The Diagnostic Supervisor stepped out of Turbolift TLA3:, and stared at the
carnage before him on the bridge. The captain's OPA0 console was nearly
completely dismantled, and components littered the floor.
"Ah, there you are, McCoy, I'm just having a spot of trouble with the
log recorder. I have replaced everything in the chair except the paint so
far ..."
The communicator beeped.
"Ensign Roche to Bridge, I've located 15 liters of the chemical colorant
you were looking for".
"Good, send it up to the bridge, along with two crewmen armed with multibristle
emulsion applicators."
"McCoy", he said, turning to the amazed Supervisor, "have you any ideas about
repelling this attack, and getting the captain back ?"
"I have been in touch with Remote Diagnostics", said McCoy, earning the
kind of respectful looks from the bridge crew normally awarded to a medium
who has claimed contact with the late departed, "and they advise us to
reverse the position of the ship while they lock weapons."
"Mr Scott", exclaimed Checksum, "planet is locking weapons on the ENTERP::,
some kind of MOVC5 with zero operand beam".
"This could erase our entire address space, Checksum, bring us about, 180
degrees".
The ENTERP:: executed a series of dizzying ROTL instructions, bringing its
face about. The planetary weapons fired, vaporizing a nearby moon.
"I am verra impressed, McCoy, how did it work ?"
"We simply transposed the least significant part of our start address with
the most significant, producing a bitwise reversed virtual address. Normally
this would cause an access violation, but with the weapons latched onto
the first byte as a length indicator it resulted in considerable more
destruction than planned, but in the wrong place".
"But, that might have destroyed the captain and Mr Spock !"
"Ah, well it says here, 'Warning: the redirection of the weapon may cause
system failure, loss of files, or complete destruction of life as we know it
on nearby planets or satellites. Consequently, Digital recommends caution
in the use of this patch'."
"Hmm, anyway, it should take them a while to regen those weapons, meanwhile
lets work on a way to recover the landing party."
W H Y C O P S H A T E Y O U <<<<&l <
-if you have to ask get out of the way-
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was
writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling that
he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the
window, and smash your face into the front fender?...
