MILKO DISCOVERS A BUG
MILKO had just lifted off from Hell when it happened. He had stopped at Hell, one of the Seven Hot Sisters that orbited Psysyphus, to pick up a load of Rutabagas for the Javanese colony on Gabriel, another of the seven. Hell was so hot .. 2000C was a cool day.. that he had kept the Califrag running in order to supply energy for the life support system. That meant that he had taken on additional sand as fuel for the Califrag, and maybe that caused the problem. The Califrag was the plasma engine that made intergalactic jumps possible, and it was unusual to keep it running during planetfall but the secondary energy source wasn't up to Hell.
As he lifted off and prepared to use the Califrag for it's more usual purpose, he noticed that it was operating peculiarly, as if it were leaking plasma. A quick glance at the Califragalistic gauges showed that the plasma was not under its usual 3000 atmospheres of pressure. He would have to shut it down and find the leak..but he couldn't believe it was leaking. No one had reported a leak in Califragalistic plasma during MILKO's lifetime, and probably no leak had occurred since the discovery of the WEB, and it's application to contain the plasma. Plasma leaks were common causes of fatalities in the freighter lanes before Al Gore had invented the Internet.. now affectionately called the WEB. But since then, the nebulous, almost-virtual WEB had been invulnerable.
MILKO had almost been pesent when Al invented (discovered more likely) the Internet. At least he was born almost exactly nine months after the event, and his father had been present. His father had the unusual talent of being able to stay awake during ballets and after-lunch speeches, so he was a natural choice as a partner for Al Gore..since falling asleep at the wrong time could prove fatal, and most of Al's partners had fallen asleep early on in the partnership. In those days, the plasma was contained in a force field that occasionally developed small leaks. When it did, there was no way to patch the leaks short of a new Califrag, and no freighter could afford to carry a spare. So when the plasma leaked you had better be near a settled planet or your goose was cooked. If you didn't like goose you might starve. Al and his father were on a short-haul between Bozeman and Napa when the plasma began leaking. Naturally both men started swearing when they discovered their plight. MILKO's father always swore with a string of random ASCII symbols "!$#%@&". Al swore in his own insipid manner, indiscriminatingly stringing together technical jargon that he had overheard but didn't understand .. "Java-script the HTMLing son of a CSS Super Highway".. "CERF the ARPA net".. when he uttered the magic phrase that put a shimmering WEB around the plasma and stopped the leaks. Al called this the Internet, and claimed discovery the next time he was called upon to speak. But the structure looked so much like a spider web that it became known simply as the WEB. It was this discovery or invention that started AL on his long downhill run to fame and entry into the Grand Pooh-Bah hall of fame, where he resides today as the caretaker of Pooh Bah-dom.
So it was a great surprise when MILKO found that his Web was leaking. He would have to shut it down and try to patch it with the magic phrase that he could never remember.. had never had any reason to use. When he shut down the Califrag he noticed that there were some peculiar lumps of fused glass in the main chamber. They looked for all the world like beetles with their six legs and two antennas, and beautiful shiny bodies, but they were obviously no life-form he had ever heard of.. nothing he knew of could survive the 3000 atmospheres at 2000 C that existed in the main chamber during a burn, and these were not moving anyway. So he cleaned them out, and threw them in the fridge just in case. Then, for some reason he remembered the magic phrase for mending the WEB that never needed mending.. "Hillary Rodham " he uttered. Of course this was wrong, but it was close enough to mend the few small holes that he found. He tossed some sand that he had picked up in Hell into the fuel hopper, and restarted the Califrag. The gauges showed no leak so he was in business!
He made it through another millennium jump when the plasma began to falter again. More holes in the WEB! This time he had better find the cause and stop it, because he was running out of magic phrases. To his surprise, he found another, rather smallish beetle-looking lump that hadn't been there when he threw the sand in. He didn't think it was in the sand, but he had better be sure. He threw it in the Fridge, and began sifting through the remaining sand from Hell. No beetles here, but there were many sand grains that were bigger than one might expect from Hellish sand. They were almost like insect eggs. MILKO improvised a filter using an old flour sifter that he always carried to bake cakes from scratch when he could find any. He filtered over a hundred large grains from the sand, and tossed the filtered sand in the hopper. The egg-grains he tossed in the fridge. He uttered the last magic phrase that he could remember "Java your canoe and Tipper too" and restarted the Califrag.
When he reached Gabriel, after unloading the Rutabagas, he tried a little experiment. He tossed one of the egg-grains into the hopper to see what would happen. Within a few minutes he saw holes begin to appear in his WEB.. what's more he saw a Beetle-like glob of fused glass chewing the holes. When he stopped the Califrag, the beetle like mass dropped to the floor of the main chamber, and remained still. When he picked it up, he noticed that there were several of the egg-like grains in the sand around it. Of course, today we know that MILKO had discovered the Beetle from Hell.. known officially as the Microswift WEB Beetle, or 32Msnondosus. These are known for their voracious appetite for WEB material, and anything that generally comes into their line of vision. Fortunately for the galaxy, they cannot operate except at very high temperature and pressure where they evolved. Unfortunately, they have by now infected almost every Califrag where they can live, and have adapted so that they are very hard to remove. Fortunately Al has come through with a few magic phrases that repair the holes and kill the beetles without turning the Califrag off.
MILKO found that the Beetles were considered a delicacy by the US Department of Justice Lawyers, so he returned to Hell for more breeding stock.. not realizing that the beetle's egg-grains he had in the Fridge were still viable, and would one day come back to haunt him, but that's another story. He did find that there were many other insect-like beings in the sands of Hell. Apparently they had evolved using a metabolism based on Silicon at very high temperature and pressure. They are quite active in Hell, and MILKO never did understand why they had never bothered anyone before.. but maybe no one had used sand from Hell before. They move very slowly or not at all at low temperatures, so that they appear to be inanimate except when in a Califrag. Of course they are almost indestructible, except by fracture at low temperature.
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