Silikits &
Ripov
by Albert Russo
After years of hesitation,
Ripov who was sinking dangerously into the
doldrums, decided one morning that enough was
enough and that he wouldn't let his life slip
away like those silly cows that watched the
express train zip by for the umpteenth time,
asking themselves the same silly question over
and over again: "Was it a bird, was it a
snake, or maybe the ghost of my lover bull?"
and mooed their hearts out until their jaws ached,
reminding them to continue to graze in their
silly old fashion.
Thus did Ripov take the
plunge and in less than a month he became
conversant with the most arcane aspects of
computerdom, leap frogging from kwic to kwoc,
juggling with bits, bytes and gigaflops and
unmasking every tom dick and pixel that cluttered
the screen when the system froze after a
thrashing bout.
He soon learned that if you
showed excessive shyness before the machine, it
would make you sweat profusely, turning you into
a hot fountain such as one encounters in watering
holes, and that, worse even, it could reduce your
gray matter to a pitifully soft ware.
Intent on reaching for the
very soul of the .machine and to prove who was
the master - he'd seen the dramatic effect
computitis had over so many humans who, no longer
able to cope, were joining the Pinocchio Club in
droves - Ripov attended the International
CompuFair for the two full weeks that it lasted.
Not only did he visit every stand during the day,
but having managed to put the electronic alarm
under temporary hypnosis after the last charwoman
had left the premises, he also spent his nights
there, disassembling the more sophisticated
equipment piece by piece, in order to acquaint
himself with the field's latest innovations. In
one of the systems which was endowed with
superconductivity, he even detected the presence
of a virus. "Holy cow !" Ripov
exclaimed upon discovering the little bugger,
"you must have been introduced here by a
whizz kid from the competition. Good thing I
snooped in to prevent the great snafu, the entire
program would have gone berserk and fouled up
years of research worth millions of dollars. This
company will never know how blessed they are that
I have crossed their path", he remarked with
a smirk.
At dawn everything would be
back in place and nobody would have the faintest
clue about the dealings of the CompuPrince of
Darkness. But reckoning that one could never be
cautious enough, Ripov began to wear smoked
glasses to conceal the feverish redness of his
eyes.
It was after the virus
incident that the idea of creating programs and
devising silikits sprouted in his mind. His aim
was to improve the lot of mankind by letting
people benefit from the phenomenal advances of
artificial intelligence and not be subjugated by
it, as was alas too often the case.
His heart bled to see the
cohorts of humans queuing behind the Pinocchio
Gates at the four corners of the earth while
attendances at the Disney Parks were depleting in
an alarming fashion, leaving Walt's ghosts more
space to roam about than they needed. Ripov thus
set up his personal campaign against ASS (Artificial
stupidity syndrom) and began producing silikits
by the dozens. But soon these became so popular,
demand soaring to such peaks, that Ripov was
faced with the toughest and most pressing
decision of his life; it was either choke under
the avalanche of orders or expand. And so, before
the end of fiscal year 1, the backyard workshop
had evolved into a multinational corporation with
branches as far flung as Tibet, Botswana and the
Antarctic. Strangely enough, during the same
period, an impressive number of UFO sightings
were being reported and subsequently registered
by local and state authorities, for entire
warehouses of silikits were disappearing ... into
thin air, literally.
What was all the rage about?
Boxes of candy and chocolate-coated silicon chips.
These silikits consisted of independent units
whose effect upon the moment of ingestion lasted
24 hours. In other words, each chip corresponded
to a day's treatment. Anyone, anywhere could as a
consequence be enlightened in any field of his or
her choice for the duration of the treatment. A
bum could thus attend the International
Gynecological Convention, provided of course he
shed his stinking rags, sprinkled himself with
Eau de Cologne and wore decent clothes, and he'd
have absolutely no difficulty following Dr.
Twatowski's dissertation. The same applied to a
Midwestern farmer who, concerned about the
erratic behavior of his cows, and having sucked a
VETEX chip, could instantly diagnose it as the
postwinter blahs. A bored housewife, to while
away her time, had the factilty of playing the
ventriloquist as she ran her errands or sat at a
coffeeshop. The professionals at first were
outraged. Doctors, teachers and scientists feared
for their jobs and so did the conjurers and the
Olympic athletes. As for the psychiatrists, who
suffered the worst fits of nostalgia (and refused
to call it melancholy), they revived the now
almost defunct Pinocchio Club. Silikitmania
spread like an epidemic and was hailed by One-day
journalists as the ultimate revolution. Class
distinction and snobbery were passé. Money,
inherited, hard earned or acquired through
illegal channels, had lost its lustre and was no
longer considered a status symbol. Anyone with a
B&S chip under the tongue who spent a few
hours at the Stock Exchange was assured to amass
a fortune. What Ripov failed to take into account
though was human greed and the thirst for power.
Dog and cat owners would incite their pets to
talk like parrots while serving them in specific
tasks. Prurient priests would have their
parishioners confess their lewdest fantasies and
thus enjoy free pornography. Witchcraft workshops
became amazingly popular and churned out
battalions of SS (Scientific Sorcerers) graduates
among whom the president of the United States was
sure to be elected. Some politicians went as far
as using cosmetikits to change the color of their
skin to confuse their opponents.
When Ripov realized that
his silikits were spawning such horror tales, it
was unfortunately too late. Desperate, he locked
himself in his lab and cried his eyes out. He
then took an overdose of silichips and fell into
a deep slumber. When Ripov woke up several days
later, he felt so happy and carefree that he
knocked the door of his lab open with a head
thrust. As he walked downtown, people stared at
him and he repeatedly heard them say "what
is this thing doing in our midst?” Thus had
the inventor of the silichip turned into a silly
amnesic cow whose sole intellectual exercise was
to watch the express trains pass, asking itself
the same silly question over and over again :
"Was it a bird, was it a snake, or maybe the
ghost of my lover bull?”
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