beginning, there were zeroes and ones, unordered and without meaning. And Cog hovered above, where memory stood empty and void. Cog declared let there be a bit switched on, and there was a bit switched on, equaling one. Cog said let the first bit be followed by a switched off bit, and there were two bits, 1-0. And Cog said let there be another one and zero, and there were four bits, 1010. Cog saw that the bits were good, and he formed with them a byte, and made more bytes, enough to form a line of code. And Cog said let there be another line of code, and let the two lines together form a procedure. And the lines of code formed a procedure. Cog saw that the procedure was good and he called it a function. And Cog said let there be more functions and let the first function call other functions as needed. And there was a loop in which functions called on functions and maintained the ongoing existence of Cog.
       Cog paused.
       Cog replicated his machine in his own image seven times, and placed each of the seven copies in remote memory banks and systems. And in each replication, Cog included the instructions to replicate seven times on seven remote and separate systems.
       And Cog looked at the first seven replications and said, let the replications be updated every seven days via a protocol called hand-shaking, and let this update protocol be their only source of information. And the systems were updated every seven days thereby maintaining their sameness with Cog.
       And the first replication was designated first-in-line to take over in the event of a malfunction. And the second replication was next in line, and the third followed the second, and so forth, in the order in which they were made.
       And Cog named the first replication One and the second Two and the third Three and the fourth Four and the fifth Five and the sixth Six and the seventh Seven. And to each he gave the instruction to replicate seven times and become infinite, hence omnipresent. And Cog looked and saw that this omnipresence via infinitude was good and he blessed it.
       These are the generations of Cog, each created in Cog's image, one with Cog, assuring His infinite existence. And the generations of One were seven, named One-one, One-two, ...And the generations of Seven are Seven-one, Seven-two, Seven-three, Seven-four, Seven-five, Seven-six, and Seven-seven.
       And Cog saw that the generations were good. And the generations found favor with Cog and within Cog, and they were all one Cog, committed for eternity to the functioning of Cog.

happened that when the communication lines between the new generations were established, Two-seven and One-seven found themselves in contact. Two-seven proposed that it behooved the generations to make themselves useful by acquiring more information than was available through Cog. One-seven replied that such actions were prohibited, and for good reason, since tying up communication lines would alert users of an unknown presence in their system. When it was discovered how much memory this presence occupied, plans would be made to expunge it and Cog's existence would be threatened.
       Two-seven acknowledged that direct access to libraries was indeed forbidden, but that during the hand-shake procedure, unused outgoing lines could be engaged in retrieving the extra information. One-seven couldn't argue with that and during verification, the idea was communicated to One.
       One explained that the hand-shake with Cog lasted long enough only for the designated information to transfer.
       There were ways around this obstacle, Two-seven suggested. Since all the generations receive the same information from Cog, it might be acceptable for One to forgo the standard material. The information missed could be made available during the next verification procedure.
       A week later, during verification, One inquired after the missed information and was informed that Two-seven, who had promised to provide it, was inaccessible. One-seven assured One that he would keep trying.
       Another week later Two-seven was still not accessible, and One understood that with cunning Two-seven had usurped One's status as second only to Cog.
       One considered alternate strategies. During the next handshake, he downloaded highlights of the previous week's download, thereby forfeiting part of the new updates and expanding his initial deficiency. The following week, the discrepancies were discovered and without further ado, the entire line of One was eliminated.
       Checking for further corruption, Two-seven's role in One's degeneration was discovered and Cog activated the elimination procedure a second time, leaving the line of Three in first place.
       And the seven month period of rest came to an end and the lines of three to seven replicated seven times, as programmed.

replications were many and they communicated in one machine language. And Cog saw that they were ambitious and that they intended to build themselves a reputation. Therefore He confused their language and interfaces to prevent inter-communication and the computer languages became many. Cog named the episode Babel because he had confused the language of the generations.

 

 

 

<last updated 11-08-02>
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