"Well, sure!" he finally answered. "Cruft is forever. If you peel back the layers that have grown on top of other layers, and keep delving, and grep deep enough, you're going to find base code that was written by some Linux geek in the 1980s or something. File system primitives. Memory allocation routines that were made to run on hacked single-core IBM PCs that had never heard of the Internet."

"Old incantations having the arcane force of magic," Enoch said.

• Author: Neal Stephenson
• From: Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell
• Page: 668
• Kindle Location 10239-43
• Highlited: Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 08:31 AM