Scene: the machine room. Lots of CS types eagerly clustered round the operators' console, sipping the famous Vin De Paques champagne.
Mike Sayers (for it is he): O.K. We've got the plan straight, have we, staff? At 8 a.m. precisely Peter Crofts presses the button and Phoenix is finally extinguished.
Peter Crofts: Yes, oh master. For 23 years I have waited for this moment. Indeed, I have done nothing else but train my mind and body to a state of physical perfection so that I could press the button. I have gone through gruelling physical ordeals, carrying chairs out of the User Area, so that my muscles could be fully fit. I have made my mind the most powerful in the universe by using it to draft enigmatic notices to stick on the wall.
(Telephone rings)
Barry Landy (on phone): STOP! I DEMAND to be present at the great shutdown!
Sayers: Oh all right. When can you get here?
Landy: Well I must just finish this bath, and have my toenails cut and nasal hair trimmed. Will 9 a.m. do?
Sayers: Yes, O.K.
(9 o' clock, or just after. Landy enters.)
Crofts: Now the plan is, that I reach forward with my right index finger, jab the button once firmly, and shout "Banzai!" I then retire to Bognor Regis and spend my declining years in writing my memoirs.
Landy: No. I want to push the button. It's my Phoenix. I wrote it. I've devoted the best years of my life to it. Now, before I retire, let me turn it off!
Sayers: No, Barry. This is the supreme moment of Peter's life. Indeed some would say, his only purpose in life. He must do it.
Landy: I don't care.
(He reaches over and jabs at the wrong button. A message on the operators' console says: PHOENIX RELOADING. SERVICE NOW GUARANTEED UNTIL 2020. WHY DON'T YOU FIX EAGLE NOW?)
Crofts: I've waited 23 years to press that button, and you press the WRONG button! Aaaagggghhhh!
(Foams at mouth and falls onto carpet.)
Sayers: Finger trouble, eh?
Landy: It was NOT finger trouble. It was an undocumented feature in the IBM syntax.
Sayers: Hmm, now what shall we tell the users?
(With apologies to a very old sketch from the Muppet show. Any resemblance between CS staff and Muppet characters is purely in the mind of the beholder.)
Jonathan Partington, September 1st 1995