The resulting image showed blank spaces where the static was removed. So she did “fill-in-the-blanks”-instructing the computer to introject imagery, according to what was around the blank spaces. In this operation the computer made a logical guess about what was missing.

She now had a static-free image, but it was muddy and indistinct, lacking definition. So she did a “high-priced spread”-intensifying the image by spreading the gray-scale values. But for some reason she also got a phase distortion that she had to cancel, and that released spiking glitches previously suppressed, and to get rid of the glitches she had to run three other programs.

Technical details preoccupied her for an hour, until suddenly the image “popped,” coming up bright and clean. She caught her breath as she saw it. The screen showed a dark, brooding face with heavy brows, watchful eyes, a flattened nose, prognathous lips.

Frozen on the video screen was the face of a male gorilla.

Travis walked toward her from across the room, shaking his head. “We finished the audio recovery on that hissing noise. The computer confirms it as human breathing, with at least four separate origins. But it’s damned strange. According to the analysis, the sound is coming from inhalation, not exhalation, the way people usually make sounds.”

“The computer is wrong,” Ross said. “It’s not human.” She pointed to the screen, and the face of the gorilla.

Travis showed no surprise. “Artifact,” he said.

“It’s no artifact.”

“You did fill-in-the-blanks, and you got an artifact. The tag team’s been screwing around with the software at lunch again.” The tag team-the young software programmers- had a tendency to convert data to play highly sophisticated versions of pinball games. Their games sometimes got sub-routed into other programs.