Chapter 46 - Very Lost

Cobbler’s attempt to find the city under attack by the angry mob of flies was proving to be harder that originally thought. He had foolishly assumed that a massive mob of giant radioactive tsetse flies attacking a city would be visible from a distance but that is where Cobbler showed his exceptional ability to fail at simple tasks, for he still had a giant blue afro on his head but due to the sudden change in the barometric pressure it had started to droop and was obscuring the top half of his vision. Cobbler was completely unaware of this development as he mistakenly assumed the blue hair he saw was blue sky and thus continued to be unaware of his reduced field of view. Despite the circumstances Cobbler could not help but feel happy due to the unusually bright and blue sky stretching out before him as far his eyes could see. Cobbler became so overwhelmed with the beautiful weather that he stopped for a short rest in a nice meadow to lie down and look up at the sky. Upon landing and looking up Joe’s hair no longer obscured the whole sky and Cobbler was able to see the actual sky which was much darker and more dreary than he had been lead to believe. This sudden change in weather startled Cobbler so much it re-fluffed the blue afro and thus ceased to hinder the view of the rest of the sky, which further startled Cobbler and caused enough afro fluffing to make Cobbler top heavy and fall down. Thus once again Cobbler proved he was most certainly adept at failing in the most spectacular ways.

/* Nothing to see here, indeed there’s nothing at all, you should stop looking */

Joe’s experience with Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! had nothing to alleviate his hunger nor had it aided his quest to find the fly swatter of ultimate power. It had left him rather confused as to how such a business could operate like that and why he was unable to directly talk when there. In fact all he had managed to do was get himself even more thoroughly lost as now there were no features, identified or not, to be seen in any direction. The landscape had become so barren that the ground itself had stopped a quarter mile back. Joe continued to press on, undeterred by what lay before him (or in this case the lack of anything before him) as he knew he must not fail in his quest for food (and that fly swatter thing, if he has to) and where he had been had only resulted in him not succeeding thus the solution must still lie ahead. Joe’s certainty faded as the minutes raced by, soon it would be mid-afternoon and Joe would have missed lunch entirely and be forced to settle for an afternoon snack. The idea of such a terrible fate made Joe more determined and he doubled his efforts pressing onwards obtaining a speed rivaled only by a fast group of slow moving speed walkers. After walking for what seemed like forever plus two (actual duration 84 thirds) Joe noticed a building next to him. He had no idea how long the building had been there for it was painted green and Joe had a habit of ignoring green buildings, the only reason he noticed this one was because his hunger sufficiently distracted him from the color. Joe was about to re-ignore it when he noticed the poem posted in front of it:

Falafel Hut “Я” we! Come and taste our LEDS!! But not really For that would be silly, Especially if they had power NO FLOWERS!

Joe was confused at the use of a Cyrillic character to represent an English word but was most certainly hungry and decided a few typographical irregularities were an acceptable price to pay to remedy his lack of food. Upon entering this unusual building Joe noticed it was retroactively unusual. The walls were covered with tiny black boxes strung together with wire. Each box had a light blinking and flashing in a variety of colors. On the far wall there was a massive computer screen with a small keyboard under it with a sign saying “order here”. Joe approached computer and proceeded to type away, his sudden computer knowledge fueled by his hunger.

Login as: joe
[email protected]’s password:
Linux falafler 2.6.26-2-686-bigmem #1 SMP Thu Sep 16	20:29:07 UTC 2010 i686

Joe was appalled at the sudden intrusion of Linux. He had nothing against open source software, in fact he was a very strong believer that all software should be free and open, but taking this once free program and cramming it into a computer to do one’s bidding was infringing upon it’s rights to freedom. Joe would normally try and free the program from the terrible clutches of its CPU but his hunger was too great to pass up an opportunity to possibly get food. Thus he pressed on into the depths of the computer seeking food and then he could work towards freeing this oppressed software.

joe@falafler:~$ ls
LEDs.py Menu.txt Makefile
joe@falafler:~$ edit Menu.txt
****************************************************
* Welcome to the Falafel Hut!! *
* With the widest variety of *
* falafels anyone dares to eat *
* *
* Falafel .................................. $5.98 *
* Different falafel ....................... %10.83 *
* 89.5$ .................................. lefalaF *
* Not a falafel .............................. N/A *
* *
* To place an order use the supplied makefile *
* *
* Warning falafels may contatin non editable *
* material and in no way are guaranteed to be food *
*	*
****************************************************

joe@falafler:~$ make falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `falafel'. Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ make different falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `different falafel'.	Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ make not a falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `not a falafel'.	Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ help

Captain Megabits has been summoned to assist you
valued customer! Please stand by.

Joe was fed up with this computer system. All he had tried to do was get some food and the system refused to work, obviously this system did not deserve to be freed from the clutches of this bizarre establishment. Joe was trying to complain a little more but he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man with a large beard and a cape coated with LEDs. “I am Captain Megabits, I’m here to assist you in selecting from our wide variety of yummy!TM falafels” Joe once again found it difficult to actually say anything, be he didn’t mind too much as he had given up on the hopes of getting food and resigned himself to a life of missed lunches. So he decided it would be best to just leave this buggy computer system and continue his quest to save the world. He told this to Captain Megabits who started to mumble something about how he should have used a package manager instead of make and vanished in a flash of light to go make repairs to the system which Joe had left in disarray. With the matter of not eating all sorted out Joe trekked back outside to the vast barren landscape he had somehow arrived in.