scannell@bubba.ma30.bull.com (P Scannell) (02/07/91)
{ed This article is rather long and only mildly amusing with a few
good points to be found within. Read it if you wish.}
Copyright 1991 Patrick D. Scannell
Used by Permission
"The Maltese Function"
Pragma Spade looked across his desk at the bizarre group which
had gathered in his office: Bridgid Stack-O'Verflough, the
mysterious woman who was not what she seemed (but was what she
seemed not to be); Caspar Gauteux, the corpulent French collector
of rare and curious software; his gun-wielding assistant, Wilmer
Flintstone; and the swarthy, unpredictable Cole Gyro. Behind
them, the office door with the legend "Spade and O, Private
Inspection Consultants" (The door painter had been shot dead in
the midst of scraping off Spade's ex-partner's name, but
fortunately none of the shots had hit the glass.) reminded Spade
of those who were not present: Floyd Thorough, Bridgid's late
partner; Miles O'Fay, Spade's equally late partner; Captain
Steubing, the late captain of the Pacific Princess; and Tommy
Dorsey, the late bandleader. They had tried, all of them, to
outwit him, but now he was holding all the cards. Better still,
he had all the cards and a gun.
Since thinking ahead had done him no good whatsoever, he thought
back, back to the beginning of the case. Bridgid had come to
them looking for an experienced Project Inspection Coordinator (PIC)
to be the third person in a code inspection, and after
a careful consideration of the facts of the case (especially
those facts which were encased in silk stockings or had portraits
of Benjamin Franklin on them) Miles had agreed to act as
Moderator and Recorder. But something had gone wrong. Floyd
Thorough had been shot leaving his hotel, and Miles had been
found not long after drowned in a vat of beer, not even his usual
brand. Spade remembered the joke about the man who drowned in a
vat of beer (which makes two levels of flashback, so save your
context) who got out twice to go to the bathroom, but in real
life it was a shock. Even the hard-bitten police lieutenant had
never seen anything like it. "He's our first drowned draft PIC,"
was how he had put it.
Ms. Stack-O'Verflough had gone into hiding, and Spade had begun
combing the Inspection Clubs for clues. Were the two deaths
related? What was the point of the flashback, if not? Was it the
work of some demented Serial Inspection Team Killer?
One other, even more gruesome, possibility had occurred to him.
He had heard rumors, maybe only legends, of killer software,
source code so convoluted that one look made instant death.
Could it be more than rumor?
He had visited some the old-fashioned inspection clubs, where the
speed of inspection was kept with a steady drumbeat, just as in
the days when galley slaves rowed the Roman warships. (The
practice of inspection had first been used to verify the
correction of printer's proofs, which were called galley proofs
for this reason.) The beat could be anywhere from a slow one-two
to what was still referred to as "water-skiing speed":
LOAD bit and SET true, BRANCH false for ERror!
NOW load in AR five, STORE with an OFFset!
No one there had heard of any Inspection killings, except a few
isolated incidents of Moderators shooting Inspectors for failure
to prepare adequately. But it was that kind of town, you had to
expect things like that.
At the Rock Inspection Station, Spade learned nothing more
(except a new dance):
Load the contents of location into Register 3
(Singin' do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do)
Then compare it to zero cause that's what it's s'posed to be
(Singin' do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do)
Branch here, branch there
It's an error, you're nowhere!
He did hear a rumor about a big shipment of magic mumbers coming
in from Haiti (which, as an Inspection Consultant, he would have
to watch out for), as well as rumors of zuvembies (or zombies),
who were now being referred to as "reuseable coders."
At the Inspection Disco, they call the Reader a "Rapper." The
beat was different but the story was the same:
He loads it IN a double WORD
and shifts it LEFT it sounds abSURD
then shifts it RIGHT leaves one bit LEFT
to give that VALue he can TEST!
Stop! Defect time!
At On The Code With Jack Kerouac, he relaxed and listened to the
laid-back Reader (but of course he was looking for defects,
because that's the rule) with his bongo drums: "Then, like, if he
finds an error he branches to the error routine" bip bip BOP
"which is, like, a cool thing to do because it illustrates the
erroneous nature of existence, you know?"
Finally, he tried the Metropolitan Inspection House, where they
were inspecting "Das Rheincode." At the Met, the Moderator was
addressed as "maestro", and the work product was read by a chorus
of Readers, interrupted by frequent cries of "Hojotojo!" (This
is apparently a Spanish word, since it is pronounced "hoyotoyo",
and it means, "I think I've spotted a defect!" It has nothing
whatever to do with Japanese motels with orange roofs.)
Load up the REGister!
Compare it to ZEro!
Branch if it ISn't!
Because it's an ERRor!
Finally, Spade had given up. There were no clues to be found.
But then Cole Gyro had come to his office, holding him at
gunpoint while he searched Spade's data base. Apparently he
hadn't found what he was looking for. Spade had knocked him out,
taken away his gun, and searched him, finding only fifteen knives
in assorted sizes and a huge selection of fake diamond jewelry.
"A real cut-and-paste type," he had decided.
Later, he had also taken away Wilmer's gun, and later
accidentally given Wilmer's gun back to Gyro, and vice versa.
Now they were both mad at him. Wilmer claimed the .22 made him
look like a sissy, and Gyro said carrying the heavy .45 gave him
lower back pain like you wouldn't believe. Gyro wasn't speaking
to Spade, and Wilmer's last comment had been, "Yeah, well inspect
this, pal!"
Then the Pacific Princess had caught fire and burned to the
waterline, almost injuring Charo, and Captain Steubing had ended
up dead in Spade's outer office, with a knife in his back
inscribed "Courtesy of Cole Gyro." But more than that, he
carried a diskette with him which contained a single source
file. Spade had cleverly mailed it to himself electronically,
with a time delay, and deleted the original file from the
diskette. (That's just the kind of bold, no-backup-copy guy he
was.)
And now (Pop your original context off the stack please. All
set? Good.) he had them all in his office at gunpoint. Now he
could get some answers. If only he could think of a question.
Wait a minute! That was it! "What's going on, anyway?"
"Egad, sir," said Gauteux, "I like a man who gets right to the
point, even when he hasn't any. Are you familiar with the island
of Malta, sir?"
"Vaguely. It's where Malta milk comes from, isn't it?"
"That's correct, sir. But what you may not also know is that it
was a sort of cultural center for the art of software development
in the late fifteenth century. So much so that the Pope himself
at that time commissioned the software artisans there to write
him a sort function for a new programming language being
developed by the Jesuits. Naturally, the artisans wanted to make
it the best sort function they possibly could, and they designed
the greatest sort algorithm ever created, before or since. But
in the end they were unable to debug it thoroughly. Can you
imagine how difficult it is to write machine code using Roman
numerals? Eventually they ran nearly a century over their
original schedule. They did not, of course, have Time Line to
help them out. Did you know, by the way, that Stonehenge was
built by the Druids as a tool for scheduling development of a
large operating system? No matter, sir, I digress. To make a
long story short, sir, the object code was delivered to the Pope
(though not the same one) with several bugs in it, and the
compiler was never shipped outside of Italy. The source code was
captured by pirates and believed lost, but it exists, I tell you,
and we are about to see it."
"You mean the diskette Captain Steubing had?"
"Exactly, sir, exactly. Floyd Thorough procured it for me in
Istanbul, and then attempted to steal it. We believed that he
had mailed it here electronically, but in fact it was smuggled
over on the Pacific Princess on a diskette hidden in Charo's
guitar. What puzzles me is why Steubing brought it here, instead
of giving it to Miss Stack-O'Verflough."
"It's just one of those comic mixups he's so famous for. Was so
famous for. But why does anyone want it, except for historical
interest?"
"It's the greatest sort algorithm ever created. If we can
inspect it using modern inspection methods and get the defects
out of it, it would be worth millions."
"I see. And what do you have to say about all this, sweetheart?"
"Nothing," said Ms. Stack-O'Verflough. "I'm only here because I
couldn't get tickets to 'Cats.'"
"That's too bad," he said. "Because --" Suddenly a bell rang,
and message came up on Spade's terminal indicating that he had
mail from himself. "Here it is," he said, and printed out a
copy. He examined it, then handed the copy to Gauteux.
"Now, as I was saying, someone's going to have to take the fall,
and I think you're it, beautiful."
"Watch it with the names, pal."
"I meant the little lady."
"I'm six foot four, bub."
"I may just shoot you all an have done with it. I've got such a
headache."
"Perhaps, sir, you should finish what you were saying. Someone
to take the fall, you say. You mean for the murders of Thorough
and O'Fay?"
"No, they knew the risks when they became software engineers.
They should have known better than to get careless."
"Steubing, then. I must confess I am curious to know who killed
him."
"Anybody who got a look at that source code, I'd say, It's not a
pretty sight."
"That's true, sir, that's true. But now tell me, what is this
fall you're referring to?"
"Well, what happens when you inspect that code?"
"Why, I expect it will require a rework, by the look of it."
"And someone's going to have to do the rework. And it's not
going to be me. The original Producer is long dead."
"I see you're point, sir. And you favor casting the young woman
in that role?"
"Who else? Wilmer or Gyro? Neither one could code their way out
of a paper bag."
"Perhaps, sir, you'd like to discuss this with the lady alone.
We could wait in the foyer."
"Yeah, do that."
"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.
"Forget it kid. Any program with that bad a history should be
thrown out and rewritten. You want to go with them and do the
rework? You'll be at it for twenty years. But I'll wait for
you, precious."
"I don't think so. Now what?"
"I'll give them the diskette and they'll go."
"Just like that?"
"They think they've got a fortune, and if they don't have to
split with me they'll let you out of it." He turned to the
machine, dumped the source onto a diskette, opened the door and
tossed it to Gauteux. "Here, take it," he said. "It's the stuff
defects are made of."
THE END
--
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