Enlightenment through Storage - Part 1

I was vaguely inspired by the Craftsman Articles. Only vaguely. Vague enough to give me a spark of inspiration in writing something like it. Will it be sensical? Probably not. But it’ll be fun. Anyway. Here it goes.

–Beginning Basic Narration of Recording 1–

A plainly dressed Human male enters into viewing. He sits on a simple chair in a small dark room that is surrounded by shelving. He is seemingly alone.

“Hello, citizens of the Empire,” he speaks to the recording device. “My name is Lapadj. I am a Kharatzara that is currently cloaked as a Human.”

“That really was not a necessary narration,” a voice says from out of nowhere. “They can see that.”

Lapadj stares directly at the recorder. “That was not a necessary narration. It distracted from the experience.” He smiles weakly. “Anyway. Back to relevancy. I am currently touring on the gods-forsaken planet Earth-“

“Definitely not necessary,” the voice quips again.

“I am trying to make this a candid account, Sarela,” Lapadj chides.

“A candid account would also have the Szarehan recording the ‘account’ speaking, no?” Sarela returns.

“You are invisible for a reason,” Lapadj hisses, looking side to side, making sure they are alone. He almost hit his head on a shelf. “You are just here to record and give special insight into what is happening.”

The unseen Szarehan crackles in a way reminiscent of an organic sigh. “I was giving–whatever. Go back to saying whatever you were saying.”

“Exactly! I will just get straight to the point.” The black haired Kharatzara-cloaking-as-a-Human claps his hands together. “I am here on Earth to learn the Human craft of programming for the Empire. This is a task I am proud to be undertaking.”

“I thought you were being candid,” Sarela mutters. She is muttering but her voice carries strongly due to the fact she is the one who is capturing the sound and video.

Lapadj stares at her with his false brown eyes. They do not convey the contempt they would if he were in his true form. It is assumed Sarela is staring back at him although he cannot plainly see it.

The exchange of blank stares is interrupted by knocking on the door to the small room.

“Harrison,” another voice, light and delicate, calls out. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, just,” Lapadj rises up and knocks the shelf beside him, dislodging a container full of pens, “ugh, getting,” he stares at the ground that is sprinkled with pens and reaches down to pick one up, “ughh..”

“Pens,” Sarela supplies, her word sent through a secure channel so that the nearby Human would not hear the Empirian. “Pens.”

“Pens,” Lapadj repeats. “I am getting pens.”

He picks up a few and then shoves the rest back into their container and places it back onto the shelf. He turns to the door. He gives a passing, narrowed glance to his invisible Szarehan companion and exits the closet. He enters into a well-lit space with various tables, chairs, and primitive Human computers. A Human female stands next to where Lapadj, or ‘Harrison’ stopped moving. He extends his hand out awkwardly, showing the amount of pens he has collected.

“Okay.” She blinks a few times. “Well, good to know we aren’t going to run out of pens any time soon.”

“There were many in the storage area,” Lapadj states, retracting his hand.

“Storage!” the Human female gleefully exclaims. “Now that is topical. We’re going to be working with Postgres databases to store the Wiki’s post information.”

“Excellent,” Lapadj says. “I am very excited to begin, Anna. Where are these databases?”

“We’ll run them locally as we test it out,” Anna replies.

She walks over to an open station. She sits down and motions for Lapadj to join her. He does, setting the pens down in a pile next to the computer. She sets up the machine to begin working. The view of the scene follows them and stabilizes to give a perspective of both of their faces.

Lapadj stares at the computer with its various graphical elements and says: “Ah.”

“Did you really think they had data bases?” Sarela asks.

“No,” Lapadj stiffly lies through their shared communication channel. The Human facial features do not mask anything.

“Okay so where should we begin with Postgres…” Anna’s voice trails off as she ponders. Her eyes flutter as Lapadj appears to be reconsidering his existence for a few short moments.

“How to add information to it,” Lapadj offers, remembering he does, in fact, exist.

“That is a good starting point,” she says. She laughs for a few short moments wherein Lapadj stares blankly at Sarela and the recorder. “There are a few basic operations that need to be done before we can even, like, do anything. We have to make the database itself-“

Lapadj acquires a keyboard, setting his fingers across it awkwardly. “How do we perform this operation?”

“Actually, I just did. All I did was say createdb and then the name of the database. I called it wiki-test. We’ll make a real one later once we get everything set up.”

“So we have our database on this…machine.”

“Yep. It is running locally on port 5432. That port is what Postgres is usually run on. If it is occupied, then 5433.”

“Lapadj blinks rapidly, as if trying to recall the information he did not read in preparation for being a tourist,” Sarela narrates to great effect.

The Empirian tourist furled his Human eyebrows at Sarela for a short second. He turns to Anna and then gives his best fake smile.

“So we can begin adding information to this database. The content of the posts and so on,” Lapadj says.

“Not quite yet. We have to have a table to put the information in.”

“Would I type it in like createtable?” He begins typing that command in.

“It’s not that simple,” she says and proceeds to delete everything he had typed in.

“Having fun yet?” Sarela asks him.

Openly, Lapadj replies: “No.”

Anna stares at him for a few moments, slightly confused.

The scene cuts out.

–Ending Basic Narration of Recording 1–

It is 150% canon that when the Spine or whatever is describing a recording it is sassy and throws in wry commentary here and there.

Anyway.

To be continued…