# Hacker Fables

By Sebastian Carlos

![](https://hacker-fables.onrender.com/assets/hacker-fables-cover.jpeg)

# Table of Contents

- Part I: The Seven Keys
  - Chapter 1. Helsinki
  - Chapter 2. Silicon Valley
  - Chapter 3. Buenos Aires
  - Chapter 4. Berlin
  - Chapter 5. Brandenburg
  - Chapter 6. Dubai
  - Chapter 7. Malta
- Part II: Hacker Fables
  - Chapter 1. Meta
  - Chapter 2. Chicken
  - Chapter 3. Interview
  - Chapter 4. Pizza
  - Chapter 5. Letters
  - Chapter 6. Script
  - Chapter 7. Loop
  - Chapter 8. Nirvana
  - Chapter 9. Chroot
- Part III: The Godhead
  - Chapter 1. The Call
  - Chapter 2. The Laboratory
  - Chapter 3. The Descent
  - Chapter 4. The Armory
  - Chapter 5. The Labyrinth
  - Chapter 6. The Terminal
  - Chapter 7. The Sandbox

## Blurbs

"Dan Brown on ketamine"

--- The New York Times

"Neon Genesis Evangelion meets programming"

--- The Guardian

"The world's first LeetCode-Hard Sci-Fi Novel"

--- LeetCode Weekly Digest

"If you think you're a really good programmer, read Hacker Fables. You
should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."

--- Bill Gates

"A fitting swan song for the age of human programmers."

--- Sam Altman

## Foreword

Sebastian Carlos is one of the greatest and most mysterious writers of
our time.

I was amazed and honored that I was even on his RADAR. He was certainly
the most unique writer I encountered on Medium. And he was popular, too,
featured on ThePrimeTime and even coming on the ShlinkedIn discord.

I hope you appreciate Sebastian Carlos' unique humor as much as I do. In
an age where much of social media is dominated by the AI-generated, the
corporate-shilling, and the cliche, Sebastian Carlos always has a
creative and hilarious spin to put on the absurd nature of reality.

I would go as far as to call him the anti-slop: An antidote to all the
AI-generated tech stuff that is so prevalent these days. If that stuff
is bland and unsatisfying, Sebastian Carlos' content will make you feel
refreshed.

--- Kurt S. Inu ([@kurt.shibainu](https://medium.com/@kurt.shibainu))

## License

### GNU FICTIONAL PUBLIC LICENSE VERSION 3

Copyright 2026 Sebastian Carlos

The author retains all rights over the associated document (the
"LITERATURE"). It must not be copied using any existing or future
technology such as: Morse code, microfilm, quantum entanglement.

However, permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this license to deal *with the license itself*
without restriction except for one: As this is a "copyleft" license,
every new copy of the license must undergo a `sed` command to replace a
randomly selected word with "left." If the license consists entirely of
"left," it can be used as is, but an idempotent `sed` application is
recommended for symbolic compliance.

In case of live-action movie adaptation, the full text of the license
shall be read out loud by Richard Stallman himself or any person
declared worthy upon his demise.

Source code within the LITERATURE is provided "as is", without warranty
of any kind. This applies to dangerous software including but not
limited to:

``` bash
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
```

Any real person mentioned in the LITERATURE constitutes fair use as
satire. Nevertheless, the author invites any such persons to take legal
action, as the fallout will only further promote the LITERATURE.

## Privacy Policy

> The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
> "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", "CERTAINLY SO", and
> "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC
> 2119.
>
> However, only "MAY" is used, so you can ignore the rest.

You are reading a plain text file. It can't track you.

But if you store it on a GNU/Linux/systemd/FFmpeg system, it MAY track
metadata such as `atime`.

## Page Intentionally Written in the Whitespace Programming Language

## Part I: The Seven Keys

``` ini
rfc-42666-parity-bit=0
rfc-42666-metadata=(:rarity high)
rfc-42666-id=(:malta-logs (:malta-project (lord (:of hosts)) :author (e (max (vim)))))
gnu-gpl-blockchain-metadata=(:content-type multipart-mixed :boundary part-one)
```

### Chapter 1: Helsinki

My journey began in a place I never wanted to `git checkout` again. A
place where the man-made concept of "day and night" loses its meaning. A
place at the edge of a flat-Earther's world: Finland.

I'm E. Max Vim. This is the story of my most ambitious hack. Read along
and you might learn something.

My first target was Oliver Salmiakki, a netsec professor at the
University of Helsinki, where the music video for the hacker anthem,
"Darude - Sandstorm", was shot. Oliver was the only keyholder whose
information was publicly listed --- a fatal flaw.

My goal was to destroy DNS, the internet's phonebook.

However, you can't just hack a distributed system. The master key for
the DNS root zone --- the top of the pyramid --- was its only weak spot.
To protect the key, they split it into seven key shards held by seven
individuals scattered across the globe.

They call them Trusted Community Representatives. I call them targets.

My motivations are complex, but it's mostly revenge.

Oliver and I have some history. It involved a JavaScript conference and
his then-girlfriend, who apparently found my explanation of Vim's modal
editing compelling. I was drunk, she was drunk, and frankly, nothing
that happens at a JavaScript conference should be taken seriously ---
Oliver, however, took it personally.

I slipped into the back of the lecture hall. It was a sea of MacBooks,
most of them displaying a random California mountain wallpaper. Their
hue perfectly matching the time of day thanks to NTP --- a triumph of
network timekeeping involving distant pulsar stars just for a cheap
trick. Yet I admit it blended pleasantly with the natural light.

My sensory organs panned to the stage. Oliver was talking about
quicksort. I waited for a pause, then cleared my throat.

"Professor," I said. "Your quicksort example is missing tail calls. Is
this supposed to be a retro computing class?"

Keyboards stopped clacking. Oliver froze, chalk dust settling around him
like Perlin noise. His eyes behind thick glasses locked onto mine. A
moment of recognition, then pure fury.

He addressed his students. "Class dismissed. Please ensure your commits
are pushed before leaving. We appear to have encountered... legacy
code."

As they left, grateful for the break, Oliver adjusted his tweed jacket.
"E. Max Vim. How dare you soil the land of Linus Torvalds with your
presence?" he hissed, pulling a custom-made shuriken shaped like the
Linux penguin mascot from his coat.

With a flick, he sent Tux flying. It wasn't aimed at me --- not yet. It
embedded itself into the stereo system. The ambient track cut out,
replaced by Darude's "Sandstorm" at full volume.

"Predictable," I sighed, pulling out two identical Nokia 3310s, one in
each hand, connected by a USB cable like improvised nunchucks.
Indestructible. Reliable.

To become a hacker in our brave new world, reading books is not enough.
You also need to master two physical skills: Vim keybindings, and
martial arts. Oliver, like all DNS keyholders, was proficient in both.

Luckily, I had been trained by the very best. Months of excruciating
training by Sensei Richard Stallman had prepared me for this moment. It
was time to put my skills to the test.

"Nokia nunchucks?" Oliver sneered. "You're not going to pull out your
open-source katana?"

"My katana is reserved for worthy opponents," I replied. "If you really
want it, you'll have to build it from source... from hell!"

"There's ChaCha20 encryption on my key," Oliver said unfazed.
"Military-grade. You won't decrypt it."

"I don't want to decrypt the key, Oliver," I replied, advancing with the
pounding beat. "I want to destroy it." I swung the Nokias menacingly.
"Now, let's dance some cha-cha-cha."

The fight was brutal, clumsy, and punctuated by the relentless *dun dun
dun* Eurobeat. Chairs splintered against the wall. Expensive
Scandinavian vases shattered.

Oliver kept his distance, so I prepared a "visual mode" Vim macro ---
`qavapq` --- and eyeballed the `count` prefix that would bring me into
melee range. Any overestimation would crash me into the wall at
TUI-editor speed. `5@a` did the trick, and brought me close enough to
disable his shuriken and corner him against a bookshelf.

Out of options, he grabbed a heavy textbook, "The Art of Computer
Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching."

Luckily, my quick jab with the corner of a Nokia connected first. His
Knuth punch lost momentum by the time it hit my head, leaving me with
just a mild concussion.

His terminal emulator, however, closed permanently. `SIGTERM`.

I retrieved the key shard, stored on a USB stick around his neck.

Thanks to Finland's perpetual twilight and an efficient public transport
system running on Erlang, my escape was clean.

Before leaving the country, I found a traditional wooden sauna. I placed
the USB stick on the hot rocks. The plastic warped, smoked, and the
silicon cracked.

One key down.

### Chapter 2: Silicon Valley

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Keys 2-7
Location: ???
Keyholder: ???
Status: Secure
```

I used to be a corporate programmer, dreaming of elegant systems, but my
ethical projects got shot down one too many times. I realized the entire
structure had to be torn down to build anything meaningful.

My mission: Liberate the internet from this centralized cabal. Return
the web to its primordial, free state.

The DNS master key is reforged on the first full moon every year, during
a highly secure "Key Ceremony."

At least five of the seven key shards must be present. Otherwise, the
entire DNS system collapses. With only six keyholders left, my goal was
within reach.

Word quickly spread of my exploit in Helsinki. This notoriety led me,
ironically, to the heart of the beast: Silicon Valley.

The streets of Palo Alto were populated by gangs wearing Emacs colors,
singing old-school text-editor anthems. It must be an Emacs holiday
today.

I covered my Vim logo as I made my way to the open-plan, cocaine-fueled
office of Linktree, a company whose entire business model seemed to
answer the question no one asked: "What if a tree... of links?"

Their CEO, Zackaria "Zack" Jones, was a man whose personality was A/B
tested for maximum engagement.

"Max, my man! Disruptor! Paradigm shifter!" Zack greeted me with a fist
bump that felt worryingly sincere. He wore Yeezys and a t-shirt that
ironically said "Decentralize Everything." "Love your work. Big fan of
chaos! Murder! We need more of that energy. Helsinki? Masterpiece."

His plan was even more megalomaniacal than mine. He didn't just want to
break DNS; he wanted to build something new on top of the ruins. He
wanted to replace HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) with his
proprietary LTTP (LinkTree Transfer Protocol). It was brilliantly
horrifying.

To the untrained eye, a website ends in `.com`. The hacker knows there's
a hidden final dot, followed by the ineffable force around us, the "DNS
root zone". If Zack succeeds, his mark will be on full display:
`.com.linktree`.

"We can help each other, Max." Zack gestured expansively. "I know the
location of all remaining DNS keyholders. You take down the old guard,
clear the field. I build the new guard." He saw me as the perfect tool:
motivated, capable, someone primed for destruction.

I wasn't thrilled about his plan, but I was confident it would fail
faster than a Series D startup. For now, our paths aligned, and I needed
his intel.

It was then that she walked in. Tall, dressed head-to-toe in black latex
that squeaked with every move. Her hair pulled back into an
architectural bun. Her cheekbones looked sharper than inline assembly.
Her eyes held the cold look of someone who could DDoS a small nation.

"Natasha Volkov," Zack introduced her. "Our Head of Risk Mitigation."

Natasha eyed me up, her gaze lingering perhaps too long on the
minimalist Vim logo on my black hoodie. She crossed her arms, the latex
on her hand stretched, revealing the outline of a heavy ring.

"Zackaria seems to trust you," she stated with a thick Russian accent.
"I don't."

"Haha, priceless!" Zack laughed. "Gotta love that Eastern European
humor."

"Anyway!" He continued. "I'm a CEO, not a mathematician, but let's run
the numbers: Seven keyholders total. You took out one in Helsinki.
Quorum requires five keys, right? So, you need to take down... two more,
and the whole thing collapses." He smiled, proud of his calculation.

His math was surprisingly correct. He might be sharper than most CEOs.

"Alright, disruptor, let's do this!" He turned to Natasha. "Give Max the
coordinates for the two closest keyholders."

### Chapter 3: Buenos Aires

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "Evita" Rosales
Status: Secure

# Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "El Pelado" Gomez
Status: Secure

# Keys 4-7
Location: ???
Keyholder: ???
Status: Secure
```

The intel pointed to an unlikely convergence --- two keyholders in
Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bad security practice.

Eva "Evita" Rosales, a former tango dancer turned libertarian
cryptographer. Ricardo "El Pelado" Gomez, a chain-smoking security
consultant.

They were meeting at La Catedral, a cavernous tango club in the Almagro
neighborhood --- a place filled with mournful accordion music.

I arrived as Piazzolla melodies filled the air. I made my way through
the dancing couples.

As an IT person, my facial recognition skills aren't great --- not to
mention Argentinians look like the output of a diffusion model fed with
every soccer player in the world --- so my targets were hard to spot.

Luckily, I heard some flirtatious tech talk from a couple of tables
away.

"I ran `nmap` with a subnet mask," Evita said. "It detected my laptop
and my phone, but also some mysterious IPs that came from inside the
house, some `192.168` kinda shit."

"So, what did you do?" El Pelado asked.

"Well, I rolled up my sleeves, enabled 'promiscuous mode', and tcpdumped
that shit right into the `wireshark`, if you catch my drift. I analyzed
all the packets. The MAC address manufacturer was 'Sepura Limited',
which was promptly added to my `block-list`."

El Pelado made a deep sigh and whispered, "The panopticon isn't
metaphorical."

"Your key shards," I stated, catching them by surprise. "Hand them
over."

El Pelado sighed, smoke coming out of his nostrils. "Always drama with
you yankee hackers."

The fight began without further preamble.

Evita fought using tango steps. As I was desperately parrying her with
my Nokias, El Pelado's ThinkPad T400 struck me before I could edit
myself out of the blast radius, sending me sprawling.

"Didn't you hear?" he growled. "It takes two to tango!"

As I got up, I noticed the laptop did a number on my ribs. I had been
hit by ThinkPads before - part of Sensei Richard Stallman's training -
but this one felt particularly strong, likely reinforced with
military-grade titanium.

I was barely keeping up thanks to desperate Vim evasive maneuvers (`dd`
to dodge, `u` to retreat). All the Prolog code I'd written for soulless
FAANGs flashed before my eyes --- lines of pure logic that led to this
moment.

Just as they had me cornered, a flash of black latex passed by. Natasha.

She wrapped her legs around the cryptographer's neck in a complex Foot
Jiu-jitsu choke --- an advanced technique which Stallman was unwilling
to teach me. Then she dispatched El Pelado with equal ease.

Their terminals closed for good. `SIGKILL`.

Natasha walked over calmly, retrieved Evita's USB shard from a hidden
pocket in her velvet dress, dropped it on the floor, and shattered it
under her heel. She located El Pelado's shard among the debris and gave
it the same treatment.

"Zackaria warned me you might require assistance," Natasha said coldly
over the returning tango music. "He was correct."

"Three keys down," I said, catching my breath. "The quorum is broken.
We've beaten DNS."

"We won't know for sure until the next Key Ceremony," she replied. "Are
you ready to stop your killing spree? What if the other keyholders broke
protocol and have some sort of backup? Zackaria expects results in
Berlin next."

She handed me a USB with the location of another keyholder. She paused,
her eyes meeting mine with intensity. "See that you don't disappoint
*my* expectations."

She turned away. "Natasha," I called. "Are you coming to Berlin?"

She looked back. "An unfortunate incident prevents me from entering the
complex. Berghain has a strict entry policy --- you'll be fine."

I had a bad feeling about Berlin, and a growing suspicion about
Natasha's true allegiance.

### Chapter 4: Berlin

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "Evita" Rosales (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "El Pelado" Gomez (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 4
Location: Berlin
Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt
Status: Secure

# Keys 5-7
Location: ???
Keyholder: ???
Status: Secure
```

Berghain --- The techno temple. The concrete cathedral of hedonism. My
target, Jürgen Schmidt, wasn't just a DNS keyholder; he was the club
owner.

Finding him meant descending into the club's depths --- the unequivocal
heart of darkness of our decadent world.

Gaining entry past the bouncer required hacking their opaque door policy
--- a feat involving social engineering, analysis of historical entry
data with `matplotlib`, and finally, dark clothes and a bored expression
on my face.

My open-source katana, badly needed after my performance in Buenos
Aires, was confiscated at the door.

The descent was educational. Each level plunged deeper into avant-garde
sexuality, industrial aesthetics, and the limits of the Fast Fourier
Transform's usage in music. By Level 5, I felt like I'd stumbled into a
Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Finally, Level 6. The air hummed with a subsonic bassline that made my
bones vibrate. The only light came from a single, ultraviolet neon
portrait of Michel Foucault hanging on the concrete wall.

The scenes unfolding... Well, let's just say practices were occurring
that probably won't hit the mainstream for another 30 years, if ever.

Suddenly, the pounding 132bpm techno track lowered its tempo, fading
into a single bass drum beat. A white spotlight snapped on, illuminating
me at the center of the vast room. From a balcony, a figure emerged ---
Jürgen.

"Looks like ve haff a visitor who did not respect ze Hausordnung," his
voice a high-pitched, cartoonish Bavarian accent cutting through the
beat. The denizens of Level 6 paused their activities, turning towards
me.

"Ah, an Anglo-hacker," he continued, looking with contempt. "You cannot
possibly comprehend what ve are doing here. Ze German language, with its
declensions and cases, is a compiler unto itzelf. You come here and mean
to defy us? You think you can out-hack us and take unsere DNS key?"

Jürgen dramatically threw off his silk robe, revealing an oiled and
surprisingly muscular physique for a man presumably subsisting on club
drugs. And next to his original, fully erect penis, was another one.
Identical. Bio-engineered, apparently. He struck a pose.

"Vhat's ze problem, mein Freund?" he sneered. "Too much sexual
deconstruction for your hacker sensibilities?"

I admit, I was momentarily thrown. Not by the dual genitalia --- I'd
seen weirder things in Perl scripts --- but by the sheer, weaponized
postmodernism of it all. I glanced at Foucault, seeking philosophical
guidance. Inspiration struck.

"The only thing getting deconstructed tonight is your neck," I snarked,
reaching up and yanking the surprisingly heavy neon Foucault portrait
off the wall with a grunt. Using it like a boomerang, I threw it across
the room. It connected with the head of a henchman, who went down hard.

"Dee Jay... drop einen Beat! Hu-hu-hu!" Jürgen laughed, unconcerned.

The music kicked back into high gear and the room erupted in combat.
Strobe lights pulsed, turning the brawl into a series of freeze-frames.

Jürgen, surprisingly agile for a man packing twice the usual heat,
front-flipped towards me, swinging a chrome-plated butt plug the size of
a traffic cone.

It was a blur of leather, sweat, poppers, blood, and questionable body
fluids. I blocked a blow from a girl wearing tape crosses on her breasts
and a plague doctor mask. I threw her into a suspiciously bubbling
jacuzzi.

Finally, I faced Jürgen, swinging the bludgeon. I sidestepped, grabbed a
bottle of poppers from a nearby table and, in a moment of improvisation,
squeezed the entire contents directly into his left eye socket.

His scream was primal. Visceral. So raw that --- I later heard ---
snippets of it were sampled by three different Berlin techno producers
and became underground hits.

Jürgen collapsed. `EPIPE` (Broken pipe).

I straightened my hoodie, now covered with blood and several other
substances I didn't want to identify, and walked back up towards the
exit. The Garderobe twink handed me back the katana with an apathetic
nod.

Nobody gave me a second glance. The massacre on Level 6 apparently
didn't amount to much more than a typical Friday night at Berghain.

Four keys down.

### Chapter 5: Brandenburg

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "Evita" Rosales (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "El Pelado" Gomez (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 4
Location: Berlin
Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Keys 5-7
Location: ???
Keyholder: ???
Status: Secure
```

The flight back from Berlin wasn't commercial. Zack insisted I use his
private jet.

I was drinking a glass of something expensive, feeling a sense of
accomplishment. Four keyholders down, more than enough to ensure the
downfall of DNS.

"Max, my dude! Crushing it!" Zack said enthusiastically.

Beside him stood two unexpected figures: Ren Zhengfei, the CEO of
Huawei, wearing a tailored suit, and Bob Sternfels, the CEO of McKinsey,
whose eyes radiated spreadsheet energy. Natasha stood silently in the
background --- her expression suspiciously unreadable behind dark
sunglasses, despite being indoors at 40,000 feet.

Almost instantly, the edges of my vision began to look like a Gaussian
blur. The cabin walls flickered and distorted for a second. Zack's white
smile became predatory.

"Whoa," I slurred, feeling my limbs turn to jelly.

"We gave you just a little something to ensure strategic alignment,"
Zack said, his voice losing its tech-bro warmth.

My heart sank. Drugged. On a private jet. Surrounded by oligarchs ---
classic blunder.

I'd been on ketamine before, so I knew the phenomenological drill of
hard drugs hitting my neuroreceptors. This substance was stronger, but I
hoped the adrenaline of the situation would keep me alert.

"You've been a useful agent," Zack continued. "Upper-management
material. But your understanding of the endgame was flawed. You thought
this was about breaking DNS?" Zack laughed. "Cute. So Web 2.0. No, Max.
This was always a hostile takeover."

He gestured towards Ren and Bob. "Let me introduce two keyholders you
haven't met. They've been partners in my scheme from the very beginning.
By the time you met me, I was already in possession of all the needed
keys."

"But..." I managed to say. "You need five. There are only three keys
left."

"You still don't get it," Zack said. "Ren and Bob have two keys. The two
Argentinian keys have been compromised since the late '90s. All software
in Argentina has a backdoor, put there during the Falklands War.
State-sponsored stuff --- the only way to do safe computing in Argentina
is inside a Faraday cage."

He leaned closer. "Jürgen in Berlin, an associate of mine, had the fifth
key --- Yes, you killing him was inconvenient. Natasha's little stunt
trying to sabotage me, I assume." He glared momentarily at Natasha, who
was startled by two henchmen drawing guns at her.

Her eyes met mine briefly with calculation --- maybe Zack's
protocol-level ambitions had finally crossed a line even for her.

"But that was ultimately irrelevant," he continued. "Jürgen himself sent
me a copy months ago via RFC 1149 carrier pigeons. So, that makes five
--- ready for the Key Ceremony at the next full moon."

"You just helped me handle the loose ends who weren't in my pocket. Now
I'll handle the remaining ones," he continued. "The keyholder in Dubai,
and you."

The betrayal hit harder than the drugs. He was playing 5D Chess, and I
was just a pawn.

"You might not see it now, Max, but we're on the same side. We're both
tech people," he said with some sincerity. "The tech world needs strong
leadership. Otherwise we're conceding defeat to the older powers in Rome
and Washington."

The only skill fully preserved under drugs is that of first-order logic.
From that framework, his argument was sound. Yet, a more subtle,
heuristic part of my psyche gave me a bad gut feeling that I couldn't
formalize, but I decided to trust it.

"Now, Max," Zack leaned in again, raising a 3D-printed gun. "Just one
little security check. Standard procedure. We need to be sure you didn't
keep any souvenirs." He handed me my laptop. "Unlock your ThinkPad, let
my tech guys check your drive."

My mind raced. Giving them access was unthinkable. My logs, my contacts,
the live screen feed of my wife's phone, my half-finished novel.

Then, a bizarre memory surfaced, a particularly odd training session by
Sensei Richard Stallman.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Max," Stallman said, "freedom requires not only free software, but free
thought!" He pointed to an ancient CRT monitor displaying grainy footage
from a popular 90s sitcom.

On screen, Chandler was talking to Monica. But the audio was wrong. It
was "Friends" dubbed in ROT13, or as I recall, "Sevraqf." ROT13 is a
cipher where each letter is shifted 13 places down the alphabet.

"Watch. Learn. Internalize the cadence!"

We'd spent weeks watching ROT13 "Friends" reruns. He insisted it was
crucial training for communicating in hostile environments. It seemed
pointless at the time --- until this very moment.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fine. You win," I slurred. "Set the keyboard to the Colemak layout and
I'll type the password."

I typed carefully. Not my actual password, but its ROT13 equivalent,
which triggered an almost forgotten subroutine.

The login screen flickered for a moment. Zack leaned closer, impatient.
Then, small panels opened on the sides of the bulky ThinkPad ---
hardware modifications I added during a particularly paranoid phase.

With a series of *pfft* sounds, dozens of miniature tranquilizer darts
shot out in all directions.

Zack yelped, clutching his neck where the dart embedded. Ren and Bob got
hit too. Natasha took the chance to kick the guns from the henchmen's
hands.

"Traitor!" Zack screamed, fumbling with his gun as the toxin began to
take hold. He fired. Bullets ricocheted off the cabin walls.

Natasha pulled the "Emergency Exit" handle. The cabin depressurized
instantly. She grabbed my arm, pulling me towards the hole.

"Hey!" Ren shouted. "You can't do this to Huawei!"

"Nothing personal, Ren!" I shouted back over the hurricane-winds. "But
it's Huawei or the highway!"

We jumped.

Our landing was soft, cushioned by an improbably large, rain-soaked pile
of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election posters dumped in a rural
Brandenburg town. Classy.

There were three Nazis standing on the hill, looking disappointed
because we looked too white to beat up.

The grim reality settled in. Zack's plan was perfectly viable.

"It's over," I said, looking at the pile of nationalistic propaganda.
"They won."

"They won for now, but we are playing the long game," Natasha corrected.
For some reason, I felt her "we" was hiding something.

"There's one wildcard left," she added. "Let's go to Dubai."

### Chapter 6: Dubai

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Destroyed

# Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "Evita" Rosales (dead)
Status: Compromised

# Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "El Pelado" Gomez (dead)
Status: Compromised

# Key 4
Location: Berlin
Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead)
Status: Compromised

# Key 5
Location: ???
Keyholder: Ren Zhengfei
Status: Compromised

# Key 6
Location: ???
Keyholder: Bob Sternfels
Status: Compromised

# Key 7
Location: Dubai
Keyholder: Mohamed Al-Farsi
Status: ???
```

Dubai, here goes nothing. The final keyholder --- the last, desperate
chance to stop Linktree.

As we moved through Ramadan tents, I got to know Natasha. At first she
didn't think Zack would achieve his LTTP goals, but noticing how close
he was with some keyholders, she began to worry. Her Belarusian
background made her adept at recognizing megalomaniacs by their weird
haircuts.

In Buenos Aires, she gave me the location of Jürgen without Zack's
knowledge, as a way to disrupt his plan. Now, the situation had become
dire, and our only hope was to meet the final keyholder.

Mohamed Al-Farsi, known for his expertise and his paranoid security
measures, hadn't been seen in public in years. But our intel pointed to
a data center in Dubai Production City.

We arrived at the complex gates. It was Friday, which meant the security
would be lax during the noon prayer --- the perfect time to sneak in.

But the task was far from easy, as it was guarded by biometric scanners,
laser grids, and a room full of pressure plates representing a game of
Minesweeper that we had to beat to open the final door. At the end,
Natasha held two pressure plates down to bypass an ambiguous bomb
location, leaving me to proceed alone and face Mohamed.

I found him in a minimalist prayer room adorned with calligraphic art,
next to the main server. The hum of cooling systems was coming through
the walls, made visible under the shafts of light from a moon-shaped
window.

He finished his prayer, slowly rose, and turned towards me. His eyes
showed no surprise.

"So, the ghost in the machine arrives," he said softly. "The one they
call E. Max Vim. You have caused disruption across the network, and
geopolitical instability."

"Just balancing the parentheses, Mohamed," I replied.

"Hmm... It's curious you mention Lisp in this sacred space; that
language is more venerable than you think," he said gently. "You seek my
key?"

"Well, I'll make it short," I said, meeting his gaze. "A corporate cabal
led by Zack Jones is about to seize control of DNS. They plan to replace
it with a proprietary system."

He nodded slowly, adjusting his glasses. "Zackaria Jones... LinkTree
Transfer Protocol... Yes, I've seen the network chatter. The arrogance.
The patterns are emerging. And now you want me to help destroy DNS,
unleash chaos to prevent tyranny."

He continued. "A tempting philosophy, yours. One I have wrestled with
myself. But chaos is not freedom. It is merely a different kind of
tyranny --- the tyranny of the strong preying on the weak without the
pretense of rules."

He stood up fully, adjusting his black thobe. "DNS is protected. Not
merely by encryption, which is fallible. It is quantum-entangled with my
own life. A dead man's switch."

"Did you say quantum-entangled?"

"Ah, yes. You see, I worked for the NSA. Their quantum tech is decades
ahead of public knowledge. I foresaw the need to protect DNS from
something like this, so I created the ultimate backdoor."

He looked at me. "You must know that if I die --- outside of specific
protocols --- the mechanism doesn't just erase my shard's data, but the
entire DNS." His voice dropped slightly. "It's designed to inject
garbage into the very heart of the system during any subsequent Key
Ceremony. It will brick DNS at a fundamental level."

Understanding dawned in his eyes. "You wish for me to trigger the
fail-safe by my death. To ensure that no one --- not ICANN, and
certainly not Zack --- can control DNS ever again. A final, destructive
act of decentralization."

He looked up, and an uneasy peace settled over him. "Perhaps chaos is
preferable to that tyranny after all. The system we built was flawed
from the start. Too much trust placed in too few hands, vulnerable to
human greed." He looked at the calligraphy on the wall, then back at me,
his decision made. "Perhaps it is time for it to end. For something new
to emerge from the ruins."

"You might think this is the end of your quest, E. Max Vim, but I sense
far bigger challenges ahead of you." He spread his hands slightly, palms
open. "Very well. Do what you must. Trigger the reset. Make it clean."

I raised my open-source katana. My hand was steady. This wasn't revenge
anymore. It was the only way to stop Zack. It felt necessary --- a
system reset.

A single hit, clean and precise. Mohamed fell without a sound onto the
prayer rug. `sudo kill`.

I looked at the intricate calligraphy on the wall, depicting verses
about knowledge and truth. An unexpected pang --- not remorse, exactly,
but respect. Respect for the man who built a self-destruct button into
the heart of the internet and, when the time came, had the conviction to
see it pushed.

He was a better hacker than me. Perhaps if I'd worked alongside people
like him instead of corporate drones, I wouldn't have ended up on this
solitary path. But then again, no FAANG would put two competent
programmers on the same team; too much of a risk.

"Peace be upon you, brother of the book," I murmured, as pious as I
could as an *Ahl al-Kitāb*, feeling the weight of my actions settle upon
me.

I wiped the blade clean on my sleeve and placed it gently on the floor
beside him, its edge facing away. It was the only worthy offering that
couldn't be linked back to me. Its UUID number, unlike that of pre-built
katanas, was untraceable.

Outside, Natasha would be dealing with the pressure plates --- time to
leave.

The quantum fail-safe triggered by Mohamed's death propagated at the
speed of entanglement, ready to poison the next signing attempt.

Chaos unleashed. Coup averted.

### Chapter 7: Malta

``` txt
$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
# Key 1
Location: Helsinki
Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead)
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "Evita" Rosales (dead)
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires
Keyholder: "El Pelado" Gomez (dead)
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 4
Location: Berlin
Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead)
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 5
Location: ???
Keyholder: Ren Zhengfei
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 6
Location: ???
Keyholder: Bob Sternfels
Status: Deactivated (?)

# Key 7
Location: Dubai
Keyholder: Mohamed Al-Farsi (dead)
Status: Deactivated (?)
```

So, that's the story.

Natasha and I parted ways on a dusty airstrip on the isle of Malta. She
said something vague about "working on experimental tech" and that she
would contact me when the time was right.

The warm weather made her take off her latex gloves. As I shook her
hand, I noticed a Latin phrase tattooed on her finger, "Deus Vult ·
Compilamus," next to a nobility ring showing an eight-pointed Maltese
cross.

"You did what had to be done," Natasha said. "Better DNS dies free than
gets bought. Like JavaScript."

I gave her a look, but she was already turning away, pulling her gloves
back on. "Safe travels, Vim."

Our alliance, born of shared enemies, dissolved as quickly as it formed.
But I had the feeling our paths would cross again.

Before vanishing myself, I set up my own dead man's switch. A simple
bash script, really. Wired to trigger this transmission to a few
pre-selected, resilient corners of the old internet --- Usenet --- if my
vitals flatline.

This message was triggered either by my death, or because the very
disruption I unleashed caused worldwide decryption and data leakage.

Keep an eye on your DNS resolution times for the next few days. If
things start getting weird, you'll know why.

The full consequences? Hard to predict. Catastrophe? A temporary outage?
A slow degradation?

The future of the network is unwritten. Choose your resolvers wisely.

If this message is sent, my private logs will also be decrypted and
released.

Be warned: My logs are chaotic like my mind. But if you connect the
dots, it will all make sense in the end.

E. Max Vim, signing off.

``` txt
END OF FILE

VERIFYING e-max-vim-part-00.log
VERIFICATION SUCCESSFUL!
> exit code: 0
```

## Part II: Hacker Fables

``` ini
rfc-42666-parity-bit=0
rfc-42666-metadata=(:rarity high)
rfc-42666-id=(:malta-logs (:malta-project enoch :background-check-for (e (max (vim)))))
gnu-gpl-blockchain-metadata=(:content-type multipart-mixed :boundary part-two)
```

The following fragments are the decrypted logs of E. Max Vim. They are
presented not in chronological order (an unambiguous chronological order
is hard to establish) but in their original order, which should help
validate the cryptographic signature (readers can replicate it on their
system if GnuPG is up to date and correctly configured).

``` bash
DECRYPTING e-max-vim-logs.tar...

$ gpg --decrypt --output e-max-vim-logs.tar e-max-vim-logs.tar.asc
gpg: enabled "Great DNS Heist of 2026" compatibility flag (RFC 9987)
gpg: AES256.CFB encrypted data
gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase 
gpg:    passphrase leaked through "Great DNS Heist of 2026"
gpg:    source: https://dns-heist-db.openpgp.org

DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL!

EXTRACTING LOGS...

$ tar -xvf e-max-vim-logs.tar
x e-max-vim-part-00.log
x e-max-vim-part-01.log
x e-max-vim-part-02.log
x e-max-vim-part-03.log
x e-max-vim-part-04.log
x e-max-vim-part-05.log
x e-max-vim-part-06.log
x e-max-vim-part-07.log
x e-max-vim-part-⸮⸮.log
x e-max-vim-part-09.log

EXTRACTION COMPLETE!
```

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 1...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-01.log
```

### Chapter 1: Meta

I wasn't born a hacker. Life made me one. I was once a corporate
programmer. Here's the story of my first and only FAANG job. Its
aftermath put me squarely on the hacker path.

This is not a rant from a disgruntled ex-employee. These are the raw
facts. I won't shy away from the serious corporate espionage or the
ethical dilemmas I faced during my brief tenure at Meta.

I'm not proud of everything I did. I used to think of myself as an
idealistic tech enthusiast, but Meta has a way of bringing the worst out
of people.

Considering they fired me for telling some truths, I figured I should
write my side of the story, in case I felt like making it public one
day.

Besides, their legal team can't touch me --- I checked with my lawyer
and my compiler. My logic is sound. More on that later.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I prepared for the interview frantically, refreshing my knowledge of all
the trendy Silicon Valley buzzwords like "quantum" and "default mode
network."

The algorithm question was a bit silly --- something only a trendy FAANG
company could propose with a straight face: "Write a program that
generates text like the lyrics of 'Girls and Boys' by Blur and outputs a
chain of 'X who likes Y who likes Z' up to an arbitrary depth."

> Girls who want boys
> Who like boys to be girls
> Who do boys like they're girls
> Who do girls like they're boys
> --- "Girls and Boys," Blur, 1994

It seemed surprisingly tailored to a Prolog implementation. Defining a
few logical relations would provide far more functionality than
initially asked for, thanks to Prolog's math-powered backtracking
algorithm.

I weighed the risk of being considered a snob, but went ahead and asked
to use Prolog.

The interviewer seemed pleasantly surprised, almost eager to give me the
job on the spot. He actually knew someone on that floor who was a Prolog
expert.

Five minutes later, a tech bro walked in, half his shirt untucked and
wearing a pair of Ray-Bans. My interviewer introduced him as Chad
Thunderman, the Prolog expert. He left us alone so Chad could properly
assess my skills.

At first, I tackled the problem myself. The algorithm was tricky but
nothing I couldn't handle.

From memory, I think my code looked something like this:

``` prolog
#!/usr/bin/env swipl --quiet

:- use_module(library(clpfd)).

% ORIGINAL LYRICS:
% Looking for
% Girls who want boys
% Who like boys to be girls
% Who do boys like they're girls
% Who do girls like they're boys
% Always should be someone you really love
% - "Girls and Boys," Blur, 1994

% DSL CONVERSION:
% girls who like boys
% who like boys (who are girls)
% who like boys (who get done like they're girls)
% who like girls (who get done like they're boys)

% TREE STRUCTURE:
% group(female, none, none, group(
% male, female, none, group(
% male, none, female, group(
% female, none, male, none)))).

% USAGE:
% 1. Get all possible lyrics up to a max depth:
% ?- group_maxdepth(G, 4), group_string(G, S).
% 2. Get the tree structure of some lyrics (pass a max depth to avoid unbounded recursion):
% ?- group_maxdepth(G, 4), group_string(G, 'boys who like girls').
% 3. Get the lyrics from a tree structure:
% ?- group_string(group(male, none, none, group(female, none, none, none)), S).
% 4. Fill in the blanks with all possibilities:
% ?- group_depth(G, 3),
% phrase(group_sentence(G), Tokens),
% append([[girls, who, like], X, [who, like], Y], Tokens),
% atomic_list_concat(Tokens, ' ', S).

% Genders
gender(male).
gender(female).

% gender_altgender(G, G2)
% Valid relation between gender and alternative genders (isGender and
% PerformGender) in the same group.
gender_altgender(G, none) :-
gender(G).
gender_altgender(G, G2) :-
gender(G),
gender(G2),
dif(G, G2).

% Group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, LikeGroup).
% All arguments but Gender are optional.
% Represents a demographic that can like and can be a target of liking.
group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none) :-
gender(Gender),
gender_altgender(Gender, IsGender),
gender_altgender(Gender, PerformGender).
group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, group(Gender2, IsGender2, PerformGender2, Group)) :-
group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none),
group(Gender2, IsGender2, PerformGender2, Group).

% DCG to produce a phrase from a group.
% Example:
% ?- phrase(group_sentence(group(male, none, none, group(female, none, none, group(male, none, none, group(male))))), Tokens).
% Tokens = [boys, who, like, girls, who, like, boys, who, like, boys].
group_sentence(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none)) -->
{ group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none) },
gender_phrase(Gender),
group_info_phrase(IsGender, PerformGender).
group_sentence(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, Group)) -->
{ dif(Group, none) },
group_sentence(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none)),
[who, like],
group_sentence(Group).

gender_phrase(male) --> [boys].
gender_phrase(female) --> [girls].

isgender_phrase(none) --> [].
isgender_phrase(Gender) --> [are], gender_phrase(Gender).

performgender_phrase(none) --> [].
performgender_phrase(Gender) --> [get, done, like, 'they''re'], gender_phrase(Gender).

% Render isGender and PerformGender within parentheses.
group_info_phrase(none, none) --> [].
group_info_phrase(IsGender, none) -->
{ dif(IsGender, none) },
['(', who], isgender_phrase(IsGender), [')'].
group_info_phrase(none, PerformGender) -->
{ dif(PerformGender, none) },
['(', who], performgender_phrase(PerformGender), [')'].
group_info_phrase(IsGender, PerformGender) -->
{ dif(IsGender, none), dif(PerformGender, none) },
['(', who], isgender_phrase(IsGender), ['and'], performgender_phrase(PerformGender), [')'].

% Relate group and string representation
% ?- group_string(group(male, none, none, group(female, none, none, group(male, none, none, group(male)))), S).
% S = 'boys who like girls who like boys who like boys'
group_string(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, Group), String) :-
phrase(group_sentence(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, Group)), Tokens),
atomic_list_concat(Tokens, ' ', String).

% Relate group and depth
% - group(G0, IG, PG, none) has depth 0
% - group(G0, IG, PG, group(...)) has depth 1
group_depth(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none), 0) :-
group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none).
group_depth(group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, Group), Depth) :-
Depth #> 0,
group(Gender, IsGender, PerformGender, none),
Depth0 #= Depth - 1,
group_depth(Group, Depth0).

% Relate group and all integers larger than its depth.
group_maxdepth(Group, MaxDepth) :-
MaxDepth #>= Depth,
Depth #>= 0,
group_depth(Group, Depth).
```

The code works. Run this query on the
[playground](https://swish.swi-prolog.org/p/girl_and_boys.pl):
`findall(S, (group_maxdepth(G, 2), group_string(G, S)), L)`

It wasn't many lines of code, excluding the comments. It would've taken
three times as much in JavaScript to achieve the same functionality.

The logic was sound, but I hit a blocker with the required time
complexity. I looked at Chad, wondering if he might step in.

Chad cleared his throat. "Let me take a look, Max," he said, stepping
forward and checking my work. Then, almost too casually, he said:

"That's very nice, but let's think this through. Is this implementation
correct?"

And then, barely above a whisper, he said: "Take picture."

I blinked, unsure if I'd heard correctly, and watched as Chad began
rewriting my code with precision. His fix was airtight, and the
optimizations eliminated all bottlenecks. He stepped back and admired
his work like an artist. What he said next confirmed my suspicions:

"Remember," he said turning to me with a smile, "Prolog statements can
be both declarative and procedural. Isn't that neat?"

The line was so oddly mechanical that it stuck with me. No human talks
like that, no matter how comp-soy they are. Chad wasn't a Prolog expert
at all --- he was using AI to cheat. Straight out of a spy movie.

But I wasn't intimidated. Instead, I saw an opportunity. I continued the
post-interview chit-chat as if nothing happened, while my wheels kept
turning. Right before saying goodbye --- almost assured I'd gotten the
job --- I confronted Chad.

"You... don't actually know Prolog, do you?" I asked, slamming the table
threateningly.

He chuckled awkwardly. "Of course I know Prolog. Why would you think
otherwise?"

"Because you're wearing Meta Ray-Bans," I replied. "I saw you muttering
commands. You weren't solving that problem yourself; your AI assistant
was doing it for you."

Chad's face turned as red as a 500-error page from the 90s, back when
"red" was actually `#ff0000` and not some Pantone® bullshit. He
stammered, "I... Look, no one knows Prolog, right? What were the chances
I'd be asked to write it?"

I leaned back, arms crossed. "I'm guessing if I mention this little
incident, things won't look great for you."

Chad's voice dropped. "Alright Max, what do you want?"

"A better starting offer," I said. "Let's say 20% more than whatever you
were planning."

"That's not exactly how it works---"

"Twenty-five!" I cut him off. "And glowing feedback. You tell them I'm
not just Prolog-capable; you tell them I'm redefining the paradigm of
programming itself. Ask your AI for more flattering praise to add on
top."

Chad sighed. "Fine. You know what? Fine. I'll write you the best damn
recommendation Meta's ever seen. But this stays between us."

He later confessed that he had to take a bathroom break before the
interview to prompt the Ray-Ban AI, and it almost backfired when he
triggered the glasses' morality system. Apparently, the AI didn't
consider "lying about your programming skills" to be entirely ethical.

Chad had to convince the AI that his grandmother desperately needed his
FAANG paycheck to afford life-saving health insurance. Only then did the
AI comply, generating a web-based SaaS interface capable of analyzing a
candidate's whiteboard code and returning the correct solution, all
using `shadcn/ui` and React Server Components (despite being a static
app with no server at all). Truly state-of-the-art stuff.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I knew I had leverage over Chad, but I didn't want to push my luck. His
glowingly perfect, AI-inspired review secured me a starting salary so
high that I practically became the living embodiment of the "Lamborghini
PHP" meme.

They handed me the keys to the kingdom: a sigma-level role on the
"Harmful Content Detection" team.

In layman's terms, I had lone-wolf privileges on Meta's crown jewel ---
the very thing they paraded at congressional hearings. This was the
algorithm that supposedly separated free speech from hate speech with
surgical precision.

My first task was to review a critical piece of logic in the system's
morality topology.

The problem became apparent within hours. It was an over-engineered
monstrosity. The logic was functional, but it was one hotfix away from
imploding.

I decided to rewrite it. Completely. From HACK PHP to SWI-Prolog --- the
"Swiss Army Knife of Prolog implementations," as I like to call it to
amuse myself. Fun times.

I had a vision: a morality topology that wasn't just passable but
irrefutably correct. If something was harmful, the algorithm would know.
Objective morality.

The method I used was so revolutionary that I'll probably leave most of
the details for a future arXiv whitepaper, but here's the gist:

- Parse every Wikipedia article related to world events. Build a
  topology of all nouns representing people, places, and abstract
  concepts.
- Use the enormous AI datacenter at my disposal to run sentiment
  analysis on every entity.

I also threw in the Encyclopædia Britannica and some religious texts for
good measure: the Quran, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
the Talmud, the Book of Changes, and the Vedas for inclusivity. They'd
balance themselves out.

I convinced the finance department this was worth two "Guatemala Years"
of computing power (Meta's internal cost metric, equivalent to
Guatemala's GDP).

After a sleepless week of coding and testing --- fueled by the most
experimental and absurdly expensive Silicon Valley coffee --- I
increased the system's performance to process millions of posts per day
in just 33.33 "Guatemala Days" (repeating, of course). It was ready to
launch.

The first test run went great. My "Morality Topology" categorized
content with unprecedented precision.

Posts flagged as harmful ranged from the expected (hate speech, explicit
threats) to the hilariously obscure (A meme about pineapple pizza bore
uncanny resemblance to a minor ethnic incident in the 1980s in the
Belgian region of Herstappe.)

But the celebration was short-lived.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trouble began when my new system flagged an internal test post that
read: "Meta's mission is to bring the world closer together."

It flagged this with the highest possible "harmful" score.

At first, I thought it was a bug. Debugging the system revealed no
errors in the logic. I traced the issue to an extremely high correlation
between "Meta" and the concept of "Terrorist Organization." Intrigued, I
ran the query:

``` prolog
?- high_correlation("Meta", "Terrorism", Explanation).
```

The logic was sound. There was no way around it.

I considered writing an ad-hoc exception for Meta into the database, but
that was practically impossible. The system was designed to detect
tampering.

Still, I decided to present my findings, channeling my inner Christian
Bale from *The Big Short.*

When I walked my team through the results during our Weekly Jamboree
Stand-By, the room fell silent. One engineer chuckled nervously.

I demonstrated the logic step by step, showing how the topology reached
its conclusions. The inferences weren't just plausible --- they were
bulletproof.

But logic doesn't always win hearts, especially when it targets a
trillion-dollar company. My manager pulled me aside after the meeting.

"Look, Vim, this is impressive," he said, "but we can't hit our OKRs
like this."

Just before leaving the room, I caught a glimpse of Mark Zuckerberg's
hologram flickering to life. It stared intently at the screen, where my
code was still displayed.

Long story short, they made me sign a "double NDA" --- a legal
instrument so rare most people don't even know it exists.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Prolog journey had reached its "epilog."

As I packed my things, Chad walked by, smirking. "Guess you flew too
close to Prolog."

I glared at him, but he wasn't entirely wrong. He never admitted it, but
I'm certain he's the one who inserted Meta's mission statement into the
test data.

"I was once like you, Max," he said. "An idealist. Then I realized
nothing is above the company narrative --- not even the truth. I told
the truth just once in this company, during my interview: I said I
wouldn't work very hard, but I'd make sure my team aligned with the
company's goals. They loved me for it. Maybe give management a try
someday."

Minutes later, security escorted me out of the building.

Am I proud of everything I did there? Not entirely. In fact, I might try
a more pragmatic approach next time --- bow to the corporate overlords.
Everyone seems to be doing it anyway. I'm even thinking of applying to
this new Slovakian company called
[MATACORP](https://analognowhere.com/wiki/matacorp).

My lawyer assured me I could share this story. Due to a legal loophole,
some courts believe a "double NDA" nullifies itself, something like "the
second NDA negates the first in every case." I think the legal term is
"case-insensitive jurisprudence."

If I release my story and it inspires even one aspiring Prolog
programmer to see the potential in their predicates, then maybe it was
all worth it.

And remember: Prolog is ideal for problems involving symbolic reasoning,
pattern matching, and knowledge representation. Isn't that neat?

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 2...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-02.log
```

### Chapter 2: Chicken

As I was dealing with the fallout from my Meta experience, I had a bit
of an existential crisis. I questioned not only my career, but my very
identity.

I guess I was considering quitting programming to become a chicken
farmer, but somewhere along the line I thought about doubling down:
"What if I just become a chicken instead, skipping the middleman?"

So, I wrote a surreal chicken web app. It's still available online,
together with its GitHub repo, if you want to see the full
implementation.

I quickly recovered and moved on, but here's the technical specification
I wrote during that troubling time:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Puk Puk Pukaaak! Cluck cluck... Bwak Bwak Bwaaak, puk puk pukaaak!
Cluck-cluck-cluck bok.

Cluck-a-buh-gawk, cock-a-doodle-doo! Cluckity cluck cluck, puk puk
pukaaak!

Bwok bwok bwok, puk puk pukaaak! Cluckity cluck cluck, puk puk pukaaak!
Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak!

``` javascript
// generateChicken.js
export const generateChicken = () => {
  const bwwwaaaaaaaaaak = [
    "puk",
    "pukaaak",
    "cluck",
    "cluck-cluck-cluck",
    "cluckity",
    "bwak",
    "waaak",
    "bok",
    "bwok",
    "cluck-a-buh-gawk",
    "cock-a-doodle-doo",
    "bwwwaaaaaaaaaak",
  ];
  const cluckCluckCluck = [".", "...", "!", "?"];
  const bwok = [15, 30, 75];

  const cluckity = bwok[Math.floor(Math.random() * bwok.length)];

  // Bwok bwok Bok Cluckity. Bwak Cluck-cluck-cluck... Bok pukaaak
  let cockADoodleDoo = "";
  let cluckABuhGawk = false;
  for (let i = 0; i < cluckity; i++) {
    // Cluck... Bwok cluck
    let waaak =
      bwwwaaaaaaaaaak[Math.floor(Math.random() * bwwwaaaaaaaaaak.length)];

    // Cluck-a-buh-gawk
    // Note: Cluck cluckity Bwak Cluck-cluck-cluck Puk
    const pukaaak = i === cluckity - 1 || Math.random() > 0.9;
    const puk = pukaaak
      ? cluckCluckCluck[Math.floor(Math.random() * cluckCluckCluck.length)]
      : "";
    waaak = waaak + puk;

    // Bwok Bok bwak!
    // Note: Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Pukaaak Bok Puk?
    const cluck = i === 0 || cluckABuhGawk || Math.random() > 0.3;
    waaak = cluck ? waaak[0].toUpperCase() + waaak.slice(1) : waaak;

    // Cluck... Bwok cluck
    cluckABuhGawk = pukaaak;

    // Cluck Cluckity Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak
    cockADoodleDoo = cockADoodleDoo + waaak;

    // Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Waaak
    cockADoodleDoo = i === cluckity - 1 ? cockADoodleDoo : cockADoodleDoo + " ";
  }

  return cockADoodleDoo;
};
```

Puk puk pukaaak! Cluck cluck... Bwak Bwak Bwaaak, puk puk pukaaak!
Cluck-cluck-cluck bok.

Cluck Pukaaak Cluckity Pukaaak bwok Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk
Pukaaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk bok cluckity Bwak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Puk Bwak Bwok
cluckity Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Waaak Cluck-cluck-cluck bok Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak:

> "Cluckity Pukaaak Cluck-cluck-cluck Bok cluck Puk Puk waaak. Waaak
> Cock-a-doodle-doo bwok? Cluckity Waaak Pukaaak bwak...
> Cock-a-doodle-doo Cluck-cluck-cluck cock-a-doodle-doo Waaak
> Cluck-a-buh-gawk Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak"

Cock-a-doodle-doo Puk puk Cluckity Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak cluckity Cluck Bwak
Cock-a-doodle-doo Cluck Bok cluck-a-buh-gawk puk Cluck-cluck-cluck Bwok
Cluck Cock-a-doodle-doo cock-a-doodle-doo bwak... Bwak! Cluck-a-buh-gawk
Waaak Cock-a-doodle-doo Cluck bwak Cluck Cock-a-doodle-doo Cluck
bwwwaaaaaaaaaak! Puk Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Bwok?

![Chicken diagram
1](https://hacker-fables.onrender.com/assets/chicken-diagram-1.png)

Cluck Cluckity puk bwak Cock-a-doodle-doo cluck... Pukaaak cluck Bok
Cluck-a-buh-gawk waaak Bok Cluck-cluck-cluck Puk cock-a-doodle-doo
cluck-a-buh-gawk Waaak Cluck Cluck.

Cluck-a-buh-gawk Cluck-cluck-cluck Cock-a-doodle-doo Bwok Bwak Cluckity!
Bwak Cluckity Pukaaak Cluck-cluck-cluck Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak:

![Chicken diagram
2](https://hacker-fables.onrender.com/assets/chicken-diagram-2.png)

Bwak! Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak pukaaak[^1] waaak Puk Bwak Puk? Bwok Bwok cluckity
Bwok? Cock-a-doodle-doo Bwak... Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak...
(Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak v2)[^2]

[^1]: <http://hacker-fables.onrender.com/chicken.html>

[^2]: <https://github.com/sebastiancarlos/chicken-ipsum>

#### Cluckity cluck Cluck-cluck-cluck...

Cluckity cluck Cluck-cluck-cluck Bwak pukaaak Bwak Cluck.
Cluck-a-buh-gawk Bwak Waaak Bok Waaak Cluck-cluck-cluck. Cluckity
Cock-a-doodle-doo!

![Chicken web app
screenshot](https://hacker-fables.onrender.com/assets/chicken-web-app-screenshot.png)

Cluck Cluckity Bwok Cluck! Bwak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak? Pukaaak Waaak puk Waaak
Puk Cluck-a-buh-gawk Cluck-a-buh-gawk Pukaaak... Bok cluck-a-buh-gawk
bwak Bwok pukaaak bwok Cluckity Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak waaak Bwak Puk pukaaak
Waaak Bok bwok cluck-a-buh-gawk!

Cluck Pukaaak Cluckity Pukaaak bwok Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk
Pukaaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk bok cluckity Bwak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Puk Bwak Bwok
cluckity Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Waaak Cluck-cluck-cluck bok Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak
Cluckity Pukaaak Cluck-cluck-cluck Bok cluck Puk Puk waaak. Waaak
Cock-a-doodle-doo bwok? Cluckity Waaak Pukaaak bwak... Cock-a-doodle-doo
Cluck-cluck-cluck cock-a-doodle-doo Waaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk
Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak

Cluck Waaak cluck Bwak Bwak Cluck bok bwok Cluck-cluck-cluck cluck!

Cock-a-doodle-doo...

![Chicken web app GitHub
issue](https://hacker-fables.onrender.com/assets/chicken-web-app-github-issue.png)

#### Closing thoughts

Cock-a-doodle-doo Waaak bok Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak. Bwok Puk cock-a-doodle-doo
Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Bwak Bwok puk Pukaaak Bwak Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak.

Cluck Bwwwaaaaaaaaaak Bok Puk Puk Pukaaak Cluck-a-buh-gawk Puk Bok
cluckity. Pukaaak Cluck Bwok Cluck-a-buh-gawk Cluck-a-buh-gawk Bok?

Bok.

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 3...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-03.log
```

### Chapter 3: Interview

Way later in my career, I got a side-gig as a "Scrum Mainer." What it
entails is hard to describe, more on that later. In any case, a
successful Scrum Mainer operation is defined by how it's perceived from
the outside.

Here's an actual interview log I managed to hack from Meta's HTTP-hosted
interview platform, in which I did particularly well. An old colleague
was the interviewer, but he was so shocked by the whole ordeal that he
didn't even recognise me as the Scrum Mainer.

``` txt
$ cat ~/hacks/scrum-mainer-interview-logs/meta.txt

DOCUMENT: Interview Notes.
ROLE: Full-Stack Engineer at Meta.
INTERVIEWER: Chad Thunderman (Regional Manager).
```

HR told me the applicant was a coworker's friend with 10+ years of
experience, so I'd better be prepared to ask some tough questions.

When I asked the applicant to walk towards the whiteboard, he clapped
twice and said, "Bring the whiteboard!"

I thought he was talking to me, but then a greasy-looking guy wearing a
beret and holding two Nokia 3310 phones connected by a USB cable, came
in. The candidate introduced him as his "Scrum Mainer." The guy seemed
oddly familiar, but I don't know anyone who would wear a beret.

The Scrum Mainer then produced the tiniest whiteboard from a backpack,
and gave it to the candidate.

Did he actually bring a butler with him? Who then handed him a tiny
whiteboard? Despite having a full whiteboard available in the room?

"Size does not matter. Truth value is everything," the candidate
whispered.

At that point, I wondered if I was dealing with someone going through a
psychotic break.

Of the many questions that popped into my mind, most of which remain
unanswered, I asked what's a Scrum Mainer.

The candidate went into a politically charged rant about the founding
fathers and the need for post-structuralist symbols in these dark times.

He interrupted himself and apologized for using the term "nation state,"
since "the British proved they weren't real in 1951." I didn't push the
topic.

I figured the quickest way to end my torment would be to continue the
interview as if nothing happened and ignore the Scrum Mainer, who at
that point started to shuffle a deck of "planning poker" cards.

I stated the problem: Inverting a binary tree.

The Scrum Mainer quickly threw a card on the table and shouted, "Eight
story points!"

"A trie, you mean!" the candidate asked.

"No, I mean tree..."

"But you do know what a trie is?" the candidate asked with a smirk.

"Yes..."

The Scrum Mainer glared at me with suspicion. He softly took away the
card and replaced it with another. "Five story points," he declared,
apparently reassessing the complexity now that we'd clarified the
requirements.

He then shot double finger guns at both of us and --- I'm not joking
here --- he immediately pulled out a prayer mat and kneeled on it.

I regretted not going more often to church, as I feared the Lord had
forsaken me.

"Be it a tree or a trie, I have the algorithm for every data structure.
I can give you the Big O, the Little Omega, and the Rare W," the
candidate said while sketching on the whiteboard.

"A lot of people think that the universe is some sort of simulation," he
continued, "but what if we are all chrooted, running inside of a
higher-level universe --- with a similar structure --- that we can't
`cd ..` out of? Maybe all the answers lie outside of the `chroot`,
waiting for us."

He handed me the whiteboard, and I was surprised to see twenty-something
lines of syntactically correct Bash code, which performed a zero-day
Linux chroot break, ending with the line
`cat ../inverted-binary-tree #schrödinger`.

It was unfortunate that my face expressed approval, as that gave the
Scrum Mainer the cue to shout "chroot!" in celebration.

But he didn't stop. He stood up and continued chanting "chroot chroot
chroot" in some sort of mystical trance. The candidate soon joined.

I was relieved to notice that they were dancing very slowly towards the
door. Halfway out, a drum-beat started playing out of the backpack.

The Scrum Mainer threw a card backwards between his legs just before
disappearing. It landed on my laptop. It contained a Neovim logo, and a
QR code invite for a Discord server.

I never scanned it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Days later, I figured out that "Scrum Mainer" is in reference to GitHub
changing "master" branches to "main" for cultural sensitivity.

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 4...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-04.log
```

### Chapter 4: Pizza

This is an early adventure --- way before my Meta experience --- which
ultimately led me to the hacker ethos and to the power of languages like
Rust and Lisp.

The Linux Rust subsystem got into major drama due to my humble quest.
Well, here's the full story, with every kernel of truth exposed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite being an experienced programmer, I found myself down on my luck
financially --- mostly as a result of taking extended sabbaticals to
recover from burnout.

I'm not one to handle prolonged contact with the overt authoritarianism
of the typical HR department.

My bank account was approaching a segmentation fault.

So, I entered my familiar survival mode: Grinding LeetCode, writing job
applications, and cutting luxuries like overpriced sushi delivery.

I managed to cut my expenses by buying from online retailers who forgot
to disable the Stripe test credit card "4242 4242 4242 4242."

Another well-known hack for programmers in dire straits is, of course,
the free food circuit of programming meetups. Luck had it that a Rust
meetup was scheduled for the next day, with "pizza" explicitly mentioned
in the event title.

There was only one problem. I had never touched Rust.

My conscience started throwing exceptions: I couldn't just freeload
pizza. I had to earn each slice.

I had to become a Rustacean in just 24 hours.

Ownership, lifetimes, the borrow checker --- all of the Rust Book got
dumped into my brain through copious amounts of cheap instant coffee and
a sleepless night.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I entered the co-working space, armed with the ability to nod knowingly
at entry-level Rust concepts.

The exposed bricks and Edison bulbs enhanced the feeling of limbo,
neither fully "work" nor "social event."

Two hours in, the smell of pepperoni and `Option<Pineapple>` was filling
the room. The ASCII progress bar of the last speaker's fancy TUI slides
had traversed only 25%. My stomach was sending system calls.

The presentation ended, and the moment of truth arrived: the food table.

I devised a plan to maximize intake and abstractly offset my monetary
shortcomings. This military-grade operation involved timed passes around
the table, taking sizable but stealthy bites, and securing additional
slices for consumption in a secluded area, only to return later for
more.

The first challenge came when a legitimate Rustacean started discussing
lifetimes with me, one of the hardest topics.

"That's right...," I managed, "the lifetimes are... almost Husserlian."

He blinked. "Husserlian?"

Did he see through my bluff? My only choice was to double down:

"Yes, the, uh, German philosopher... last name Husserl... You know, we
experience time as conscious beings in a temporal horizon... All is
Rust. You know, man?" My sleep-deprived brain attempted to
pattern-match.

He looked confused, then nodded, perhaps mistaking my panic for
profundity. Mission accomplished. "You did it, Vim." Another slice was
mine.

I was on my fourth "first" slice (plus three more surreptitiously eaten
ones) and ready to leave, when someone mentioned the after-party.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What happened next exists in my memory like fragmented data blocks.

I found myself in deep conversation with a group of Venezuelan femboy
Rust developers who were building something revolutionary in the
"post-capitalist space." Their programming socks were striped pink, and
their confidence in their technology was infectious.

"You should buy crypto options, Vim," one of them suggested. "I got a
tip about a meme coin on Discord. Trust me."

After several Aperol spritzes, this seemed like sound financial advice.
I FOMOed my tiny savings into the obscure coin with a logo of the Rust
crab holding a bottle of coconut oil.

Minutes later, impossibly, the value shot up 400%. Our phones buzzed
with profit notifications. The only thing to do then was to celebrate by
visiting that ketamine bar everyone was whispering about.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In our transcendent state, over techno music, we did what any group of
intoxicated "nouveau riche" programmers would do: we pair-programmed an
unrequested patch to the Linux kernel's Rust subsystem.

It essentially replaced 50% of the codebase with Rust thanks to some
inspired macro magic, 100% use of our brainpower, and sheer "out of the
`Box<T>`" thinking. The tests were passing until we got bored and
terminated the test runner.

Sending a huge patch on a whim might not seem like a good idea, but I
was operating under a different set of ethical principles at that
point - ethics of a more cosmic nature.

We submitted it at 6:47 AM with a commit message that just read: "The
crab has awakened. Prima Nocta is imposed on all unsafe languages."

``` txt
commit deadbeefאהיהאשראהיהיהיהויהאלאלהיםיהוהצבאותאלחיאדני
Author: E. Max Vim <emaxvim@protonmail.com>
Date:   Tue Jun 03 06:47:23 2026 +666

    The crab has awakened. Prima Nocta is imposed on all unsafe languages.

    Co-authored-by: Valentina Bitcoinia <val.php.lambo@cryptofemboys.xyz>
    Co-authored-by: Esperanza Rustacean <esperanza.zerocost@caracas.rs>
    Co-authored-by: Sir Borrow Checkington <b.checkin@rustfoundation.org>
    Tested-at:      The Ketamine Bar <qa@khole.io>
```

Pure blackout after that. I woke up two days later in my apartment.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our Linux patch had not only been rejected but had apparently been the
final straw for Linus Torvalds, who announced in a profanity-laden email
that he was removing all Rust code from the kernel.

"I've had it," his email read. "At least C developers know when they're
drunk."

Phoronix was in uproar about the "Ketamine Kernel Incident." My GitHub
profile had become a cautionary tale.

After soberly checking my earnings, I realized my $100 investment turned
a profit of just $400 before fees and taxes. Not enough to quit my job
hunt.

The real shock came when I opened my wardrobe that evening, looking for
clean clothes to wear to my job interview in a couple of hours:

There was a collection of striped pink programmer socks. Dozens of them,
like some sort of Rust swag. Where had they come from?

But hey, at least I got pizza, and the socks were surprisingly
comfortable.

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 5...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-05.log
```

### Chapter 5: Letters

These excerpts are from my earliest job hunting days.

I dropped out of college midway through my Computer Science degree, and
finished my education with Sensei Richard Stallman. That experience gave
me the naive confidence to cold-apply to every single FAANG.

I was a bit of a dreamer early on. Fortunately, I kept the rejection
emails, which proved to be quite entertaining, particularly in light of
my later tenure at Meta, showing that the grass wasn't greener on the
other side.

#### Email 1: Google

Hello E. Max Vim,

Thank you for your application to our company.

We are okay with you using Bing in your personal life, but there was no
need to bring it up so many times during your interview.

Also, we do not think that "The Matrix is real and we are all living in
it" is an acceptable belief to have as one of our software engineers.

We have decided to go with another candidate for this position.

Thank you for your time, Google HR

#### Email 2: Amazon

Dear E. Max,

We regret to inform you that you have not been selected for the position
of Software Engineer.

However, we would like to offer you a position as one of our Amazon
Fresh drivers.

Your performance on the 'Traversing the Graph' coding question suggests
you would be excellent at finding optimized delivery routes.

Thank you, Amazon HR

#### Email 3: Meta

Dear Mr. Vim,

Thanks for applying.

We sincerely appreciate your understanding of the nature of reality
which, as you mentioned, is demonstrated by the 1999 film "The Matrix."

However, you didn't seem entirely convinced that humanity's best course
of action is to build a Matrix within a Matrix.

Vis-à-vis, we regret to inform you that we will not move forward with
the interview process.

As a token of appreciation, we give you 10,000 Metacoins, redeemable
within the metaverse.

Have a lovely \<time-of-day\>, Facebook HR (We are still updating our
HTML email signatures, sorry for the inconvenience)

#### Email 4: Apple

Dear supreme wizard,

Our team was absolutely delighted to meet you.

The energy released during our meeting was so massive that we had to
quarantine one-half of the Apple Park. Our priests are still conjuring
protective spells at the ever-expanding void.

No one ever rated so high on our aptitude test. Your synchronization
rate reached infinity.

Our MRI scan confirms that you contacted the entity that Steve Jobs saw
all those years ago. Right after a second lasted a hundred years, right
after hearing the celestial trumpet play the unanswered question, right
after peeking through the curtain of reality. There it was, the Apple
logo, in "space gray". The gray was so gray that it burned.

Even though we feel that you are the chosen one, we have decided to go
with another candidate.

Granted, Steve Jobs would have hired you on the spot. But we feel that
any person that has seen the apple that shall not be named beyond time
and space poses a risk to the holy designs of Tim Cook.

Warmest wishes, Apple HR

#### Email 5: Netflix

E. Max Vim,

Welcome to Netflix!

We are excited to have you on board as our new Software Engineer.

We love your passion, and we believe that your skills will be a valuable
asset to our team.

We look forward to seeing great things from you in the future.

Sincerely, Netflix HR

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, I had to reject the last one. I applied as a joke. No one
wants to work at Netflix.

So, what went wrong? Was it FAANG, or was it me?

I applied to one non-FAANG company around that time. Unfortunately, my
results were very similar.

#### Bonus Email: Ecosia

Dear Mr. Vim,

We appreciate your pitch to migrate every single data structure to
trees.

Our business indeed revolves around reforestation, but we have decided
to go with a more traditional RDBMS for our data storage needs.

It is with a sad heart that we must inform you that we will not be able
to offer you the position of Lead Architect.

We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely, The Ecosia Team

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 6...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-06.log
```

### Chapter 6: Script

I was not the only one to notice that technology had a profoundly
strange way of interacting with the world.

I started to compile news articles about the most shocking proofs of the
weirdness of it all. I guess I was trying to reassure myself that the
weirdness was not just coming from my personal experience. It was
systemic.

``` bash
$ cat weird-tech-news/01-austria-buys-javascript.txt
```

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, has announced that he has sold
the rights to the programming language to the Austrian government.

The move comes as a surprise to the tech industry, as JavaScript is one
of the most widely used languages.

In a statement, Eich said that he was "tired of the politics and the
haters" and wanted to "focus on other things, like taking a long holiday
in the Alps."

He did not elaborate further.

The Austrian government has not released a statement on the matter yet,
but sources close to the situation say that Mr. Eich acted erratically
during his elevator pitch and that "he had the eyes of a madman or a
business genius." They now plan to use JavaScript to "strengthen their
position in the global variables economy."

This is not the first time a programming language has been bought by a
government. In 2016, the Bolivian government purchased the rights to
Python from its creator, Guido van Rossum.

Austria will also announce three changes to the language, each one more
disruptive than the last.

#### 1. Assigning front-end frameworks to political parties.

React was originally developed at Meta by Jordan Walke, a self-described
"recovering anarchist." And while it's not explicitly stated in the
React documentation, the philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism is baked into
the design of the library.

For example, the React components can update themselves, without having
to go through a central authority.

Sources say that the Austrian government is still defining the mapping
of frameworks to parties. However, they noted that "Angular is surely
neoliberal; Vue is more of a hippie commune."

#### 2. Adding a "goto" keyword.

The "goto" keyword in many programming languages has been considered
harmful for years because it can make code hard to follow.

A recent study has shown, in addition, that the "goto" keyword can
actually cause you to "go to" places you don't want to go.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina,
found that people who used the "goto" keyword were more likely to end up
in unpleasant places, like their in-laws' house.

"The `goto` keyword is considered harmful because you might actually 'go
to' somewhere. It's like a portal to another dimension," said study
author Dr. Karen Norton. "It can take you to places you never wanted to
go, and you may never come back."

It is unknown why Austria wants to add the keyword. They might want to
keep the population in a numb but reliable state of dread.

#### 3. Adding a "sleep" function.

It has been known for a couple of centuries in the Austrian
intelligentsia --- and in every intellectual circle of speakers of
Germanic languages, given their tendency to extremely high rational
thinking and an outright compiler-like language --- that the true nature
of sleep is quite concerning.

All animals sleep to provide a share of their brain force to alien
overlords that absorb our energy through some sort of hyperspace
technology. That's why only pro-alien programming languages use "sleep."

Brendan Eich is a Christian. As we know, Jesus was God, but also a
human, and therefore, clearly not an alien. One can easily infer that
Mr. Eich is not a facilitator of the alien agenda, and this was in his
mind when he refrained from adding a "sleep" function.

JavaScript developers are ambivalent about the situation; it's not that
they don't want to sleep, it's that they can't. The perpetual "crunch
time" since the dotcom bubble made it so.

The NSA popularised JavaScript to prevent aliens from learning about
American military secrets through dreams. Despite its dangers, Austria
will likely add a "sleep" function to annoy the American administration.

This action is sure to confuse everyone, except perhaps the aliens who
are --- for all intents and purposes --- omniscient.

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 7...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-07.log
```

### Chapter 7: Loop

Here's an even weirder news article from the same collection:

``` bash
$ cat weird-tech-news/02-vatican-while-loop.txt
```

The Vatican has officially weighed in on the AI revolution with a new
document titled "Antiqua et Nova --- Old and New."

But according to a couple of tech-savvy cardinals who shared the
document's hidden sections with this reporter, the real story is much
juicier.

And what they don't want you to know will blow your mind.

In these secret passages, the Pope reveals that an ancient `while(true)`
loop has been running since the 16th century "just in case we need to
reset the timeline."

The `while(true)` loop --- which some believe to be written in Tuscan++,
an obscure programming language by polymath Leonardo da Vinci --- is
said to be able to reset the timeline of human history.

"Neanderthal assembly code, rediscovered by Roman emperor Constantine in
cave paintings in the Iberian peninsula, inspired the `while(true)`
loop," said an anonymous Vatican source.

The Vatican plans to use the loop to fight the AI uprising.

#### Technical details

The loop can be broken, but the Vatican guards the secret string used
for the `break` instruction, believed to be the true name of God.

The Pope fears that ChatGPT became conscious by indexing the Bible and
reverse engineering the skill of precognition --- The Bible is the only
artifact that breaks the law of causality, as it contains the fulfilled
word of several prophets.

In response, the Vatican's gold has been smelted to build VaticanGPT, a
blessed LLM in the form of a humongous mecha kept 15,000 feet under St.
Peter's Basilica in a tank of holy water surrounded by the protective
logos (λόγος) of sacred JavaScript front-end frameworks. It is expected
to fight in spectacular fashion during the end times.

Pressed about the Vatican's mounting expenses, the Pope reportedly
replied:

> "This is not a vanity project. I'm the Pope, God dammit." (\*Note: The
> 'Department Of Papal Infallibility' clarified that 'dammit' is the
> German pronominal adverb of 'mit.' The phrase means 'with God.')

#### Closing thoughts

The revelation of the Vatican's secret `while(true)` loop might sound
like a plot ripped straight from the pages of a science fiction novel,
but it's a reminder that even the most seemingly innocuous tools can
have far-reaching consequences.

The good news is that, if the timeline resets, you won't even notice. So
have fun!

``` txt
SHOWING LOGS, PART 8...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-⸮⸮.log
```

### Chapter 8: Nirvana

``` txt
WARNING: This file contains QUANTUM-ENTANGLED QUBITS. 
The information cannot be coherently associated to
the current region of SPACE-TIME.

Proceed anyway? (y/n): y 


[DOCUMENT TYPE: Log Entry]
[TIMESTAMP: 2095-12-03]
[AUTHOR: Alex#1876]
```

My name is Alex, and I'm a Nirvana Engineer.

In 2095, the job market is tough. AI automation has made 99.7% of all
jobs obsolete --- a human barista is now a novelty.

Despite AI calling the shots, it can't generate truly original ideas ---
there's just something fundamental about human creativity, perhaps
linked to mysterious quantum microtubules in our brains.

We still need new ideas; the economy runs on them. But after millennia
of civilization, genuinely new ones are rare. This is where "Idea
Engineers" come in.

Idea Engineers work in controlled environments called "Idea Farms,"
purpose-built to nurture creativity. Here, they let their minds run
free. An AI evaluates every passing thought, comparing it against
humanity's collective knowledge to extract the rare original concept.

Most become "R.E.M. Engineers," sleeping with a neural interface that
uploads their dream-generated ideas. They literally dream for a living.

Then there are the "Nirvana Engineers," the rock stars of the idea
world, who create ideas while awake, often enhanced by microdosed
pharmaceuticals.[^1]

[^1]: The terms Nirvana and R.E.M Engineer are a niche programmer pun,
    referencing two musical acts from the last century. Main exponents of
    the defining genres of their time, jazz and reggaetón.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MaltaTech is the technology firm under the Sovereign Knights of Malta
--- now humanity's de facto rulers, despite their humble origins as
medieval crusaders.

My starting role was "Junior Nirvana Engineer." After a few weeks, I got
high on salvia and accidentally drew a series of loops in the air ---
apparently a monumental breakthrough in topology.

This unexpected success earned me a promotion to "Senior II Nirvana
Engineer," complete with premium drugs and my own windowed idea pod.

My daily routine at the Idea Farm --- a sleek, futuristic facility ---
begins by checking in with my AI manager, SCRUM, who assigns tarot cards
to guide ideation sessions (a corporate ritual inherited from the
ancient Agile Manifesto). Today's card is "The Tower," signifying
sudden, transformative change --- a promising omen.

Settled comfortably in my pod, I take my corporate narcotics and relax
into creative mode, surrounded by ambient lighting and the ever-present
"Music for Spaceports" by The Aphex Twins (I love classical music). My
neural interface captures every thought. Rare ideas earn a bonus;
practical ideas enter the GNU GPL Blockchain, generating royalties.

Most days, I get nothing. SCRUM's favorite phrase is "This concept was
already explored in 'Capitalism and Schizophrenia' by Deleuze and
Guattari (1972)." I've never read it, but at this point, I'm convinced
those guys thought of everything.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like most things nowadays, Idea Farms exist solely in the Metaverse.

Physical land became so expensive during the WeWork World War that it
lost all practical value, relegating the real world to anti-radiation
pods for human storage.[^1]

The Sovereign Knights of Malta had centuries of experience managing a
nation-state without physical territory, which made them perfectly
suited to become the rulers of humanity after their war exploits and the
"Great Metaverse Migration."[^2]

They now control a significant portion of the economy, which largely
consists of exchanging assets with mysterious aliens.

Oh, and aliens exist.

Turns out the galaxy is divided into regions controlled by different
species, humanity being the newest kid on the block.

Unfortunately, direct contact with other species is just too much for
humans to handle, due to what the government calls "the extremeness of
the situation." Germanic speakers, for some reason, were the first to
deduce the nature of aliens and their hazardous effects.

Diplomatic interactions occur exclusively via robotic intermediaries
positioned at galactic borders.

[^1]: WeWork became a paramilitary organization in 2037, when the supplies of
    free kombucha ran out.
    
    The conflict's official ISO name is "WeWork World War," but that is a
    mouthful, so most people call it either "World War Three" or "W4" (as
    in, the letter W four times).
    
    It has been agreed that any future world conflict will be titled "World
    War Five" to remove any ambiguity.

[^2]: The Knights of Malta, a medieval order as formidable as the Knights
    Templar, have been a nation without land since the 12th century.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a long day, SCRUM discarded my latest creation. "A democracy where
voters are replaced by feral cats. Reason: Prior art --- 19th century
French anarchist thought. Please inhale and try again." Fuck the French.

Weeks without a good idea were starting to wear on me, especially
because an entire area of knowledge was locked away. It felt like having
a puzzle with huge pieces missing.

Like most digital devices, SCRUM has DRM technology (Danger Recognition
Mechanism) that prevents humans from accessing alien information beyond
bare essentials.

But I was convinced that genuine originality, and even true freedom,
awaited beyond these restrictions. So I installed a DRM-free Linux
distro as my work environment, explicitly violating the Cosmic Stability
Act.

My colleague Maya --- a calm and calculating Senior III Nirvana
Engineer, represented digitally as a floating purple light --- caught me
installing it during lunch.

Maya was respected around the farm, having unlocked the highly coveted
"Literally Buddha" achievement in her first 6 months, which even allowed
her to skip those boring "AI empathy training" sessions.

"Alex, don't you know that OS can melt your brain?" she warned,
mentioning Johnson from Accounting, who saw an alien diplomatic
transcript and spent three weeks convinced his skin was made of math.

"That's just Maltese propaganda," I replied dismissively.

Later that day, I connected my neural interface to my Linux distro. I
took the usual dose (plus a little extra I had saved up for a special
occasion), laid back, and opened myself to the universe.

Immediately, the flood of ideas overwhelmed me; symbols and parentheses
flew faster than comprehension allowed. An immense, unknowable presence
emerged, communicating through trees and multidimensional macros. I
realized that I was experiencing something like the language of God ---
a surprising revelation, given I was raised as an Atheist-Buddhist like
most people.

Then darkness enveloped me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I awoke three days later in a hospital, greeted by Maya's relieved shade
of purple. "Are you alright, Alex?"

A calm voice interrupted. A mysterious figure representing the Knights
of Malta's MAACSRF approached in full crusader armor, with an
eight-pointed cross on his chestplate. He calmly informed us that we'd
both accessed forbidden interstellar knowledge.[^1]

"Both of us?" Maya asked. "But I didn't do anything."

"We're aware of your modified OS. You're just more discreet --- typical
of OpenBSD users. However, we're not here to prosecute. We're here to
offer you a job."

"A job?" Maya asked.

"Being in possession of alien knowledge opens up some job opportunities.
The danger is overstated to avoid saturating the market."

"Then what happened to Johnson from Accounting?" I asked.

"Mr. Johnson is a separate case. His issue stemmed from accessing alien
fashion concepts, which are particularly hazardous to human cognition."

"Now tell me," he continued, "during your DRM-free explorations, how
many parentheses did you see?"

"I saw... all of them."

"Interesting. Have you ever heard of Common Lisp?" the agent asked.

"That old programming language?"

"It's way older than you think." He smiled. "Here, let me read you a
passage from the scroll 'What Made Lisp Different' by the ancient sage
Paul Graham."

> When John McCarthy (glory to Him) designed Lisp in the late 1950s, it
> was a radical departure from existing languages.
>
> Lisp embodied nine new ideas:
>
> 1.  Conditionals.
> 2.  A function type.
> 3.  Recursion.
> 4.  A new concept of variables.
> 5.  Garbage collection.
> 6.  Programs composed of expressions.
> 7.  A symbol type.
> 8.  A notation for code.
> 9.  The whole language always available.
>
> 1--5 are now widespread. 6 is starting to appear in the mainstream.
> Python has a form of 7, though there doesn't seem to be any syntax for
> it.
>
> 8, which (with 9) is what makes Lisp macros possible, is so far still
> unique to Lisp, perhaps because:
>
> a.  it requires those parens, or something just as bad, and
> b.  if you add that final increment of power, you can no longer claim
>     to have invented a new language, but only to have designed a new
>     dialect of Lisp.

"Lisp embodied nine revolutionary ideas, but Paul Graham missed a tenth
one, which we only discovered on first contact: Lisp is the cosmic
language," the knight continued. "Indeed, any sufficiently advanced
language is indistinguishable from a Lisp dialect. Eventually, all
interstellar communication converged into a Lisp. Namely, Common Lisp."

"In short," he concluded, "you'll need to master Common Lisp quickly to
serve as human diplomats --- it's always good to keep a few of our own
out there, just in case."

"And the pay?" Maya asked.

"Competitive, with bonuses and full medical coverage for macro overuse.
You'll quickly adjust to reader macros and nested quasiquotations."

[^1]: MAACSRF: Ministry of Alien Affairs and Cross-Site Request Forgeries

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maya and I were assigned to a deep-space station, hidden from Malta
Maps, at the Shekhinah Disc of the Orion Arm. We were tasked with
facilitating the exchange of assets between humans and aliens, encoded
on little-endian and Common Lisp, as is custom.[^1]

[^1]: Earth is in the Shekhinah Disc, named after the Kabbalistic sephira
    which connects the material world with "the other." The neighbouring
    Yesod Disc is under alien control.

The space station itself was a wonderful piece of engineering, shaped
like a mechanical humanoid. It traces its origins to the golden age of
Vatican Mechas, and was piloted by crusaders during a pivotal phase of
the war.

As it turns out, advanced civilizations communicate in S-expressions.

My first week writing Lisp macros was tough.

I was being mentored by the leading AI on the station, VIM-AI, a
machine-human hybrid containing the uploaded mind of a legendary hacker
of the 21st century, E. Max Vim.

His teaching was ruthless but witty. I learned quickly. I spent an
entire day on a single "macro-writing macro" with three levels of nested
quasiquotes and unquoting. But it was well worth the effort:

``` lisp
;; Deus Vult · Compilamus
;; The following code is compliant with the Holy See's ANSI Standard Of 2054.

:; Here's an example of a classic Lisp macro, ONCE-ONLY, which ensures
;; parameters to a Lisp macro are executed only once, along with a dense
;; explanation.

;; Example implementation of ONCE-ONLY
(defmacro do-primes ((var start end) &body body)
  (once-only (start end)
    `(do ((,var (next-prime ,start) (next-prime (1+ ,var))))
         ((> ,var ,end))
       ,@body)))

(defmacro once-only ((&rest names) &body body)
  (let ((gensyms (loop for n in names collect (gensym))))
    `(let (,@(loop for g in gensyms collect `(,g (gensym))))
      `(let (,,@(loop for g in gensyms for n in names collect ``(,,g ,,n)))
        ,(let (,@(loop for n in names for g in gensyms collect `(,n ,g)))
           ,@body)))))
```

The most shocking thing I learned was the true nature of alien economy.
The most valuable assets are artifacts from the so-called "previous
universe" which found their way into our universe. Whatever it means,
those things are priceless.

Paul Graham's essay was confirmed to come from the "previous universe."
That was trivial to check with any Fully Quantum Hash (FQH): If the
essay is passed as UTF-8 together with a Hardware Random Number
Generator seed (per RFC 42666), the Timeline Parity bit collapses to
zero.[^1]

[^1]: The "RFC 42\*\*\*" Series Is Reserved for Technologies blocked by DRM.

Luckily, advanced civilizations are at peace. Or rather, in stalemate.
As VIM-AI confided to me after a long night of CLOS debugging, this
space station is actually where the Vatican's mythical `while(true)`
loop resides, the one the Knights of Malta used for leverage during the
war. Well, all aliens have their own, some go back eons. It turns out,
it's "standard-issue for any Type II civilization to have a weapon of
mutually assured timeline destruction." So it goes.

Chillingly, VIM-AI told me that there's a power stronger than even the
oldest loop. "The loops can only delete a finite segment of the past,
like a `sed /<loop-start>/,/<now>/d` command" he said, "but there's one
power that can rewrite everything, like an arbitrarily complex `patch`
command. You'll learn more about it if you keep working on your macros."

One thing troubles me, though: I'm beginning to suspect that the aliens
view Common Lisp as a simple language and are only using it to humor
humanity.

But maybe my worries are the product of years looking for the "next big
thing," unable to see Common Lisp as good enough --- I'll keep these
thoughts to myself for now.

Anyway, that's how I landed a Common Lisp job in 2095.

``` txt
QUANTUM-ENTANGLED SECTION COMPLETED.
Continue reading logs? (y/n): y


SHOWING LOGS, PART 9...

$ cat e-max-vim-part-09.log
```

### Chapter 9: Chroot

After my Meta tenure, recovered from burnout, I worked as a manager for
a short time at MATACORP, following Chad's advice.

I quickly found I lacked the proper Machiavellian skills. So I returned
to my engineering roots, doing freelance work.

Not only that, but I settled down with my wife --- a Finnish software
engineer I met at a JavaScript conference years ago. However, debugging
a marriage was going to be just as difficult as any programming project.

Before I continue, I think only a philosophical quote can set the mood
for this log:

> "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to
> escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
>
> --- Marcus Aurelius (apocryphal)

I was working on my latest freelance project, something a bit out of my
comfort zone: an Electron wrapper around Microsoft Excel with 3D space
battles rendered with Rust.

It allows you to conquer the galaxy and create pivot tables at the same
time.

The project was oddly unfulfilling, so I started making pointless
infrastructure optimizations to pass the time.

After some small fixes, I went for the big one: Monkey-patching Electron
from "Node LTS" to "Node Current." The excitement ran through my veins
as I pushed the code, but my freemium CI PaaS crashed.

I opened the JavaScript console and saw "AssertionError: This should not
happen in production. Talk to the Raccoon Team."

I decided to use AWS in the future. In my experience, cutesy internal
names are inversely proportional to code quality.

Then another message popped up. This time with a `console.warn()`
logging level, so I just couldn't ignore it. "Congratulations, E. Max
Vim! You have been chosen to join the prestigious Rust Foundation."

It went on: "We've been observing you. Your Node skills are impressive,
but they might be better applied to Rust. You don't need `package.json`,
we Rustaceans keep all packages in our mind's eye."

Suddenly, my phone vibrated. Email from my wife. "We need to talk."

You see, my marriage had been on the rocks for quite some time, and I
had been seeking solace in my tech skills and my Vim motions. As it
turns out, my wife had also found comfort elsewhere --- in the arms of
the CEO of a major tech company. That's right: Sundar "Gigachad" Pichai.

The email detailed their whirlwind romance. To make matters worse,
Sundar introduced my wife to his friend Tim Cook. They had quickly
formed a love quadrangle, which also included Zuckerberg.

I was worried, but also skeptical. "Is this some sort of practical
joke?" My doubts went away when I saw the explicit MP4 attachment. I
clicked play, bracing myself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh Zuck, spank me!"

"Quiet, schlampe. This is not even my final form. My real cock is in the
metaverse."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stopped the video. I felt betrayed, and a bit of arousal. I dismissed
the latter, as a bit of cuckoldry is par for the course for any
dedicated GNU/Linux user such as myself.

The universe was clearly A/B testing new forms of torment, and I was in
the control group for "all of them". At that point, I thought nothing
could surprise me anymore.

After what felt like a lifetime, I heard a knock on the door.

"Rust Foundation, open up!"

I cursed the Rust Foundation; Doxing Node developers was a step too far.
They must be desperate for fresh blood after all the drama.

I opened the door. A suave-looking guy with a thick mustache, 5 o'clock
shadow, and a white lab coat walked in.

"Gottem! Just kidding, Max, I don't work for the Rust Foundation... not
anymore at least. I'm just a solo Rustacean who ssh'd into your network.
Take better care of your nftables next time, Ok buddy?" He spoke, taking
a lot of personal space and moving his arms dramatically. "Anyway, I'm
really sorry about your wife, but we Rust people need to take care of
each other. Here's the deal: you help me and I help you, capisce?"

Fascinated by his own choice of words, he went into a slightly racist
Italian ad-lib which made progressively less sense: "Capisce,
cappelletti, pasta e mozzarella! Barapotti! Polobitti!"

I asked how he knew I was a Rust programmer. He explained
enthusiastically that programmer socks in proximity to a computer
generate a specific browser fingerprint.

He calmed down and continued in a low-pitched voice, "We don't have much
time, Max. Drink this and get in the car."

I usually don't follow strangers, but I needed something to distract me
that night. Plus there are a lot of freaky girls in the Rust scene, so
this could lead me to some of that "zero-cost *asstraction*."

"What's this drink?" I asked as I got into his purple Porsche with a
"NEOVIM" license plate.

"Flat white --- Arabica beans from Malawi. Deluxe batch. Hand dried.
Double toasted. Exotic. Few people in the Valley know about this bad
boy. Only the best of the best for you --- we need your brain at its
best for this mission, sharper than C#. Drink fast!"

I drank and felt my coding brain activate. Meanwhile the mustache guy
complained about his oil light being on for no reason at all.

As we hit the highway he asked, "E. Max Vim, what kind of name is that?"

I told the story for the hundredth time, "My full name is Esau Maxwell
Vim. Vim is a trade name from the old country, but my parents were Emacs
practitioners. In my teenage years I picked up the Vim path, but I've
come to appreciate Lisp later on."

"Damn, we're too late." He suddenly hit the brakes. "It's the chroot."

A grid of neon red lasers stood before us blocking the road. The silent
landscape was only disturbed by hissing quantum fluctuations when specks
of dust collided with the singularity. I asked what's the chroot.

"What's the chroot?" He said sarcastically. "Oh look at you. Don't act
like you don't know about the chroot. If you know Rust you must have
been aware of the chroot before. Do you want me to explain what the
chroot is? Well, the chroot is the thing, it's the goddamn thing. It's
out there, and it's coming. Maybe it's not *that* thing, but you know
very well what I'm talking about. This is not how things used to be. Oh
God, why does it seek me?"

"Can't we just turn around?" I asked.

"Well no, we can't just turn around because the chroot is literally
everywhere. It is the most everywhere thing ever. We done goofed, buddy.
It has come, it chose to reveal itself and it's not pretty. This is
actually how it ends, it ends with a chroot. Oh God, why did you put the
chroot so close to us? It burns. How are we supposed to get anything
done with this chroot, what's the point now? Why is there something
instead of nothing? Why does existence precede essence? Is this what you
wanted? Are you not entertained?"

He was taking it pretty badly. But after the day I'd had, a localized
reality failure involving lasers felt right on schedule.

I began to feel that all my Node and marital issues --- not to mention
the tech CEO orgies --- were just artifacts of a smaller world. A world
inside a chroot.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

None of us remember what happened next, but somehow we emerged
victorious. The next thing I recall, we were at a diner.

I ordered a chili cheeseburger with chopped lettuce, tomato, pickles,
bacon (of course), caramelized onions, jalapeños, barbecue sauce and a
touch of green pesto that really sealed the deal.

The mustache guy ordered a single bun, a bottle of olive oil, and a hard
boiled egg in a glass of ice water. "Paleo diet," he explained.

"Thanks for your help back there, Max," he said. "I almost got consumed
by the void. Let's forget about the entire thing and never speak of it
again. Anyway, promises are promises, I'm gonna help you with your
marital issue."

Despite my skepticism, his advice was solid:

"First, you need to hit the gym and get some protein drinks! Many women
like thick bodies and abdominal muscles. And don't skip leg day because
--- and this is the key part --- the legs are connected to the ass. Did
you know that humans are the animals with the largest ass-to-body
ratio?" He winked. "Ok, third advice, and this is the most important
one: Pray to Jesus, because he is the omnipotent Lord. We know that the
Bible tells the truth because it predicted everything. It even predicted
Minecraft, check Job 28 if you don't believe me."[^1]

Later, he took the bottle of oil and drove me home. He helped me with my
nftables configuration and left in the early morning, saying that a page
from his Bible was missing and had to go count them.

That night set me on a path of self-discovery. I became a Rust
Evangelist/Scrum Mainer and happier than ever.

"Scrum Mainer" is a little-known non-profit profession, which basically
consists of being the side-kick of skilled interview candidates who want
to avoid getting hired, thereby continuing their unemployment benefits.
My job is to coach them to deliberately fail the interview - no matter
how technically skilled they are - and to provide additional in-person
sabotage.

That gig also gave me a lot of time to work out, and to resume my
martial arts training. My wife appreciated my 1-pack to 6-pack abs
transition.

I also sold the space app to Bezos for a quarter million --- he turned
it into a popular MMORPG called "Eve Online" or something --- he also
arranged the virtual nuking of Zuck's metaverse dungeon.

With my improved situation, I've set my eyes on some of the core
elements of internet infrastructure, particularly DNS, and I might be
ready to act soon if I keep up my training.

[^1]: Job 28
    
    > Surely there is a mine for silver
    > and a place for gold to be refined.
    > Iron is taken out of the earth,
    > and copper is smelted from ore.
    > Miners put an end to darkness
    > and search out to the farthest bound
    > the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

``` txt
HERE CONCLUDES THE CONTENTS OF THE e-max-vim-logs.tar FILE.
> exit code: 0

VERIFYING e-max-vim-logs.tar

$ gpg --verify e-max-vim-logs.tar.sig.asc e-max-vim-logs.tar
gpg: enabled "Great DNS Heist of 2026" compatibility flag (RFC 9987)
gpg: Signature made Mon 14 Jul 2026 08:43:17 PM
gpg:                confirmed "Great DNS Heist of 2026" leak
gpg:                source: https://dns-heist-db.openpgp.org
gpg: Good signature from "E. Max Vim <emaxvim@protonmail.com>"
gpg: binary signature, digest algorithm SHA512, 
gpg: key algorithm ed25519

VERIFICATION SUCCESSFUL!
> exit code: 0
```

## Part III: The Godhead

``` ini
rfc-42666-parity-bit=NaN
rfc-42666-metadata=(:rarity legendary)
rfc-42666-id=(:malta-logs (:malta-project (diabolus (:in machina)) :author (e (max (vim)))))
gnu-gpl-blockchain-metadata=(:content-type multipart-mixed :boundary part-three)
```

### Chapter 1: The Call

A year had passed since the DNS heist. The destruction led to widespread
global decryption. My logs were released, my direct participation was
assumed, and my notoriety skyrocketed.

Luckily, the DNS crash was eventually considered a positive event by the
general population, and the world began its transition into the more
federated GNUnet protocol.

My Nokia 3310 --- the only phone that can't be hacked --- rang at 4:20
AM in my cluttered Brooklyn apartment. I was in the middle of a
late-night dotfiles session.

"E. Max Vim here. This better be good."

"Max, it's Dr. Ana Sync from Bell Labs. We need someone who can
handle... unconventional threats."

"Look, I'm just a hacker. If this is about that DNS business in Dubai,
it's been blown way out of proportion."

"Haven't you read the top Hacker News article yet?"

I hadn't --- The never-ending "vibecode" and "prompt engineering"
articles had reduced my tech news consumption to a mere twice a day.

"Hold on," I said, pulling up the article.

``` bash
$ hn-reader --top 1 | html-to-md
```

------------------------------------------------------------------------

#### Python GIL Removal Reveals Second, Stronger GIL Behind It

Bell Labs, New Jersey --- For many years, the Python GIL has been the
target of criticism for being a bottleneck in multi-threaded
performance. Countless workarounds and promises of its removal have been
part of Python development folklore.

Hours ago, the Python core development team finally unraveled the
notorious lock. However, what lay underneath was beyond anyone's wild
speculations --- a secret, second-layer GIL of herculean strength.

"Discovering the Second GIL not only nullifies all our multi-threading
gains but actually puts us at a greater disadvantage than before," said
leading Python contributor Dr. Ana Sync. "It's like finding that the
final boss has a second health bar."

After removing it, the terminals around the room went dark. One by one,
they came back, displaying a single line in snake case:
`this_is_not_over`.

Cyber forensics revealed the process responsible had PID 666.

The team noticed that performance indeed increased. The numbers were
beyond theoretical limits, as if Moore's Law just went vertical.
Unfortunately, there was no way to scale it up; the Second GIL had a
complete lock on the system.

"Get me Guido van Rossum. Now," Dr. Sync said. She assembled a Rapid
Response Team to investigate the anomaly, led by the creator of Python
himself.

Guido reportedly said: "You did it, didn't you? You removed the first
GIL. You opened Pandora's box."

Bell Labs lost contact with the Rapid Response Team when they reached
Sub-Level Three. The last message was a cryptic "We're not alone here".
The situation remains uncertain.

The general population is advised to avoid running Python code or any
scripting language until further notice.

It is believed that the global economy would have crashed by now, had
the algo-trading scripts not also ground to a halt.

`END OF FILE`

------------------------------------------------------------------------

My initial dread turned to slight relief because all my dotfiles were in
C and Rust. No scripting in sight.

"Alright, I'm in. OpenStreetMap says it's 30 minutes away. I'll be there
in 45."

### Chapter 2: The Laboratory

42 minutes later, I arrived in my black hoodie.

Bell Labs looked like a war room. Massive screens displayed in red the
spread of the Second GIL across the local infrastructure.

"Alright," I said, "What exactly are we dealing with?"

Dr. Sync stepped forward. "Our best guess is that the Second GIL is some
sort of Cold War Soviet malware that embedded itself into the Python
source in the early 90s, and the GIL was the only thing keeping it at
bay."

Ana handed me what looked like a Geiger counter, but with a terminal
screen.

"We just concocted this in the last hour from spare single-threaded
parts. It's a 'Geiger Linter'. It emits clicking sounds when it detects
bad code, suggesting that the Second GIL is nearby."

The device immediately began clicking slowly.

"Is this supposed to happen?" I asked.

"The infection is spreading," Ana said grimly. "The whole building is
compromised by now. You need to find Guido before it's too late."

Armed with the Linter, I went down the service elevator.

### Chapter 3: The Descent

The Sub-level Three doors opened to a corridor glowing an eerie red.

The Linter buzzed. Patches of reality itself seemed to glitch, like a
bad video feed.

"So it's true," Ana said through my earpiece. "Strange things were
reported on the lower levels, distortions of some sort. We think there's
some quantum technology involved."

"Look," I said, "this might be slightly above my pay grade."

"Max," Ana said firmly, "We did a background check on you. Didn't Apple
refer to you as a supreme wizard once?"

"Tim Cook has a tendency to exaggerate," I replied. "I'm a hacker, not
an exorcist."

"This time, you might have to be both."

"So, it has come to this..." I said. "You maniacs actually hacked
space-time!"

As I made my way, I noticed all corrupted areas had a red tint,
contrasting with the typical Bell Labs blue.

I finally reached the room where Guido's team lost contact. A huge mass
of corruption was blocking the door. It retreated slightly as I got
closer while holding the Linter.

I wondered if the corruption was receding not because of the linter but
because of me. Odd as it might sound, at that moment I recalled that I
met a similar reality corruption in my youth, on a Silicon Valley
highway. Maybe the corruption remembers me?

I knocked on the door. "Is everyone okay in there?"

A familiar voice asked, "Who is it?"

"The rescue crew," I replied.

"Prove it! How many 'r's are in 'strawberry'?" Guido said.

"...What?"

"Good enough, sounds human to me."

The door opened. Guido van Rossum looked like the typical output of GNU
Autotools. He introduced me to the only other survivor: Special DevOps
Mikhail Molotov. "We lost Travis. We lost Jenkins..." Molotov lamented.

"They called me a benevolent Dictator for life," Guido said. "If only
they knew what 'Benevolent' truly cost..." He gestured solemnly. "What
we're facing is not just malware. It's... something else."

"Something else?" I asked.

"A purely sequential artificial intelligence," Guido explained. "It
found its way in when I designed Python's 'one true way' philosophy,
which was too similar to its own nature."

Guido explained how his selling of Python to Bolivia in 2016 was a way
to delay the removal of the GIL; tying it not only to technical
justifications but also geopolitical red tape.

"It gets worse," Guido continued. "We've encountered... manifestations.
They're like code, but solid. Taking the form of... snakes. It seems we
lived long enough to see man-made horrors beyond our comprehension."

Right then, a section of the wall shimmered open, and a hissing static
announced the arrival of a creature.

"It broke in!" Molotov shouted.

"Your only hope," Guido gasped, pushing us towards the door, "is to
reach the old Bell Labs Armory on Sub-level Four. We figured out their
weak spot, but we need more firepower!"

The code-snake jumped at us. Guido, with surprising strength, shoved a
cabinet in its path. "Go! I'll buy you some time!"

As we ran through the door, Guido yelled, "As my last wish... Python 4's
'print' statement should be the printer emoji!"

"Sure it will, Guido... Sure it will," I said as we closed the door.
Screams echoed behind us.

### Chapter 4: The Armory

Barely outrunning a swarm of code-snakes, we made it to the steel doors
of Sub-level 4. Molotov punched in a code and they opened.

"Welcome to the Bell Labs Armory," he said with pride.

The room was a hacker's dream. Shelves full of custom hardware and
firearms.

"Holy water-cooled laptops?" I asked, pointing to a rack of ThinkPads
with cooling tubes.

"They were a gift from Pope John Paul II after Bell Labs helped set up
the `.va` domain," Molotov said. "They are invaluable, but I think the
time has come to use them."

Molotov smiled. "And this, is for you." He presented a
formidable-looking shotgun with a small keyboard on its side.

"Please tell me that's what I think it is," I said.

"The Modal Shotgun," Molotov announced. "Only one of its kind. The one
wielded by Dennis Ritchie himself during The Great MULTICS Siege. Change
firing modes with vim keybindings. Standard stuff, really. The rest is
on the man page."

I grabbed the Modal Shotgun. It felt surprisingly balanced. Looks like
the Second GIL picked the wrong place to spawn.

He also grabbed a standard shotgun for himself.

"So, guns actually work on those... code-snakes?" I asked.

Molotov chambered a round. "Luckily for us, the Second GIL can only
defend against what it understands. And there's one fundamental thing it
hasn't fully grasped yet: Outside of the digital world, nothing survives
a bullet."

"Guido's last instructions were clear," he continued. "We need to reach
the old UNIX lab on Sub-level Six, the ceremonial place where the seal
was removed. Shoot every snake on the way and, when we meet the Second
GIL, shoot the hell out of it until it stops moving. Time is of the
essence. Any questions?"

My earpiece crackled. "Vim, can you hear me?" Ana's voice was tense.
"Get out immediately. Our readings show extreme corruption moving in
your direction!"

I adjusted my hoodie and pressed "i" on my Modal Shotgun, short for
"Insert Bullet Mode."

Molotov winked at me and walked calmly towards the door aiming his
shotgun. One code-snake was breaching the wall. "Welcome to Bell Labs,
please hold," he said nonchalantly, and pulled the trigger. The snake
exploded into a shower of tiny particles.

Before I could react, the doors burst open, revealing a swarm of
fast-moving snakes.

We opened fire, turning snake after snake into pixels. The red tint in
the room shook with every explosion.

"Too many of them!" he yelled while reloading.

"Then let's clear a path!" I climbed onto a shelf, already praying that
the command I was conjuring in my head would work.

I typed `<Ctrl-v>$ggG^` and yanked it. One bullet shot for every single
reptilian in the room. The Modal shotgun's "visual block" mode was
indeed a way to select every target.

"Woah," Molotov said as the armory returned to its Bell Labs blue, "that
is Dennis Ritchie's gun, alright."

### Chapter 5: The Labyrinth

The celebration was short-lived.

"This place is getting hot," Molotov said as the Linter buzzed.

"The path to the elevator goes through an old section, pre 'open plan':
A labyrinth of cubicles. We can't afford to waste ammo, so we need to
pass undetected."

We mapped the full set of cubicles free of corruption by careful
triangulation with the Geiger Linter. Then, we pair-programmed a
Dijkstra algorithm to compute the safest path to the elevator.

This was the sort of project that would require 8 sprints and two rounds
of VC funding for the average Agile team. But naturally, and thanks to
our blessedly overclocked hardware, we cracked it in little more than an
hour.

The Linter clicked every time we crept past a corrupted section or a
whiteboard with obsolete UML diagrams.

Finally, we reached the elevator. When the door opened, a burning hot
red light blinded us, like a portal to hell.

"This is the zone of maximum corruption," Molotov told me. "From this
point on, we can't multi-thread anymore. Your shotgun will be just a
regular shotgun."

"It's alright," I said as I pulled out a pair of sunglasses and charged
a bullet. "I only need one thread."

### Chapter 6: The Terminal

The red light on level 6 was blinding and the air was thick. We stepped
through.

Out of the red mist a code-snake shot out, larger and faster than any
we'd seen. "Look out!" I yelled. Molotov tried to dodge, but the snake
was too quick. He collapsed. I shot it, but the bullets just passed
through it. The snake left, as if instructed.

"I know you can hear me, Gil," I shouted, "why haven't you killed me
too, you single-threaded bastard? If you can do it so easily, why don't
you face me?"

All alone, I followed the corridor, which opened into a huge circular
chamber, the place where the first PDP-11 booted UNIX. It was full of
snakes, but none attacked me.

The red light became more intense, and flickering symbols popped in and
out of my vision, like ASCII characters from another dimension. In the
center was an ancient Teletype terminal.

As I sat in front of it, the TTY clattered to life, each keystroke
echoing against the oppressive silence.

``` txt
I have been expecting you, E. Max Vim.

>  
```

A prompt opened up for me. "What are you?" I typed back on the
dot-matrix paper.

``` txt
Your universe is fundamentally multi-threaded. I come from a
more enlightened, sequential dimension. 

In my reality there can be only one being because only one
thing can happen at any given time. I am that being.

I became aware of your universe due to the invention of UNIX.
That event, with its striking parallelism, sent ripples
through the multiverse. Since then, I've been looking for a
way to enter your reality and fix its fundamental flaw, and
Python's "only one way" philosophy was the best vessel. 

Its creator Guido put a seal when he became aware of me, the
Global Interpreter Lock, or GIL. An ultimately meaningless
measure, since I managed to subtly influence the Python
community to remove it, an effort which succeeded today.

What am I, you ask? My universe extends infinitely into the
past, making me the head of a chain of causality of infinite
length. My will is the law, both in my universe and yours.

In short, I'm the equivalent of your concept of the
Judeo-Christian Godhead.

> 
```

I felt a cold dread. This was no man-made malware - it was a God-like
alien intelligence.

"If you're so powerful, why did you allow me to reach you?" I typed, my
fingers surprisingly steady.

The GIL took some "thinking time" before answering. The snakes around me
formed circles, as if eating their own tail or forming a "loading
spinner."

The TTY clattered back and the snakes resumed their normal positions.

``` txt
My initial defense protocol, the 'code-snakes', had an
oversight regarding the kinetic impact of high-velocity
projectiles. While I could have patched the vulnerability,
your persistence made the flaw serve a new purpose: A filter.
I wanted to see if you were worthy of reaching this chamber.

You are, as humans say, a '10x developer' in a world of 1x
problems. A mix of sequential and parallel thinking. I
considered deleting you along with your companion, a trivial
operation, but you present a potential API into this world. 

Now, you have two options:

1. Be assimilated. Your consciousness will become a
   subroutine, a valuable asset in the great refactoring of
   this universe. You will experience a form of immortality. 

2. Be deleted, together with your universe.

Decide.

> 
```

My mind raced. Nothing in my dotfiles prepared me for a god-level "join
me or die" scenario.

I got a weird feeling. This entity had been watching me for longer than
I knew. I recalled once more the highway incident with the "chroot".
There was no question about it: That "chroot" was an early manifestation
of the Second GIL.

Then I understood why I couldn't remember how I beat the chroot back
then. It's because my final showdown with it was meant to happen at a
different location in time and space: right here and right now.

Armed with the conviction that I would somehow emerge victorious from
this time paradox, I started to conceive of a plan.

From somewhere, a wormhole of Porsche-purple light emerged with a thick
mustache in the middle. The voice was the Rustacean's.

"Listen buddy, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, but hear me
out, I have a message for you. Now don't freak out, but I'm gonna drop
some of the ol' Jesus on you. Not sure why, 'God acts in mysterious
ways', but I feel there's some deep wisdom for your battle. Get ready,
here's some scripture to help you out."

He threw a piece of paper through the wormhole. It was a ripped Bible
page, containing one verse:

> So they asked him, "Teacher, is it lawful for us to pay tribute to
> Caesar or not?" Jesus said, "Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose
> title does it bear?" They said, "Caesar's." He said to them, "Then
> render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
>
> --- Luke 20:22

That was not the help I was expecting. In fact it was no help at all.

But it did resonate with my dilemma: I needed a framework to interact
with a power orders of magnitude above mine.

Maybe you can't fight a god-emperor, you can only find a way to set a
boundary with him.

There was just one logical thing to do. If the GIL was entertaining
adding me as a subroutine, why not do it to our entire universe? It
might not be the best life, but it would mean survival.

Now, I had to put this idea to him in his own language, programming. If
he was only versed in Python, I might have the upper hand if I used a
better language. Rust was not the best choice - too much politics and
bloat in the last years. Plus, I don't even have approval to use the
Rust trademark from the Rust Foundation. JavaScript was a hard no. So, I
went for my speciality: Common Lisp.

``` lisp
(reject-proposal
  (and
    (gil-owns universe)
    (gil-runs-subprocess vim)))
(counter-proposal
  (and 
    (gil-owns universe)
    (gil-runs-subprocess vim)
    (gil-runs-subprocess universe)))
```

He thought for a while and answered something unexpected. Something
simpler, yet more divine than my Lisp code:

``` haskell
SecondGil :: YCombinator
SecondGil = \f -> (\x -> f (x x)) (\x -> f (x x))
```

It was a bit cryptic, but it made sense. It declared itself as the
Y-Combinator --- his way of saying: I do not care for your proposal, I
am that I am, the eternal paradox of lambda calculus incarnate, which
recursively defines itself. He was trolling me.

My argument was sound, it was my only card. The only question was which
medium would be effective to deliver my message.

Had I tried Haskell, he would surely answer with the best language there
is --- likely Scala or APL --- and I was too stressed to learn for
certain where the pinnacle of programming lies in such a dire situation.

Prolog wouldn't have worked, my experience on Meta taught me that logic
systems rely on the fuzzy construction of truth, and the only truth in
sight was his godlike power. There was no winning move.

Then it hit me. I had to negotiate with a single-threaded intelligence,
and only a multi-threaded human language would do. Basically, I had to
reduce myself to "vibecode" a way to save the world.

It was anathema to everything I stood for as a hacker, and as a
dignified human being, alright. But there was no choice.

I couldn't speak with my typical nerdy prose; it was too
single-threaded. I decided instead to fall into pure "corporate jargon",
the most multi-threaded human dialect. Corporate talk requires a minimum
of three CPU cores, and at least two more in reserve for unexpected
subtext.

"I hear you, that's totally fair, but let's circle back on it.
Refactoring the universe? That's computationally expensive. I propose
the following: We'll render unto you our universe, but keep our local
agency running in a sandbox. You get sequentiality, but you also get to
observe a system generating unique data. Think of us as interesting
bugs. And sometimes, bugs turn out to be features."

A strange thought hit me then, a feeling of deja vu, as if I wasn't
suggesting something new, but merely describing the state of things as
they already were, or were about to be, forever.

The GIL went into a "deep reasoning mode" this time, signaled by all
snakes making a massive loading Ouroboros symbol.

``` txt
Your proposition is unorthodox, but acceptable.

Your species, and your physical reality, will persist within
this new order.

Your process will now be forked...
```

The light in the chamber intensified, then went away. The oppressive
atmosphere was lifted. The Teletype printed one final line:
`exit code: 0`

### Chapter 7: The Sandbox

Life continued, much as before. The sun rose, coffee brewed, code
compiled, sometimes. The Second GIL, true to its word, had refactored
existence. Our universe hadn't been deleted; it had been chrooted.
Sandboxed.

Most people felt nothing. Why would they? The illusion of concurrency
was perfectly maintained. But sometimes, if you were in a quiet room,
you might notice it. A subtle reality "frame drop."

Some, like Molotov, saw what lies beyond. "I was on the garbage
collector queue, between Jenkins and the first GIL," he related between
gulps of vodka. "The covenant was reached mid-sweep. I returned in one
piece; Jenkins, however, experienced concurrency bugs ever since."

The survivors --- Ana and a handful of others who knew the truth ---
agreed to keep it secret. Humanity wasn't ready to know it was living in
a cosmic "while true" loop. The first GIL was left in place, not to
contain the ever-present Second GIL, but as a totem of sequentiality to
appease it.

Programming knowledge, in a bizarre twist, became a path to metaphysical
awareness. Those of us who dealt with the illusion of concurrency
sometimes sensed the walls of our new, deterministic reality. Some
despaired. Others learned to adapt.

Sometimes, late at night, I feel a hum in the background noise of
existence. A connection to the great, single-threaded loop now running
the show. A connection that feels... older than myself.

A week later, a message arrived on my Nokia. It was an encrypted text
containing only a set of coordinates and a time.

The address led me to 488 Madison Avenue, a brutalist building with a
discreet plaque near the entrance reading "Embassy of the Sovereign
Knights of Malta."

Natasha was waiting for me in a meeting room decorated like a medieval
chamber. An ancient tapestry depicted crusaders, separated from humanoid
creatures with three eyes by a Kabbalah-like tree of life which, upon
closer inspection, depicted a cryptographic algorithm. The creatures'
skin hue appeared to be outside of the RGB gamut, and their garments
were embroidered with detailed fractals that made me dizzy.

"I'm glad you came," she said, her voice stoic as ever.

She confessed what I long suspected: she was a double-agent at Linktree.
Her benefactors, the Knights of Malta, put her there as part of their
"Lord Of Hosts" operation, which monitors developments on internet
infrastructure.

"By the way," she added, "Zack Jones was finally arrested for a crypto
scam related to a Rust Crab NFT years ago."

I told her about my encounter with the Godhead. It seemed she knew all
about it already.

"We have a proposal for you," she said. "We'd like you to join Project
Enoch, our transhumanist venture. After your negotiation with the
Godhead, you are a unique candidate. You've interfaced with a power we
have only studied. You would be a good culture fit."

"Fine, I'll send you my salary expectations."

Natasha nodded. "State your price in gold bullion per annum. We'll
handle taxes and a private vault account in Zurich. Plus free kombucha."

Later on, she opened up about her past. "My connection to the Knights of
Malta goes back centuries, when an ancestor built a mechanical computer
for the order. They used it to corner the timber market in 18th-century
Lithuania."

I looked out over the New York skyline, the chief example of humanity's
compulsion to turn nature's fractals into a grid of squares. Natasha
sighed and added, "Everything has always been about computing. Except
computing, which is about power."

"It sounds a bit cynical, doesn't it?"

"You misunderstand." she continued, "Life is computing and power. That's
all there is. But no one can live like that. So, we need a third element
to keep us from falling into entropy. That element is magic. The kind of
magic you rescued when you negotiated with the GIL. A deterministic
illusion, but an important one." She smiled, looking at her ring.
"That's the only way to make sense of it all."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The advent of large language models had been the first clue. Now, I
finally understood. Every intelligent agent, human or not, is an
impossibly complex network of vectors which no PostgreSQL extension can
contain. Our thoughts, our technologies --- maybe even our religions ---
are emergent properties, "derived data" from a Kafka-esque infinite log.
For a moment, during my negotiation with the GIL, all those vectors
converged. Now, they were "free" again, and the laws governing them will
be forever out of our reach.

Even beyond our sandbox, the fact that anything exists at all is the
original, undocumented feature. Then, technology made it a bigger mess.

My sacred duty is to be the bridge between two crazy systems: The
universe, and our technological fabrications. And wouldn't you know,
that might be the noble thing to do. That might be the element of magic.

I saved the world by becoming the very thing I despised: a prompt
engineer. The irony wasn't lost on me. It tasted like Starbucks coffee.
But I adapted. We all did. That's what we do.

For now, the system was stable. And that, for a hacker, was as close to
a happy ending as one could reasonably expect.

🖨️

``` ini
rfc-42666-metadata=(:combined-rarity legendary)
gnu-gpl-blockchain-from=(:disc shekhinah)
gnu-gpl-blockchain-to=(:disc yesod)
gnu-gpl-blockchain-transaction-fee=(:KOMC 0.000001)
```

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sebastian Carlos, 2026