The Tool That Takes Pictures Of Your Work

People who write the words that tell number machines what to do change their work many times each day. At times a change damages the work, and they need to go back to how it was before. The tool that takes pictures of your work is for them — and for all people with work that is made from words.

The pictures

When you tell it to, the tool takes a picture of all your work, as it is at that moment. You give the picture a small sentence: what you changed, and why. The picture cannot be changed after that — not by you, and not by another person. You can look back at all the pictures, from the work's first day to now. If you damage your work now, you can go back to a picture from before, and there your work is, like it was. It is a small machine for going back through time — but only for your work.

The two lines

The tool can hold your work as two lines at the same time. In one line, you try something dangerous. In the other line, your work does not change. If the dangerous try goes well, the tool helps you put the two lines back into one. If it goes bad, you cut that line, and no one is hurt.

All of it, on all the machines

Each person working on the thing has all the pictures — all of them, from the first day. Because of this, if one number machine dies, the work is not gone: it is on all the other machines. Very many people in different countries can work on one thing at the same time, and the tool holds all of it as one.

The angry man who made it

A man made this tool some years after the year two thousand. He made it in about ten days, because the tool his group had been using was taken from them, and he was angry. He was often angry, and people knew him for it. He had made a big thing before: the words at the centre of very many number machines.

The name he gave this tool is a small word that means a bad person. People asked him why. He said that he names all the things he makes after his own name — and that this word, as well, was a name for him. He was laughing about the kind of man he was.

The book you are reading sits inside this tool. A picture of it was taken a short time before now.