ivry.
Without saying a word, Lazare picked up the thick black binder from Alexandre de Vigan's hands.
"In my office, gentlemen. Immediately. »
The tone did not admit of any reply. De Vigan, Karim Belkacem and René Castella exchanged uncertain looks. The primal frustration of the man deprived of his gold fought bitterly against the quasi-religious fascination exerted by their young boss. In a leaden silence, they stood up and followed in the footsteps of the Chairman and CEO.
They walked through the long corridor of the direction, whose thick carpet muffled the sound of their footsteps, to the heavy solid oak doors of the sanctuary of Lazarus.
Inside, the vast presidential office was plunged into darkness, lit only by the pale, gray glow of a menacing winter sky. Outside, snow continued to fall on the red suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, covering the corrugated iron roofs with an immaculate coat.
Lazare walked around his large rough wood desk. He knelt down in front of the wall concealing a bank security safe and composed the suit. A heavy, mechanical click sounds, releasing the steel bolts.
Lazare drew several bundles of technical diagrams, printed on large-format tracing paper, as well as sealed cardboard files. He stood up and spread it all on his leather desk pad with controlled brutality. He then looked up at his technical director.
"Alexandre just gushed, and rightly so, about our sales figures in the arcade sector, Karim," Lazare began, his voice remarkably calm, but with a frequency that captured the absolute attention of his audience. "But you and I, as engineers, know the shameful truth that lies beneath the hood of the hardware system we sold them. Tell them about our CPU. Tell them about the VESLA that currently equips these terminals. »
Karim Belkacem stepped forward, suddenly uncomfortable. The engineer ran a nervous hand through his dark hair, casting a contrite look at de Vigan and Castella.
"The VESLA processor that we soldered on the arcade motherboards... is a functional sham," the technical director admitted in a low voice. "It's a very low-level CPU. A minimalist 16/32-bit hybrid architecture, a transitional tinkering that we have developed in a hurry. Its only function is to send the basic instructions without restricting the SONG coprocessor too much. To run video games in a smoky room, it's an illusion. But if it were asked to handle a complex file system, precision float computing, or actual multitasking... it would collapse in a few microseconds. It has no level 2 cache, nor a branch prediction unit worthy of the name. »
"Exactly," Lazarus said, tapping the desk with the flat of his hand. "We reign supreme over the display, but our central brain is crippled. A bodybuilder's body with the brain of a sparrow. And I categorically refuse to allow Volta S.A. to depend forever on processors from the American Intel or Motorola to run its real professional systems in the future. This billion francs, gentlemen, we are going to burn it to forge a real state-of-the-art VESLA processor. A chip that will defeat the x86 architecture. »
Alexandre de Vigan turned pale. The financial shark, who was already seeing armies of engineers gobbling up hundreds of millions in uncertain fundamental research, felt his stomach knot. Developing a silicon architecture from scratch was the tech industry's worst financial sinkhole.
"But Lazarus... choked the salesman. "The R&D for a CPU of this magnitude is going to ruin us! Intel has taken years and billions of dollars to design the 386 chip! We need fundamental research teams, instructional tests, thermal tests that are spread over months... You can't improvise such a chip, even with a billion francs! »
An indecipherable smile, almost amused, stretched Lazare Bonaparte's lips. The sixty-year-old engineer, who had returned from a time when these architectures were taught in computer history textbooks, looked at his sales manager with icy indulgence.
"You have not understood, Alexander," whispered Lazarus. He tapped the large tracing papers spread out on his desk. "The fundamental research development costs for this chip are absolutely zero for Volta S.A."
Karim frowned, approaching the table. "What do you mean, sucks? It must be well conceived! »
"It already is."
Lazarus spread his arms, revealing the intricate patterns. Karim's eyes widened. Tracing paper was blackened with staggering complexity of logic gates, register architectures, superscalar execution pipelines, and arithmetic and logical units (ALUs). Everything was there. Clean. Precise. Millimetre.
"I don't need teams of researchers to invent the future, Karim. I have it in my head," said Lazarus, stating this monstrous truth with the naturalness of one who tells the time. "I've spent the last six months, between two Japanese negotiations, putting the entire architecture of the high-performance 32-bit VESLA on paper. I know every transistor, every clock cycle, every RISC instruction of that component. The architecture is perfect, optimized, and free of design errors that our American competitors will take years to correct. »
The silence of the room is weighed down with amazement. Karim looked at the plans as one contemplates the tablets of the law that had come down from Sinai. The engineer suddenly understood that Lazarus was not a simple genius; he was a living anachronism. The work of a lifetime for a consortium of Silicon Valley engineers was based there, on an oak desk in Ivry-sur-Seine.
"The money will not be used to look for the solution," said Lazarus, closing a file. "I have the solution. The money will be used exclusively for implementation. René, you will coordinate the physical prototyping. Karim, your budget will be used to pay the Taiwanese foundries to engrave my plans, test the lithography masks, and correct the production impurities. The pure material cost. But the real work of your team, Karim, will not be on silicon. It will be on the software. »
Karim raised his head, his jaw dropped. "Software? But you just said that we were going to launch a complete computer! »
"And that's what we're going to do. Full servers, powered by the duo VESLA and SONG," Lazare confirmed.
It was at this precise moment that Alexandre de Vigan, struck down by the magnitude of the industrial provocation, awoke from his torpor.
"Full servers?" repeated the sales manager, panic finally breaking through the investment banker's veneer. "Lazarus, we have already talked about it on the roof! It's pure madness! If we try to sell our own computer servers on the civilian professional market, IBM, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard will slaughter us! They have a global monopoly on data centers and office computing! »
De Vigan paced back and forth, gesticulating nervously.
"If we come in to compete head-on with a 100% European machine, the American government will get involved! They will trigger patent infringement investigations the second we announce our product! They will block us at American customs, they will pressure their European allies to boycott our machines... They will never let us threaten their technological sovereignty at the very heart of their economic reactor! »
Lazare let the sales manager empty his bag. He watched him stir, and then, with a slow, soothing gesture, he invited him to sit down again.
"You are perfectly right, Alexander," said Lazarus, his voice suddenly becoming velvety, almost complicit.
De Vigan blinked, unsettled by this sudden approval.
"To titillate America on the open civilian market would, indeed, be immediate suicide," the Builder conceded. "The United States is the sanctions giant. They rule over enterprise IT. That's exactly why we're not going to sell them just one of these servers. Our new target, our exclusive and unique buyer for this first generation of Volta computing machines, is Defence. »
Lazare pointed with his index finger to the western part of Paris, beyond the snow-covered windows, where the staffs, the ministries and the armaments directorates were located.
"La Défense?" repeated Castella, skeptical. "The army? But the French army doesn't have the budgets of American banks, boss. »
"The arms industry and the French military may not have the budgets of Wall Street, René, but they have something far more valuable to us: fierce chauvinism and legitimate paranoia," Lazare explained. "Right now, our generals and aeronautical engineers hate the idea of having to run their defense secrets, missile models, or nuclear simulations on hardware designed in Silicon Valley."
Lazarus leaned back in his chair, folding his hands.
"They are afraid of backdoors. They are terrified of American industrial espionage, which is a documented reality. By offering them an ultra-powerful server, with a French operating system, a French central processor and a French graphics chip... We don't sell them simple computers. We become the physical embodiment of their national sovereignty. They will pay a high price, without discussing for a single second. »
Alexandre de Vigan's eyes brightened suddenly. The tactical mind of the shark had just assimilated the geopolitical maneuver in all its cynical splendour.
"And the best part of this strategy... De Vigan murmured, a slow smile stretching over his thin lips.
« ... is that we will remain totally invisible to the Americans," Lazarus finished, a triumphant glint in his eyes. "Washington doesn't care if the French army equips itself with a local server manufacturer, as long as this manufacturer does not threaten IBM's market share in banks, hospitals and civilian companies in the rest of the world. Military contracts are classified, by definition. Our equipment will be covered by defence secrets. We will design the ultimate weapon, and we will grow up sheltered, in the opaque shadow of the French military-industrial complex. »
Karim Belkacem, for his part, had remained fixed on the software dimension of the project.
"Okay with the concealment strategy," the technical director chimed in. "But what is the army going to be able to do with our technology? I mean... the SONG is a monster of graphic calculation. He rotates textured polygons, Gouraud's shading, sprites. Generals don't play arcade simulators in the basement of the Ministry! »
"No, Karim. They don't play. They conceive death," replied Lazarus coldly.
The CEO pulled out a file with a blue cover, stamped with the logo of Dassault Aviation.
"Take our national aeronautics champions. Dassault is currently designing its future omnirole-generation fighter aircraft: the Rafale. It is the most ambitious industrial project in the country's history. As we speak, their engineers are tearing their hair out over archaic CAD software. They run wireframe models on massive computers that take hours to render a simple change in the curvature of a wing. »
Lazarus put his hand on the diagram of the SONG chip.
"Imagine what your team could code with our architecture, Karim. With a Volta server powered by the alliance of VESLA and SONG, Dassault engineers will be able to design, manipulate and rotate the 3D models of the fighter in real time. No wires. Solids. Textures. Instantaneous fluid and air dynamics calculations, managed by the hardware Z-buffer. We will save them years of wind tunnel testing. We will accelerate the creation of their weaponry with a visual computing power that no American yet possesses. »
Karim felt his pulse quicken. The algorithmic challenge was titanic, but fascinating. The idea was to transform a chip designed for playful illusion into a physical simulation tool of military precision.
"And it doesn't stop there," Lazare continued, pulling out another document, this time bearing the seal of the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA). "Our intelligence services and the general staff have cryptography needs that are beyond comprehension. Breaking modern encryption, such as the American DES, requires phenomenal raw computing power. You have to test millions of keys per second. It's massively parallel processing. »
Lazare got up and walked around his desk to face his friend. He put his hands on Karim's shoulders, looking at him with an all-consuming intensity.
"This is where your real mission lies, Karim. That's why I'm confiscating the billion in dividends. Your team is not going to design the processor. She will design the soul of the machine. You're going to take the source code of our good old VoltaOS, and you're going to dissect it. You're going to create a derivation, a hardcore military fork . A shielded operating system, optimized to distribute compute loads between VESLA and SONG. Because I want these two chips to be in perfect symbiosis. »
"A unified memory architecture... Karim whispered, immediately grasping the technical involvement. "The CPU and graphics card share the same very high-speed data buses. No bottleneck. As... like a supercomputer from Cray Research, but miniaturized in a server the size of a suitcase. »
"Exactly. But Cray makes austere machines, manipulable only by PhDs in computer science via abstruse command lines," Lazare objected. "And that's where Volta will change everything. The genius of our military OS will not only be its power; it will be its simplicity. »
Lazarus tapped his index finger on his own forehead.
"The generals of the general staff are not programmers. Ballistics engineers have no time to waste learning code syntaxes to run a missile trajectory simulation. Your team will code fully graphical military simulation, CAD, and cryptographic breaking software. »
"With windows? Mice ? For the army? René Castella was astonished, whose vision of military computing was limited to the flashing green screens of spy films.
"Windows, icons, drop-down menus, and 3D environments, René," Lazare confirmed firmly. "We are going to drastically shorten the learning curve. An intelligence analyst will simply drag and drop an intercepted file into a decryption window, and the SONG coprocessor will instantly allocate its thousands of clock cycles to do raw calculations and break the key, while the VESLA processor will handle the display and network security. The GUI is not a kid's gadget. It's the ultimate productivity tool. We are going to make military computing intuitive. »
The chief engineer felt a shiver of pure excitement run down his spine. The task was cyclopean. He would have to lead hundreds of coders to create, from scratch, software suites that could compete with the behemoths of the U.S. military industry, while applying the revolutionary principles of the consumer graphical user interface.
He was going to have to bridge the gap between the ergonomics of a video game and the lethality of a weapons system.
"You'll need to hire, Karim," Lazare said, reading his friend's mind. "Pick from the grandes écoles. Polytechnique, Centrale, Supélec. Go and find the most brilliant mathematicians, the specialists in algorithmics. Don't look at the expense. That's what the billion francs are for. Pay them at a level they wouldn't even dare to dream of in the public. We are going to siphon off the nation's grey matter to forge our software fortress. »
Karim Belkacem nodded slowly. Visions of sports cars and rest cars in the countryside had completely deserted his mind, swept away by the urgency of a historic mission. He had once again become the architect of the Titan.
"I'm going to structure the teams into three software divisions starting Monday," Karim said, his voice suddenly firm and confident. "One for aerodynamic CAD for Dassault. One for cryptography and signals for the DGA. And a core division to ensure the memory symbiosis between VESLA and SONG. The VoltaOS Military will be functional at the user interface level in six months, ready to accommodate the physical prototypes of your chips. »
"Perfect," says Lazare, before turning to his sales manager.
Alexandre de Vigan stood erect, silent, his brain running at full speed. The shark's cynicism had turned into an almost terrified admiration for the strategic mind of his boss. The attack was so well designed, so well camouflaged, that it was a conceptual martial art.
"And I, Lazare?" asked de Vigan, smoothing the flaps of his cold woollen jacket. "In addition to the takeover of the European assembly plants that you asked me to oversee... How should we approach the beast? Generals are not bought like Japanese arcade directors. »
"No. They buy themselves with fear, patriotism and secrecy," corrected Lazarus. "You are going to use your networks, Alexandre. I want discreet, unofficial appointments. Lunches in private circles with the directors of the DGA's programs, with the Armed Forces General Staff and with the Dassault Aviation management board. »
Lazare approached the bay window, observing the snow that was gradually burying the inner courtyard of the factory, erasing the traces of the old world.
"You won't talk to them about graphics cards or video games, Alexandre. You are going to talk to them about sovereignty. You will insinuate to them, very subtly, that their current American supercomputers may be real sieves for the CIA. And then, you will introduce them to the Volta solution. A black box, waterproof, designed and manufactured on national soil, impossible to hack from the outside, and endowed with a visual and mathematical computing power that will make their engineers cry with joy. »
The sales manager let out a short, elegant laugh devoid of any warmth. The irony of the situation was delightful. They would use the colossal funds extorted from the Japanese entertainment kings to finance the independence of the French Republic's army, all for the sole purpose of preparing the ground for a war of economic annihilation against the United States.
"This is high diplomatic treason disguised as patriotism, Lazarus. I'm going to love selling this. I'm going to make them sign confidentiality agreements so strict that they won't even be allowed to say Volta's name in front of their wives. Washington will never know. »
Lazare Bonaparte nodded slowly. His dark gaze remained fixed on the indistinct horizon of the Parisian suburbs, drowned in the incipient snowstorm.
America was still sleeping soundly, sated by its recent triumph in the Cold War and convinced of its perpetual technological invincibility. Bill Gates was quietly preparing for the release of his future operating systems, and IBM continued to sell its overpriced machines to the world, unaware that a temporal rift had opened on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
In the biting cold of the Parisian suburbs, behind the padded walls of a management room, the absolute weapon that was to bring down their hegemony had just received its unlimited funding. The billion francs in dividends had just been sacrificed on the altar of sovereignty.
Recess was over. The Third World War of Computer Science had just begun.