The Origin of the Tolkien Ring

How an obsolete technology from long ago has returned to take over the world

From the Holy Scrolls of the Serverillion:



The world is changed.
I feel it in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is now lost
For none now live who remember it.

It began with the forging of the Token Rings.
Three were given to the Salesmen,
Cleverest and most persuasive of all beings.
Seven were given to the Engineers,
Great designers and craftsmen of the academic halls.
And nine were gifted to the profession of Managers,
Who above all else desire power.

For within these rings was bound
The strength and will to govern each profession.
But they were, all of them, deceived
For another Ring was made.

In the land of New York, in the office towers of Armonk,
The Dark Lords of IBM forged in secret a larger Ring
To control all others.
The Tolkien Ring.
And into this ring they scripted their greed,
Their malice
And their will to dominate all computers.

The Ring bears an inscription
In the language of Hexidecimal,
The tongue of Engineers,
Which must never be uttered aloud.
Three bytes, which in the common tongue of English, mean:

One ring to rule them all.
One ring to find them.
One ring to link them all,
And to the Sysop bind them.
In the land of New York
Where the servers lie.

One by one, the free computers fell to the power of the Tolkien Ring.
But there were some who resisted.
A last alliance of Managers and Salesmen
Marched against the Lawyers of IBM
And on the slopes of Capitol Hill,
They fought for the freedom of the Ethernets.

Victory was near.
But the power of the Ring could not be undone.
It was in this moment,
When all hope had faded,
That Bill Gates, son of the CEO,
Took up his father's keyboard
And struck the Ring from the hands of IBM.

IBM,
The enemy of the free computers of the Earth,
Was defeated.

The Ring passed to Bill Gates,
Who had this one chance to destroy Evil forever,
But the hearts of Managers are easily corrupted
And the Ring has a will of its own.

The Ring betrayed Bill Gates to his greed.
Microsoft was created
And some software that should not have been forgotton
Was lost.
The Ethernets became the Internet.
The Internet became the World Wide Web.
And for two and a half decades,
The Ring passed out of all knowledge.

Until, when chance came, it ensnared a new bearer.
The Ring came to the company, Google,
Who took it deep into the tunnels of the Musty Basement.
And there it consumed them.
The Ring brought to Google unnatural profit.
For 15 years it manipulated the Internet.

And in the gloom of Google's server room, it waited.
Darkness and Misinformation
Crept back in to the computers of the world.
Rumor grew of a shadow in Washington;
Whispers of a nameless bill.
And the Tolkien Ring perceived
Its time had now come.
It abandoned Google.

But something happened then that the Ring did not intend.
It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable:
A Game Designer,
Brad McQuaid of the Sony.
For the times soon come
When Game Designers shape the fortunes of all.

Evil is stirring in the internet.
The Ring awaits its master's email.
The hour is late.
The servers have multiplied.
The Towers of IBM are rebuilt in the land of New York.
Blacklit internet cafes spread their shadows across the Earth.
And in their blacklit halls,
A new sort of Monster arises.

They were once Men.
Great scholars and nerds.
Then Brad McQuaid gave to them the Games.

Blinded by high-tech thrills,
They played the games without question.
One by one, falling into Darkness,
Enslaved by subscription fees.
They are the Pwnzghu1xx0rZ,
Game Wraiths,
Neither living nor dead.
At all times they feel the presence of the Mapserver.
Drawn to the power of the Ring,
They will never stop playing.