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Gentian is a town in the far hills of Mandatory, and Jacques was a not so humble commuter programmer. Jacques was suppose to program some poor sod, to live a normal, and hopefully useful sort of life. Jacques, unfortunately, had higher ideals in mind.
Jacques was not one to let his commuter dwaal in the mist of stupidity, or sloppy programming. Nor did he show too much interest in the mind bending preparations of the hermitians. Thus his commuter wasn't amongst the alcoholics, druggies or other drop outs.
In fact his commuter was quite a respectable sort of commuter, working all day at a thoroughly respectable job then commuting back home in the evening. All in all, a solid but unexceptional citizen.
Occasionally symptoms of the malaise of his programmer showed through in the commuter, preoccupation with nonessential things like philosophical questions, pretty mathematics and the like. Not serious enough for the commuter to be anything more than an interested layman in these areas. But a warning symptom none the less.
The problem was that Jacques, was bored with this task. He wanted to be involved in answering truly fundamental questions of this existence. Not just doing an essentially maintenance task. Admittedly, programming is a marginally scientific task, but this merely frustrated him. He wished for far, far greater things.
If he was allocated to a menial job such as cleaning old, battered souls, he may well of settled down. But Jacques now had his hands on some fairly powerful hardware, a research grade human commuter. But was bound to programming it to do the boring but essential commuting between office and home.
Jacques' own programmer was himself somewhat lax. There were many things to be decided, delegated, conjugated etc. and one sub-optimal programmer was minor.
One day, in the Christmas season when everyone had dispersed to mingle with their nestlings among the fringes of the stars, Jacques decided to steal a bit of time on his commuter to answer some questions of interest to him.
Could he instruct his commuter, (who worked at a small clinic not far from Gentian), to apply itself to understanding? For example, can the commuter come to understand why the vacuum cleaner turns the air blue?
Initially the answer came back, the commuter thought he had run the vacuum cleaner run over some "Blue Wonder" powder split on the carpet.
Jacque's fiddled and tinkered over lunch time. Always a bad sign. After substantial improvement to the algorithms, the commuter realised that the air turns blue because his colleague Jill is swearing.
"Aha!", said Jacques, "the problem becomes more interesting. I must devise an algorithm that enables my commuter to understand the motivations of his fellow humans."
Having thought this, Jacques worked on through Tea and Lunch time, (a sure portent of trouble). Just before home time, he had compiled, debugged, and downloaded his program into his commuter.
"Aha!", said the commuter, "The electrical noise generated by the cleaner interferes with Jill's patients' cardiac pacemakers, making them hop in fractal circles. So when dotty old Mrs. J. jiggers Jill's potted-tiger off the counter, and then doesn't say she is sorry, Jill gets cross cross cross!"
Thus pleased as a punch card, Jaqcues logged off reality and drifted home.
While lying, tanning in the starlight, contemplating his own cleverness, Jacques mind dwelt on his efforts. "But this is much too complex!", thinks Jacques, "My program has reached a thousand lines of the 'See' language, but is no closer to the fundamental questions of existence.."
Like all programmers, he was a programmer because no one but a commuter would listen to him. He longed to tell someone what a clever thing he had done. But the only creature that would listen to him was his commuter. But that, of course, was forbidden. Unheard of! A programmer fraternizing with his commuter? Disgusting. But he was desperate, and telling the guard at the gate he was working late, sat down once fateful more at his terminus, and made his commuter work late too.
Jacques, who is forever cursed, told his commuter everything that should have been kept hidden, told him that he Jacques, was his programmer. He explained to him how it was to lie basking in the high energy rays of the stars. He described the purple notions of adjoint logic. But worst of all, he explained what he had done and showed his commuter the understanding program.
The commuter, naturally having all the inclinations of the programmer, was fascinated. "Go on", said Jacques, "Try it out!" Willingly the commuter asked himself, "Given the program inside me, will my answer to this question be 'Not on your Nellie'? Answer 'Aye' or 'Not on your Nellie'"
Thus said, Thus done. And reality hung. Crashed. Fell over.
On examining the log files of Reality X57\A\Earth-100(b), it was discovered that a powerful reality paradox had been generated, destroying the illusion of consistency.
If on looking at the understanding program, the commuter predicted he would say 'Aye', then the answer to the question is clearly 'Not on your Nellie'. If the commuter predicted he would say 'Not on your Nellie', then the answer to the question is 'Aye'.
If Jacques had asked that question of himself, it would have just been a question he couldn't answer correctly. But commuter programs govern the reality in which they run, hence the disaster.
Regrettably five different realities succumbed one after the other when programmers from higher realities, attempting to understand the cause of the disaster, ran Jacque's program on their commuters.
No retribution can be taken on the guilty programmer, Jacques Turing, as his reality was the second to be destroyed.
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