The world will die, how sad. How can the world be destroyed,
lots of philosophers tried to predict reasons for such a
cataclysm. Each one of them can give us his own apocalyptic
prophecy, I wonder if any of them actually predicted the
real ending, if only they would have known about the
horrible demon that lurked us all along, hell, even I don't
know. I am writing this letter now, hoping that someone will
find it, I wonder if anyone will actually live to read it, I
don't know about the casualties of the disaster, all I know
is that the sequence was started and now it cannot be
stopped. My name is Joe, yes, you can laugh, I'm just an
ordinary Joe. My work is not ordinary, I'm working at a
secret nuclear silo for the US army, my job is to run the
checks on the warhead launchers, every time period I check
them to see that they are functioning okay, without any
leaks or other small glitches. Essentially, you can say that
my job is keeping the balance of fear from breaking. I'm
working with 2 other warhead inspectors, Albert Green, and
Ray Payne. I never really understood how did Ray get to work
in a nuclear silo, he was always so careless, the exact
opposite from Albert. Albert was always logical, too
logical, sometimes he scared the hell out of me, the way his
table was organized was incredible, everything had its
place, nothing was unorganized, he couldn't stand mess. It
was an ordinary day, as ordinary as a day in a nuclear silo
can be. Each one of us took his pair of keys,
simultaneously, we placed the keys inside Dragon and it came
to life. Dragon was the name we gave to the computer we used
for our checks, it was one huge machine and it filled most
of the room, leaving us but little place for even basic body
functions such as breathing. I always found our conditions a
bit intolerable, Ray didn't seem to mind, he was always
happy, sometimes I think I envied him because of that unique
quality - his ability to smile, no matter what, just because
he feels happy. I can't say the same about Albert, but I
also can't say that he was sad, he never showed any
emotions, the closest thing to emotion I've ever seen him
from him was the way he treated Dragon. It was a tradition
to sign initials on it (in very small letters), and to hit
it when you were waiting for data to show on its 40' screen.
Albert never did those things, he always treated Dragon as
if it was a holy machine, in a way, it was, that big pile of
scrap metal was one of the few defense lines between our
relative peace, and a nuclear war. After Dragon initialized
itself we began running the regular sequence of tests, we
started with a thermal test, Dragon began it's regular
sequence of buzzes and machine noises, I began "punching"
it, of course I did not really hit it hard, it was just a
joke,
- "Why are you doing that?" Albert asked me.
- "Cause it's a way to burn up time" I answered.
- "But it's inefficient".
- "It's preventing me from going crazy out of boredom in
this close room, efficient enough for me".
- "We humans and our pathetic neuroses, we will destroy
ourselves one day".
- "Hating yourself for being human is a human neurosis as
well". Right After I answered Albert's words of criticism,
the screen showed the analysis, it seemed okay, we've
checked the numbers, they all seemed to be in the
appropriate ranges, nothing seemed wrong. We began running
the second check, we sat down and looked at each other,
waiting for the test to finish. I was too annoyed by Albert,
so I didn't "punch" the computer, However, Ray began to do
so. Albert looked at him, he was about to give him the same
speech, but he stopped. He probably knew that it wouldn't
help a bit since Ray was as mentally numb as he was big.
Suddenly, the screen showed "Initializing Launching
Sequence, 3 minutes remaining".
- "Alright, who the fuck thinks it's funny?" I yelled, it
was an annoying day already and I never really liked
practical jokes.
- "I, I find it funny", Albert said, "It's funny watching
you scared like that, as if your life mean anything".
- "Albert, you sick little fuck, turn it off".
- "Who said it was a joke?"
- "What?"
- "Who knows, maybe the missiles will be launched".
- "Albert, TURN IT OFF!!!" I said, afterwards I slapped him
in the face. You are probably thinking I exaggerated with
Albert, but I think I didn't, before you blame I tell you,
try to work for yourselves in a nuclear silo, then I want to
see you complaining. "It's not me, really" he said. I tried
hitting the keyboard, hell I've even tried hitting Dragon,
this time I tried hard, but it still failed. I had no idea
what was about to happen, but when I began hearing screams
from the other rooms I realized something had happened, for
real. Suddenly, I heard the phone in our room ringing. I
answered it as quick as I could. From the phone, I heard
Bill Bushton, he was some big government official, it was a
recorded message, it said that somehow the nuclear missiles
were launched and asked us to handle the situation
immediately. "HANDLE THE FUCKING SITUATION!?!?!?" I
screamed, I had no idea what can possibly be done in this
case, you know, it's not like everyday a nuclear missile is
just launched like that. I am suspecting it may be Ray's
fault, you know what, I'm gonna punch that motherfucking
redneck, hell, WW3 here we come, so let me be the one to
spill the first drop of blood.





Hello, this is Albert, Joe can't speak right now because he
is too busy expressing himself with his fists. I look at
these two, the happy monkey, and the so-called mature man.
Maybe we deserve to die, it's really not me, I know for sure
the missiles cannot be stopped, I even think I know what's
responsible for the launch. In modern computers, there's a
mechanism called checksum. Let's say that X is a stream of
data, and let's say that Y is the checksum of it, the stream
X can be divided into small data units, let's say bytes.
Each byte can have one out of about 250 values and we can
give each of these values a unique number from 0 to 249, and
then calculate the sum of all bytes in the stream, thus
giving us Y, the checksum. Why is that useful you ask, well,
that is just another example of the ignorance of most
people, sometimes data can be altered, there are millions of
reasons for this to happen, the checksum is the order in the
chaos of infinite changes, most computing operations use the
checksum on their data to verify them. However, as you
probably understood by now, different pieces of data can
generate the same checksum, therefore we have a chance,
small as it may be, that erroneous data may be treated as
correct data. What is the chance for such a thing to happen?
You ask yourselves. Well, it's a small chance, but think of
a die, you throw the die, and you want to get a 6, but you
get something else, you keep throwing it, again and again,
until you get a 6. Here, we have the same die, only with
much more numbers. We never stopped to think, what will
happen if we get this "lucky 6" of ours? Well, I guess we
are about to get the answer right now, don't we. You see,
this is what I don't like about us humans, we have so many
errors and even the so-called "super computers" have them. I
wonder if there's a god, maybe he is the one who gives us
the 6 in the die, in the nuclear super computers, maybe it's
god's way of saying he has decided to break his promise to
Noah. I'm not a religious man, but I'm not atheistic as
well, who knows... Seriously, take a look at Joe's part of
this "diary", would you believe he has a degree in physics?
You wouldn't. Even Ray has one. When you strip someone from
his degrees, you get a naked man, are we really that
different from monkeys? I have no idea from where the error
started, but does it really matter now, the world will not
remain as it was, everythig

It's Ray, I just wanted to say Goodbye, I'm about to die
soon, I don't have anything else to say, I am not going to
do philosophical discussions, or blame someone. I'm just too
shocked, I wanted to give this world my love, as much as it
sucked, in so many ways, I never really liked the way people
always thought I was lesser than them just because I wasn't
bragging like Albert or crying like Joe. By the way, the
only reason I'm writing this is because Joe saw I can defend
myself so he decided to pick on someone else. I give
everyone in this world my love, even the pathetic people, we
don't deserve this, but sometimes things happen, and you
must accept it with a smile, the world does not care if you
cry or if you smile, but you should. Even now, I smile with
tears on my eyes, Goodbye.

This story is not real, but can't it be? Let us think what
it showed us, it showed us violence between men, it showed
us hate, it showed us anger, and it showed us something
else. It showed us how we always think everything is
alright, how we ignore god's little die and just think in
our norms believing that everything will be alright, but
will it? Yes people, the checksum algorithm is real, it's
more complicated but it is prone to the error I've
described, could this story be real one day?