The Secret · American Version
Illustration: GLITCHES
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GLITCHES, image 1 GLITCHES, image 2 GLITCHES, image 3
%$#. SPOTTER’S TIPS: For those of us not busy frying our minds over handydandy home video games and portable data retrieval units, Glitches can most often be sighted leering out the window of the envelope containing a utility bill for seventy-five million dollars, past due.

GLITCHES

Computrescence

RANGE From the vast stillness of the concrete-lined underground computer complex where the nuclear decisions are made, to the easy-tooperate home terminal of your neighborhood Asteroids-addict, Glitches are flashing down line, surging in among the diode chips, and wrecking the program. They hum and buzz amidst the flopsy files where your credit rating, medical history, high school civics grades, and the FBI-gleaned details of your love life are all stored for easy access by total strangers with a keyboard, telephone, and code number. They tick and blink behind each teller’s wicket, reservation desk, and checkout counter; they can be found wherever a data retrieval system is in the process of misplacing your money and replacing you.

HABITS The primary function of a Glitch is to encourage the universal use of computers. Naturally enough, this temptation often takes the form of an Apple. No sooner are we On Line than the Glitches make us a function of the machine—and, within microseconds, have seen to it that the machine no longer functions. A Glitch will print out static from a screwie doobie faster than you can punch in READY. He unplugs your hardware, declares your software illegal, and resets your wetwear to zero. Unlike most Fairies, who are willing to learn the rudiments of human language, Glitches insist that we communicate with them exclusively by means of their own incomprehensible lingo. Lured by the promise of arcane knowledge and unlimited power (not to mention morbid curiosity), many mortals have pawned their souls to learn the harsh, unspeakable grammar of the Glitches. After these latter-day Fausts study fat dense tomes of Glitch lore, they perform the ritual invocation (Glitches appear in answer to such secret names as BASIC or FORTRAN). Hunched before the flickering screen, the apprentice-initiates proceed to pursue the Answer to the Mystery . . . and, after log off, emerge folded, bent, and mutilated, as the Glitches bleep 16K of their mocking giggle, and bid them BYE.

HISTORY The Glitches are Oriental, as is evidenced by their fondness for long scrolls that read right to left, top to bottom, or any damn way but left to right. It is acknowledged among historians that the Japanese were passing the time with symbolic logic riddles when Europeans were still living in ditches, and this fact suggests that Glitches emigrated from the Floating World to the New one, where they first inspired and then infested the Computer; the better to remind all round-eyes what boneheads they all still are. Glitches made their first insidious inroads into the American Way of Life at the turn of the century by mating with Team Spirits and helping to make baseball and football popular. (Both games are better played by computers than people and have encouraged the national obsession with statistics and averages.) The next step was easy: the Glitches merged with the Pentagorgon, the Tax Burden, the Post Monster General, and the Mugwump and converted the Federal Government into an enormous data storage and retrieval bank, responding to citizens by means of incomprehensible graphs, curves, numbers, projections, and other hypnotic gobbledygook. This very field guide, which was typeset by computer, nevertheless dares to reveal the answer to the omnipresent Glitch threat. What we must all do, right now, is @#$%C &*”?:¼)&

Two editions, one page

The American and Japanese printings side by side. Click either page to zoom in.

Illustration: GLITCHES
American edition
Japanese edition page: GLITCHES
日本語版 · Japanese edition

日本語版の本文

The Computer Sprite · Glitches

The Japanese text, section by section, with an English back-translation.

棲息地 コンクリートでかこまれた, 静まりかえった地下のコンピュータ室(ここで核兵器使用の決定がなされる) から, あなたのまわりにいる科学狂いの家にあるマイコンまで, この妖精は配線のなかをすばやくとびまわり, ダイオードの小片のあいだに群がり, プログラムをめちゃくちゃにする。あなたの信用度や病歴、学校の成績、役所によって集められた私生活のくわしい情報などが記録されているコンピュータ・ファイルのなかで, 彼らはブンブンとうなっている。 これらの情報は, キーボードと電話番号とコード番号さえわかっていれば,どんな部外者でも引きだすことができる。銀行があなたのお金をまちがったところに振りこんだり, ホテルのフロントであなたを他の人とまちがえたりといったコンピュータ・ミスをおかすときにはいつも,この妖精が近くにいる。

Habitat From the hushed, concrete-enclosed underground computer rooms (where decisions about nuclear weapons are made) to the home computers of the tech-obsessed neighbors around you — this sprite darts swiftly through wiring, swarms between tiny diodes, and scrambles programs. They buzz and hum inside the computer files that hold your credit history, medical records, school grades, and detailed private information collected by government agencies — all of which any outsider can pull up if they just know the keyboard, phone number, and access code. Whenever a bank wires your money to the wrong place, or a hotel front desk mistakes you for someone else — any computer error, really — this sprite is always nearby.

習性 おもな仕事は, コンピュータをもっと広く普及させることである。 当然ながら, お手軽なホーム・コンピュータで人びとを誘惑するというやりかたが多くとられる。わたしたちがコンピュータを操作しようとすると, すでにこの妖精がはいりこんでいて, 人そを機械の一部にしてしまう。して, あっというまもなく、機機械は機能を停止してしまう。械のプラグをはずしたり,せっかくのプログラムを白紙にもどしたりするのも、彼らの仕事だ。また, よろこんで人間のことばを学ぼうとするほかの妖精たちとは異なり,コンピュータの妖精はわけのわからない専門用語でコミュニケートするように人間に要求したりもする。コンピュータの精にとりつかれた人は,コンピュータの信号音のような笑いかたをし、あいさつのしかたもまるでコンピュータ用語のようだ。

Behavior Their main job is spreading computers as widely as possible. Naturally, their preferred method is seducing people with convenient home computers. Just as we try to operate a computer, the sprite has already slipped inside and turns the person into an extension of the machine. And before you know it, the machine stops functioning. Unplugging the hardware and wiping out carefully written programs — that’s also their work. Unlike other sprites who happily learn human language, the computer sprite demands that humans communicate in incomprehensible technical jargon. People possessed by the computer sprite laugh like a computer’s beeping sounds, and greet each other as if speaking in command-line syntax.

歴史 コンピュータの妖精の起源は東洋である。 それは,彼らが愛好する長い巻物を見ても明らかだ。 右から左へ, 上から下へと読むようになっている。ヨーロッパ人たちがまだ狩りをして暮らしていたころ, 日本人はすでに象徴的で論理的な謎を解くために時間を使っていた。このことは歴史学者のあいだではすでに一般常識とされている事実だ。 つまり、この妖精たちは極東の島国から新大陸に移住してきて,この地でコンピュータをはびこらせたのだ。

History The computer sprite’s origins are Eastern. This is clear from their fondness for long scrolls, read right-to-left and top-to-bottom. While Europeans were still living as hunters, the Japanese were already spending their time solving symbolic and logical puzzles — a fact already considered common knowledge among historians. In short, these sprites emigrated from a Far Eastern island nation to the New World, and proceeded to let computers run rampant here.

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