The extra shadow

Once there lived a young boy who was just like me and you, with only one minor difference. He has two shadows instead of one. Oh, you must think now, certain plays of the light causes two shadows for anyone. Why, you say, I can see 4 shadows of cricketers when they play in the stadium at night, illuminated by those 4 powerful lights on each corner of the stadium. But they are all lighting effects. The shadow of the boy is no lighting effect. He possesses two shadows, one likened to the rest of us and the other strong and black unlike any that we would have seen. The shadow that this boy has, does not diminish even in the presence of sunlight. Instead it remains with him for ever. Oh, and how proud he is of his extra shadow. He would show it off to everybody. The proud black silhoutte mimicking his every move.

And many admired it. Some worshipped it. But not every one cared for it. In fact, he found a very vitriolic opponent in Shamus who called him a devil. Shamus even managed to turn some of his friends and neighbours against the little boy saying he was the incarnation of Satan and not to be trusted. The boy would look at him, seething rage just waiting to explode. But there was nought he could do about it.

One particular day, the boy while waiting for his transportation to school, was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of boys much meaner and tougher than he. They taunted him and called him the devil. They mocked his shadow and laughed at him for thinking he was all the more great because of it. They jeered at him till he could take it no longer. He ran off to his room and thought aloud to himself, "I wish you dead, shamus. I wish you would die in writhing pain." He thought of nothing but shamus's death the whole day. At night when he went to sleep, he dreamt he was killing shamus.

His mother and father worried at the young boy's sudden sullenness. At night they would tip-toe to his room and see him silently snoring away with his shadow now immersed in the blackness of the room. They wished he would smile and laugh again, showing off his extra shadow once again.

The news next morning stunned everybody. Shamus was found to be hacked into two discrete pieces. The top portion of his body, slashed cleanly from the left shoulder to the his right hip was found to be lying on one side of the ground while the other half lay a little distance away. The mortifying news rang throughout the village and everyone was scared of this new terror that had come to their village. They blamed the general lack of interest in godly matters as the reason for this new terror. But the little boy knew that it was his hate that had killed Shamus.

He was guilty of Shamus's murder and his conscience got to him like a sharp stab to his chest. If he was sullen just a few days back, now he was brooding and grieving. He became more silent and sad than ever. He stopped showing off his shadow to people. He would simply sit in his room, lights all switched off so that he could not see his extra shadow. The object of his pride was now merely a reminder of his guilt. He started hating himself and his shadow instead of Shamus now. He started wishing his shadow would disappear forever.

His parents, after a year of anxiety now started to get really worried. They admonished him for his gloomy behaviour and told him to get out sometimes and see the world. But he would just sit in his room brooding. Then finally, one day, they coaxed him so much that he decided to go out, just this once. Once Out, he felt the soft breeze whissing through his hair and the sun shining at his feet. Oh, how much he missed all these. He started feeling better. He started whistling tunes and became happier all the more. He thought out aloud, "I have been for too long brooding and crying and for what? Just because I was too proud of my shadow who is nothing but just a slave of mine. I will no more be a slave to the flattery. Instead, I will try getting flattery for the right reasons. From today, I will start feeling proud of myself. I shall bec..." And he looked on the ground while uttering these words, he suddenly noticed that his shadow had changed. It was no more mimicking him. It still retained his shape but it had something in its hand. Something that resembled a scythe. The last thing the boy saw was the shadow raising its scythe up over its head.

Dog Breakfast

Once there lived a mad computer whiz. His whole life was dedicated to the study of neural network. And the more he studied it, the more convinced he became that the human brain was incapable of producing such genius as Mozart's symphonies, Ramayana, Invention of glue and crayons etc. I mean, have you ever seen the human brain? What was it but something very similar to a dog's breakfast? He believed that there was a supercomputer located somewhere beyond the reach of human beings, maybe in the center of earth. It was the supercomputer that gave them ideas so that humans would always be busy doing something useless like inventing and discovering stuffs. Hence, some people who communicated with this supercomputer were smart and others would cross roads when the traffic signal was still green.

In order to confirm his theories, he would visit the local mortuary and graves and bribe his way to obtain a brain sample each day. He would put it in a Kentucky Fried Chicken Box and bring it to office every day. Thus leading his peers and bosses to believe that he had just obtained a humungous appetite for KFC. So voluptious appetite that he did not care to share it with them and would eat it in locked rooms.

But the whiz never cared for the other's thoughts on his KFC craze. He would, in his locked room, dissect the brain and check each and every part of the dog's breakfast in order to get some clue. After months of KFC craze, the scientist finally found a clue.

There was a small organ located on one side of the brain. What use was this organ but as a transmitter? It did not help in any way with the functioning of the brain Also this organ did not exist in some people. People who were stupid did not posses this organ. But genius's belong to Mensa club had these organs very developed and large. What better proof for the existence of the mythical supercomputer?

He was ecstatic and just had to celebrate his discovery. He dreamt that he was winning the Nobel Prize. He went to the bar and had a few rounds of drinks and then went onto the top of the building and jumped from it, killing himself.

While sitting in the bar, it had struck him that such a notion of a supercomputer could only have been put into his head by the supercomputer itself. What use of a Nobel Prize for a prize that he did not deserve?
(adapted from TimeQuake - Kurt Vonnegut)

Indoor Sex Please

A ship once was caught in a dreadful storm. And try as they may, the captain and his team could not save the ship. The ship sank and a computer programmer who was on board was washed ashore a strange island. He dragged himself to the safety of a cove nearby and fell unconscious onto the floor.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by a strange tribe of people who spoke a strange tongue. They all crowded around and looked at him with astonishment. Apparently this was the first time, they were seeing another human come from the sea. They treated their new guest with great respect. They gave him coconut juice and some meal which had some fleshy thing in it. They took him around their precious island and showed him a grotesque figure. The computer programmer thought it was their deity.
At night, they did a strange hoogaa-boogaa dance. The programmer was also invited to the dance. It was pretty easy and they all had great fun. Many days passed and the programmer decided to teach his new friends the miracles of mordern science.
Now that he was versed in the new tongue, he told them of a box which could do many things simultaneously. It was called as the computer. You could write in it and read materials from all over the world from it. You could send letters to people in other places. As he started describing the computer, the tribesmen started chanting "Indoor Sex Please" in a very low voice.
He described more about the computer. He described process management and thread management. The chanting became louder. "Indoor Sex Please, Indoor Sex Please". When he started describing Virtual Memory they started screaming "Indoor Sex Please, Indoor Sex Please". So excitedly the programmer asked him to take him to this place where Indoor Sex was.
They took him to the cabin next to the chieftains. Inside sat one tribesman, playing solitaire on a computer. Next to the computer was a manual of --- Windows XP.

Apocalypse Machine

Once a bunch of computer programmers sat together and made a machine that would tell them the fate of the human race. They set it to work and left it alone for a 250 years. The machine was virtually forgotten during that long duration. There remained only one programmer who took care of the archaic machine. One day, he heard a whirring sound and the machine produced a printout. He went ahead and looked at the printout and was surprised. The machine predicted that the human race had only 290 years to live out of which 250 years had already finished.

He called up the press and he called up other computer programmers and told them the result that he had obtained. They were all surprised at the result and they all unanimously agreed that it was a bug rather than a prophetic apocalypse. But the initial programmer was not willing to believe that it was a bug. So the programmers came and checked through the entire code and hardware of the machine. They sat and studied the problem, line by line. Science had progressed much since the programmers of the past had made that machine. And they looked for errors in the thinking of the programmers. Finally after 3 solid years of hard work, they found an error in the code. It was a very unnoticeable error but one with profound implications. They corrected it and ran the machine. The machine would continue to run for another 250 years.

After 250 years, the machine whirred and produced a printout which read that the human race had 292 years to live out of which 250 years had already finished. Unfortunately, there was no one else to read that prophetic apocalyse because the whole human race had been wiped out 200 years ago.
- by Joe Antarrior