A Scene from ‘The Life of Barry’

 The interior of an anonymous conference room. A darkened room with a very conspiratorial atmosphere. Bod and Farley are seated at a table at one end of the room. Foskett, dressed in Activist gear — black robes and a red sash around his head — is standing by a plan on the wall. He is addressing an audience of about eight masked Activists. Their faces are partially hidden.

    

Foskett:    We get in through the underground heating system here… up through to the main corridor here… and Burke's study is here. Having grabbed his computer, we inform Burke that it is in our custody and forthwith issue our demands. Any questions?

Xerxes:    What exactly are the demands?

Bod:    We're giving Burke two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Evil Machine Company and if he doesn't agree immediately we format his hard-drive.

Matthias:    Delete his files?

Foskett:    Wipe all the bits off, send 'em back every hour on the hour, one by zero… show him we're not to be trifled with.

Bod:    Also, we're demanding a ten foot mahogany statue of the Emperor Chuck Hollis with his **** hanging out.

Farley:    What? They'll never agree to that, Bod.

Bod:    That's just a bargaining counter. And of course, we point out that they bear full responsibility when we delete all his photos even the ones from his latest cruise, and… that we shall not submit to blackmail.

Omnes:    (Applause) No blackmail!

Bod:    They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers' fathers.

Farley:    And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

Bod:    Yes.

Farley:    And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.

Bod:    All right, Farley. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?

Xerxes:    The Array?

Bod:    Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.

Masked Activist:    And the mid-range array!

Farley:    Oh yes… the mid-range array, Bod, you remember what the data-centre used to be like.

Bod:    All right, I'll grant you that the Array and the mid-range Array are two things that EMC have done…

Matthias:    And Content Addressable Storage…

Bod:    (sharply) Well yes Content Addressable Storage… the CAS goes without saying. But apart from the Array, the Mid-Range Array and the Content Addressable Storage…

Another Masked Activist:    VMWare…

Other Masked Voices:    Encryption… Documentum… Legato…

Bod:    Yes… all right, fair enough…

Activist Near Front:    And the Replication…

Omnes:    Oh yes! True!

Foskett:    Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if EMC went under, Bod.

Masked Activist at Back:    BCVs!

Foskett:    And it's safe to store your data now.

Farley:    Yes, they certainly know how to protect your data.. (general nodding)… let's face it, they're the only ones who could in a climate like this.

    (more general murmurs of agreement)

Bod:    All right… all right… but apart from Arrays and mid-Range Arrays and CAS and VMWare and Encryption and Documentum and Replication and BCVs and data protection… what have EMC done for us?

Xerxes:    Control Center!

Bod:    (very angry, he's not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh… (scornfully) Control Center, yes… bloody Control Center! Oh forget about stealing his computer, we might as well give up now!

BTW, I know EMC didn't invent a lot of those things but they productionalised a lot of them…the Romans were the same, they acquired a fair bit of technology as well, especially from that lot called 'The Greeks'. And an apology for the statue thing, it's a fairly disturbing image I guess and finally, an apology to the Monty Python Crew for stealing fairly whole-sale!

EDIT: PS Apologies to Chuck for revealing to the world that he keeps chickens, I've censored that line now!