e built into the same
kernel. A POKE (or STA) to a memory location would switch you to a different machine architecture.

Thank you for your questions. I hope that I have sparked some interest to the readers of Commodore Free. I look forward to hearing from you, and thank you
to the folks at Commodore Free for keeping us all informed!

Thanks
Scott Hutter


*************************************
"THE...SYSTEM...IS...DOWN"
*************************************

"The clerk" who was slightly overweight and still hung over from the free late lunch and awards ceremony last night, looks down at the keyboard; his face bathed in the green light from the terminal that he uses daily, although; as
is the case in most departments; cutbacks have meant that they have taken some of the bulbs out on alternate florescent lighting tubes. This was in the misguided conception that the process would save thousands from the budget. Next to his desk was a pile of papers printed on one side, they had all been asked to use the other sides for scrap paper and note taking; how much has
this saved every year is a guess but someone somewhere had earned a bonus for the suggestion.

The clerk's room is also cold, the radiator hasn't been on for a number of years, that's why most people who come into the office wear a long coat; they know just how cold the office is. Most of the other staff even sat working in
a coat; their breath vapour can be seen in the cold office air going upwards
as they speak to each other. The clerk and the others in the office often feel it would be better for them to sit in the car park, at least the sun would
warm their faces and it would be lighter than in the dark stuffy offices.

The clerk looks up at the light and curses to himself, he then looks over at the radiator and mutters under his breath about the cold; he stares at the papers on his desk and the notes he has taken on the other side; unable to
read them as the ink from the paper has soaked through both sides of the paper making the other side really useless for anything other than the bin. He
wishes he had the idea for himself and remembers the rumour that Jamerson in the next office had the idea and won a 2k bonus; he wonders if they will ever make that money back from using 2 sides of the page then dismisses the whole thing as he remembers his terminal. He then peers down at the keys, on the terminal that are lit with the same green electronic eerie lighting from the terminal screen. He seems worried; almost concerned; but he hasn't seen anything like this before; not in his entire career. The clerk isn't a fan of technology and remembers a simpler time when everything was hand written if
you needed to find some information you went to the archives; not now, everything is supposed to be more reliable faster and as the other ministers say "more with it" He glared at the screen and pulled down his glasses; not that he could see better as without them he was blind as a bat. No, he hadn't seen this kind of error message before, it's not he thought to himself. Then pausing in his own fear and shuddering, not from the cold but the thought that the system was about to fail. He remembered something about this kind of error when the whole thing was implemented; darn this infernal machine he thought.

The screen displayed error message after error; and all of them rolling up the screen, the little tiny green lines of error messages dancing in front of his eyes as they rolled up the screen then disappearing off the top as the next error was printed on the bottom of the screen, then another then another each green word seemingly pulsing almost mesmerising with hypnotic regularity and the clerk pushing his face towards the screen, to better focus on what the message says, fumbles in his pants pocket for a mobile phone.

He dials the number for these sorts of problems and reads out the messages
from the screen. Silence falls on the other end of the phone then he shouts
"I say, can you hear me? are your there?, , come on man; what should I do?"
the phone line suddenly blurts into life, the person at the other end stuttering and stammering, he asks the question that the clerk was dreading "does he know" the question is of coursed aimed at the prime minister, the clerks immediate boss and in this case he does know; he knows because he too, is also staring at the same green screen but he sat in his own office, and tapping on the keyboard in the vain hope the error message would somehow stop, but as he hasn't seen this error before he decides to ignore the message and leave it to the people who know about these things, after all it's not like they haven't had error messages before now; and why should he try to resolve the problem; heck he pays his staff enough they should fix these things before he see them he thought to himself. He thinks to himself again and suggests to himself "after all isn't that what I employ and pay them for, he muses about his staff the question and then mutters under his breath about having more things to worry about, more important and time pressured things.

The clerk on the other hand is very worried, he stammers down the phone in an as authoritative voice as possible, "look my good man; we need the system back online" the person on the other end of the phone line nods and then says
"it's, it's, it's nothing I have seen before and it will mean we need to restart the system" The clerk hasn't heard this said before, he asks the man, "is everything down then" the phone line springs back to life and the words "everything is down" comes over the line. The clerk nervously asks "but it is fixable isn't it" the caller on the other end of the phone just says "we haven't had this happen before" the clerk hangs up, his head is bowed down
into his hands as he leans forward further and further until his hands hit the keyboard and the machine issues a worrying "BEEP" the clerk jumps into a standing position and rushes in to see the prime minister.

"The system is down" says the clerk. The prime minister looks up from his notes, his face puzzled at first by the intrusion from the clerk. He thinks to himself, "Doesn't this man know I have things to do" he almost issue a cautionary word to the clerk and then stops, he decodes the words again but in slow motion in his mind "THE...SYSTEM...IS...DOWN" he jumps up suddenly comprehending the enormity of the problem and stands at his desk in attention, he stares at the clerk making him feel uneasy and start to sweat. The clerk unable to move and feeling transfixed to the spot swallows hard and then in a slightly higher pitched voice than he usually speaks and with beads of sweat running down his head utters the words "hhhhuuuuummmmm ssssshhhould IIIIIII
ggo down to the dep ppartment" he then pauses and swallows hard, the Prime minister breaks his gaze and looks around the room, the room is full of pictures of various notable people in Victorian style clothing, the room
itself is oak panelled from floor to ceiling, and with very little light
except mainly from the chandelier in the centre of the room and the sharp
beads of light coming from the sides of a large window covered almost entirely with dark heavy curtains. The prime minister looks around, he thinks to
himself "what would I do without all this" he looks at the clerk and smiles calmly, he says "yes please go to the department" the clerk feeling uneasy at his calm and self-assurance he starts to speak but no words come from his mouth, the prime minister looks at him and puts a hand on his shoulder and
then says "and thank you for your help" the clerk realizing the distress and the sense of occasion just turns and heads down past the rows of pictures and towards the large heavy door, he turns looks at the prime minister then
quickly and quietly closes the door behind him.

Still in the room and alone the prime minister drops to his knees head in his hands and begins to shout "why? why?" his cries are not heard through the
heavy door and walls, the sound is echoed around the room, meeting itself coming back and reverberating into every pie

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.01 (GNU/Linux-i386)
* Origin: Dragon's Lair (39:901/280)