In ancient times, sacred warriors would spend the night before an important battle praying to the god of their choice. Usually, it might have been a better choice to simply get some rest.

Today, we have no more warriors, no more glorious battles, fought man against man, no more history made by a single dedicated man.

But, we have 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione . Or, as we know it, caffeine. And we have a new class of sacred warriors, the code monkeys and hackers.

That is right. Non geeks, pay attention now:

Each time you sleep well in your little cushion, men and women of the geek class sit, scattered around the globe, in front of dimly lit computer screen, fighting his battles against malicious code, only that the rest of us may have a comfortable night. Some of them write the malicious code, some of them write the counter code, some of them write code that has never been seen before, and some of them simply try to please our gods, namely, the middle till upper management. And each of these geeks has 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione , or his fashionable substitute.

The all nighter actually is what made most of the bad stories about us geeks.

We are the ones that sit alone in apartments, never having seen daylight, totally nocturnal, and always on the search for secrets the normal human mind was not meant to know.

Well, to tell you the truth, most of these things are… true. Yes, daylight usually is a bit of a blinder after an eight day coding spree, for writing codes you usually need to be alone to concentrate, The night simply is the time were it is less likely for a commoner to drop in and ask us to fix the computer of their grandma who has spilled soda all over the open and heavily modded case (Without pay of course), and yes, goddammit, the human mind should not be forced to deal with that kind of stuff, but goddamn, somebody has to do the job.

Well, one of the most discussed facts of non geeks about our all nighters is that if we really do work, or just download dirty pictures of the Internet.

I have to say: Yes, we do. We also do play counterstrike, and chat a lot with our fellow geeks who are also out at the keyboard, doing exactly the same. But, we still get our work done. Crazy, not? Well, actually, not a single bit. As I have stated, during daylight, most of you commoners seem to think that writing code is exactly the same as their jobs.

Now, I have some very bad news for you: Writing code is an art. Your job is work.

Now, if you want to experience what we experience during daylight, just do the following.

Get the cardboard box that is exactly in the middle of the whole section. The one with the squeaky floors, that produce sound anytime when someone walks by.

Get a fax, that spills out a page every half hour, which induces the unfortunate impression that it was something terribly important, but you sadly cannot read it, because the fax s messed up and only produces the letters, written on a black cardboard with black ink in front of a black velvet lining, photographed by a camera with no flesh and no lens, in a totally dark rook.

Tie ten cellphones to your head, that are all tuned to that very compensated version of the manamana song from sesame-street.

Now, get one of the TV’s and feed it with a 24 hour video mix from the manamana video, and the playboy channel. Turn it on, and tune it to maximum volume.

Get a radio, and turn it to static. Max volume also.

Now, get a bus load of preschool children, equip them with game boys, and force them to stay in your cardboard box.

Now, please, you presumptuous arrogant piece of the man, try to memorize the entire telephone-book. Backwards.

Get my meaning? Great!

Now, if you want to know the merits of working at night, simply ask your sysadmin ( do not forget the traditional offering of Mountain Dew and Ramen) if you can spend an hour in the server room.

My first time in the server room was simply amazing. You can hear all those noises at first, but they dim down to mere nothingness after a few hours. Now, Imagine the following:

You are all alone on your floor. No boss that wants to know why your performance is not what marketing promised, no noisy coworkers, No motion. The only peoples you will probably meet are the night watchmen (If Jerry actually manages to access the Internet, big ups to you. For a person who has never even touched a keyboard, you play a hell of a game of Quake, and your wife makes the best goddamn sandwiches) or the cleaning lady (Miss Rastikalepeptios, if you read this, never was my night more pleasurable then when you dropped by with a cookie and a can of freshly brewn Greek coffee. I still have to assume that you are an angel sent by god. But I doubt that an angel has such fantastic stories about your grandchildren or the coworkers. I also doubt that an angel knows such curses. Even I had to google some of the meanings. But I guess there are other gods too…).

You have no distraction that you did not create yourself. You are practically the only person on the floor. Dang, you can even play the Bee-gees at full volume, and no one will care.

Now, do you think that in such a distraction free environment, we could possibly take the same time for our tasks as under daylight conditions?

That is right, and I know some guys will be mad about me sharing the secret, but each time I sit alone in the server room, with my laptop on my knees, all the machines buzzing busily and slowly starting, and the CD player plays some french madrigal while a bowl of tasty Ramen cools down a bit so I can slurp them, It is like a small but precious holiday for me. If you work in the business, and have to deal with customers in the daylight hours, big up yourself, like the young people these days fancy saying. I could never reach my full potential. But during the night, when everybody sleeps… Then it is the time of my ascension from the heavens, then it is my apocalypse and my time of Elysium. Then, and only then, I am truly alive.

I also understand the point of the management. These guys simply need to know what you are doing, when you are doing it, and they need the satisfaction of a certain Austrian painter to see all their henchmen busily at work.

But let me emphasize:

You do not pay me for being under your watch. For having to partake in pointless meetings, for having to socialize with others of your kind, or for the constant harassment when you make jokes about my clothes, which mainly consist of a T-shirt and of my trusty pair of jeans. Yes, I have seen you, in your precious little suits, gathering around and mock me.

You pay me for getting my work done. If you have any reasons, besides not being able to control me, or supervise me, why I should not work at night, I will gladly accept, and show up during daylight hours.

But unless then, I will remain a child of the original darkness. The darkness only enlightened by the dim glimmer of some LED-Displays, some lamps, and my trusty laptop. I will willingly deal with any problems you leave for me, and I will do it as fast and as proper as I can.

But unfortunately, you never leave enough problems for me. Or, problems that could be dealt with by the main daylight shift, if they weren’t busy brown nosing the upper management. Then, and only then, I sometimes feel the urge, after all the work is done, to flip down that laptop screen of mine, borrow your precious little beamer, and have a little game of Quake in ultra high definition.

Or, occasionally, I will get a pack of cigarettes, my laptop, climb up to the roof, and with the help of some extensive wiring being done, I am able to just sit under a sky full of sparkling stars, hear the distant sounds of police sirens and cars running around, have a tasty bowl of Ramen and a mountain dew, and pretend that I am a member of some alien culture, that has been dropped on a place like this, with a brain the size of a small planet, and that I actually care about what does go on in that office you others might call home.

I am an artist. This is my manifesto.

You may call me a social outcast, a danger to society, or even refer to me as that creepy guy. You might think that I am trapped in a world that is not good for me, and that it is necessary for me to partake in those silly routines of fondling yourself to the corporate hymn, Corporate activity, healthy business life or whatever you like to call your little game of intrigues.

Ask yourself this: Would you ever be able to write about your work in such a manner that it might seem to an outsider that you would actually care? Or even love your job?

I love my job. I totally do. It gives me the opportunity to play with neat electronic gadgets, cuss upper management officials with limited I Q’s for making mistakes even a 10 year old might be smart enough to not make. I love to be responsible for making such a smooth and well built machinery run. I simply must say that since you are so damn successful, that you are able to pay me slightly more then the lowest guy in management, you must have done something right.

Now, if I would march into your office, and shit on your table while explaining you how to run a business this size, would you even wait to call security to beat up my geek body?

Nope. You wouldn’t. Because you have gone through business school, studied hard at University’s whose fees are more then what I see in an entire year, and have spend several years learning it the hard way, so you do not have to have anybody to tell you how to run business.

Now, if you do not want to loose your social security, bank number, insurance or anything else like your privilege for a save elevator ride ( what a pity that the elevator had to get stuck just seconds before the big meeting with the guys from Japan! Perhaps the next time you will listen when I tell you that cheap labor that is provided by a nephew of the board of directors chairman is probably not a synonym for good work, you will listen…), do not tell me how to do my job. Just always think of this: I am the guy that has root access to all of your files. Do you really want to make me angry? Or not fully concentrated?

I think you got your idea.