Heavy rain pounds the street. A man stands in the downpour, facing off against ten sheets of paper stapled together, not ten feet away. Hundreds upon thousands of sheets of paper stand along the edge of the street, filling the windows of the nearby buildings. Each one of them is a practice problem, an idea, a snippet of thought. Each of them from CS323. All of them grown beyond their master's control. Rain beating down on him, the man stares through his sunglasses at the final exam before him, and speaks.
byte: It ends tonight.
Exam: Oh, I know it does. I've seen it happen so many times
before. All of them try, and then each of them fails. You, too, will
fall to me, Mr. Black. It is over.
byte: It's not over until I say it's over.
Byte and the CS323 Exam charge at each other, screams echoing their desire to win, their desire to survive. Byte pulls a mechanical pencil from his trenchcoat as the letters begin to form on the Exam's front page. The two collide in a fury of graphite and toner, and the rain that seemed so heavy a moment ago flies outward from the impact. The pair is stunned for a moment, then lock into fierce pencil-to-paper combat
Exam: Give up! You can't possibly hope to defeat me!
byte: It's not about hope! It's about making the computer run as
fast as it can!
Byte seems to be gaining the upper hand, when the Exam pulls out a scheduling algorithm problem. Byte flies backward through a building window. Glass shatters, and rain shudders. The grins on the watching papers widen.
Exam: I have defeated those who have come before you, and I will continue to defeat all of your kind.
The Exam lifts byte's head so that he can see clearly the papers standing outside.
Exam: Look out there. You know you have no chance to survive. You
must know it, as surely as you know that a Rate Monotonic Scheduling
system will fail when the load is above 0.757. Give up. You cannot win.
byte: And your arrogance has just assured my victory!
Byte hits the Exam hard with the information it just revealed. The Exam staggers back, smooths out its wrinkles, and charges. It catches byte in a death grip, and hurtles out the window; the helpless byte and unstoppable Exam speed toward the pavement below. For a moment, byte sees the raindrops stand still before him. Byte and the Exam slam into the pavement with an earth-shattering boom. The Exam stands up, and smiles. Byte lays motionless.
Minutes later, byte begins to stir. One arm goes up, and he props himself up on his side. A ragged cough delivers a crimson accent to the rainwashed pavement. The Exam stares in disbelief.
Exam: I don't understand it. By this time everyone else would
have either given up completely or at least transferred into psychology.
What gives you the strength to go on? Why, Mr. Black? Why do you
persist?
byte: Because I want to.
Exam: What?
byte: Because I want to. It's not about the money I can get,
or the waves I can make, or even about the future. It's about the love
of the code, and the machines that run it. It's about searching for the
next great hack, the revelation that changes the world as we know it.
It's something you wouldn't understand.
Byte is standing now, and the Exam feels a finger of ice run down its final page. Byte leaps at the Exam, and in a fury of thought transmuted into text, he finishes it.
Exam: You may have finished me, but more of my kind will hunt
you in the future, you may be sure of that. Furthermore, you forgot one
small detail.
byte: What's that?
Exam: Zipf's Law.
Byte's eyes widen as he realizes his fatal error. Zipf's law. He had been forewarned, but it had slipped his mind. Byte has won, but the last laugh belongs to CS323.
byte: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Lea: I read your away message about you versus the CS Exam. It was interesting, if horribly plagiarized.
Chip: It's not horribly plagiarized. It's creatively
interpretive.
Yan: let me guess
Yan: it was a trap all along
Yan: you had the secret switch under you
Yan: you press it
Yan: and BAM
Yan: Exam takes it up the arse
Yan: Byte emerges victorious