(1997) With cameras in all the rooms to record onto her computer's hard-drive her every movement - including sex with her live-in lover Nicholas Clayton (J.D. Wolfe) - genius programmer Emmy Coer (Francesca Faridany) attempts to tap into and retrieve the immortal information waves of the 19th-century designer of the world's first computer language, Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (Tilda Swinton), the deceased daughter of the romantic poet Lord Byron.

In this dramatic cyber fantasy from director/producer Lynn Hershman-Leeson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eileen Jones, drawing from Sadie Plant's CD-ROM Women, Weaving and Cybernetics and Betty A. Toole's Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer, begins on March 11th, 1993, and ends on June 17th, 2002.

Upon discovering she's pregnant, Emmy vehemently tells Nick during an argument as she's smoking a cigarette: "I'm not having this kid." Her mentor, Prof Sims (Timothy Leary, more famous for his LSD experiments), encourages her to keep up her work: "Information is like a mist - breathe it in." Told that her pregnancy may cause her to engage in fantasies and that she should avoid undue stress from working long hours, she asks her female physician if the spirit of the unborn can be affected by thoughts. (According to researchers in the new field of fetal origins, as noted in an article in Time by Annie Murphy Paul: "the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas," shaping among other things "our intelligence and temperament.")

At first Emmy can only observe scenes from Ada's eccentric, promiscuous life, such as her parents in coitus for her conception on March 11th, 1815; a moment in her childhood when she expresses her initial dislike for mathematics; her illnesses and marriage at 16 to William King (Owen Murphy), who became three years later the First Earl of Lovelace; her dependence on opium and laudanum for pain; her love affairs ("Passion for learning confused with passion") with her children's tutor and John Crosse (John Perry Barlow), who introduced her to encryption, leading her into the art of systemic codes; her friendship with Mary Shelley (Nick, whom Emmy emphatically warns not to touch her computer, comments on the Frankenstein-like creatures on her computer's monitor, including their dog's animation); her collaboration with Charles Babbage (John O'Keefe) to create an engine capable of predicting everything.

In need of "spirit" (Ada's programming language) to make it work, the Difference Engine No. 2 had to wait for actual completion of its construction by the National Museum of Science in London in 1991.

Herself affectionately called "Little Bird," Ada's mechanical bird Charlene ("As light and dexterous as your mind") links the two women; computing and women's liberation were woven together via Ada. To Nick it all "sounds like the Twilight Zone" with channeling to bring back the dead.

Just watching a video of Ada's life isn't enough for Emmy, who desires direct contact through digital space. Would such an interaction, if possible, be dangerous? Prof Sims urges her forward to blow her mind: "Use everything you can."

Thinking she's finally gone insane when she hears Emmy's voice - "I seem to be able to see through your eyes … your memories" - Ada begins communication with her invisible interlocutor. When her mother Lady Byron (Karen Black, who also has Emmy's mother's part) disapprovingly counsels Ada, "You must turn to God," upon discovering the daughter's gambling with a numbering system for winning at the racetrack, Ada retorts that her mother had already lost her bet in the game of chance (divorced) with heredity linking her to Lord Byron. (Not mentioned is her mother's further wager on God's existence.)

Ada tells Emmy she felt invisible herself all her life because she never could become what she knew she could be. Instead the "Enchantress of Numbers," as Babbage called her, gave birth to three children and died before her 37th birthday. "Not enough time," she says to Emmy: "Can you save me?" Emmy has cloned all of her memory patterns during their association, but Ada protests: "I don't want all my secrets known."

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