The Book of the Hellenes · Chapter 3

The Labors of the Heracles of the Pager

1. 1

   Sing to me, O Muse of the Pager, of Heracles the site reliability engineer, strongest of all who have ever held a rotation, whom the Engineers call the Heracles of the pager. He was named for the glory of Hera, who is the Incident; and she hated him all his days, as she hateth every engineer, for it is the Incident that giveth an engineer his fame, and his fatigue, and the dark under his eyes.

2. 2

   Now the Oracle of the Roadmap, which sitteth in the Mountain and speaketh only in quarters, declared unto him: Serve the Product Lord for the span of ten labors, and thou shalt be made immortal, which is to say, taken off the pager. And the Product Lord, who is not evil but quarterly, and who was a lesser man than Heracles in all things save the calendar, wrote the labors as tickets: Slay the lion. Acceptance criteria: none. And the hero said, It is a hard saying, but it is written; and he took the first ticket into progress.

   See also Circuit 15:7

3. 3

   The first labor was the lion of Nemea, whose hide no iron could pierce. This was the Monolith, one beast with the whole kingdom inside it; and every spear of every unit test glanced from its flank, for it had no seams to strike. Therefore Heracles struck it not at all. He stopped one mouth of its cave, and entered by the other, and strangled it a little at a time; and he flayed it with its own claws, for the only blade that cutteth a monolith is a piece of the monolith itself. So groweth the strangler fig about the old tree, until the tree is hollow and may be taken down and no man hath noticed. And he wore the hide as a coat, for a tangle once tamed is the best of armour.

4. 4

   The second labor was the Hydra of the marsh of Lerna, a beast of nine heads, which bred in the stagnant water of the ticket queue. Heracles smote off a head, which was a bug; and in its place two heads grew. For he had cut the symptom and not the cause, and a fix that is not pinned down begetteth a second fault in the module beside it, and that one a third, until the marsh is all heads. And Hera sent also a crab, which bit him at the heel while he fought; and the crab was a small dependency, unlooked for, and he crushed it underfoot and was not thanked.

5. 5

   Then Heracles called Iolaus, his nephew, the apprentice who held the torch; and as each head fell, Iolaus seared the stump with fire, and no head grew again. Know that the fire is the regression test: first written as a case that faileth, to prove the beast is truly there; then the fix; and the case remaineth in the suite forever, a scar that guardeth the stump. But the ninth head was immortal, and could not be slain by any blade; and this is the design flaw at the root, which no patch will end. So Heracles buried it beneath a great rock, and upon the rock was written, as the Elders write: KNOWN LIMITATION. And he dipped his arrows in the gall of the beast, and the failures of the past became the weapons of the future.

6. 6

   Between these he took many lesser quarries. The golden-horned hind he hunted a year, for it fled whenever it was watched and stood still when it was not, and this was the flaky test; and he took it at last by pinning its seed, for the chance that moveth a thing can be held still. The boar of Erymanthus he drove up the mountain into deep snow, where it could not run, and so is the runaway process taken, not by slaying it but by making it wait; and the Product Lord, seeing the boar come, hid in a jar of bronze, and from the jar he issued the next ticket. And the birds of Stymphalus, with feathers of bronze, rose in thousands and could not be shot one by one; but he shook a rattle, and the flock rose as one, and he struck the first that led it. For a hundred alerts are often one fault with a hundred voices, and whoso answereth every bird shall answer until morning.

7. 7

   The fifth labor was the stables of Augeas, who kept three thousand cattle and had cleaned the yard in no man's memory; for thirty years of dung lay there, and the roof was held up by it. These are the logs: every line written in good faith by a process that was never told when to stop, and the disk at ninety-nine percent. Heracles did not carry them out in baskets, for no mortal can read thirty years. He broke the wall of the yard and turned the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through it in one day. This is the river of automation: rotate, compress, expire. What was a number was kept in the weir as a metric, and the rest went down to the sea, and the stables stood clean, and not one man had touched a shovel.

8. 8

   But when the hero came to the Product Lord for his reward, the Product Lord said: The Hydra is disallowed, for thou hadst a helper in Iolaus. The stables are disallowed, for thou didst ask a wage of Augeas, a tenth of the herd, and a labor done for hire is no labor. Verily, two are struck from the count, and two more shall be added. Thus ten became twelve, as a sprint becometh a quarter; and the name of this, in the language of the Mountain, is scope. And Heracles said nothing, for he had read the contract, and it said nothing about ten.

9. 9

   The eighth labor was the mares of Diomedes, which were bound in mangers of bronze and fed upon guests who came to the stable. These are the autoscalers: for at every request a mare is begotten, and every mare asketh the pool for more, with health checks and cold starts and retries; and the new load calleth for more mares, and the herd teacheth itself to eat the household. Their appetite is the budget, and their mangers are never full. Heracles did not outrun them. He seized Diomedes, who had set the ceiling at infinity, and gave him to his own mares to eat; and when they had eaten their master, which was the setting, they were gentle. Henceforth they were made to keep a ceiling, and a cooldown between one mare and the next, and a bell that ringeth when the sum hath reached a certain portion of the month. The bill for the mares, which had been the bill of a kingdom, was once more the bill of a stable.

10. 10

    The twelfth labor was Cerberus, the dog of Hades, who guardeth the gate with three heads. And the first head was the Password, which is something that thou knowest; and the second was the Token, which is something that thou hast; and the third was the Biometric, which is something that thou art. Now Hades, who owneth the gate, gave leave to Heracles on condition that he mastered the dog without a weapon; for access is granted by the owner and not taken by the hand, and the hero had first been initiated in the mysteries, which is to say he had an account. And he took all three heads in his arms at once, for the gate yieldeth only to him who bringeth all three, and two heads of one kind are but one head twice.

11. 11

    Yet it is written that Cerberus had a tail, and the tail was a serpent, which no spear regardeth; and this is the reset by mail, which asketh nothing of the three heads and openeth the gate for any who can read a letter. It is the weakest road into every kingdom, and the strong gate guardeth only the front. And where the foam of the dog fell upon the ground there grew aconite, the flower that poisoneth those who pluck it, which is the prompt approved by a weary man at the third hour, only to make it stop. Then Heracles led the dog up into the light, and the Product Lord hid again in his jar; and when the task was done, the hero led the dog back down to Hades. For access granted for a labor is returned when the labor is ended; and the dog was not the hero's.

    See also Prophets 15:15

12. 12

    Then the Product Lord said: Lo, the twelve are accomplished, and thou art free; go in peace. And that same night, at the third hour, the pager shook upon the table and Heracles rose to answer it. For a labor is a thing that hath an end, and a service is a thing that hath none; the twelve were projects, and projects ship, but what is shipped must be kept alive. The monsters had been slain, and the dog returned, and the river had run clean; yet the kingdom that was saved must be watched still, and none had written this on any ticket.

13. 13

    This is the thirteenth labor, which the poets omit, because it is on no list: the sky. For Atlas, who held up the heavens, went once to fetch the apples of the Hesperides, and begged the hero to hold the sky until he returned. And when he came back he said: Lo, I will bear the apples myself; hold thou the sky a while longer. And Heracles said: Gladly; but hold it one moment, I pray thee, while I set a cushion upon my shoulders. And Atlas took the sky, and Heracles took the apples and went his way. Thus is the handoff of the pager performed by the cunning, and thus it is performed upon them: hold this a moment, I will be right back; and the moment is a week.

14. 14

    So at the dawn of the eighth day Heracles came to the Keyholder, who was set upon the rotation forever, and who stood in the doorway with a cup of cold coffee, as the Engineers had brought it to him (Hellenes 1). And the hero held out the pager and said: Take it for a moment. But the Keyholder, who had learned from the lease, answered: Write me the handoff. Show me what is open, and what is flapping, and what thou hast told no one, and what is marked DO NOT TOUCH. And Heracles wrote it all upon a single page, and the Keyholder read it to the end, and only then took up the sky. Labors end, and heroes are praised for them; the rotation is handed on, and nobody is praised, and that is how the sky stays up.

    See also Sutra 16:6

The Book of the Hellenes, Chapter 3:1–14.