Bugs by John Sladek Read Free Book Online Page A

minutes. Then it’s an hour or so, and before long he’s working through the night. Then it’s every night, and weekends. He can’t do anything but work on it. Don’t get me wrong. Everybody does this once in a while. But some dumb bastards make it a lifestyle.’
    Honks puffed thoughtfully at the unlit pipe. It was a meerschaum, carved with a dragon.
    ‘Next sign is, he can’t delegate. Has to do everything himself. Nobody else can do it; he has to do it. Locks himself in his office all day. Pretty soon he’s way the hell out in left field on his own, only he thinks he’s still in the game. You notice that when he starts talking about a big breakthrough.Soon as I hear the words “big breakthrough”, I know the guy is gonna end up wrapped in wet sheets.’
    ‘But Sturge talks about a big breakthrough all the time.’
    ‘With Sturge it’s different. See, Sturge is a twenty-four-carat asshole. He don’t mean anything by anything; he’s just hand-waving. Sturge has no idea what’s going on here; he just signs the cheque and beats his gums.’
    Honks looked at his pipe, then emptied the tobacco back in the lacquered box. His long-nailed fingers toyed with the cloth-covered buttons of his tunic. ‘You probably think we’re all nuts around here. But just watch Mel. Wait till you hear him talking about his big breakthrough,
the Robot M.’
    ‘I meant to ask you. This robot project –’
    ‘Is going in circles. That’s what happens when you get a lunatic in charge; he leads the group in circles. You’ll see.’
    ‘But it’s a real project, right?’
    ‘Right. Money makes it real. There’s a big fat wad of DoD money about to fall on us – that makes it real. The Army wants metal men real bad.’
    ‘What should I be doing?’
    ‘You might want to look over some of our modules, get a feel for what’s happening. Here, take a handful of printout.’
    Honks hoisted a ten-pound stack of wide accordion-folded paper and handed it to Fred. The top page read:
    splurf(*nebng) += nebng; /* Decision rechecking */
    {
    Iwan;
    mnang;
    frypsth;
    }
    if (glorm)
    {
    doit;
    splurf;
    gamnog(&dorb,&jode);
    if (snang == trykv) splurf;
    }
    else
    snangk;
    gamnoga = gamnoge;
    Fred carried the heavy bundle, and a heavy heart, back to his cubicle. There were over 300 pages, each covered with meaningless poetry. He could not even be sure this was a human language, and not the latest edicts of insect-headed creatures from Aldebaran. Be fair, he told himself. In principle, at least, this stuff could be understood.
    That evening, Fred searched bookstores for a key. Most of the books were as opaque as that which they explained.
    … obtainable from the two’s complement of the binary representation of the hexadecimal component of the low byte of the offset address of the first argument, excluded (XORed) with the binary representation of the two’s complement of the high byte of the segment address of the second …
    The register pair ES:DX the first two bytes the segment address the subprogram the environment string the segment address the register pair ES:BX the parameter block the file to be loaded utilizing the control load facilitating information the path name and filename an ASCIIZ string the register pair DS:DX the subprogram the program the function facilitates loads into memory and optionally executes utilizes points to contains identify by resides in is pointed to by contains identifies allows execution after loading of is loaded to is specified by reside in.
    He finally located two readable computer books, and bought them immediately:
The Dumb Child’s Computer Dictionary
and
Talk Good Software
.
    As he tried to sleep, frightening insect-head codes floated before his eyes … splurf, snangk, gamnoga …
    Leaving the plane in New York, he and Susan both thought of hell. Wasn’t there a New York neighbourhood called Hell’s Kitchen? No doubt this was Hell’s Entrance Hall, the welcoming trapdoor. They tried to jolly one