In light of Roboshrub Incorporated’s recent acquisition of Santa Claus’ house and workshop through a federal seized property auction, our management wishes you all a happy season of royalty payments and photogenic moments. As yet another year comes to the end of its tether, we can only be reminded of the things that made these last twelve months so great:

Friends

Government Officials

Personal Hygiene

Aluminum

Also, I recently updated €ncryptør to fix a few bugs and add a button. Does anybody have a suggestion for new features I can add? Remember the static void main!

Forward

’Twas a time of great upheaval, that shining interval after the rise of the first human empire, but before the invention of marshmallows. Sumerian civilization (as always) was in a death spiral, much like the band it was named after (Sumer’s #1 hit, “I Dream of Water” went bronze c.a. 1900 B.C.E.).

People speaking languages from the branches of a Semitic root took the ancient Near East by storm, but the final nail in Ur’s coffin was Ibbi-Sin. Ibbi-Sin was an amazing man whose shining incompetence and predilection for calling his mother “Mommy” in official government records allowed the mighty Empire of Ur a glorious decline into obscurity. Mesopotamians for centuries after Ibbi-Sin’s demise came to recall his reign of ineptness fondly, and countless politicians have since tried to match his sheer stupidity. Only a handful have succeeded; even less have surpassed it.

It was in this climate that a series of crude and disparate civilizations sprouted from the detritus of a thousand years’ angst.

Babylonians

Baby-lonians were a race of super-intelligent toddlers, and the first people to make widespread use of the “frivolous lawsuit.” The first such suit most likely took place around 1800 B.C.E. when a traveling salt merchant sued the owner of a pepper plantation for charging him using a base sixty counting system. This suit was later dropped when both sides agreed to a joint condiment salt and pepper power-share which still reverberates today in our very kitchen cabinets.

For centuries, Babylon had been a weak city, subject to the looming threat of their neighbors’ (the Aggressiveites and Conqueronians) imperial imposition. That all changed once Hammurabi took over one cold and stormy night. Hammurabi was seen as an “aristocrat of the people,” and worked day and night to ensure that laws clearly stating the inferiority of the peasantry to the nobility were written down on stone tablets.

Hammurabi wasn’t just concerned with creating a system of uniform justice dispensation, though. No, not by a long shot. He was a military genius, turning foreign heads of state against each other using the deadly art of diplomacy (and necromancy). Naturally, Hammurabi used his neutrality to consolidate his reputation as a really good ally while building his forces for an eventual mass invasion of his good allies. Unfortunately, Hammurabi’s greatest strength was also his undoing. After 42 solid years of hamming up Babylon, Hammurabi was crushed to death under a giant stone tablet with Babylon’s laws carved onto it.

Some historians in the late 20^th century speculated Hammurabi’s death was orchestrated by a secret quasi-religious organization, and that Hammurabi left behind subtle clues to allow watchful adventurers the opportunity to catch them. Though this has been repeatedly debunked, the “Hammurabi Code” still persists in some historical circles.

Egyptians

Born on the sandy banks of the Nile, Egypt was torn apart during its early years by a cabal of insane mapmakers, angered by the mislabeling of northern Egypt as the “Lower Kingdom” and southern Egypt as... wait for it... the “Upper Kingdom.”

Once their civil war died down and the mapmakers were sealed for all time in the bowels of the sphinx (which is why the sphinx was originally created), Egypt was once again united under the rule of a single pharaoh. Okay, truth be told the pharaohs of this time period (the Middle Kingdom) were seen as less of a deity than their predecessors. This is corroborated by an opinion poll finding the great Metuhotep had a lower name recognition rate than a famous bartender in Memphis. To be fair, the bartender was Chuck Norris.

In a pitiful attempt to boost the standing of the pharaoh in popular culture, propaganda ran on all the media outlets warning citizens that it was “better to die in the service of the pharaoh than easily become the tribal leader of another nation using your superior Egyptian knowledge and to live the rest of your lives in luxury and contentment.” Fortunately, the Middle Kingdom came to nothing and soon it was conquered by the Hicks, mountain folk from central Asia.

This ushered in an era of darkness, in which the Egyptians fought for their freedom against the redneck menace. Shirtless and with but a single tooth each, the Hicks’ contribution to western civilization is sadly often underrated. In the 1950s, archaeological evidence surfaced indicating that the Hicks were responsible not only for the domestication of the dune buggy, but for the invention of deep frying.

The reign of the Hicks was short-lived, however. Once Ra descended onto the Great Pyramid in his spaceship, he saw the plight of his human slaves and immediately summoned over ten thousand (10,001 is still technically over 10,000) Jaffa from his stronghold on Abydos through the Earth’s Antarctican stargate. Realizing their imminent doom, the Hicks fell back to the Egyptian stargate they’d captured during the beginning of the conflict. But the fools accidentally dialed out during a solar flare, and the entire Hick army was sent back to the Cretaceous Period. They single handedly killed every last dinosaur. Thus Egypt’s New Kingdom began.

Hatshepsut was the first female pharaoh of the New Kingdom, and indeed the first woman in all of Egyptian history. Before her every Egyptian was a cloned male, derived from a master genome stored in the capital. She was desperately afraid of being a trendsetter, though, and had all statues of her carved to include a beard. She was succeeded by Thutmosis III, who was elected with the largest divine mandate in Egyptian history. Thutmosis III is best remembered for his conquest of Miami, Florida, and his formation of the metric system. He was also the first pharaoh to write his name in wet cement, to the chagrin of the Bricklayer Guild.

Greeks

“It’s not impossible to understand the Greeks without first looking at the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, but why would you? I mean, seriously, why?”

Dr. Galacto (the world’s foremost historian/economist/spaceman) said this during his keynote address at the World Hellenic Society conference of 1992, but it could have been said by any archaeologist at any time. Without the influences of both the Minoans and Mycenaeans, ancient Greece would not have existed as it did... exist.

Unlike other civilizations of the time, the Minoans were aquatic. They had gills, and rode giant domesticated sea horses. Though they traded extensively with land-based civilizations, they held a deep disdain for humans. Mycenaeans were a horse of a completely different texture. They created what would later evolve into the Greek language, Linear B. Linear A was already trademarked by the Minoans, and they did such a good job of covering their tracks that we still can’t decipher Linear A.

As Dr. Galacto pointlessly pointed out, the Minoans were a sea-based people who worshiped the bull. Later, one of the Greek gods, Poseidon, would be represented by a bull. Now, Dr. Galacto wasn’t intimating that the religious nature of the bull was transferred from Minoan society to Greek society... but he sure made it seem that way in his keynote speech. Some field archaeologists criticize Dr. Galacto for oversimplifying Greek religion, and for mocking the Greeks for “forgetting how to read a simple little children’s book during their childish dark age.”

The good doctor was quick to point out during the Q/A that he admired some parts of archaic age Greece, such as the Iliad and Odyssey, which achieved a level of cultural pervasiveness in Byzantine culture that the bible has never reached in western Europe. “Then again,” he quipped, “the Byzantines were a truly pathetic people. I mean, if you look at the way their society caved to the Turks, then I’m sure Russia is a worthy successor to their legacy.” The World Hellenic Society never invited Dr. Galacto to another summit.

Another fascinating factoid about the Greeks: they had no eyelids. True story.

Dr. Demetri Fuller sat in his home study. The glow off his large Dell monitor illuminated his face in the darkness. It was late, too late. He should be asleep, he had work tomorrow.
He should have made a lesson plan.
But there were just so many. Too many to record, too much data to be organized. He scrolled and the light of his computer flickered, casting blue shadows on his bookshelf. The numbers were all there, they just didn't add up. He tried a calculation. Another pop up of numbers. Nothing made sense. Again, he clacked numbers down the keyboard. Slowly equations popped up in black text over his screen. The numbers scrambled and filled his screen... darkness. As he passed out Demetri Fuller managed to unplug his computer with his falling body.

Take a step out of a mind for a moment.
Demetri Fuller was using the Internet. His student aide, Samantha Stock, had introduced him when she asked for his screen name.

"My 'es en?' I'm not entirely sure what that is, however if you are referring to the use of Sigma and Nu in different equations there are several..."

"No, no Professor. Your SN, your screen name."
A blank stare.
"For Instant Messaging?"
Still blank.
"On the computer?"

"Well, I don't own a computer actually Sam, I thought you'd've figured that out by now."
Let's take a step further back. Demetri Fuller is a man of numbers and equations. Functions and algorithms. They amaze and fascinate him, which is apparent in his constant memorization of mathematic equations. Anything with Greek letters and numbers in it is probably known by Professor Fuller, and taught, too. One of the few professors at the universities who does not use PowerPoint or slideshows for his lectures, preferring the old slate and chalk method, Demetri is considered an educational ludite. His students have mixed feelings about this. Some enjoy it, as it affects his enthusiasm and relations with his students, making his classes more human. Others... well let's take a look.

"No. Way! Mister Fuller, you can't not know what AIM is. Everyone talks with it. We're going to the computer lab to set up your account."

And so it was that Samantha Stock threw Demetri into the digital world. Over the following days it came up in conversation at the water cooler and in class. Everyone seemed to want to get naive Mr. Fuller into the World Wide Web.

"Jeeze, Fulller, I know ya didn't use it fer yer lesson plans but I didn't know you had no computer. Tell ya what, I'm gettin' Becky a brand new one for a gift, her's is outdated. You can have it!"

"Mr. F, you ain't been on AIM? That's a pity, you gotta keep it real, that's what's good. Hit me up at MCBrian1998. 'S my SN. Yo, everybody, sign in with your screen name today, that's what's good!"

And now Demetri had them, just because Brian had shouted that in class he had nearly a quarter of his lecture hall signing their screen name on the attendance sheet. It had become a little pet project. Get all his students, in the high four hundred, those that came to class, to sign in with their screen name. A little way to know his kids better. Until this weekend the information had seemed cute. Innocent. But now he was organizing it.
There were too many similarities for them not to be organized. Oh, sure, there was a level of individuality. A way to hide your name in the screen name, a 'boy' or 'grl' to define sex, maybe a hobby or movie character, but all had some sort of number.

punkgrll1337
whitters2427
emokid017
rikkid2004
virgo91786
swimfan06

The numbers, always at the end... They had to mean something. Not just to the kid, not just as a label. There were too many for it not to mean something. Something big, something relating to the grand scheme of things.
And so it was that Professor Fuller, with his doctorate in mathematics, specializing in ancient equations set to work of making sense of instant messaging screen names.

Time passes, flowers bloom, cocoons burst and bugs emerge, a sun rises and sets over a picturesque piece of campus seven times. One week is gone.
Mr. F is in the computer lab, a single screen flickering in the corner. His tie is loose and flung awkwardly. His shirt unbuttoned and his face unshaven he stares bleakly into the computer.
P=a(1+rt)
ç- ∑3 ≈ X
ƒ(x)≠∆s35

Nothing was working.
Again numbers and symbols and screen names flickered on the screen like flies, overlapping each other, discoloring the screen.
Soon the room was dark, the only light blacked out aside from the setting sun through the closed blinds.

Praaaaaaaaaaaat!
That was the sound of surrender, the sound of a man giving up any semblance of society because of his failure. It was the sound of Mr. Fuller passing gas. He drooled as he stared at the glowing darkness.
Excuze you Lowle!!!!
The voice was like forks in electric sockets, like old, black and white TV robots, like Ronny the Robot. You could hear the exclamation points, too. It was disturbing.

"He-Hello?"

U No us. We spent so much time together in the last week.

“I- I do?”

U been studiyn’ us for the past like year, son. WhaTaff! I thought we were friends!

It was at this point Demetri noticed that wires were. , not moving… slithering, yeah slithering together, monitors were connecting and crawling to each other, computers were connecting and clanking closer.
Monitors stacked on top of each other and created a large, blank screen in front of Demetri as other computer parts writhed and amassed themselves around the lab.

Mr. D we’re the #s

“The what? You’re static?”

No! we’re the numberz.

“The numbers?” The screen that was taller than him, now angled itself over Demetri Fuller, in front of him at a 45-degree angle. Wires strapped him down at his wrists, tipping his chair back so all he could see was the screen menagerie.

The screen flickered, Yeah da numberz, Numbers, symbols and screen names flashed full screen, sometimes larger than Fuller himself.

“Wha-what do you want from me!”

We wantz ya ta stop!
Plugs ripped out of sockets and snaked up to Demetri’s body, threatening to plug in through his skin.

“What … are you? I need to figure it out!”

A picture of Leonardo DaVinci popped on the screen and a midi file began to play. “Yes I, DaVinci, foresaw this mass communication anomaly. I knew that the younger generations, striplings. I knew that they would need to be controlled and therefore created mathematical theory to monitor their actions. I also created the security system current hold you. Quite impressive if I say so myself. Ahem. To whom it concerns X≈ mdy/t£ in which X is equal to… to…. toooooooooooo…

And the computer shut off. Wires loosened and dropped, the stack of computers and monitors slacked slightly as if no longer sentient. Dead technology.
“Mr. Fuller, are you alright?”

Officially sanctioned by the First Church of Tax Exempt Status.

• In the beginning, there was nothing.
• Then He appeared, out of nowhere, and realized where He was.
• And that location was the universe.
• He knew it was the first day, since the digital wristwatch on his hand included a calendar; and on that first day He created matter to occupy the universe, out of the energy latent in his very own beard.
• Beardless and lonely, He punched a series of plasma clouds until they could stand it no longer, and thus the sun was born.
• At first He was unsure of the nature of his creation, and tried to put people directly on the sun.
• It ended badly.
• Seized by a compulsion to use His powers to build majestic landscapes that could be admired from space (which is where He lived), He stuck a gargantuan finger in His ear and from that wax sculpted eight perfect planets of varying size; a series of sneezes resulted in two rings of snot around the sun, which coalesced into the asteroid and Kuiper belts, respectively.
• That was the first day; on the second, He went to the third planet and created mountains and oceans and birds and trees and the free market.
• By the third day He was exhausted and decided to finish the other planets later.
• On the seventh day, He decided the other planets just “weren’t worth the trouble” and used genetic engineering to turn a field of algae into the first humans to do the terraforming for him; but the humans were flawed.
• They were morons.
• So He buried a bunch of dinosaur bones just to mess with them, and He’s never been seen in person since.

It’s a wig shoppe!
That’s where it’s at!
Don’t need no hat!
And you’ll look less fat
After eating the infinite pie.

At the wig shoppe!
You’ll make new friends!
There’s no split ends!
Our new psychic portends
Your next coin toss will end in a tie.

Near the wig shoppe!
There’ll be ten parades!
See the ice capades!
Buy a case of toupees
And watch them build their own hive.

In the wig shoppe!
You can hear the skulls rattle!
Brand a whole herd of cattle!
We teach hair plugs how to tattle
On their owners for their stunning lack of pride.

Shop till you drop!
Watch a bald spot pop!
Kick a mammoth!
In your pajamas!

Own the wig shoppe!
We are going out of business!
Closing up right after Christmas!
Put that hairpiece on your wish list
And maybe Santa will shave his beard and staple it to your head.

Some people will find this disturbing.