- 2005.04.14
Continuing
our long tradition of literary excellence, the Lite Side is proud to bring you:
The CEO and the Tiger
Part One: In the very olden time there lived a
semi-barbaric CEO, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and
sharpened by the progressiveness of distant civilized neighbors,
were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of
him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and,
withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he
turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to
self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the
thing was done.
When every member of his domestic and political systems moved
smoothly in their appointed courses, his nature was bland and
genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch and some of his orbs
got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for
nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and
close the windows on recalcitrant operating systems.
Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become
semified was that of the operating system, in which, by exhibitions
of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his employees were refined
and cultured.
But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself.
The computer of the king was built, not to give the people an
opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of music or wondrous words,
nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict
between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far
better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the
people.
This vast architecture, with its encircling cables, its
mysterious BIOS chips, and its unseen proprietary code, was an
agent of poetic justice, in which unconformity was punished and
virtue rewarded by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible
chance.
When a competitor created an innovation of sufficient importance
to interest the CEO, public notice was given that on an appointed
day the fate of the person would be decided in the lobby of the
building, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although
its form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated
solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a CEO,
knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his
fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and
action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.
When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the CEO,
surrounded by his board, sat high up on his throne of a stable
multivibration on one side of the lobby, he gave a signal, a door
beneath him opened, and the potential customer stepped out into the
amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the
inclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It
was the duty and the privilege of the customer to walk directly to
these doors and open one of them. He could open either door he
pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the
aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance.
If he opened the one, there came out of it a highly advanced
Tiger, the most advanced and useful Tiger that could be built.
Whereupon the CEO's board told the people they should not accept
the man, and through Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, they tore the
customer asunder.
The moment that the fate of the customer was thus decided,
doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired
bloggers posted on the outer rim of the lobby, and the vast
audience, with bowed heads and downcast hearts, wended slowly their
homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so
old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.
Stay tuned to the Lite Side to learn the fate of the CEO and the
fierce Tiger.
