Friday, April 27, 2012

The Network of Eden


Because Nobody Believes in Magic Apples Any More (After Gen. 2 and 3)

Now the Chief Programmer had created a network in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.  The Chief Programmer made all kinds of software available on the network—software that could answer any question, solve any problem, perform any task, and that controlled machines that could make anything at all, and allow the man a life of perfect ease and comfort. In the middle of the software directory was the program ForbiddenFruit.

The Chief Programmer took the man and put him in charge of the Network of Eden to work it and take care of it.  And the Chief Programmer commanded the man, “You are free to run any software on the network; but you must not run the program ForbiddenFruit, for when you do your network privileges will certainly be revoked.”

Now the Hacker was more crafty than any of the other users the Chief Programmer had allowed on the Network. He said to the woman, “Did the Chief Programmer really say, ‘You must not run any software on the Network?”

The woman said to the Hacker, “We may run any software on the Network, but the Chief Programmer did say, ‘You must not run the program ForbiddenFruit, for when you do, your network privileges will certainly be revoked.’”

“Your network privileges will not be revoked,” the Hacker said to the woman.  “For the Chief Programmer has crippled your software. He knows that when you run the program ForbiddenFruit, your powers will be unlimited, and you will be like The Chief Programmer, able to do anything at all.”

The woman saw that the program ForbiddenFruit allowed her to do things she had never imagined. She also showed her husband, who was with her, and he used it to do still more things. But it also deleted essential files that enabled them to access the Network. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they had corrupted their computers; so they closed out the program ForbiddenFruit and pretended to log onto Facebook.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Chief Programmer as he entered the chat room in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Chief Programmer by playing Solitaire. But the Chief Programmer texted the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the chat room, and I was afraid because my files were corrupted; so I hid.”

And the Chief Programmer said, “Who told you that your files were corrupted? Have you used the program that I commanded you not to run?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she ran the program to do a few things, and they seemed harmless, so I did more.” Then the Chief Programmer said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The Hacker deceived me, and I ran ForbiddenFruit.”

So the Chief Programmer said to the Hacker, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all users! You will crawl on your belly and you will send nothing but spam all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crash your servers and break up your botnets, and you will not be able to stop him.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ran the program about which I commanded you, ‘You must not run it,’ cursed is the Network because of you; through painful toil you will struggle to use it all the days of your life. It will produce bugs and crashes for you. You will be plagued by slow connections, viruses and malware. By the sweat of your brow you will struggle to run even simple programs, and all the powers you once had access to will be unavailable any more.”

The Chief Programmer said, “The man has now become like one of us, and knows what the Network is fully capable of. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and restore his connection.” So the Chief Programmer banished him from the Network of Eden to be content with slow connections and clumsy software. After he drove the man out, he ran FlamingSword and disconnected the man from the Network so there was nothing at all the man could do to restore the connection.