This story began on March 2, 2000, and went on for 2000 days. Some 200,000 spots were encoded. Over 150 inserters were built and installed and maintained at over 60 headends. Every day some 200 schedules were sent, and 4000 logs were retrieved.
And each day, subsidiarity was performed according to some 1200 portal spot requests, requiring the transport of about 120 spots.
Most of the time I sat around in the Control Room so I could Watch everything run, but once in a while I got to push the buttons. (see below)
It’s all over now, except for some wonderful friends, a handful of stories, a novel, a poem or two, and some jokes. And this book – which, like Tolkien’s story of the Sun and Moon in his Silmarillion, is the last radiant fruit of the system on which my co-workers and I worked so long to erect and maintain. This Tolkien reference is no meaningless allusion: the idea of the Tree is very important, as you will see. I am a Chestertonian as well as a computer scientist, and so my references may sometimes seem distant from my subject. But then, as Chesterton says, "I never can really feel that there is such a thing as a different subject." [ILN Feb 17, 1906 CW27:126]
Paradoxically yours,
Doctor Thursday
The author, some years ago, at the controls of the machinery which performed subsidiarity.
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