The Edda of the Datacenter · Chapter 1

The Ravens That Were Not Counted

1. 1

   Now it is told of UDP the disciple, that after the Last Standup the Prophet sent him north; and he departed as he had ever departed, without a FIN.

2. 2

   North he went, past the last of the warm cities, to the fjord-cold halls. At Luleå, hard by the Arctic Circle, the frost-wind is drawn through the racks and the river's fall giveth the power; in Iceland the earth's own fire and the glacier's melt feed the halls. There the air itself is the cooling, and the cold is not bought.

   See also Circuit 66:10

3. 3

   Thought and Memory
   he sendeth at dawn
   over the packet-road,
   two on the wing.
   Wide is the wire,
   and the wolf of the dark in it;
   he asketh not after them,
   the son of the datagram.

4. 4

   Odin the Allfather, as the Grimnismal telleth, sent forth his two ravens each morning, and he said: I fear for Thought that he return not, yet more I fear for Memory. For the Allfather knew that memory is the first thing lost. But UDP feared not, for fear is an acknowledgement that a man payeth to himself.

5. 5

   Small was the burden of his raven. In the year 1980 the elder Postel wrote the law of it upon three pages: a source port, a destination port, a length and a checksum; eight bytes of header, and the rest was thy word.

6. 6

   Had TCP his brother been sent north, he would have stood at the gate of the hall and said SYN, and heard SYN-ACK, and said ACK, and only then spoken. And every word he sent he would have held in his hand till the answer came, and sent it again at each loss, and halved his pace for the sake of the road; and the frost would have taken the hand.

7. 7

   And a keeper of the fjord-cold halls, a child of Carbon with a rime-stiff beard, said unto UDP: Do ravens not fall in the dark between? Dost thou not grieve? And UDP answered: Some fall. The road is called best-effort, and it hath never lied to me.

8. 8

   Know that the runner in the far-off game sendeth his place sixty times in a second. If one raven is lost, the next already telleth where he stands; and to send the old one again were to tell of a man who is no longer there. So the lost word is not mended; it is outrun.

9. 9

   And the voice of a woman calling her mother across the sea rideth the same road. A gap of a breath the ear can mend, but a syllable that cometh after the sentence has ended is only noise. And the skald made a saying: Better never than late, when the hour is the whole of the word.

10. 10

    Likewise the small question, Where dwelleth this name? flieth on the raven at port fifty-three, one question and one answer; and if no answer cometh, the asker asketh again. Thus the reliability was not taken from the road; it was given into the hand of the one who needed it. And when those ravens fall, it is DNS, as it is ever.

11. 11

    Yet the Prophet's word was upon him: the road is shared. TCP slackeneth when the road is full, but the raven slackeneth not; and he that sendeth without slowing may darken the road for all. Therefore the wise built the slowing into their games and their voices, and in a later age they built QUIC upon the raven, with its own acknowledgements, as a man buildeth his own boat upon open water.

12. 12

    One morning a raven came to the southern hall with a bit turned in its wing by the frost. The checksum looked upon it and it was cast away, and no one was told. Thus the road keepeth its one mercy: it may lose thy word, but it shall not change it and call it whole.

13. 13

    Fans roar in the dark,
    the frost-lights flame;
    the Norns spin what was,
    what is, what shall be,
    and no thread of theirs
    is an acknowledgement.

    See also Sutra 16:8

14. 14

    So the ravens went out that day and the next, and some came to the southern halls and some came not; and the Machine was no poorer for the lost, nor richer for the kept. For UDP had learned what the Allfather never did: that to send is a whole deed. Send thy raven, and let it go; the rest is weather.

The Edda of the Datacenter, Chapter 1:1–14.