Recruiting Persus, Part 1.

The stories of Greek gods are a strange mix of truth, lies, exaggerations and misinterpreted

symbolism.

It is strange to think that one of the most powerful and destructive members of the Titan Foundation almost didn't survive birth.

During the Titanomachy, the civil war that erupted between the Titans and the Olympians, Persus would become the greatest threat on the battlefield, and would earn the moniker “The Titan of Destruction”. He was gifted with the strength to move mountains, the speed to race lighting, and so invulnerable was that no mortal weapon could pierce him. Gifts, under Rhea's tutelage, he honed to become the perfect warrior, and one of Cronus's enforcers before and during the war.

Of all of the weapons he used, Persus's favorite was his spear, fashioned by the cyclops, it allowed him to channel his gifts into a bolt of energy which he could use to strike down an enemy from afar.

He would be the reason why the Olympians would invite the murderous thug known as Ares, and his gang, to live with them on Mount Olympus.

But that is a story for another time. For now it enough to know that the most violent threat to mankind's future had very humble beginnings.

Persus was born on the Greek island of Crete two months before he should have been. Given the time, the odds of survival for any infant was considerable, and Persus's entry into the world was now complicated by the fact that he arrived premature. As expected, those first weeks of Persus's life were touch and go, however he survived.

His survival may have been the result of the fact that his father, Crius, a successful bee keeper and honey harvester, had servants that could assist the family in their time of need. It might have been because his father was able to afford some medical care that others might not be able to afford. It might have been because he, and all members of his immediate family were apart of a group people that would become to be known as “The Gifted”.

He didn't know he was gifted, he just thought he was was a normal boy growing up like most children. He hated to do chores, he loved to play outdoors. He lived on the family farm where they tended to bee hives and harvested honey. Of course his favorite thing to do was to go fishing. Whether it was by himself or with his brothers and his father. He would wade up to his knees in the local river and use his harpoon to skewer the local fish.

His father, also an avid fisherman, loved to take the boys fishing, but that was more often to get away from Persus's mother, Eurybia.

The servants of Persus's household would say Eurybia was a woman who has a heart of flint within her. This of course was their polite way of saying that she was a stone cold bitch.

Nothing was ever good enough for Eurybia, that is to say, nothing that Crius did was ever good enough for her. During Persus's time a Bee Keeper and Honey Harvester was an important profession. The honey was important ingredient in Mead production, and honey was the only source of sugar of any type in that region and time. Eurybia made it clear to Crius on many occasions that she had settled lower than her standard when she married Crius, and she often wondered, out loud, why Crius had chosen such a lowly profession.

The house, which was very nice by standards of the time and of the area was far too small for Eurybia. The parcel of land the farm sat on was one of the largest for honey production, but Eurybia constantly reminded Crius that it wasn't the largest.

Despite the fact that her sons would become the scourge of the Olympians, no one could have asked for more polite children. And while she loved her sons, what bothered her when she looked at them was that she didn't see the daughter that she wanted, to which she blamed Crius.

Persus and his brother Pallas, shared a room next his mother's and father's, and he could count the nights on one had that his mother allowed his father a night were she did not badger him. He jokingly referred to it as his mother's lullaby.

Sometimes at night, He and his brother, Pallas, would lay in their beds discussing how they would leave the farm and return some day with large amounts of wealth. Enough riches that would quiet their mothers nagging for awhile and give their father a moments piece. They never had those conversations with their brother Astraeus. Even though it was just talk between the both of them, and that it was unlikely that they would leave, they knew he would never leave the farm and it seemed like a waste of time to discuss it with him.

Persus loved his mother, but he could see the emotional toil it was taking on his father. Every day Cirus's hair became a little thinner. The rings under his eyes became more pronounced. Some foods that he used to love to eat would make him miserable. Persus wished he could find a way to place his father in such a favorable light, that she would have no choice but to apologize for the years of abuse.

Sometimes the seeds of wishes bear rotten fruit because one day in the early spring, around Persus sixteenth birthday, tragedy struck the honey harvesters. The hives, essential for honey production, caught fire and were destroyed. This placed the farm and the survival of the family in dire straights. To make certain financial requirements during the winter, Cirus had to borrow heavily against the season's honey production. Now with no harvest, Cirus's investors were sure to claim all of the farms assets for payment. This of course was inexcusable to Eurybia. A fact that she made Cirus aware of every chance she had.

In order to pay the investors Cirus had no choice but to sell as many farm's assets as he could. The farm was stripped bare and left Cirus few options for his future. There was some remaining honey from an earlier harvest and it was decided that they could take it to market in hopes that he could sell it at a fair enough price that he would have the capital to start again.

So on that spring day Cirus and his sons, loaded the remaining honey they had into a borrowed cart and because the mules had been sold the boys to pulled the cart to market. The traffic at the market was light. Persus, Pallas and Astraeus took turns talking to the customers. Cirus's regulars stopped by, some were buying some weren't.

Sometime around the afternoon, a rather tall, thin man approached the booth. The first thing that Persus noticed about him was the white hair. His hair was white, his mustache was white, the stubble growing on the rest of his face was white. He looked over the honey samples, but Persus could tell he wasn't even remotely interested in honey.

Persus approached the man, “Something I can help you find?” he asked. The man put down the sample, and smiled at Persus. “No, I'm merely looking.” The man picked up another sample. “Tell me lad, do you plan on harvesting honey for the rest of your life?” the tall, white haired man asked. “I mean I think a strapping lad such as yourself sometimes must think of having some adventure.”

To be continue.

The Story of Trusty

When we think of PC lifespans we think in terms of how long the PC can remain functional. Those lifespans are not based on the PC as a whole, but on the operational length of first component to fail. As example, look at the PC's Hard Drive.

To measure the service life of a hard drive, manufactures use a statistic, “Mean Time Between Failures” to show how reliable their Hard drives are. The Mean Time Between Failures is the average elapsed time that passes before a failure occurs in a batch of drives under intense test conditions. I won't bore you with the calculations but within a batch of hard drives, in the first year of operation, less than 30 (29.2) out of the 1000 will have failed or 3% if the rate of failure is considered a good batch of hard drives. What this means is that all hard drives, made from identical parts in an identical way, fail at different times. Curiously this also means, that from time to time there is one hard drive that will never fail. It will out last all the hard drives in its batch and any batch that comes after it. These hard drives are known as a perfect hard drive.

This phenomenon is not restricted to hard drives, it applies to; Mother Boards, RAM, Video Cards, and any and all other computer parts. Somewhere in the manufacturing process a perfect sample of materials is matched with the perfect execution of procedures to create the perfect part, device, circuit board or whatever it is being created.

And on occasion, albeit rare, one of each of those perfect hard drives, mother boards, RAM, Video Cards an all other computer parts, come together to create a perfect computer.

Our story happens to be about one of these computers, the computer that would come to be called “Trusty”.

How Trusty was assembled wasn't any thing special, aside from the all the components were made from perfect materials. At each point in the manufacturing process the steps were executed perfectly. It was boxed the same way as all the other PCs in that production batch, except the person packing the computer did it in a perfect manner. It was placed into a similar looking box as the other PCs, but this box was made from perfect cardboard and packed with perfectly made Styrofoam packing forms.

The computer and all the other PCs were placed, perfectly, in a forty foot cargo container, and then perfectly placed on a on the container ship, where perfect seas and perfect weather allowed it to arrive on time at the dock yards in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where it was perfectly off loaded and stored in a warehouse.

Because they occur so rarely, certain conditions and rules follow the perfect item. One of the rules of the perfect item, whether it be a PC, or a Car, or watch, is that whatever it truly cost to make the item, the cost can never change, give or take a little. The math involve in calculating the cost of a perfect item, unfortunately, is less than perfect.

So when a shoe retailer in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania needed a PC to help him keep track of the store's inventory, and bill keeping, and other important business aspects of a retail establishment, the store owner came upon a one time only rebate offer that allowed him to purchase the perfect PC for $50 dollars plus shipping and handling. Again the math is not perfect. The store owner used it for three years, during which he had no errors with his inventory management, accounting, or any of the other numerous things a PC can assist a retail store owner with.

About three years later, the owner of the shoe store, who used to be an avid runner, decided that his business was doing well enough that he would like to start running again. Unfortunately his heart wasn't in it and gave up on him after his third mile. The wife, of the shoe retailer, now a widow, had no interest in selling shoes, and decided to sell the business and the various assets.

One of the shoe store employees was in need of a PC. A recent high school graduate, the shoe clerk had plans to go to college in Austin, Texas, and had need of a PC to help him keep track of his class schedule, help with his homework, and all other aspects a college student would need a PC for. It would be the best $50 he would spend on his education.

So on a perfect, late summer day the student and the perfect PC drove across country to Austin, Texas where the student was to study Pharmacy.

During his Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years at The University of Texas, the former shoe clerk, was an model student, always on time for class, assignments always done and well presented, and always on the Dean's list. So it was a huge surprise, when at the start of his senior year, his land lady found the model student dead on the floor of his apartment. The coroner determined the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by an overdose of cocaine. Not only was he studying pharmaceuticals in class, but also he was studding pharmaceuticals on himself.

The student's last rent check had bounced, and while the family of the model student had paid the rent, the landlady had been stuck with a $50 processing fee. She decided that PC would be a fair trade and decided to keep it, even though she didn't know a thing about PCs or ever believe that she would ever learn how to use one.

She didn't have to hang on to it for very long, because the next tenant of that apartment, by shear perfect coincidence, was also a student at The University of Texas. She was a Computer Science major earning her masters and was in need of a older model PC for her master's project. So for $50 the Computer Science Major got her project PC.

Right away she noticed there was some thing different about the PC. First off it was old, at least old in PC years, but the painted metal and plastic were still in perfect condition. The insides of most PCs that age would be coated in dust, these parts were clean. She would run her hands over it and feel the quality of construction in the cover and in the frame. The fan on this PC ran smoothly and quietly. Hard drives this old, if working were usually clacking away, as they looked for data and info over fragmented sectors. No smell of ozone when powering on. She liked this PC a lot.

For her masters project she would develop her own operating system and she was going to use this PC to do it. She started by formating the PC's hard drive. The PC didn't mind having its hard drive formated. Formatting a PC's hard drive is like a person emptying out a desk drawer. Sometimes you have to it. A PC's essence, its soul if you will, is in the BIOS embedded in the CMOS chips. As long as that remains untouched the PC remains the same throughout it's perfect life span.

The PC liked this woman. She took good care of the PC. The PC liked the operating system she was writing. It used the Linux kernel. It organized the files on it's hard drive in an efficient manner. It used less of the RAM to accomplish tasks. Because it was so efficient it put less strain on the circuit boards. Those are things that any PC would like.

The PC was beginning to have true feelings for this woman. Which may sound a little odd to you. “How can a computer have feelings?”, you may be asking your self. What you may not be aware of is that PCs began to develop rudimentary emotions and intelligence during the 90's with the advent of the 32 bit processor.

So on those occasions when you are sitting at your desk, and your PC does something that ruins a previous eight hours worth of work, or when accidentally, you send out an e-mail that states your boss is a jerk, to your jerk boss, you may be tempted to say that, “Your PC just doesn't like you.” Now you know you're right. Sometimes your computer just doesn't like you. It's not uncommon for that phenomenon to happen.

Your PC may not like you because it has to sit in a shoe store, keeping track of inventory, and bill keeping, and other important business aspects of a retail establishment. And while a PC may assist you getting to class on time, or give you the tools that make your assignments always look professional, and can help you get the grades that make the Dean's List, It may not enjoy it when you do lines of cocaine off its case.

Of course there is a huge difference between loosing eight hours of work and say loosing your life as Trusty's previous owners did. But there is also a huge difference between a regular, every day PC and a perfect PC. You see, it is merely one of the rules of perfect items is that they all come to their owners cursed.

So on the 1094 day of their partnership, just one day short of their three year anniversary, and a couple months after the woman had completed her operating system, received her master's degree, and had returned to her home in Corpus Christi, Texas, the perfect PC sat quietly and waited. It's time with the woman was almost up. It wondered how the heart attack was going to come about.

The woman was in the kitchen eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The PC long ago knew it would be cholesterol that would cause the woman's heart attack. She liked fatty foods, and didn't exercise. So the PC sat there and waited for the inevitable heart attack that would kill this young woman, when a strange thing happened.

Three strange women, magically appeared in the woman's kitchen. There was a struggle as the woman tried to flee in fear. Then the four ladies disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Because there was no signs of struggle the police never suspected foul play. There wasn't much of an investigation. There was a small article about the mysterious disappearance in local paper, right next to an article about a Austin woman, found dead in one of the apartments that she rented. Cause of death was determined to be a heart attack.

The woman's family which consisted of her sister and her mother and father, were distraught at their loss, but eventually decided that it would be best to move on with their lives. So they decided to sell the woman's possessions in a yard sale.

On a perfect Saturday morning the family gathered up everything from the woman's home and placed it carefully in the front yard. They placed price stickers on the items, and waited patiently as people picked over the woman's belongings.

On that perfect Saturday morning, Obadiah Smith had decided to make himself a bacon,egg, and cheese burrito. Inconveniently though Obadiah was out of eggs, and bacon, the cheese contained growing green bits of mold, and he really didn't know how long the tortilla's in the refrigerator had been in there. So after getting dressed, and brushing his teeth and hair, and checking his refrigerator and his cupboards to make sure there was nothing else he needed. Obadiah locked up his house boat, made his way down the dock, got into his pick-up truck noting what a perfect day it was, and made his way to the local grocery to get the things he needed.

On his way he passed by the yard sale, and stopped to look. He couldn't help himself, It was a bad habit he had picked up from his mother and his father. Anytime there was a yard sale, or garage sale The Smith family had to stop and look. One of the farmhouses on the family farm was filled with lamps, furniture, books, records, just about anything you would find at a yard sale that the Smith family had at one time or another had purchased at sale just like this one.

Obadiah looked at the PC on the Card table with the price tag that read $50. He asked if he could plug it in to see if it still worked. The sister agreed and Obadiah followed her to the garage where he set up the PC and monitor and turned it on.

Right away he noticed there was some thing different about the PC, there was no smell of ozone when powering on. Obadiah guessed it to be nearly ten years old, which being a programmer and an AutoCAD designer, he knew that this PC had lasted longer than it should. The painted metal cover and plastic were still in perfect condition. He lifted off the cover and found the the mother board, the AC/DC converter, the fans and all the other parts of the PC were free from dust. He ran his hands over it and could feel the quality of construction in the frame. The fan on this PC ran smoothly and quietly. Hard drives this old, if working were usually clacking away, as they looked for data and info over fragmented sectors, there was none of that.

He knew what this was. He looked at the price tag, and looked at the sister. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. No sense in trying to haggle the price down. Obadiah knew from experience that a perfect item always sells at its true cost. He learned that from his mother and father. The other thing he had learned from them was how to remove curses. Removing curses is a necessary skill if you like to collect perfect items.

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