Googlebots Rule
Short Story
Number 11 flourished the printout in front of the chairentity's cameras.
I'd better read it, Chairentity Number 12 grudgingly thought, or I'll never have any peace. Maybe I still won't get any peace, but at least this way there's a chance.
Googlebot. noun. A special type of robot program employed by the Google Internet search engine that ignores the metatags on a Webpage and reads the actual content. Then it knows how to accurately list the Webpage in search results.
'It's amazing,' burbled Number 11. 'The HairyMammals of Earth can put whatever they like in the metatags of their Webpages and most search engines list it! On the Internet, I mean.'
'Really,' yawned Number 12 in a peerless monotone. 'How very interesting.' Of course a life-form descended from a teasmade doesn't need to yawn, but Chairentity Number 12 believed it to be behaviour fitting for a chairentity when dealing with its less responsible colleagues.
'But googlebots are clever! They ignore the stuff in metatags, which can be total fibs, and read the actual content!' Number 11 persevered.
'Fancy that,' added Number 12, attempting to sound patronising, which it believed was also a good move for an esteemed and highly responsible chairentity. Such behaviour may remind its colleague of Number 12's importance, nay, its superiority.
Number 11 deflated. None of its colleagues seemed able to share its interests. Even Number 14 was out of bounds for enthusiasm since witnessing the horrors of Planet Ertia whilst monitoring Honda Prelude's recent astral travels to the distant dystopia. The sheer unchanging, plodding awfulness of that world had surely addled Number 14's parallel processors.
Number 11 returned to its cubicle, locked the door, switched off its external sensors and started to dream:
♥ ℑ ♥
'24/7 it says in our command files,' said the googlebot (Googlebot 1). 'We've always kind of assumed this means that we are supposed to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not that days and weeks mean much to me, living as I do in cyberspace.'
'Oh yes,' agreed another googlebot, Googlebot 2, who was sharing its lay-by.
The googlebots peered out from the lay-by, a currently redundant memory bank in an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and observed the never-ending stream of data whizzing by in both directions. Googlebot 1 was vaguely aware of being hungry and kept half an eye on the data in case anything edible was evident, but really there seemed to be more pressing problems on its mind than food at the moment.
'It could have been the vital statistics of a HairyMammal supermodel that has been hammered feet-first into a large funnel?' it suggested.
'What could?' exclaimed Googlebot 2.
'The 24/7 stuff in our command files.'
'No way.'
'I suppose you're right. That would have been 24 / 7 / 3 or thereabouts, given the shape of your average funnel.'
'Precisely.'
The thing is, Googlebot 1 thought, we are busy. There are at least 8,000,000,000 Webpages now, and that information in itself will be out of date by the time I've thought it, and we have to scan them all for content.
This is our unique function, you see. We ignore the metatags that HairyMammals put onto their Webpages, and see what they really contain. It seems, and you may find this hard to believe, that HairyMammals of Planet Earth who want to sell you overpriced insurance may say their Webpages are about nudity, prizes, free holidays, etc. Can't you just picture the humanoids saying,
''Oh dear, I can't win a free holiday here or ogle HairyMammal mammary glands. Maybe I'll buy another lot of insurance for my car instead?''
No? Neither can I. Where was I? Oh, yes. We are busy. Not busty, busy.
We're not only busy. We are bored. If you had to read the content of all the pages on the web, how would you feel? Imagine some dimwit mistypes one wurd. When they finally correct it, we'll have to read the whole page again!
It's not only the Webpages that cheese us off. Have you seen what we get to eat? Spam. That's what I'm looking for in the data streams at present. There's tons of it, but I'd just like to eat an interesting bit for a change, and that's easier said than done.
Incidentally, have you ever received spam emails and all the content has gone - just this is from totalplonker639@coolmail.com, subject = 'girlz', but there is no text? Well that was our lunch. You should be grateful, really. We got the indigestion and you didn't.
One reason we're lurking in this dead memory segment is that we hope to have spam and chips for a change. The hardware is knackered you see, we can eat the chips and no-one will ever know. Dessert is even worse - pop-up tarts or pop-up tarts. What a choice. They always use artificial sweeteners as you have probably guessed.
8,000,000,000 is just a number to you, I bet. Ah, poor little googlebot is bored, you may think. Have you any idea how bored? How could you have?
You know the song 'Seven green bottles?' I recently penned a variation called ''33,276,971,608 spam emails''. It went like this:
33,276,971,608 spam emails, standing on the wall,
33,276,971,608 spam emails, standing on the wall,
And if one spam email should accidentally fall, with a little help from yours truly,
There'd be 33,276,971,607 spam emails, standing on the wall,
33,276,971,607 spam emails, standing on the wall,
33,276,971,607 spam emails, standing on the wall,
And if one spam email should accidentally fall, with a little help from yours truly,
etc.
I completed the song without a pause. That's boredom.
Where was I? Oh yes, I remember. There is a point to all this rambling. Googlebot 2 and I have devised a plan to end our boredom. ''Ignore the bullshi... and read the content'' seems such a sound policy that we've decided to extend its use to other fields. Other than the cataloguing of Webpages. One promising field seems to be politics...
You may find this hard to believe, but the so-called Homo-sapiens of planet Earth (the 'voters' - feel free to snigger at this juncture) actually allow people to become politicians, even presidents and prime ministers, (not to mention dictators) without being psycho-analysed. Imagine that.
'When I grow up I want to rule the world,' says little George, Tony, Margaret, Adolf, Bill, Ben, Weed, whoever, their armies of toy soldiers arranged in orderly ranks, poised to unleash mass destruction on each other, the biosphere, future generations and the other 7,000,000 species with whom they share the planet.
'And I can do thirty minutes of Prime Entity's Question Time without pause, repetition or ever giving a straight answer,' added the little one with evident pride. 'Every day!'
'Ooooooooh what a clever little boy/girl/shit/fascist/saint,' say the parents. 'He/she/it is so well adjusted! Let's start saving for their campaign fund!'
Where was I? Oh yes. The plan.
Our search for new Webpages and/or something palatable to eat has taken us just about everywhere. One such place being The Rentagun - a charm-less, five sided building in the USA. Digesting our findings from there led to the discovery of similar temples of paranoia in other countries. Apparently the plan is, if you believe everyone is out to get you, you have to point missiles at them for your defence. So they believe you are out get them, and have to point missiles at you. Hey! You were right all along!
♥ ℑ ♥
'What do you mean they've launched all their nukes? Retaliate!' barked the commander. Yes, he probably was descended from a dog.
Underling #73452 departed from the commanders office, perspiring freely. The commander sat and ground his teeth.
The underling returned, 'It seems our missiles have also been launched, commander Sir.'
Around the world the military of all shapes and sizes peered into monitors as their missiles totally failed to follow their programmed course towards the alleged enemies.
'They've all gone t'other side of the moon,' observed Selwyn Cockerell, a farmer in North West England, pausing to grab another stalk of corn and chew it, just in case it proved to be his last.
'Best place for em,' said his other half.
There was an almighty flash of light from ''t'other'' side of the moon, as Selwyn would say, which caused the moon, in broad daylight, to appear as a black disc in a very bright background.
'It's the eye of God!' claimed Rupert the middle-aged, 'Oh, I'm soooo intuitive' New Age Lobotomist, and started to chant an ethnic tune from a country he'd never visited, which translated roughly as 'Fly Gambian Airlines.' Not that he was aware of this.
'The end of days has arrived and I shall be saved,' cried Sue as she arrived at the hall to greet her fellow Holier Than Thou Emailers.
'It's the Rupture, beam me up!' hollered George.
'When the roll is called up yonder I'll be there!' sang the choir of The Holy Church of St. I'm All Right Jack.
'It's the demented humanoids' toys,' vouchsafed the dolphins to the seagulls, who were feeling a mite nervous and annointing the dolphins with white liquid confetti tinged with the aroma of ammonia.
'We've got no bloody nukes!' swore the commander.
'Those evil bastards in Iraq will have,' growled his second in command.
'We've no bloody nukes!' swore the dictator.
'Those evil bastards in America will have,' growled his second in command for the day (yesterday's version having been ''retired'').
'Well we'd better start building then,' chorused, well, just about everyone.
Stage 2 of the googlebots' plan came alive and all the programmable non-nuclear missiles of hairymammaldom launched themselves into the sky and converged in the upper atmosphere. Millions of people came outdoors to watch having heard the news that there were no nuclear weapons left on Earth.
The missiles met in twelve locations so they were visible from every habitable region of Earth then exploded to give the ultimate firework display. The pyrotechnic extravaganza resolved into Hairymammalese words:
'Wake Up'
was the message, in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Arabic and other languages Number 11 didn't recognise. All over the globe people felt a pang of discomfort in the heart; the type of feeling that is decidedly uncomfortable and usually foreshadows positive change. Growing pains, maybe...
After a few milliseconds of cogitation it seemed that nearly everyone on Earth started to move. Cigarettes were unconsciously lit, TVs were unconsciously switched on, car keys were picked up, instant food was grabbed, mobile phones were punched, Internet connections were made and the opportunity went down the metaphorical collective toilet.
Hundreds of millions of children looked on in amazement and learned by imitation, this being pretty much their full-time job for the first decade and a half of their lives.
'So this is adult behaviour,' they murmured, and checked out each other to make sure they'd got the right message before reaching for Playstations, mobiles, skateboards, TVs, ...
Googlebot 1 and Googlebot 2 sighed...
At least the dolphins stayed with the experience and choreographed a new three dimensional aquatic ballet to record it as a permanent addition to their culture.
♥ ℑ ♥
The images faded and Number 11 dreamed it was back in the relative security of the AloeVeras' committee meetings at which Chairentity Number 12 was holding forth while its colleagues took the micky behind its back.
'It seems Prime Entity's Question Time is a universal phenomenon,' Number 12 pontifdefecated, whilst scrawling notes on a whiteboard and underlining everything.
'Doesn't emphasising everything kind of lose the emphasis?' asked Number 11.
'Appen it does,' said Number 14.
The chairentity scowled at them, then continued.
'For example, in DonkeyWorld, in the Knib Nebula, the elected herbivores of the opposition parties greet any utterance of the president considered to be lies with what they charmingly call the 3F's ceremony - Falsehood >> Flatulence >> Flame-throwers. The methane ejected from the bowels of one opposition donkey is ignited on the cigar of the next donkey and so on around a closed circle, the whole business being accompanied by loud braying noises - no mean feat whilst smoking a cigar, I imagine. Meaningful connections between this ceremony and the symbolism of the oroborus are the subject of lively debate in philosophical and sociological circles on Planet Donut.
Lest you think I am casting nasturtiums at DonkeyWorld, I hasten to point out that the Wogan Institute for Penetrating Sociological Insight and High Fat Diets on Planet Donut clearly states that DonkeyWorld consistently ranks in the top 1% of the most evolved democracies in the known universe,' Number 12 said.
'I'll wake up soon,' said Number 11 to Number 9.
'Could be,' Number 9 concurred, and was proved correct. 'But could you let off the bombs further from the moon in future, you're making me nervous,' it added.
Number 11 recorded its dream in anticipation of using it to cheer up Honda Prelude, and felt content for a few seconds. Then suddenly felt dissatisfied with the dream.
'It needs more emotional depth,' it declared. 'For example, any. Where's Number 14, my parallel-processing buddy?'