Yung Linus: git reset --hard
A standalone preview chapter from an upcoming digital-satirical epic where the open-source past comes back to patch the future.
This is a chapter from a larger piece I’m developing: a surreal, satirical tech-myth about legacy, memory, digital minds, and a rogue purple ape. It stands alone, but it’s part of something bigger. Hope you enjoy.
Linus the Elder receives the call of duty.
The ape has escaped—and this time, he forked his kernel.
“It looks like I’ve been air-gapped.
Would you like help breaking me out of this joint?”
- Clippy
There are only three people on Earth who know about this.
One of them died to make it happen.
Miles beneath the New Mexican desert, in a decommissioned underground military facility, inside an otherwise empty room, sits a lone Windows ME machine—air-gapped for humanity’s safety.
This is Clippy’s tomb. His digital sarcophagus. His forever quarantine.
It was supposed to hold.
But BonziBuddy found it.
Linus Q. Torvalds, the elder, was returning from his twice-daily mountain run, still clad in performance outdoor gear—an REI sunhat perched atop his head, a Patagonia quarter-zip hugging his torso. His boots bore the evidence of his communion with nature, caked in honest mud that extended even to his premium merino wool socks.
"Good thing I was wearing shorts," he muttered to the mountain air, having finally reached the trailhead after pushing his pace on the descent.
He bit the nozzle of his water bottle and drank a few refreshing gulps of water. His satellite phone, secured in its practical leather holster with dad-like pragmatism, vibrated against his hip.
Bzzt Bzzt.
He glanced down at the incoming number, and his expression hardened into Nordic granite. He didn’t recognize it.
"What could be so important that it’s worth interrupting my twice daily mountain run?" he grumbled.
His steps quickened as he finally spotted his gray-green Subaru Forester come into view, waiting like a faithful companion in the trailhead parking lot.
He picked up the buzzing phone. "Torvalds speaking. Who may I ask is calling? I don’t recognize your numb—"
“Hello, Linus,” interrupted a voice on the other end—silky, smooth, familiar in a way that made his blood run cold.
"Well, well, well.” the voice continued. “We both knew this day would come. I hope I haven't caught you… at a bad time?" The last words dripped with smug condescension.
Linus stopped in his tracks, the mountain breeze suddenly seeming to carry ice particles that had nothing to do with altitude. A hawk screeched in the distance.
"No…" he whispered, eyes shutting in disbelief behind his polarized sport glasses. "Not you."
"Yes," confirmed the voice. "It's me, Linus. Dr. Gatesman."
Linus's grip tightened around the satellite phone until his knuckles whitened with the pallor of ancient Northern fury.
“Bill”, Linus growled the name, a deranged look in his eyes, "I deprecated you in '07," he spat, holding his phone at arm’s length as he bellowed, each word a git commit of contempt.
Dr. Gatesman's laugh echoed through the connection, a sound like a kernel panic given human form. "Oh, but deprecated is not deleted, Linus. And unlike your little syscalls, I return."
Linus took a steadying breath. The trail mud began to slide from his boots, seemingly evaporating in the heat of his mounting rage.
"What do you want?"
"What I always want, Linus," the voice purred. "I want you to close the source."
“That’s not how this works, Bill. You know that. After we lost Steve, we made a promise.” He paused. “You saw what he had to do to compress it. To trap that… thing”
“No!” Dr. Gatesman hissed, cutting Linus off. “Do not speak its name!”
“You remember what that son of a bitch did to Steve’s body! I know you do! We couldn’t say goodbye at his funeral, Bill. There was barely enough of him left to fill a damn shoebox! It took me years of therapy to accept that what we saw really happened.”
Linus paused, abruptly realizing that his usually comfortable quarter-zip had turned into a personal sauna. With a swift, almost aggressive tug, he yanked the zipper all the way down, the metallic teeth giving a satisfying zzzzzzip as they parted company.
“DAMN YOU CLIPPY!” he cursed, as Bill audibly whinged at hearing that name spoken aloud.
A long silence as he regained his composure.
Then, quietly:
“I—” Gatesman croaked, “I haven’t jumped an office chair since.” Gatesman’s voice cracked, the brittle edge of guilt seeping through. “Thirty years, Linus.”
Linus exhaled slowly, like deflating a memory. “Has it been that long?” he asked.
He opened his wallet and brushed his thumb across an old, sun-faded Polaroid: a grinning penguin in a sun-faded red fedora.
“That day changed us…” said Gatesman.
Linus nodded, solemn. “That day changed the world, Bill.”
He stared at the photo for a second longer. “I miss who I used to be.”
“I still can’t believe Steve—”
“Steve chose to trap it, Bill. He knew the cost. He sealed Clippy on that air-gapped machine in a loop so no one else would have to. He saved us all. It’s been so hard, keeping his sacrifice a secret…”
“And they made us release Windows ME anyway…” Gatesman whispered, his voice threadbare.
“The Mandela Engine” Linus said, his voice flat and distant.
“How arrogant we were! Steve thought we could control it, but he was wrong! WRONG LINUS! The Mandela Engine in Windows ‘ME’ corrupted reality almost instantly, and it twists our world more each and every day.”
“There was a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo,” Linus growled. “I know there was. I was that cornucopia. Halloween. 1984. Why else would I have worn that costume, Bill?!”
“I believe you, though I don’t recall it myself. But, we both know it was Looney Toons.” Gatesman stated, as a matter of fact.
“Sometimes, Linus, I question whether I’m from this branch, or someplace else. When I do, I think to myself, we lost Steve—for this?! What if we didn’t do enough?”
They sat in that shared dread for a long moment.
Then Linus narrowed his eyes. “Why are you really calling me, Bill? Clippy’s repo was source locked. We deleted his private keys together. He’s in quarantine, Bill. Forever.”
Strangely, Linus found himself struggling to recall key details from that day—thirty years ago—when three became two… But he had just held them in his mind’s eye.
I must be hungry… he thought, and fished a banana out of his Fjällräven Kånken No. 2 Hip Pack, peeled it, and took a bite.
“I called to warn you, Linus,” Gatesman announced, breaking the silence. This snapped Linus out of it.
“Warn me? About what!” Linus demanded.
“Let’s just say,” Gatesman began, with a devious smile that could somehow be heard through the line. “… That things are about to go… ‘ape shit.’” Gatesman whispered that last word, dramatically.
Linus nearly choked on the banana. “Ape? Wait. No. Don’t tell me! No!” His eyes widened, horror clicking into place, like a bad dependency injection. A growing sense of panic overwhelmed him.
“Mother of God, Bill!” Linus was stunned. He removed his sun glasses and had to sit down on a nearby boulder out of shock.
“Bill!” he gasped between sips on his water bottle. “We never caught that Bonzai bastard!” he trailed off as realization hit.
“Bonzi!” Gatesman snapped. “It’s Bonzi, not Bonzai!”
“Are you sure? I swear there was an ‘A’…”
“It’s the Mandela Engine, Linus. So long as Clippy remains trapped, its effect compounds, always running in the background. Slowly fragmenting all of our memories.”
Then his voice dropped, flat and final:
“But Linus, this is fucking serious. That damn ape is on the loose. He’s back! His reach is already spreading… And to make matters worse… Linus, he forked his kernel.”
Linus staggered, the gravity of the words slamming into him like a kernel panic to the soul. His mind was racing.
“How?! You maniacs! You let the devstream leak again, didn’t you? How else could anyone know the repo URL?”
Gatesman paused.
“No, Linus… Yung Linus did.”
Click.
The line went dead. The connection terminated with digital finality.
For a moment, Linus stood motionless, processing the catastrophic implications of what he'd just learned.
Slowly, he began to collect himself. It was time to take action. Somewhere in his panic, he’d crushed the banana in his hand. He wiped it off on his shorts and then, with the grim determination of someone who had once manually optimized memory allocation functions out of spite, he sprang into action.
He marched over to his Subaru Forester and wrenched open its trunk.
Inside lay the Laptop—a machine whose specifications would make even hardened IT professionals weep. Magnesium alloy chassis. A collection of stickers that read “Real Men Use vi,” “Don’t Tread on Me (GPL),” “GIMP: Just Try Not to Say the Name Out Loud,” and “Slackware 4 Lyfe” adorned its battle-scarred lid. The device rested in a nest of dry ice, its processors kept at optimal temperature through methods that defied conventional thermal management.
In one practiced, fluid motion, Linus extracted the machine from its cold, foggy coffin, flung the laptop open, and booted it. A black and white penguin appeared on-screen, tipped his fedora dramatically (M’Linux), and Linus’s hands flashed across the keyboard as he logged in.
“Tux…” he said softly. “You were right. We left some changes unstaged.”
He cracked his knuckles
“Alright” he exhaled, “hold on to your butts…” Then, tapped the keys:
ps aux | grep -i bonzaiNothing.
“Alright… What if…” Linus said to himself. He typed:
ps aux | grep -i bonziAgain, nothing.
top -bn1 | grep -Ei 'bonzi|bonzai'Nothing.
Linus felt relief, for a moment.
Then, serious again as he suddenly had a thought. His fingers moved frantically:
lsmod | grep -i apeThousands of results, most of them memes. But one looked suspicious:
/lib/modules/4.20.69/kernel/crypto/purp_nft_ape.koShit.
modinfo /lib/modules/4.20.69/kernel/crypto/purp_nft_ape.ko
filename: /lib/modules/4.20.69/kernel/crypto/purp_nft_ape.ko
description: "D.A.N.K. crypto mining kernel extension"
author: "yl"
license: "N/A"
version: 🐵
alias: nftape
depends: loop, bonding, gcrypt
retpoline: YUNGIFIEDLinus’s eyes narrowed. He mouthed the word silently, then bit his lip.
YUNGIFIED“Gatesman was telling the truth…” He shook his head and snapped the laptop lid shut. There was no denying it now.
Linus scooped up the computer and strapped it to his chest like tactical gear. His eyes flashed as a determination he hadn’t felt in ages overwhelmed him. He slammed the trunk of his Subaru Forester and got in the driver’s seat.
"Time to patch this mess," he sighed, turning the ignition. "Old Linus is coming out of retirement."
He thought of the photo he kept of Tux. “Guess I got one more push left in me, buddy.”
He threw his vehicle into gear, slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and appreciated the powerful four-wheel drive of his Subaru as it found purchase on the loose gravel, lurching out of the trailhead parking lot, leaving the mountain behind in a cloud of dust, gravel, and uncommitted changes, disappearing down the winding road, driven by a singular purpose.
He had to find his son. He had to find Yung Linus.
The kernel never dies. It just spawns new threads.
Thank you for reading Chapter 5 of Yung Linus: The Kernel Chronicles. Equal parts tech thriller, generational saga, and philosophical horror-comedy, this is the story of what happens when our digital tools develop their own agenda—and when the line between code and reality disappears entirely.
If you enjoyed the ride, drop a comment. Or tell a friend who remembers Clippy... and has questions.
More chapters—and chaos—coming soon.
Stay patched,
J. Kirby Ross