By sunset, the mechanical owls were sorting thousands of scrolls a second. The Grand Architect smiled. "You've done it, Alex. You've taught the machines to understand the heart of human speech."

If a scroll contained words with "happy" coordinates, the owl sorted it into the bin.

Finally, it was time for the owls to work. Alex trained them to recognize the "sentiment" of the scrolls.

The owls, being mechanical, didn't actually speak English—they spoke in numbers. Alex had to turn words into math.

Alex quickly realized the mechanical owls were literal-minded. If a scroll said "The cat sat," and another said "the cat sat," the owls thought they were completely different messages!