textfiles/magazines/LWS/12.lws

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"The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific"
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An electronically syndicated series that
follows the exploits of two madcap
mavens of high-technology. Copyright 1991
Michy Peshota. All rights reserved. May not
be distributed without accompanying
WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files.
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EPISODE #12


                  The Last Words Bomb

<<<<Revenge bent, S-max pilfers the program code for
Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace's newest smart bomb.
Unfortunately, the short-tempered computer genius cannot
make sense of the software's inscrutable user interface.<<<<

                    By M. Peshota


     The assembly language savant was sitting like ancient
stone in front of his computer terminal.  He would have
brought his fingers to the keys and resumed their manic
dance across them, but he was gripped by fear that if he
did, the ghost who inhabited his office closet, the ghost of
Alan Turing, the father of computer science and a lonely,
tireless kibbitzer, would emerge with his bicycle and come
and look over his shoulder, clucking like an old teacher.
He could consequently bring himself to do nothing but stare
exhaustedly into the night.  He was wondering if other
programmers had this problem when he heard a cry of
"Hooligan programmers!"  He turned his bloodshot eyes toward
the other end of the office.

     The officemate who looked like a mountain ogre was
pawing the pages of an immense, crabbed printout and
grumbling.  The book "The Joy of Software" was propped in
front of him on the desk.  His dark eyes scanned its open
pages with uncomprehending suspiciousness.  In one fist he
clenched a brutish-looking screwdriver.  He held it over the
printout like a murder weapon, as if he was about to stab it
repeatedly and leave it for dead.  He had two days growth of
beard, his hair poked out in all directions like a man who
has lost much sleep, his t-shirt was more heavily sweat-
splotched than usual, and the faded infinity sign imprinted
on the front of his shirt now looked like part of a roller
coaster that had fallen off its scaffolding.  "Idiot
software," he muttered.  He shuffled pages.  From his
impatient clench, the printout--dogeared, pasted up, taped
together, and graffittied as profusely as an abandoned
building between the turfs of two warring gangs--stretched
across his desk, zigzagging down to the floor.  It was the
program code for a computer-guided missile that Dingready &
Derringdo Aerospace was designing for the military.

     How his officemate had gotten hold of the top-secret
software, Austin was not certain, although he suspected that
the computer builder had learned all about it the same way
that everyone else in the company had--by infiltrating the
secret recesses of the company mainframe computer by using
the password "topgun."  The password "topgun" was used by
most of the military contractor's executives to log on to
the computer, despite the ceaseless pleading of the security
director to use something less likely, such as "dog" or
"cat".  For as long as Austin had worked there, it was a
well known fact, that anything of interest in the company
computer could be read with the password "topgun."

     He heard S-max moan.  He sounded like a constipated
moose.  "Pixillated hoodlums," he snorted--it was his
favorite term of derision for programmers who got on his
nerves.  He pawed more pages.

     Earlier in the evening, the computer builder had begged
Austin to show him how to run the software and program the
guided missile.  He promised to give him a ride in his van
with the rocking satellite dish on top if he did--a prospect
that the programmer found quite attractive, if only for the
fact that it had been over four years since he had left the
military contractor's research sub-basement.  The thought of
unravelling the enigma of "The Last Words Bomb" software was
also appealing to him, for it had been many years since
anyone had last made sense of the bomb's trailing, muddled
code.

     It would be a monolithic taste, tracing through the
helter-skelter code and trying to figure out how it worked,
where it led to, how it ended, even for a programmer as
gifted as Austin, for the program looked like nothing but
one long telephone message to a fellow named "FIFO" lost in
a place called "ENDBOMB."  Snatches of it were written in
Austin's specialty, assembly language--the computer tongue
that has been known to induce madness by the meticulousness
it demands, but much of it was coded in any of two dozen
different computer languages, some charmingly obscure,
others downright loopy.  There was INDO-GOSUB, for example,
in which every verb was lost within a millions GOSUBs and
all the operands had very angry-sounding gutteral names.
There was PL/1-SKRIT which, when printed out, looked like a
giant big-toed bird had run over the page with ink on its
toes.  There was REFORMED PASCAL which was like a cross
between an imperative/algorithmic language and directions on
how to use a Chinese cookie press.  There were many others
that Austin was even less familiar with.  The linguistic
hodgepodge of "The Last Words Bomb's" software was
attributable to the large number of half-interested,
underpaid programmers who had worked on it over the years,
including--Austin was embarrassed to admit--himself.  Not
only did the code lack any comments explaining what its
lines did, but its margins were doodled full of drawings of
Kilroys, spaceships, elves, fast cars, and all the species
of insects in the sub-genus eipuloituna, and algorithms that
had nothing to do with the task at hand.  One stretch of the
margin was adorned with Biblical-looking brambles, grapes,
and vines, and lettered with the proclamation "VAX USERS DO
IT BETTER" in the style of an illuminated manuscript.

     Austin saw his officemate drop his bushy head onto his
desk, cover it with his hands, and groan.

     Despite the jibbering digressiveness of the guided
missile's software, the weapon itself was highly advanced
verbally.  That's what made it so unique, and ultimately so
important to the defense contractor as well as the Pentagon.
It could do what no other smart bomb in the arsenal of any
world power, moreless any terrorist one could do: it could
print a message in the sky over its target prior to
detonation.   You could program it to write, say, "SURRENDER
AT ONCE OR PREPARE TO CHANGE YOUR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TO
C!"  Or you could have it spell "NATO HAS BETTER SOFTWARE
ENGINEERS THAN YOU DO, FOOL!"  (These were the two examples
given in the missile's user's manual.  Not surprisingly, the
manual was authored by programmers.)  The missile would
blaze its communique' through the clouds in graceful trails
of smoke.  The smoke could be any color or the letters any
style that could be found in any major-release video game.

     Of course, in order to command the bomb to paint
messages in the sky, you needed to use the missile's
software, and it was that software that S-max was presently
tussling with.  Austin would have liked to know what the
troublemaking S-max wanted to write in the sky, but he
resigned himself to the fact that he would probably never
find out since it was doubtful the short-patienced computer
builder would ever make sense of the code.

     Having lifted his head off the desk and resumed
scanning the code, he began pounding his fist on the desk.
"Damn programmers!"

     Austin sighed.  It was growing late.  It was probably
well past midnight, he concluded, feeling his own chaotic
body rhythm start to allign itself with the approaching
rumble of the janitor's floor buffer down the hall, as it
did about every time this night.  He felt his scraggly-
haired head drop to his own computer keyboard.  He felt his
mouth drop open and a stream of drool creep from it.  He
would have liked to have crawled beneath the desk and gone
to sleep there instead, where it was more comfortable, but
the assembly language savant was too weary.  As sleep's
foghorns grew nearer and louder, he surrendered himself to
the conquering peace of abject exhaustion.

     The last thing he heard was his officemate yelp with
exasperation and promptly stuff the program code for "The
Last Words Bomb" into the trashcan with loud, vindictive
punches.


                         <Finis>

>>>>In the next episode of "The Adventures of Lone Wolf
Scientific," S-max begs his officemate to write a new user-
interface for The Last Words Bomb.  When the programmer
refuses, expressing his reluctance to use his programming
talents on an "instrument of death," the computer builder
tries to explain to him the concept of a "peace-keeping
tool."<<<<