Nerdcore: The Core Wars --- #122: Prestidigital Logic Explained
[[Gibson, Tim, and Abraxus are looking at a glowing green symbol. It's the same symbol that Gibson wears on his shirt.]]
Tim:What is that symbol supposed to mean, Gibson?
Abraxus: I'd always assumed you'd screwed up the Seal of Hagith during an invocation and you were cursed to forever wear it on your t-shirt.
Gibson: It is based on the Seal of Hagith, but I've modified it so it perform as a magitech integrated-sigil-circiut.
Abraxus: Hagith is used to seal a dybbuk spirit inside an inanimate object. That's how you make golems.
Gibson: Exactly, but if you want to make a tech golem, you have to integrate all of the circuitry into your sigils, otherwise the spirit will friy the circuitry and escape.
[[This panel is an animated circuit diagram in green on a plain black background. It matches Gibson's description.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}:For instance, if I want to make a clock circuit to synchronize all of the logical operations in a robot's mind, I can't just use an XOR gate with a delayed I/O loop because it wouldn't have the correct arcane significance.
[[Gibson and Skatha look at a more complex glowing green symbol that looks somewhat similar to Gibson's t-shirt symbol.]]
Skatha: But if the same circuit were formed into the Seal of Hagith?
Gibson: Exactly! Only it's a modified seal of Hagith because the meaning of the original version is closer to "genitalia" than it is to "heartbeat".
[[Another green on black diagram panel, this one is filled with a binary truth table as described by Gibson.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}: Now, obviously we also have to use prestidigial logic gates. The truth table of XOR is 0110, which corresponds to this geomantic figure who's name is Carcer and who's sign is this.
[[Another green on black diagram panel, this time with two new truth tables for IF -> the symbol ALBUS and NOIF -> the symbol PUELLA.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}: Of course, Carcer is logically equivalent to XOR, but it's meaning is "Prison". That's great if you want your Tech Golem to feel trapped inside its body, but I like to use a couple of different gates that give the Golem a feeling of wisdom and beauty respectively.
[[Another diagram, this time with the ALBUS and PUELLA symbols incorporated into Gibson's t-shirt symbol.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}: And also let us exploit the fact that our sigil has two inputs and two outputs. If we put an Albus gate here, which is equivalent to the "IF" logical operator, and a Puella gate here, which is logically equivalent to "NOT ONLY IF"...
[[The same diagram as the previous panel, but parts of it have gone dim.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}: Then we have a heartbeat sigil that we can not only use for asynchronous operations when its turned off by taking the X output, but...
[[The same diagram as in the previous panel, but it is animated and parts are blinking bright and dim.]]
Gibson{{voiceover text}}: When you turn it on by inputing 1 to each input, you get a nice clock whose X and Y outputs are always the opposite of each other, which gives us some good logical possibilities while being even more symbolic of a beating heart!
[[Gibson is standing next to a zombie with wires and circuits sewn into it and gesturing at it happily.]]
Gibson: And that's how come I was able to make Ashfield into a Cyber-Zombie.
[[The others look shocked and upset.]]
Tim: What? We didn't want you to do that!
Gibson: Oh, sorry.