Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.7.0.8 $; site uiucdcs Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!lll-crg!dual!qantel!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!kaufman From: kaufman@uiucdcs.Uiuc.ARPA Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: Back to the Computer Message-ID: <9900375@uiucdcs> Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 13:32:00 EDT Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.9900375 Posted: Sun Aug 11 13:32:00 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 21:36:02 EDT Lines: 203 Nf-ID: #N:uiucdcs:9900375:000:12096 Nf-From: uiucdcs.Uiuc.ARPA!kaufman Aug 11 12:32:00 1985 BACK TO THE COMPUTER A movie spoof by Kenneth A. Kaufman Young Marty McBug entered the address of his friend, DEC Brown, one morning, only to find it empty. The hardware betrayed the fact that the address hadn't been accessed in days. Suddenly, a message came through, and Marty decided to accept it. "Marty, is that you?" came DEC's voice over the line. "Yeah, where have you been?" "Never mind that. Listen; this is important. I need you to meet me at the CPU at 01:15. Can you make it?" "Uh, sure, DEC." "Good. By the way, what time is it?" "Says here it's 08:00." "In that case it's 08:25." "08:25? Holy shit! I'm late for my data input!" Off he sprinted to join his data group. Upon arriving, he ran into his girlfriend, Sysgen, who warned him to use an alternative entrance in order to avoid the delimeter. Despite their efforts, though, the delimiter spotted them. "Late again, McBug? You're gonna wind up just like your parent, no good George McBug. Why even bother to enter the software audition?" But enter it he did. His software group had produced a hot new version of Rogue. Unfortunately, the judges found the code too recreational for their liking. But Sysgen was impressed. She later said, "You ought to submit that to a compiler." "But it might be rejected by the compiler," Marty replied, "and I don't think I could live with that." Just as they were about to perform a MERGE, there was an interrupt. "Save the system clock," came the voice. "Save the system clock. It was struck down by a worm 30 versions ago. We're trying to get it running again." "Oh, ok," said Marty. "Here's two bits." When Marty arrived at $HOME, he found George in a lively discussion with his old buddy, Bit. Bit was saying, "And I need that code in tonight. Understand?" "Uh, sure Bit. It'll be ready for you tommorow morning." "Hello? Is there anybody in there? I can't just submit it with your address on it. I'll need to copy it." He looked into the refrigerator. "I come all the way out here, and all you have is COBOL Cola?" Marty's other parent, Domain, entered, carrying a cake. "This was to celebrate Uncle Joey's release from the bad block. But unfortunately the payroll program crashed again." Later, Marty's sister was complaining. "How will I ever meet boys?" Domain responded, "Just as George and I met, it will happen. George fell into a LISP program and was rammed by Grandpa's CAR." "We've heard. And how when he kissed you at the Glitch Under C dance ..." "That's Encapsulation Under C." "Whatever. But what was Dad doing in that tree structure in the first place?" "I was word watching," claimed George. At 00:30 Marty was called by DEC. "You weren't running SLEEP, were you?" "Uh ... no." "Good. On your way to the CPU, can you stop by my address and pick up my trace program?" Marty agreed, and upon arriving at the CPU, he found DEC and his dog, ARCSIN, along with a beautiful linked list that had obviously been structurally modified. "Turn on the tracer," said DEC, "and watch me test my new creation. First note that the timers on me and ARCSIN are completely synchronized." They simultaneously turned to 01:18. "We'll now put ARCSIN into the root of the list. At my command, he'll start traversing. And when he reaches the 88th node ..." The dog began traversing the list. Through 30 nodes, then 60, then 70, 80, 85, 86, 87, ... When he hit the 88th node, ARCSIN and the entire linked list disappeared in a blinding flash. "It works!" shouted DEC. "What? You just blew ARCSIN out of existence." "That's not so." "Then where'd he go?" "Not where, but when. You see, I made that linked list into a time machine, and sent ARCSIN one minute into the future." "You ... you made a time machine out of a linked list?" "If you're going to make one out of a data structure, why not use the best?" Suddenly, ARCSIN and the list reappeared. They withdrew the dog from the list, and DEC began shouting with joy. After ascertaining that ARCSIN's timer was exactly one minute behind DEC's, DEC made sure the tracer was picking all of this up and approached the linked list. "You see, this here sets the destination time. We can set it for ... well, for example, this time thirty versions in the past, when this CPU wasn't even here - just a bunch of trees. This is a significant moment, for this is when I got the idea for time travel. It was when I came to, after a head crash, that I envisioned the flux compiler. That's this thing here, and it makes time travel possible. It requires 121 gigaflops to enable the linked list to go into time, and to provide it, I have to put in some virtual memory." "Virtual memory? Did you steal that?" "No. Some crazed hackers stole it and gave it to me. They wanted me to build a device which would allow them to break into the operating system. I kept the virtual memory, and gave them a package consisting of the contents of /dev/null. Now let me show you ..." A sudden burst of activity came from a nearby bus. "Oh my god!" said DEC. "They've found us!" "Who's found us?" "The hackers! Run for it Marty!" Marty froze in horror as the hackers brought out their new-fangled hardware and erased DEC. Seeing them closing in, he leaped into the linked list, and began traversing it. The hackers followed on the bus. Marty thought he'd be caught, but when he hit the 88th node, everything disappeared around him. The next thing Marty knew, he was leaving the linked list and some neighboring trees at an odd address, after realizing that the virtual memory had run out. Not yet fully believing he was 30 versions in the past, but noting the high frequency of primitives around him, Marty decided to get a drink. "How about a TAB?" "What do you think this is, a typewriter?" the man at the register asked. "Ok, what about a Context-free?" "You're going to have to pay for any context you order here." "Look. Just give me anything without GOTOs in it." "As he stared at the unappetizing cup of comments he had received, he noticed that the person on his left was none other than an earlier version of George, when who should walk in but an earlier version of Bit? "George," said Bit, "I need that code in tonight. Understand?" "Uh, sure Bit. It'll be ready for you tommorow morning." "Hello? Is there anybody in there? I can't just submit it with your address on it. I'll need to copy it." Marty, struck by a sudden case of recursive deja vu, went to a phone booth to look up DEC, since he probably was the only one who could return him to his version. The address listed was unfamiliar: Univac Drive. He asked the man at the register where Univac Drive was. One block past Babbage was the reply. "One block past Babbage? That's PC Jr. Memorial Way." "Who Jr?" "Never mind." Seeing George leave, Marty darted out after him, eventually finding him in a tree. "My god! My father's inspecting silicon valleys!" Just then, George fell out of the tree into a nearby LISP program. Seeing the inevitable oncoming CAR, Marty dove over the parentheses and pushed George out of the way. As a result, it was he who was hit by the CAR. The next thing he knew, he was in bed, being attended to by an attractive young lady. "Are you feeling better, Boolean?" she asked. "Boolean?" "That's your name, isn't it?" "No, my name's Marty." "But your label says 'Boolean'." "Oh, never mind that." "By the way, I'm Domain. Is there anything I can do for you Bool ... er ... Marty?" "Mama mia! No!" Marty shouted, darting off toward Univac Drive. It took some convincing to get DEC to believe that Marty was really from 30 versions in the future, but Marty succeeded by relating the story of DEC's recent head crash. DEC, knowing the danger of tampering with archived versions, made sure that Marty hadn't interacted with anybody. Marty was about to deny that, when he realized he had upset his parents' meeting and that Domain had the hots for him. "Does that mean I've deleted himself?" he asked, suddenly concerned. "Oh, no, you'll just have to bring your parents together. Otherwise, time could get caught in an infinite loop." "Ok, I'll work on that. But can you help me get back to my home version?" "I'll have to study that trace from your version. But we'll see." The next day, Marty tried to bring George and Domain together in their data group. Unfortunately, George was too busy looking out for Bit, and Domain was only interested in Marty. At lunch, Marty sat down with George. "What are you writing?" Marty asked. "Oh, this is just some simulation software." "No kidding. I didn't know you were a programmer. You ought to send that in to a compiler." "But it might be rejected by the compiler," George said, "and I don't think I could live with that." "Listen. Domain over there really wants to talk with you." Unfortunately, as George approached, so did Bit, and only the sudden arrival of the delimiter prevented Bit from turning both George and Marty into UNIX. That night, Marty encrypted himself and visited George. "Greetings, earthling. My name is Loop Skywalker. I come from the planet ROMulus," he lied, beating the left side of his chest with his right fist. Needless to say, Marty had George eating out of his hand. There was no way George wouldn't ask Domain to the Encapsulation Under C dance. As Marty had said, "Just tell her, 'You're my double-density.' She'll go floppy." Marty found DEC reviewing the trace. "This is wonderful," DEC was saying. "Thirty versions later and I still have my parity bit!" "So DEC, can you get me back to my version?" "Do you know how much 121 gigaflops is? In this version, you can't just go to the bit bucket and pick up some virtual memory. The only thing that can provide 121 gigaflops here is a worm. And you never know when and where one of those will strike." Marty triumphantly pulled out his Save the System Clock leaflet. "We do now!" So Marty was able to go to the dance and bring his parents together. He even played the world's first version of Johnny B-Tree. He then rushed to the system clock, where DEC had rigged the linked list to run on worm power. After slipping DEC some privileged data, he hopped into the linked list and set the controls for 10 minutes before he had left his version. Moments later, he was back in his version. Suddenly, he saw activity on the bus, and realized it was the hackers heading for the CPU. Doubting that DEC would take his advice, he took off on his memory board at full speed. Alas, he arrived at the CPU too late - just in time to see the hackers erase DEC and himself escape into the past. He ran over to where DEC had been, when suddenly DEC returned. "I write-protected myself," he explained before taking Marty home and himself going 30 versions into the future. At home Marty found things different but, he felt, better. Sysgen came by, and he was about to take a few bytes out of her when with a flash, DEC arrived with the linked list. Marty immediately noticed there had been some changes in the linked list. For one thing, DEC was running a simple garbage collection algorithm and putting the output in a MR. FORTRAN device. This futuristic power system was much simpler than having to steal some virtual memory. "Come on," said DEC. "You two have to come back to the future with me." As they entered the linked list, Marty noticed that they had entered too far down the list. "Shouldn't we go in at the top of the list? Here we don't have 88 nodes to traverse." "Nodes?" laughed DEC. "Where we're going, we don't need any nodes!"