Once upon a time, there was a young applications programmer who had worked for the company only a few months. It was Christmas, and her mean old Project Leader was making her work until her system was written (while he went off to London to chase bits).

Suddenly, the room was loaded with AIDE bugs. The applications programmer was so frightened and confused, she fell on her assembler. She was struggling desperately with the program when, out of nowhere, came a Special Projects Person, the Bytecracker Nut. The applications programmer and the Bytecracker Nut battled with the AIDE bugs until all but one (who had a particularly nasty FUBAR* routine) were resolved.

Luckily, they were fighting next to a data stream and a friendly terminalpoll sitting on a numeric pad executed the bug with its two-wire line. The Bytecracker Nut and the applications programmer were very grateful to the terminalpoll and patted him on the I/0 channel as they went down the data path.

A11 Now, the Bytecracker Nut knew of a very special hold buffer owned by a wise old used peripheral salesman, Don Coreloni. He took the applications programmer to the Don where they sat on a fencepost to chat. Don Coreloni showed the programmer his Staff of Specialists (INSERT KAZOOBAND PLAYING "The Bytecracker Sweat" HERE) who performed for them by eating core, dumping disk and becoming transparent.

The applications programmer cried out as her head hit the desk and she woke up. Damn! She'd fallen asleep over another AIDE listing. She glanced at her pocket 102 and noted from the distinctive time display that it was only 22:45! A quick day-of-the-month Inquiry told her it was still 12/24! She hadn't missed Christmas and the football games after all! Joyfully, she gathered her things to go home, silently thanking the Bytecracker Nut for draining the swamp.

Copyright 1977, Shirley Stough