Epoc the Last ticket

Overseer sat in his leather and gold console, the smell of oil and metal heavy in his nostrils. His tall and lanky frame was old now, even for one of the immortal. His gold colored lenses defocused as he gazed inside his own head to read the days correspondence from the all thing.

Worker unit Curmudgeon alpha reported that his last commit was balls and dreamy hopper unit oopsed up the arse with a wandangle do dad. Overseer began the sacred procedure and reassigned the sanctified work log, the venerated documents and the holy source to Gunghoe alpha with the message of please complete this holy ticket by lunch time.

Gunghoe alpha was just rising after a night fighting the data whores below for scraps of source. Looking in his mirror he cleaned his black metal carapace, checked all eight of his legs and four manipulator arms and raised his elongated head to clean under his neck. Gunghoe squirted the holy oils, the cool greasy high quality liquid easing his aching joints. "Arr thats better" he shouted in a cavernous volume he used as a repository. The inner monolog of his conversation with his second and third brain had taken him about five minutes. By the time he finished the floor was awash with sacred oils that trickled down to the depths below. The data whores below would be lapping it up with their long and sinuous tongues. "Bitches, drink up good"

A chime sounded clear and beautiful like the start of a symphony it filled Gunghoe with joy. Gunghoe gazed at the wall, the thousand boxes were marked and each box contained a grid of 365 smaller boxes. Gunghoe hopped on his impossibly massive black legs and scrawled the last box of his wall solid. Speaking to himself "I shall now begin the sacred ritual of the update to sanctified branch source and its an especially a beautiful day because today, I will be transfer the sanctified source from our latest branch back to master thus renewing our master branch and deploying our next version so all may enjoy the fruits of our labours."

Gunghoe flew into a rage at the message he receive he screamed and ranted and raved. Collapsing on the ground like a dying spider softly whispering. "Commit was balls and dreamy hopper unit oopsed up the arse with a wandangle do dad ... dam you dreamy hopper you broke the branch again, now I can't merge!"

After relieving the source of some cruft from the commit, Gunghoe had gotten to the root of the problem. A nasty one indeed as the wandagle do dad was indeed up the arse, causing him to pull the wandagle from master and put it back into the branch. But the problem with that was the do dad would have to be re-writent to fit with the proper wandangle. "Dam you Dreamy hopper why didn't you follow the sacred procedure of the daily ritual." Dreamy hopper could hear the rantings and ravings of Gunghoe, his green eyes and coppery skin reflective in the dark of his source chamber. He croaked his soft voice and shouted up the chamber "If you get the wandagle from my branch you don't have to re-write the do dad"

Curmudgeon alpha was a dusty old plastic model, built before the source was last branched, he had seen the turning of the heavens and the ritual of the merge before but had refused to be recycled instead staying in his ancient dented white and silver chassis. He only had two arms, two eyes and two legs modelled off the mythical makers who strode the earth millennia ago. "All sleeping, all sleeping those masters of old, leaving us behind to make the great machine" Curmudgeon climbed out across the impossible gulf between Dreamy Hopper and himself to converse with the youngest of their kind. His ancient carapace creaked and groaned, sacred oils would do no good to ease the bourdon on his servos. "Arrrrrrrr" said Curmudgeon to Dreamy hopper who looked inquisitively Curmudgeon. "Noooooooo Drrrrreeeemmmy" said Curmudgeon "What" said Dreamy, "Are you trying to tell me not to merge" it seemed to Dreamy that it took an eternity for Curmudgeon to nod his dented plastic head.

Both of them were shocked to hear the loud boisterous bellow from Gunghoe "Hey guys, we have four hours to re-write the do dad so I can do a merge"

"No don't re-write the do dad re-write the wandangle" exclaimed dreamy with a massive waving of many arms and many legs.

"Aaaaaaaaar no fuck it just write an interface layer and sort it out in the next branch" rasped Curmudgeon.

"Oh umm fuck it lets do that it sounds fast then I can get back to my data whores and get oiled up good. Dreamy update the ticket on what we are doing" He does a little fake dance which puts both of them off going anywhere with him later on.

"I don't do tickets, tickets are like totally lame" Dreamy is waving his arms about and starting to hop on his one leg.

"Fuccccck, just update the ticket so overseer sees we are doing something, if you ruin my ritual and I can't get down with those data whores tonight your fucking dead Dreamy ill unplug you myself" The black beetle moves towards the flapping arms, leering with his insect like head.

"Whooo, dude thats harsh, ok ill update the ticket" Dreamy stops hopping and moves to the console.

Back on his leather and gold throne oversea reads the input from the all thing. "Adding some interface shit to fix the do dad wandangle arsed issue"

"We are done!" Dreamy quickly skitters away and begins drinking the sacred oil.

"Immmmm offf" Curmudgeon climbs back to his source hole in the wall and plugs in, reviewing Dreamys latest work.

Gunghoe begins his sacred ritual, and has to restart it three times as various forgotten commits arrive and are arranged. His hands move in an arcane set of ritual stop start motions. Eventually he has merged the master back to the branch, he runs the holy integration tests, the sacred unit tests and skips the user interface tests as was prescribed millennia ago by the makers of old. Gunghoe stages the code, replacing some thousand workers with their new source and instructing them to run all tests. After agonising hours, the data comes back good most of the tests passed across the board and the source is ready for update. The ritual of merge commences, it happens very quickly as many units take themselves offline and reboot for the new version of source. They read the release notes and criticise their lack of documentation and elegance. "Whats this commit message about, I mean you think they could write some documentation for once right" One unit doesn't reboot, he sits alone in the dark his dented plastic casing dull and cold to the touch his crystal eyes go dim.

Overseer reviews the statistics and announces a great celebration, branch one thousand is closed we are now version one thousand of source. Overseer raises his frame from his leather seat and cracks a bottle of sacred oil. His console flashes, he closes the ticket but opens another as it is his sacred duty, he makes a new ticked for a new branch. "Fix arsed code that caused old models to crash" Overseer looks down to the world below him, the thousands of units hard at work with their next project. Its taken a long time to get here he whispers and it will take a long time to finish.

Visualise your way out of global warming fuckers or how to bullshit yourself up your own arse

Last one I promise next post will be happy!

Relevance to space game, I got a comment from my flatmate that the previous post didn’t link too well to space game. That may be true but he still didn’t use the comment thingy which infuriates me more than the lack of salt and vinegar chips in America. Space game has two powers, which are important, the collective represent a command economy free market (which can turn to a non free market in the blink of an eye) the UN represent a company driven free market.

Both options sort of work, however I did get side tracked on the boomers selling me down the river for some lattes and supposed rising temperatures so they can get me to buy their totally shit solar panels, yogurt, free trade coffee and some shit house free trade itchy clothing. Hmm free market to rip me off you 60 something bitches. Give me my friggen space age pants that curse the environment never break down and will last longer than David Letterman (I hate that guy). This same group of people are telling us to imagine, that we can be successful, imagine this rip off your kids and you too can be successful! I got emailed this blog about the problem with positive thinking, and I thought there may be some more juice in my spleen to vent.

The chaser did a great “The Secret” segment, really funny. Maybe they can imagine that the global warming will provide them with a magical land of mangoes honey, bananas and lattes.

Now imagine your head going up your own arse so far that you think that buying someones free trade coffee is good and that you have truly made a difference.

Humans screw people over all the time, if the Boomers can screw their kids, then they have no problem about screwing the third world. Now imagine that the power of positive thinking can make it all go away. That’s how I see the UN they have edicts rules, laws, proposals, sanctions etc but what they should really do, is do what I would do fuck all those guys and buy a coffee because it’s not my fault it’s my parents who changed the world and gave me a steamer.

They knew in the 50’s about global warming, the same people are now calling it climate change. Just because they can’t get the math right doesn’t mean it won’t happen does it? Think positively global warming will make our kids scared and buy our shitty itchy shirts and shithouse coffee. Global temperatures have been falling since 1998; sun spot activity is at its lowest in recorded history. Sun spots matter more than carbon dioxide suspected of causing the medieval warm period where green land was colonized; so what’s the truth? the model, the science, certainly not, we haven't moved to a law from a theroy yet, all the expirments are not done so why impose a new market? Truth is irrelevant, it’s all about selling. If there’s a problem then we will solve it with technology, in the immortal words of Dave Chappelle "Mars Bitches, the united states of Space" lets just build a friggen colony there or some super sun blocker technology or fusion.

In the sci-fi setting, its important to know why things work even if all the players don't it adds the realism.

In my sci-fi settings, selling is just as important as it is now, unless you are going to have a Utopian society which has surpassed the need for individual wealth;

I see that oneday humans work together for the good of all, these are lofty ideals and good goals but in the short term unachievable. This however is the dream of the Tau Ceti Collective; at the moment in the setting they are in their honeymoon period, they have created their world, their cities and their economy is booming primarily because they are selling to the less fortunate Earth economies.

They can out-compete them because resources are cheap, labor is cheap, and who are they ripping off? They create robots, infants that reach sentience after 5 years. During this 5 year period the robot is property; sold for a low cost to people who want to use it. So the collective the beacon of hope and light for mankind, is really the master of slaves what game masters and designers do with this is up to them but it provides a huge number of story hooks. Robots that start waking up earlier what to do, what are the legal ramifications, illegally keeping the robots indentured by wiping their minds, robots burn their programs (like the burning bras) and decide to strike out on their own and discover that it’s an unforgiving unfriendly world, come up against glass ceilings etc. Its nice to have everything balance up and everything has a cost, their prosperity is at the expense of their children the robot brains that they create.