He starts tapping out some lines in a language called Perl. Perl’s a scripting language; useful for controlling your computer’s functions and automating repetitive tasks. A UNIX machine like this one is rooted in a filesystem that contains tens of thousands of different files, mostly in straight ASCII text format. There are many different programs for opening these files, displaying them on the screen, and editing them. Randy intends to write a Perl script that will roam through the filesystem choosing files at random, opening each file in a randomly sized and located window, paging through it for a while, and then closing it again. If you run the script fast enough, the windows will pop open all over the place in a kind of rectangularized fireworks-burst that will go on forever. If this script is used as the screen background, in place of solid indigo, then this will go on underneath the one window on the screen where Randy’s actually working. The people monitoring his work will go crazy trying to track all of this. Especially if Randy writes a script that will cause the real window to change its shape and location at random every few seconds.