It was the final day of the summer of 1981 when Rick Ames, the computer whiz-kid, became self-righteous. Some say that he cracked open like a watermelon in the July sun. Others came to believe that the Lord Our God (King of the Universe) had given Rick the stuff that prophets are made of: eggs. A third group sat huddled in the corner, waiting to be pulverized by the walls which relentlessly closed in upon them. All could agree on one thing, however. Rick Ames had an error on line 70 in his main program: he had attempted to read a file without permission, and his job had been aborted. At the sure knowledge of such circumstances, some men break down and cry. Others turn on the ``off'' switch and wait it out. Rick's mind worked differently. Suddenly, as if in a flash, Rick knew what his next programming project would have to be. He put everything he knew about aside (for future reference) and retreated into the mountains. Not onto the mountains, as most do when they claim they're going ``into'' the mountains; but really into the mountains. Well, actually Rick went into the Midtown tunnel and made a really big fuss. But by the time he emerged, his program was already written in his mind. Rick had a paper-tape machine in his head too, along with his school-boy fantasies, so it was no problem to get the program downloaded to disk where it can be accessed when pertinent, and not at some time shortly after being pertinent. What the program did was this: The user was asked to enter his or her name. Then the computer would respond with this message:
LOUSY SINNER REPENT! YOU ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID!!!!!!!!!! GO AWAY! UH-OH! OH! OH! NOW YOU'VE DONE IT! ERROR COMING UP! ERROR COMING UP! UH-OH! ERROR COMING UP! ********************************************** THIS JOB'S GONNA BE TERMINATED, YOU SAD LITTLE CLOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then the computer was programmed so that one of any number of errors would occur. Whole data bases were sometimes irretrievably trashed. Line after line of gibberish was printed across page after page of the nicest handmade-type paper. Valuable antique vases toppled with the sort of crash which announces the creation of tiny shards of molecular size. Often the police were notified by voice mail!
Rick's program was termed a success: a work of genius. The Chase Manhattan Bank threw out all their old programs and used Rick's to compute interest and things. Of course they lost all their money in a matter of days, but they felt better about life when they strolled the avenues, sniffing the summer breezes which wafted this way and that.
Public pressure ultimately convinced the Department of Defense to ignore the advice of stodgy old codgers who ought to be riding subways muttering to themsleves (and are, these days), and hire Rick to write launching and landing programs for all their missiles. It seems the missiles were goiing up okay, but they landed too fast; lots of 'em were breaking! Rick took his new job seriously. He had missiles landing gently and blowing up shortly thereafter all over. Cities and towns were going off left and right, but care was taken that no one was ever actually in those cities when they were leveled to dust. Meanwhile, Rick designed a computer which could input and output data chiseled into slabs of rock, just in case the Lord Our God ever blessed him again with a data transmission.