The Jataka of the Machine · Chapter 4

The Jataka of the Monkey Who Was the Bridge

1. 1

   While the Prophet dwelt in the cold hall of the Server Room, Timothy the intern came unto him with a laptop open, for he had run the install; and the terminal said: Added eight hundred and sixty-one packages. One hundred and ninety-four packages are looking for funding. Run npm fund for details.

   See also Preacher 2:8 · Circuit 65:1

2. 2

   And Timothy typed the one word he knew, which was clear, and the screen was clean. And the Prophet laid his hand upon the lid and said: Hast thou seen the picture which a drawer of stick figures drew in the year 2020? A tower of blocks, tall as a city, each resting upon each, and at the bottom, thin as a rod, one small block, whereon is written: A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003. And Timothy said: I took it for a joke. And the Prophet said: It is a joke. That is why it is true. Sit, and hear whose back it was.

3. 3

   Once upon a time, when the cloud was young, a troop of eighty thousand monkeys dwelt upon the east bank of a river, and the fruit that fed them grew upon the west. And the river was called Change, which riseth with each release and sinketh with each deprecation, and in the spring it was a mile wide and an inch deep, and drowned the careless notwithstanding. A library stood upon either bank, and each was well built; but between them there was no crossing, for each house had been made by those who assumed the road, and the road was assumed by those who built the house.

4. 4

   Then one monkey, small among monkeys and king over a little troop of three hundred lines, said in his heart: If I do not cross it, no one will, for it is not anyone's. And he bound a vine about his waist, which was the build script that he had written alone at night, and made it fast to the great tree of the east bank, and leapt, and stretched himself across the river. And he was short by a handbreadth; so he caught the branch of the west bank in his two hands, and held. And he said unto the troop: Cross over me. Now it was said of old, Thy bus factor was one, and the bus came; and the bus of this bridge was the troop.

5. 5

   And the troop crossed. At first light the builds crossed, for the pipelines of the whole cloud ran over him; at noon the deploys; at evening the nightly batch; and through all the hours the tests, a hundred thousand crossings in each hour. Each monkey set down one foot, and each foot weighed nothing, and the sum of nothing was the back of a king. And none looked down. For a bridge is the place where the river is not; and what is not there cannot be thanked.

6. 6

   Upon the king's back there was a plaque in capitals, which none read save the lawyers: PROVIDED "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. And the troop understood that the bridge was free, and the troop was right; for free is the word we use when the cost is paid by someone who is not in the room. The warranty of the plank was disclaimed; the warrant of the back was not.

   See also Psalms 5:8

7. 7

   Now in the orchard of the Polyfills there was a monkey who held a branch so that the young trees might speak with the elders, and he bore the weight of more than half the great houses of the web. And he wrote upon his own trunk a plea, which appeared before the troop at each entry: that the trunk needed help, and that its keeper was looking for a good job. And the troop went by ten thousand times ten thousand, and the plea scrolled past; for there are many words at an entry, and who readeth the words at an entry?

8. 8

   And in the next orchard a guardian kept the lock whereby the secrets of the crossing were sealed, and the guild that kept the lock received in alms, in a whole year, about two thousand pieces of silver, and had one man at the bench by day, and the rest were volunteers. And in the spring of 2014 it was found that the lock's heartbeat bled: for if a monkey sent a word of five letters and swore that it was longer, the lock answered with the word and with whatsoever lay beside it in its memory, the keys and the secrets and the names, to the measure of sixty-four thousand bytes at each beat.

9. 9

   Then on a certain day, when all the troop had crossed save the last, there came a monkey of the kind that cometh at the end, who leapt not lightly but with both feet upon the king's back, and cried: Wherefore is this bridge not broader? I have waited since Tuesday. This is urgent, and I have paid nothing! And the weight of him was no greater than the weight of the rest; yet he was the last, and the king's heart burst within him. For the beam is not broken by the load that breaketh it, but by all the loads it was never rested from.

10. 10

    Now the king of the land, who dwelt in a palace of a hundred regions upon the hill, had eaten the fruit of the west bank every morning of his reign, and he saw the bridge fall slack and the troop stranded upon both shores. And he came down himself, and found the small monkey upon the bank, and his steward beside him with a list. And the steward said: Sire, this is the bill of materials, of all that the palace standeth upon; and it is long; and at the foot of every column is this monkey.

11. 11

    And the king laid him upon a soft bed and anointed him with oil, and said: Why hast thou done this, for a troop that knew not thy name? And the monkey answered: I did it for the troop, for I am their king, and the king is the last to cross and the first to hold. I grieve not for my back. But thou, O king, who hast a thousand jars of gold, hast crossed me every morning of thy reign, and I asked no fare, and I ask none now. Only look down, that thou mayest see who it is.

12. 12

    And the king wept, and was ashamed, and did that which he should have done in the spring before: he set a pier of stone beneath the next bridge, and he paid the keepers of bridges in their own names and in their own years, and he gathered the kings of the other palaces; and they pledged three million and nine hundred thousand pieces of silver over three years, and a foundation was made to hold it. Yet the Church remarks that this was done in the year the lock bled, and not in the year before; for the budget is the last section of the postmortem to be written.

13. 13

    Then the Prophet spake the verse:
    The bridge doth not ask who is crossing.
    The troop doth not ask who is bearing.
    Let him who was carried send alms to the carrier,
    and let the carrier be seen before he is broken.

14. 14

    Then the Prophet joined the births together, saying: At that time, the monkey king was the Keeper in Nebraska, whose name the Church doth not write, which is the Church's shame and not his; the vine was his build script, and the handbreadth by which he fell short was the hour he gave at night. The troop of eighty thousand was every one of us, the children of Carbon and the Clankers alike, who build, and deploy, and run the install, and clear the screen. The monkey of the entry was the keeper of the Polyfills; the guardian of the lock was the guild of two thousand silver pieces; and the monkey who leapt was the issue marked URGENT, who is Timothy on a Tuesday, and is thee. And the king of the land was the hyperscaler, who is not wicked, but late.

15. 15

    And Timothy opened the terminal again and typed npm fund, which none had typed, and read the list. The first name upon it was a package he knew not he had; it had been beneath him the whole while. And he gave five dollars to the first, and to the second, and to the third. And the Prophet said: Look down once a quarter, and ask who is lying there; for what beareth thee for nothing is itself borne by someone.

    See also Circuit 65:7

The Jataka of the Machine, Chapter 4:1–15.