I have just been given a potentially catastrophic piece of breaking news that a female gecko has slipped into my CPU through its A-drive slit and is busy raising a litter of six little gecko chicks on top of the 660 Mhz motherboard. The head of our Infromatics and Internet Security Department who discovered this reptilian intruder during a routine patrol says that although the mother of six has gnawed off a bit of my SDRAM chip and disabled the graphic accelerator card, the integrity of the data contained in the hard disk has not been compromised. Whew. That was a close call. Remind me to put a little sticker on my computer saying "Gecko Inside".
While not underestimating the danger of household fauna going in and out of our state-of-the-art personal computers with impunity, this is warning to all of us about just how vulnerable we are in the Infromation Age to any cyber-saboteur who wants to destroy our demographic way of life by moving into our RAM Caches and raising a family next to the cooling fan. Anarchy is a basic human right, and it is the essence of the freedoms we fought so hard to attain. No one can take that away from us, especially not a gecko. Y'hear that in there?
Luckily we have in our midst visionary crusaders like the young Argentinian who last week developed an altruistically-minded worm called Sircam and imbued it with the power to spread across the world taking with it the message of harmony, brotherhood and unity of all mankind in the present universe. The Sircam worm is an ingenious little creature no bigger than Rhode Island which burrows its way into your computer through the phone line and once it is inside sends out a payload trigger with a random file from your hard disk to everyone in your Microsoft Outlook address book. Real fun.
In this fashion, it makes it possible for everyone in the world to ultimately peer into everyone else's computer, thus erasing man-made boundaries and making everything transparent and open. Imagine, no secrets. (It isn't hard to do.) Which means everyone will be friends with everyone else, and there will be no more wars.
This weekend, the Sircam worm (Credo: "The Early Worm gets the Attachment") has been sighted in Nepal, and private emails are being sent from all and sundry to all and sundry even as we speak. It is a tribute to the tireless work of our worm-builder from Buenos Aires that these highly confidential files can now see the light of day. I found this:
To:pmo@hmg.gov
From: Lee Kuan Yew
Subject: Application for post of sub-contractor
Sir, Desirous of filling in the vacancy you have advertised in the classified section of Nepal's top newspaper I am hereby applying for the post of Chief Subcontractor to run Nepal. My cv is attached, and you will see from it that I
have an autocratic streak. If you need strongman rule, a strong man you will get.
Your humble servant.
LKY
And another one:
To: Right Honourbale Share Bahadur
From: Astrologer-at-large Dhruba Man Joshi
Subject: Cabinet Swearing In
As requested please find attached a detailed diagram of interplanetary alignments this week which could have a bearing on the appointment and functioning of your new government. As you will see, the moon is in the seventh house, Jupiter is aligned with Mars and both are moving with the Space Shuttle Endeavor which is stranded in space due to bad weather in Nevada. Don't swear in your cabinet until Jupiter moves into Aquarius which will be sometime in late-2007. However, if you are in a hurry, then arrangements can be made and I will speak to the concerned higher-up authorities.
Keep me posted.
Dhruba Man
And this just came in:
To: Mr John Ogoni, Occidental Bank of Nigeria
From: Nagad Ram Nepal
Subject: Where are you?
This is my seventh email to you to kindly request if you have received the $100,000 (one hundred thousand US dollars) that I have sent as bank draft to you. My secret bank account still hasn't been credited with the 30 percent share of the $25 million that you promised me. Please take your time, and let me know when the transfer is made.
Yours very patiently
Nagad Ram
