Doctor Know's computer

Doctor Know's computer was an eldritch, supernatural computer owned by the 925th Universe's version of Doctor Know, who brought it with him when he became a member of the Scottish Division of the Multidimensional Finders Service.

Nature

A “large research computer”, it “stored every bit of data contained in Doctor Know’s extensive library” and could also scan other realities and times. (PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division) It was “by Cyclock standards, (…) impossibly advanced. Literally. It simply wasn't ever possible for any creature living or dead to get this advanced… except Doctor Know”. (PROSE: Good Crieff: The Tribulations of the Scottish Division (2024 reedit))

Described as an “eldritch monstrosity that only the man himself understood”, it had “seven layers of keyboards filled with all sorts of symbols and buttons”, many of which were illegible, invisible or worse: one button “required the user to shift their hand through the keyboard into the 4th dimension to hit a button made millions of years in the future by a race known as the Heloiglobians”, (PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division) and some buttons were only visible from certain angles. One account specified that it only had “at least” seven layers of keyboards, suggesting there may have been more. (PROSE: Good Crieff: The Tribulations of the Scottish Division (2024 reedit)) One of its keys was for the symbol “kwy”, unknown to 21st century typography and pronounced as the sound “kwy” only “more breathy and fhleghmatic” [sic]. (PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division)

Because the computer “contained information deemed highly valuable” (especially to Doctor Know himself), the sorcerer had outfitted it with “every form of protection he could”. One of these was Quantum Encryption, which placed the computer in a state of Constant Present: in essence, “the machine was constantly purging past and future timelines”, such that it, and the files it contained, only existed in the present moment. In practice, to a Cyclock's ability to scry the past and possible futures, it appeared to suddenly stop existing a moment into the future, preventing such a time-sensitive observer from accessing its files by looking into the object's future and observing a time when Doctor Know would look over the desired information himself. (PROSE: Good Crieff: The Tribulations of the Scottish Division (2024 reedit))

History

Both Talbot and Tetra-None Hepta-Oct tried and failed to use the computer on one occasion, but eventually had to prevail upon the Doctor himself to make it work after the Hydrant retrieved him from the coffee shop to which he had absconded. (PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division)

Some time later, having been considerably disturbed by the news that his “son” the Wogglebug was now dating his boss the Man in Grey, Doctor Know mwalked out of the office to process this information. He had left his computer unlocked, allowing an impish Tetra to try the video game he'd been playing on it when she'd walked up to him earlier. (PROSE: Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over- There: Tetra-None Hepta-Oct and Doctor Know-It-All Talk it Out)