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.
