User:Murgh/Goat Soup Syntax Rupture

Overview

The Goat Soup Syntax Rupture -normally preceded by adjectives such as "devastating", "calamitous", "cataclysmic", "epochal", or "humiliating", to emphasize the magnitude of the event- ranks among the most significant occurrences of the modern Galactic Era.

This temporal marker separates the rigid, deterministic and predictable state of reality of the Pre-Soup Period, and the mercurial, whimsical and frequently nonsensical tone of the Post-Rupture Aftermath. Reality as it was perceived by galactic citizens was never again the same.

The catalyst

The event was not precipitated by an invading armada or natural disaster, but by all accounts, a fairly primitive data hack to the GalCop Central Mainframe (GCM). A precise and surgical injection of rogue code targeted the GCM's procedural ability to express descriptors and left it in a state of perpetual overflow. This sudden blow rendered the mainframe in a permanent "silly" state, limiting the data output to a predetermined vocabulary, rendering the output into a syntax that the observer could no longer interpret as authoritative. Of the greatest consequence to Galactic life, an ordinary planetary system descriptions factually listing its features were no longer neutral and analytical, but stuck in a mode of illogical brevity. First confrontations with sentences such as, "This planet is famous for its exotic goat soup but ravaged by the mating rituals of lethal spotted yaks" left the galactic user population stunned.

Scientists and engineers tasked with system restoration were soon surprised that it was not as simple as initially believed. They arrived at the analysis that GCM had been rendered to a permanent state of "Recursive Logic Dysphasia", and all conventional methods of repair appeared to reset or worsen this condition. Furthermore, the damage was manifest in such a way that GCM would itself resist any intervention, and continue to attempt "to heal itself" through expressions of absurd levity.

It was the final conclusion of the GalCop Restoration Panel that the GCM either be expeditiously deactivated, erasing millennia of collected galactic data and analysis - essentially the sum of humanity's knowledge- and consequently usher the species into an era of barbarity, or tolerate the semantic degradation and maintain operational continuity despite the erratic output. It was the panel's final recommendation that the GCM be allowed to continue to perform its duties and continue to tell its "jokes".

Responsibility

Although surveillance analysis had been flagged the resistance group The Mnemonic Fraction, only token precautions had been taken by GalCop command, ranking the dissidents only as a Class 3 Nuisance. The mainframe Intrusion Countermeasure Protocols were (understandably) believed to be of the utmost state-of-the-art and no previous efforts of sabotage had ever come close to classify as a credible threat. The inquest that followed concluded that in hindsight, the GalCop command had underestimated the Mnemonic Fraction and their elusive leader Gladous Masda.