Modern Hydra

For his next labor, Hercules had to clear his inbox. His nemesis for this task was the Thuerkian Hydra.

The Hydra was a serpent-like beast with many email addresses. Each address could carry an attachment venomous enough to make the recipient wish he could unsee it.

The Hydra lived in a cave near the swamps of Thuerk. The cave was also where the springs of Anonymous originated. From time to time the Hydra would leave the swampland and raid nearby villages, greatly complicating life for the peasants who lived there.

Hercules, travelling with Iolas, arrived near the cave. Arranging cloth over his eyes to protect himself from Hydra’s venom, he send a number of hostile and insulting messages to the Hydra, mainly disagreeing with the Hydra’s views on a variety of subjects.

This caused the Hydra to emerge from the cave, enraged. Unwanted email after unwanted email viciously attacked Hercules. He wielded his mouse deftly, clicking on Unsubscribe before the images had a chance to load. But for each email he unsubscribed, two more email addresses started sending him messages.

This was a losing battle for Hercules. He could not escape, he was getting tired, and the beast was growing.

Desperate, Hercules called to Iolas for help. Grabbing a keyboard, Iolas told Hercules to click Reply instead of Unsubscribe. To each message that Hercules Replied, Iolas added a 550 Invalid Recipient header. This prevented new addresses from growing.

Finally, the Hydra was down to its one immortal address. Hercules was able to, with his great strength, unplug that server and bury it under a great boulder from which it could never escape.

The End.

And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names.

Revelation 13:1

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:09 am and has been carefully placed in the Technical category.

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