The Schizo Project - 2

Eric - King amongst Coders (self appointed)
Cyril Borg (Cyborg) – Frenzied project manager
GSM Disintegrators Inc - Glutinous Sucking Monster, customer from hell
Aardvark – VP, Software development
Ed Slimeball- Marketing guy

Scene1- It is midnight. XYZ-Cheeposoft offices are silent, dark and deserted. But a faint light glows in Aardvark’s cabin. Three dim figures are seen in the light.
(Continued from yesterday…Aardvark has just made the frightening revelation about the incubus in the Schizo contract, thirty years ago)

Eric : The incubus in the Schizo contract!

Cyborg : (whispers) we have heard of it, of course……but no one ever says anything. They clam up and walk away if you ask questions.

Aardvark : It was one line…one itty-bitty line in a 300 page contract. It was all Slimeball’s fault.

Cyborg :You mean our VP of marketing?

Aardvark : Yes…he was a junior marketing executive then. He was our sales rep for the Glutinous Sucking Monster. Our lawyers warned him, but he left that line in.

Cyborg : What was that line?

Aardvark looks heavenwards and intones sonorously

Aardvark : ‘We guarantee that the system will use the latest cutting edge technology and have the most advanced features’.

Eric and Cyborg gasp in disbelief.

Aardvark : Guarantee, mind you…. Guarantee! Slimeball insisted computing technology had reached its zenith with the ENIAC.

Cyborg : And the technology…..

Aardvark : Yes… she moves doesn’t she? Like a juggernaut. From ENIAC, we moved to IBM Main frames, then to VAX and COBOL, then to Unix boxes, then to client server systems and C++. All this was free of cost, mind you. Whenever we asked them to close the project, they pointed to the incubus, and threatened to take us to court. By version 1.114776 we moved it to a web based system using J2EE.

Eric : And since I joined the project, I have been moving it to SOA and Choreography.

Aardvark : And the features…there is always a more advance feature. It started with images…they wanted pictures of the staff in the database…This was in the early 70’s, when this was not a joke. We made pictures using naughts and crosses. Then they wanted links to the SAP payroll system, their ECG records…a few years ago they wanted GSM tracking of their employees…a wireless mobile interface…

Eric : For the last release they wanted to add all the coffee machines to the database, and program them using SMS messages from anywhere in the planet.

Cyborg : Isn’t there any way we can stop them?

To be continued on Wednesday….can the Glutinous Sucking Monster be stopped?
© Poltu