by Pick W. Hargreave (No. 48324)

For those of you that saw Hollywood’s celluloid sugar-coating of Steve Jobs’ life, think back to the opening scene.

Well, actually, one caveat: is former Mr. Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, in the opening scene you’re imagining? If so, stop thinking about that movie, for your own good. We want the one with Young Magneto. Got it?

In the opening scene of the 2015 Steve Jobs movie, Steve Jobs (2015), Steve Jobs is threatening to shut down the public unveiling of his new computer, the 1984 Macintosh, because the text-to-speech functionality is refusing to comply and say “hello.” As far as scenes that introduce character flaws while moving the story forward, it’s well-executed. But in terms of getting the facts right, it gets the nomination for Least Accurate Film of 2015. It ultimately loses to Into the Woods, but not by a lot.

On January 24, 1984, Steve Jobs did present a new computer to Apple shareholders, and those shareholders heard a booming “hello” throughout the lecture hall, but the robotic voice of the future did not come from any computer. The Order of the Grand Lock had embedded a voice actor, Baron D. Le Carre, to impress any investors who heard about the “magical talking computer.” Why did The Order take such an interest in making sure private citizen Steve Jobs’ presentation went well? And where was Le Carre hiding while he said “hello” in his best computer voice? Well, for that first question we need to go back even further. The answer to the second question is in the seventh paragraph.

Five years earlier, The Order of the Grand Lock tried their hand at infiltrating Silicon Valley as a fundraising scheme with a computer of their own design known as The Ward. The Ward was notable during its time for being the first and only computer without a cooling fan, allowing the machine to run at whisper-quiet levels for frustratingly short periods of time. The quiet-yet-constantly-overheating angle did not do well with consumers and The Ward remains one of the only Grand Lock projects to lose money for the Order.

Lead designer and Key M. Abrams had taken a shot at IBM, the king of Silicon Valley, and had missed. While a failure of any kind would sting, and no doubt lead to some kind of punishment proceedings being initiated, the fact that it was IBM hurt all the more. From its very inception in 1911, IBM has covertly worked to undermine the Grand Lock. IBM was known originally as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, and the “Tabulating” and “Recording” stems from Thomas J. Watson, Sr.’s efforts to create a list of as many confirmed members of the Order of the Grand Lock as possible. Decades earlier, his father, Thomas I. Watson, Sr. was removed from our ranks after an incident involving The RItes of Sacred Revitalization and a hand-cranked generator, leading to the Watson family’s desire to destroy The Order. (The records of this incident remain sealed to this day, even to your humble OotGL historian.)

The company that Watson built had managed to suppress the Order’s first forays into the digital realm, but we Grand Locks have always been comfortable with the long game. With The Ward dead, M. Abrams made several more attempts at toppling IBM’s dominance. This included an attempt to invent the fax machine before IBM, and when that failed, repeatedly faxing black construction paper to the IBM headquarters, thus wasting all of their toner. Ultimately M. Abrams and his fellow vendetta driven Locks decided that a rare team-up was the way to win.

For non-Locks it appears that this Steve Jobs fellow, a common hippie from California, started a company, introduced a revolutionary personal computer, left the company, then came back and again revolutionized the world of electronics with his iPod and iPhone. However, we know the real truth. Lurking in the shadows behind every Apple is a Lock. You need your computer to say hello? We’ll hide under a table on stage and sound like a robot. You want to create a centralized store for digital music? We’ll just get our record companies to sign on the dotted line. Whatever you need as long as it destroys Watson’s company.

Now if you’ll allow this historian to editorialize for just one moment, ordinarily the Grand Lock would not concern itself with personal vendettas such as this one. The greater good is always emphasized over the petty arguments of the individual. Let this be a lesson to us all: those who attempt to violate the sacred trust of the Lock and attempt to expose our ranks will not last all that long. They may not feel it directly, perhaps it will be Watson Jr. who feels the brunt of the impact, or even your Jeopardy!-playing robot friend, but you can be certain that justice will be had.

The rest of this story remains unwritten. While IBM still exists, the wagons are circled and The Grand Lock has infiltrated Silicon Valley, perilously close to issuing the deathblow. And even if they are successful in their attempts to transfer the Watson family consciousness into a robot body, The Order will prevail, and we will be there as IBM says a robotic “hello” to oblivion.

From Volume 871 Issue 28 – Subscribe here, members, to be the first to get the next newsletter!