Dec Wars - Chapter 2
A long time ago, on a node far, far away...
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE VAXHACKER
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0: races aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network...
Enter our hero, Luke Vaxhacker, who is out to get some replacement parts for his uncle. The jawas wanted to sell him 3CPU, but 3CPU didn't know how to talk directly to an 11/40 with RSTS, so Luke would still needed some sort of interface for 3CPU to connect to. "How about this little RS232 unit ?" asked 3CPU. "I've delt with him many times before, and he does an excellent job at keeping his bits straight." Luke was pressed for time, so he took 3CPU's advice, and the three left before they could get swapped out.
However, RS232 is not the type to stay put once you remove the retaining screws. He promptly scurried off into the the deserted disk space. "Great!" cried Luke, "Now I've got this little tin box with the only link to that file off floating in the free disk space. Well, 3CPU, we better go find him before he gets allocated by someone else." The two set off, and finally traced RS232 to the home of PDP-1 Kenobi, who was busily trying to run an icheck on the little RS unit. "Is this thing yours? His indirect address are all goofed up, and the size is gargatious. Leave things like this on the loose, and you'll wind up with dups everywhere. However, I think I've got him fixed up. It seems that he's has a link to a data file on the Are-Em Star. This could help the rebel cause." "I don't care about that," said Luke. "I'm just trying to optimize my uncle's scheduler."
"Oh, forget about that. Dec Vadic, who is responsible for your father's death, has probably already destroyed his farm in search of this little RS232. It's time for you to leave this place, join the rebel cause, and become a UNIX wizard! I know a guy by the name of Con Solo, who'll fly us to the rebel base at a price."
Later that evening, after futile attempts to interface RS232 to Kenobi's Asteroids cartridge, Luke accidentally crossed the small 'droid's CXR and Initiate Remote Test (must have been all that Coke he'd consumed), and the screen showed a very distressed person claiming royal lineage making a plea for help from some General OS/1 Kenobi.
"Darn," mumbled Luke. "I'll never get this Asteroids game worked out."
PDP-1 seemed to think there was some significance to the message and a possible threat to Luke's home directory. If the Administrative Empire was indeed tracing this 'droid, it was likely they would more than charge for cpu time...
"We must get that 'droid off this file system," he said after some intervals. They sped off to warn Luke's kin (taking a `relative' path) only to find a vacant directory...