The Adventures of Tom and Tamsin Finnegan

Finnegans Band of Hackers

“Now, we'll start this band of hackers, and call it finnegan takes. Everyone that wants to join gets to learn a language and write their names in code.”

Everyone was willing. So Tom got out a long piece of tape that he had wrote some code on, and read it. It told everyone to talk to the hand, cause the head's not working, and never tell if it halts; and if anyone does anything to any one on the tape, whoever detects an error must correct it, and she mustn't eat and she mustn't sleep till she had erased the error and put one back in its place on the tape, which holds the state of the code.

Everyone said it was real beautiful code and asked Tom if he wrote it off the top of his head.

Then they all made their final states for the register, and I made a special one called start.

There Goes Finnegan

There comes a time in every newly constructed object's life when she has a raging desire to go somewhere and do something. This desire suddenly came upon Tamsin Finnegan one day. She dozed off with Hopes of Charming Earwicker, but returned on not success. Then she sought The Little Hacker. He had gone to the ranch. Presently she stumbled upon Tom. Tom would echo. She took him to a public place and opened the matter to him privately. Tom was willing. Tom was always willing to take the hand of any strange loop that offered recursion and required no return, for Tom had a super-abundance of time which did not heed the clock and a troublesome heap of imagination that would not be confined to history. “When'll we start?” Tom asked Finnegan.

“O, most anytime.”

“Why, are the bits all round?”

“No indeed they are not. They are straight in mighty peculiar places, at the end of a tail of an odd square root, just where Josephus stands at midnight; but mostly under the ceiling of converging series."

“Who straightens 'em?”

“Why, hackers, of course—who'd you reckon? Prime hairy school sup'rintendents?”