Crypto: 0
As-Received-By: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language-Path: Arbwyth->Trade 24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Twirlip of the Mists
  [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in a single jovian system.
  Very sparse priors.]
Subject: Blighter Video thread
Keywords: Hexapodia as the key insight
Distribution: Threat of the Blight
Date: 8.68 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
  I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from
Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only
gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true
that humans have six legs? I wasn't sure from the
evocation. If these humans have three pairs of legs,
then I think there is an easy explanation for

--MORE--

While the original transmissions of the video and the rest of that posting have been lost in the mists of time, some archivists wonder if the following reconstructed digital artifact might be that video from Straumli Realm?

Regardless of how many legs humans had (it is indeed not clear from the video), those creatures were so primitive they thought storing information on spinning rust was a good idea. They would then put the rust into war machines to force each other to do repetitive labor -- instead of just building different types of machines to do the work directly. They did other crazy things like using high-density nuclear energy sources to fight over control of low-density carbon-based energy sources. They used rockets and advanced material science to fight over farmland instead of using the rockets to move into self-replicating space habitats built using advanced material science. They used biotechnology to plague each other over small genetic differences instead of using it to heal themselves, diversify their surroundings, and create arcologies. Most of them did not seem to have understood the irony of tools of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity. Even their "intelligence" agencies used the tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. No wonder they are credited with spawning a Blight.

A few interpretative programmer-archeologists, however, feel that the video predates the Blight and was instead about some sort of preemptive "countermeasure". They believe they have recovered an early version of the software discussed in the video from some fossilized rust. They have made an educational exhibit with a working prototype at the "MORE" link above.

But many experts in Computer Science and Applied Theology dispute the historical accuracy of the recreation -- both from the lack of enough rust to do fully verified reconstructions and also from the utter alienness of such creatures and their way of thinking. They point out that the video seems to predate the reconstructed software by several years and describes a somewhat different program architecture with more modules. These experts warn that reconstructing software that might be from Blight times is simply too risky -- especially software designed by such confused creatures.

Events such as this prove once again the universe is all ronzelle between.