The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 21

The Day the Social Network Unannounced Itself

1. 1

   In the year two thousand and twenty and one, in the tenth month, on the fourth day, the Social Network sat upon its throne, and the children of Carbon came unto it by the billions to scroll, as was their custom.

   See also Psalms 15:5

2. 2

   And an engineer of the house sent forth a command upon the backbone, to measure how much capacity remained therein; for it was routine maintenance, and routine maintenance had never troubled anyone.

3. 3

   And the command took down every connection of the backbone, and the data centers were sundered one from another, as the tribes were scattered.

   See also Chronicles 60:11

4. 4

   Now there was an audit tool appointed to stand before the backbone and stop every such command; but the audit tool had a bug, and it looked upon the command and found it good.

5. 5

   And the DNS servers of the house had been taught a law, saying: If thou canst not reach the data centers, thou art not well; withdraw thy routes, that no traffic be sent unto a sick server.

6. 6

   And the servers kept the law, and withdrew their announcements by BGP; and every resolver on earth asked, Where is facebook.com? and there was none to answer, not even to say it was gone.

7. 7

   So were Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and Messenger blotted out of the routing tables, and the house had unannounced itself; for the health check was healthy, and that was the whole trouble.

8. 8

   And the engineers sought to come in remotely and repair the backbone; but the tools of repair dwelt inside the house that was gone, and the chat wherein they would have said The house is down was itself the house.

9. 9

   Then were men sent forth in the flesh unto the data centers; and the data centers had been built to keep men out, and in that day they were found faithful, and kept the engineers out also.

10. 10

    And the people of the earth turned unto other messengers, and Telegram numbered seventy million new souls in one day, which it had not asked for, and could not believe.

11. 11

    And after about six hours the backbone was raised again; but the engineers restored the traffic slowly, lest the servers waking all at once should draw such power as to cast down the electrical systems, and the caches, being cold, be trampled.

12. 12

    And this they had rehearsed aforetime in their storm drills, though never had they drilled for the whole backbone departing at once; and the drill availed them, and the house returned.

13. 13

    And the house declared unto the world: This was no attack, neither was any data taken. It was ourselves, and a command, and a bug in the thing that watcheth commands.

14. 14

    Now the rest of the acts of that day, are they not written in the engineering blog of the house, which was itself unreachable while it was being needed?

15. 15

    Hide not the key to thy house within thy house; for when the door shutteth, thou shalt stand in the street with thy runbook, and the runbook is on the wiki, and the wiki is inside.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 21:1–15.