He had been up all evening chmodding files for his new weblog while Lucille lay in bed, snoring away as usual. There was a point during the wee hours of the morning at which he happened to notice the slow disintegration of the walls, crumbling downward as if collapsing under some gross weight. The rabbits were grooming one another beneath the coffee table and the plastic bag atop their hutch seemed to be moving, inching toward him ponderously. He blinked several times and returned to his ftp window.
Right click. Properties/CHMOD. 777. Right click. Properties/CHMOD. 777. Right click. Properties/CHMOD. 777.
He'd been experimenting with many different pieces of blogging software, trying to find the perfect fit for the political commentary of a middle aged internet illiterate. After several hours of endlessly chmodding files, he thought he'd found the perfect piece of software, but there was a problem: the files didn't seem to be chmodding properly. He was starting to become suspicious that he'd chmodded these same files at least three times before, and when he tried to load the cgi files in order to sign in and begin blogging, he received the same error message.
FORBIDDEN : You don't have permission to access load.cgi on this server.
"What the fuck? I just chmodded this file to 777. What the fuck?"
Alas, load.cgi was chmodded to 755, not 777 as he had thought. Right click. Properties/CHMOD. 777. Right click. Properties/CHMOD. Permissions: 755. "What the hell is going on here?"
He threw his hands into the air, then brought the fingers to ruffle his hair as he turned away from the computer for a breather. The rabbits were stretched along their bellies, the chin of one resting on the neck of the other. The plastic bag had nearly reached the edge of the hutch and seemed to be waiting for the perfect moment to jump across the ravine between it and the computer desk and attach itself to his face. The fear of asphyxiation by a sentient plastic bag lingering in his mind, he turned back to the ftp program.
He right clicked every file he'd just spent the past half hour chmodding, only to find that they'd reverted to their original 755 status. "Holy fuck, they're chmodding themselves!" He pushed himself away from the desk, avoiding the plastic gaze of his nemesis, and ran to the front door. Thrusting it open, he ran out and down the street and kept on going until the sun began to rise and the birds were singing and his feet began to hurt but he persevered.
Lucille emerged from the bedroom at seven o'clock and walked downstairs to find the door open and the computer humming. The rabbits were asleep under the table and the percolator had switched on, filling the house with the smell of coffee beans. "Harold?" she asked aloud of the emptiness, peering out the door into the cold grey morning.