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The Hogs of Entropy 0652
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ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #652
`888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8
888 888 888 888 888 "A Plane Ticket for Yuri"
888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8
888 888 888 888 888 " by Trilobyte
888 888 `88b d88' 888 o 5/22/99
o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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first day at atari headquarters. yuri looked at the vending machines
and decided they were not enough for his needs.
"i need cans of roast duck. without roast duck i cannot develop the
games that you need to survive," he told his coworkers.
the cans of coke were fine with him. he went to his cubicle and set
up pictures of his family back in russia and his dog, molly, who was back at
him in his apartment.
yuri was in love with a girl who worked at a cafe he liked to go to
there in sillyvale, california. she didn't like him, though -- she thought
that he was a scary, overpowering comrade. that turned her off.
yuri sat down in his new chair in his new cubicle and spun around.
he then stood up and looked at everyone else in every other cubicle.
"hello!" he shouted and began to shake his arm in the air. "i am
yuri! i am your new coworker. if any of you want to play any video games
against me on break i will kick any of your asses!"
the people who had looked up at yuri when he began his tirade
immediately looked back down at their work when he stopped. yuri continued
to survey his surroundings and then returned to his chair.
his boss came up, sweating and nervous.
"heh, yuri, it's great to have you here," he panted. "heh. you
introduced yourself to all your coworkers, that's great. they all knew you
were coming but i'm sure they didn't know exactly what kind of person you
were. heh." he adjusted his shoulders. "i heard about your, uhh,
complaint about how we haven't got roast duck. i'm going to work on that
for you. maybe we can send someone out to the market when you want to eat.
how does that sound?"
"no. i no wait when i get hungry. either i get roast duck or i get
a plane ticket back to russia," he replied.
his boss began to sweat some more. "heh," he replied nervously,
"well, like i said, we will work on that for you, yuri. well, this is bob,
the project manager, who would like to have a few words with you."
"what you say?" yuri questioned.
"he wants to tell you about the project you'll be working on."
"oh. yes. well i tell him the project _i_ be working on. bob, you
come listen to _me_," yuri commanded.
bob walked over and put his hands in his pockets. "ok, what," he
said, condescendingly.
"i work on program that is all about love. that is what i work on.
you pay me, i work on program. it will make me happy."
bob stared at yuri for a moment.
"you mean that we flew you over here, offered you tons of money, and
you think you're just going to code something to make _you_ happy? no...
no. yuri, you are here to make _us_ happy. then we pay you, so _you_ can
be happy."
"money is nice, but money is not all. i work on this program and it
will make me happy."
bob was getting peeved. "you're going to do what we want you to do,
because we're paying you. you're working for us, doing a job for us.
that's why we pay you. so you have to do that job. if you have some
program to write that you just thought up, you're going to have to write it
on your own time."
yuri decided to stop the battle. he shouldn't push his luck, because
maybe they don't need him as much as he thought. sure, he was a great
programmer over in russia. he wrote some of the best secret software
programs for communist-era soviet government management. he wrote cold war
simulations. he began this depressing work as a warm young man,
enthusiastic about ideas and possibilities. years later, atari ended up
hiring yuri as a 35-year-old man disinterested in what others believe are
his accomplishments. none of them meant anything to him. he had loftier
goals which he was not allowed to achieve.
he was willing to cooperate with atari. perhaps he could be happy.
"ok, you win," yuri told bob. "it is dumb for me to write my program
on your time. i work for you, i write program for you. it is my job."
"yeah," said bob.
bob began telling yuri his assignment -- some sort of realistic 3D
tank simulation. it involved a lot of mathematics and computers with a lot
of horsepower. and it was very very heartless. perfect work for yuri.
weeks went by and yuri had already designed a perfectly efficient
core to the simulation, cleanly replacing the one developed over the course
of 4 years by the team. he hadn't consulted with them at all. another few
weeks went by and atari moved the other people on the project away from it,
giving complete control to yuri. government representatives stopped by the
offices frequently to view progress because they would likely be licensing
the software.
6 months went by and the simulation was complete. yuri had made
oodles of cash and built himself a giant mountaintop mansion. he said he
owed his quick success to nights of study and careful planning at the cafe
in sillyvale, and to his cans of roast duck he has at home.
the government came to atari's office for the final showing of the
tank simulation. hundreds of army officers crowded into the room to stare
at the 20-foot projection screen that would be the display. atari's top
executives stood by, beaming with pride. yuri stood up in front, next to a
supercomputer, and in front of the display.
it was time for the presentation to begin.
the lights went dim, but not out.
"ladies and gentlement, colleagues, patrons, and friends, i welcome
you to this room today. i have designed the most advanced tank simulation
in known history. i will show it to you soon. first i must say thank you
to my project manager, bob. without you, i couldn't have found the
motivation in my heart to write this program. but you convinced me. and i
hope that this will make us both happy."
yuri flipped the switch.
the display looked amazingly real, showing two ultra-detailed tanks.
they had robotic arms and seemed very large. the program controlled the
movement of these tanks as they travelled across the landscape.
eventually the tanks split courses and the display went split-screen.
one tank began driving through an ultra-realistic depiction of downtown
sillyvale, the other one was driving through a suburban neighborhood.
the tank in the downtown stopped in front of yuri's favorite cafe and
its robotic arm smashed through the window. the view switched so that it
seemed to be coming from the hand on the end of the arm. it weaved through
the crowd in the very detailed representation of the cafe, and came upon
yuri's favorite waitress and grabbed her. the arm retracted back through
the cafe, knocking over a few tables and hitting some people. when it had
completely removed the waitress from the cafe, it turned around and headed
back the way it had come.
"hmm, hostage recovery abilities," thought many of the army
officials.
meanwhile the other tank drove down a street called "meadowbrook
lane". it stopped in front of a very large 3-story brick home, number 1206.
a loud noise filled the simulation room. it sounded like a stampede.
yuri took this moment of loud volume to sit down on a nearby chair.
suddenly a whole slew of ducks came into view. very very well
rendered. there were probably about 190 of them. the tank's robotic arm
broke through the doors and windows of the house, and then a super powerful
air compressor blew all of the ducks toward the house and through the
openings. the tank sprayed some sort of liquid all over the house and then
spit fire at it with a flamethrower. the house instantly glowed and burned.
ducks inside were roasting alive. the tank turned around and headed back
the way it had come, again showing the lonely streets of the suburban
neighborhood.
"that's really versatile," thought a few army engineers.
"this simulation can be used to simulate any use of tanks," thought
a few others.
yuri stood up in front of the crowd and stopped the simulation. the
army officers stood up and applauded, as did many atari executives. that is,
all except for his boss and bob.
bob, in fact, phoned the police, but couldn't tell them what he
wanted to because just as the station answered, a tank, carrying a girl,
burst through the wall of the room. it was the waitress from the cafe. the
army engineers ran to another end of the room as the tank quickly crushed
their collapsible chairs.
yuri walked up to the tank when it had stopped moving. he grabbed
the girl's legs and shouted "NAY". the tank released its grip on her and
she fainted in his arms.
bob then ran up to yuri, shouting and wailing, "ARE YOU INSANE? ARE
YOU FUCKING INSANE? I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS. THIS IS CRAZY! YOU ARE
CRAZY! YOU HAVE DESTROYED EVERYTHING!"
fire engines were heading to bob's house to try to put out the fire,
and maybe to save a few of the roasting ducks. that is, all the ones that
hadn't already been roasted.
yuri hopped in the tank with the waitress and headed off to the
sillyvale airport. his route was surrounded by tanks under his control,
from the atari offices all the way there. waiting for him at the airport
was a privately chartered jet. all yuri had to do was show them his ticket
and he would be whisked away back to russia with his new girlfriend.
and they lived happily from then on.
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[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #652 - WRITTEN BY: TRILOBYTE - 5/22/99 ]
