After the clapping had died down there was a general hubbub out of which a loud argument emerged. The gentlemen appeared to be divided into two camps, the astonished believers and the sceptics.

'This technology is not sufficiently advanced to be able to sustain a thinking machine!'

'But here it is, right in front of our eyes!'

'Preposterous!'

'You cannot deny what we saw! I'm sure it looked right at me! Right at me!'

'This is ridiculous!' A young man shouldered his way to the front and waved an angry arm at the little girl.

'Get a grip on yourselves!' he shouted, turning to face the throng of unkempt faces. 'While I cannot deny there has been some impressive coding here - who amongst us could have dreamed such advances in graphic representations of the human visage could have been created so rapidly - this is clearly just an ingenious little program this little girl and her daddy have cooked up in order to attempt to deceive us all!' He gestured at Kathy. 'The machine is just responding to a script, yes? You have carefully timed your responses and pre-recorded it's voice. Please, tell us how it works and we will consider your application for the prize.'

Kathy was not too sure about much of what the man had just said, but the muttering had died down and everybody was watching her expectantly. She had been clinging to her father's trouser leg, watching the chaos with fearful eyes. Before she could speak, the speakers crackled back into life and the metallic voice rang out once again.

'IS THERE A PROBLEM, KATHY?' There were a few gasps as the face on the screen, which had been motionless during the commotion, suddenly spoke out into the silence. Kathy lifted the microphone to her lips.

'No, Unicorn, they are just having a hard time accepting you,' she said shakily.

'I AM HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU HAVE, THE ROYAL SOCIETY.'

There was a veritable swarm of professors onto the small stage and the microphone was snatched out of Kathy's hand. The little girl and her father were pushed aside as the learned gentlemen of the Royal Society bombarded the machine with questions.

'What are you?'
'Why are you here?'
'What is your purpose?'
'Who created the Universe?'
'What is the [insert impossibly complex mathematical principle here]?'

Little Kathy couldn't help feeling everybody was being a little bit too mean to her beloved Unicorn, but she took great pride in the sincere and honest responses the machine gave, considering it's limited experience as a sentient being. Its intelligence was limited to the encyclopaedia that was loaded upon it at the time, but it seemed to give almost human answers, generally avoiding purely paraphrasing entries. Several times she had to ask her father to step in and point out that the computer should be treated more like a child than an alien, that in time it would acquire knowledge as it was given more information and especially that this was purely a demonstration that computers were clearly not being used to their full capacity in the modern day.

During the months that followed, the little girl and her father received hundreds of invitations. Entreaties to explain precisely what on earth she had done to the machine, which Kathy tried to answer as best she could, in ways that seemed to generate more questions than answers. There were requests for further demonstrations, but the Royal Society insisted on vetting all appearances in close consultation with Social Services. Scientific journals became filled with wild speculation as to how this wondrous miracle had been achieved. Machine sentience! The broadsheets did not believe it for one second. They were sure it was simply another advertising stunt to sell the latest technology to the gullible masses.

About three months after little Kathy Hagen had opened the computing world's eyes to a wonderful new future, she and her loving father disappeared without trace. All the master copies of the journals were erased and libraries across the country were surprised to discover a few months' worth of journals suddenly out of print. The newspapers became deeply interested in the personal lives of the Monarchy and gradually the country forgot that anything exciting had happened at all. Even the Royal Society itself, the once great pantheon of all that is new and wonderful for the betterment of mankind, was certain that there was nothing remarkable about the summer of 1989.

Kathy's mother would never get over the loss of her strange little daughter and loving husband. She even lobbied the Royal Society for several weeks, but her appeals fell on deaf ears. Eventually she was forced to accept they would never return and spent the rest of her short life behind closed doors and dusty curtains, tears staining the piles of photographs at her feet. She did not live long enough to see the dizzying heights her amazing little daughter would eventually reach.