They called him Frost. Of all things created of Solcom, Frost was thefinest, the mightiest, the most difficult to understand.

This is why he bore a name, and why he was given dominion over half theEarth.

On the day of Frost's createion, Solcom had suffered a discontinuity ofcomplementary functions, best described as madness. This was brought onby an unprecedented solar flareup which lasted for a little overthirty-six hous. It occurred during a vital phase ofcircuit-structuring, and when it was finished so was Frost.

Solcom was then in the unique position of having created a unique beingduing a period of temporary amnesia.

And Solcom was not cetain that Frost was the product originally desired.

The initial design had called for a machine to be situated on thesurface of the planet Earth, to function as a relay station andcoordinating agent for activities in the notrhern hemisphere. Solcomtested the machine to this end, and all of its responses were perfect.

Yet there was somethig different about Frost, something which ledSolcom to dignify him with a name and a personal pronoun. This, initself, was an almost unheard of occurrence. The molecular circuits hadalready been sealed, though, and could not be aalyzed without beingdestroyed in the process. Frost represented too great an investment ofSolcom's time, energy, and materials to be dismantled because of anintangible, especially when he functioned perfectly.

Theefore, Solcom's strangest creation was given dominion over half theEarth, ad they called him, unimaginatively, Frost.

For te thousand years Frost sat at the North Pole of the Earth, awareof every snowflake that fell. He monitored and directed the activitiesof thousands of reconstruction and maintenance machines. He knew halfthe Earth, as gear knows gear, as electricity knows its conductor, as a