Episode 5, Delectable Mountains, in which a little bit of code can have big repurcussions geniwate.com/admin/mipandmop

1. geniwate.com/admin/mipandmop
Concept based on The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan,
and written for Contemporary Media Work Practices,
a course at RMIT University
(www.rmit.edu.au)
c. geniwate 2012-5
Delectable Mountains 5

2. There was some sort of siren going off up
ahead along the mountain ridge. There
would be silence for a couple of minutes,
then the siren, then silence. They walked
cautiously towards it. Is it a fire?, Mip
wondered.
I don’t see any smoke, Mop replied.

3. Eventually the siren was very loud. I don’t see anything, Mip repeated with frustration. Mop
walked over to a bit of dead bush and started worrying it with his boot. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘It’s here.’
He up-rooted the bush, and underneath it there was a mouth, going straight down into the
ground. The next time the siren came on, it was very loud.

4. I think it’s an alert, he said. Or at least, an alert gone wrong.’
There’s nothing to be alert about out here.
Exactly. Whoever programmed this has made some mistake with the
syntax. It’s probably meant to be giving an error message at a portal
somewhere, instead its out here, randomly crying.

5. Don’t suppose we can fix it?
We don’t have read-write permission. Nothing we can do.’
They left the siren where it was, its lament following them like an evil
wind.

6. syntax