Anniversary Email 43

Congratulations on 8 years, <NAME>. You’ve done many deep dives into the recesses of Apache and Linux for us, and I must call on your expertise in delving into the unknown once more.

In the lightless depths of the earth is an ancient cavern. Its scarred walls have not seen light since before the time of the dinosaurs. It oozes a thick, ruddy substance that warps and twists the stone with which it comes into contact, etching inscrutable runes that glow with a sickly green light. Staring too long at them induces vertigo, and strange whispers can be heard at the edge of your perception. Time itself seems to slip away as you stare into a growing void that screams at you with foul intent. You could lose yourself there in that terrible abyss, your mind shredded by the things you are forced to bear witness to. The sort of alien intelligence that cannot be understood by the soft, yielding flesh that comprises your human brain. You are unprepared for such truths, incapable of discerning their mad pattern from the random background noise of the universe you inhabit. You would call it evil, but what does evil even mean in the face of such uncompromising darkness? Indeed, does the concept of evil even apply to such a place? It is beyond mere humanity. An unearthly otherness suffuses the very air.

Anyway, we need you to descend into that cavern. That viscous discharge could be just the secret ingredient we need to give <COMPANY> Cola a little extra oomph. Our early experiments with it seem to indicate that it corrupts and mutates any living cells with which it comes into contact, twisting and warping the genetic strands into impossible nightmare beasts, little more than squirming masses of tendrils and barbed hooks and fanged mouths that scream incomprehensibly and throw themselves toward whatever living creatures are closest, seeking to infect them with its gruesome contagion. We think adding a little more corn syrup to the mix will balance that out. If not, we can always use our fall back slogan: “<COMPANY> Cola: So good it will warp your flesh into a grisly mockery of life that seeks only to pollute others and drag them into your macabre existence of unending pain and suffering. Mmm! That’s gooooood stuff!”

It has tested pretty well with focus groups.