Spot

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File:Spot(small).jpg
Spot after his most recent upgrade in AWOM

The name Dairine gives to the cloned computer which carries her version of the Wizard's Manual.

Dairine is the first one to get her hands on the Callahan family's new Apple IIIc when it arrives. The machine as described in HW is plainly meant to be a sleeker, newer offshoot of the older Apple IIc school of thought. It's described as "a cream-colored object about the size and shape of a phone book", with the keyboard and motherboard combined into one console -- a very early attempt at a laptop, or at least a transportable. Though the machine has an external monitor, its main body also has a flip-up "liquid crystal screen" which is mentioned later.

Dairine (being Dairine) immediately begins to fool around with the machine's new software while her parents are arguing over the Apple manuals. When the boot-up logo appears onscreen in the form of the Apple without a Bite, Dairine's only briefly distracted from her initial purpose, which is to make a backup copy of the machine's boot disk. However, not fully understanding the strange new commands she's seeing, she winds up making a copy of the entire machine. This computer, with which she lights out across the universe on Ordeal, is the initial iteration of the machine-based Manual that Dairine comes to call "Spot".

Tom tells Nita and Kit that the software version of the Manual has been in beta for some time, and has up until that point only been authorized for use by Advisory level wizards and above. Dairine's acquisition of it makes plain that the Powers that Be wanted her to have it -- there being no other way for her to have gotten her hands on it. (It also suggests that They appear to want it tested to destruction, or as near as possible to that point -- a theory that Tom does not mention to Nita and Kit right then.)

Dairine quickly enables the computer to handle verbal input and output of Manual functions, so that she can handle it by voice rather than having to do spell coding by hand. This saves her a lot of time and possibly saves her life a number of times during the course of her Ordeal. But the most important alteration of its function has to do with what she (and other beings) do to it after her arrival on what is still only known as the Motherboard World. The events that transpire there cause the computer/Manual to become a far more proactive and sentient-seeming construct than it was when it started out in the Callahan living room. In particular, Dairine requires the computer version of the Manual to pour itself completely into the living but not-as-yet-self-aware silicon matrix of the planet, and also to connect her up to it at the same time so that the matrix has some way to understand the concept of life and experience. The resulting unique union changes all three entities forever: and in particular, Spot stops being an "it", as far as Dairine's concerned, and is henceforth referred to (at least by her) as "he".

Immediately after the birth and Choice of the Mobiles, the computer acquires the ability to generate its own sensory organs and means of mobility, growing stalked eyes and legs as he needs them. Some time after that, other changes ensue. Not much seems to happen during the course of AWAB, but early in TWD when Spot reappears again, he's had an upgrade: he now looks like "a little silvery-shelled laptop computer, about the size of a large paperback book". Dairine mentions to Nita in passing that Spot is in some ways acting more like an organic life form (possibly one of the more slowly-manifesting side effects of the union on the Mobiles' world); specifically, when Nita notices Spot scratching himself with some of his various legs, Dairine attributes the problem to the fact that he's itching "from his last molt". Presumably software and other upgrades accompany these physical changes, and may also occur at more regular intervals.

His relationship with Dairine appears to deepen and become more private over the next few books. Nita notes during the course of AWAL and WH that Spot doesn't talk much to anyone but Dairine, at least verbally, though he's willing enough to display strictly Manual function for other wizards when asked. (Sequences occurring in Dairine's point of view also make it plain that she and Spot now sometimes communicate telepathically rather than by voice.) While information Spot provides does prove useful during WH, he does not figure prominently in the action himself until the events of WAW, when he travels with Dairine back to the Motherboard World, and the two of them once again work together in depth with the Mobiles on the problem of the Pullulus. Massive data transfer and networking on the Mobiles' world, and the events that subsequently transpire on Rashah and the Moon, may well be the harbinger of more change in the near future -- judging by Spot's most recent (physical) upgrade, in AWOM, to what appears to be a variation on one of the newer MacBooks.

(HW, AWAB, et seq)