“But your true name isn’t ‘Moira,’ is it? Moira’s just what people call you?”
“Yes.”
“And most people address you as ‘Lady’ because you’re a witch. That is, you belong to the class of witches, right?”
“Yes,” said Moira, who was beginning to see where this led.
“All right then,” Karl said. “You are named one thing, you are called something else and you’re an instantiation of a class called yet another thing.” He grinned. “Then you get someone like Wiz, who is Sparrow to most people, Wiz to his friends, is an instantiation of the class of magicians and has a true name. Each of them is different and each of them applies in slightly different circumstances.
“It’s the same in programming. A variable is an instantiation of a class, like integers, and it has its own name that uniquely identifies it, like a true name. At any given time it also has a value, which is what it actually is just then, but which can change with circumstances. Finally, it can also be known by other names in other circumstances and it can be referred to by a pointer, the way ‘Moira’ points to you without using your true name. See?”
Moira stood open-mouthed. “You mean that’s what Wiz was trying to show me?” she asked incredulously. “That’s all there is to it?”
Karl shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“But that’s so simple. Why didn’t he just say that?”
“Probably because he never thought of it that way. From what everyone says Wiz was a master class hacker and hackers just don’t think in those terms.” He grinned. “We have a saying about people like your Wiz. Ask them what time it is and they’ll tell you how to build a clock.” Jerry put the scroll back on the pile.
“Now I’d like to ask you something. What did you mean just now when you said you don’t think the way we do?”
“We do not generalize the way your people do.”
“Who says so?”
“Why, Wiz.”
“I think Wiz is wrong. You don’t generalize the way Wiz does, but then most people don’t. You’re oriented to language, not mathematics. One of the things that confuses it is you’re very careful in your speech. You don’t use metaphors and similes in the way we do, probably because your language can directly affect the world around you. You can make magic by accident.”
Moira thought hard.
“Then you think we can learn this new magic?”
“I’m sure of it. Oh, you’ll probably struggle like an English major in a calculus class, but you can get it if you’re willing to work at it.”
“How is it you are so much more skilled at explaining all this?” Moira asked.
“Oh, that. I was a high school teacher for a while.”
“A teacher? Then why did you become—whatever you are?”
Karl grinned ruefully. “Kind of a long story. Seems I started out to be an engineer and in my junior year I decided I’d rather be a teacher. So I switched majors and got my degree in education.”
He looked out the window and sighed. “Well, after I had taught math for a couple of years, our high school got an inspection by the accreditation commission. I had more than enough math courses to teach math, but most of them were taken as engineering courses. So the accreditation commission decided they didn’t count. I could either go back to college and take twenty-four hours of math courses I’d already had or I wouldn’t be certified to teach math and that would count against the school’s rating.”
“You mean you were not a good teacher?” Moira asked.
“Oh no. I was a very good teacher. The accreditation commission rated my classroom performance ‘superior’. But I had taken all my math courses with an ENG prefix instead of a MA prefix.”
The hedge witch frowned. “Forgive me, My Lord, but I do not understand.”
Karl sighed. “Neither did I. That’s why I took a job as a software engineer—for twice as much money.”
Moira thought hard for a moment.
“My Lord would you be willing to take on an additional duty? Would you be willing to teach this to others?”