A bit on a disk

Our Bit was the middleman. Or so he called himself. His superiors had more weight and were always more important. There were some bits with less influence, but they had never listened to him, so he lost interest in them. He never listened to his bosses either, he had a quite strong opinion of his own. Often there was external interest in his views and then they asked him what he thought, whether he was a supporter of plan A or B, whether he witnessed an event as possibility 1 or 2. He was always glad to give his opinion, they always took his word for granted. It was what gave him his confidence.

But as often happens, confidence faltered. Our Bit couldn't see what the meaning of his existence was. In earlier days he hadn't cared. He had a firm believe in his opinion, people asked his opinion and they always believed it. Without doubt. What more do you want from life? Now he couldn't see his influence on the big plan of life, let alone what this big plan was. He began to care. It didn't suffice anymore to know that some other bits agreed with him, others just didn't. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know why his contribution, which after all was only a slight variation on the stand his superiors took on the world's affairs, was considered essential by these external people, these journalists that kept asking them questions. Why did they think it was so important what he thought, that they never skipped his opinion when they were looking for the big picture. Why did he think it was so important what he thought, after all he could just follow the general direction set out by his superiors and not put in this subtle deviation of his. What made his inferiors so sure they had to differ from his vision, providing a view in such small detail that these differences were entirely academic, they could never be important in a real world. But still all bits persisted, doubts or no doubts, whether they were understood by other bits or not. They all felt their life had a meaning, they were sure of it, though they could not see it.

A lot of arguments broke out. Apart from having their superior and inferior bits as their neighbours, which kept things in some order, the bits also were in contact with bits in the neighbouring tracks. Sometimes these other neighbours were of the same rank as your bosses and they joint forces to make life miserable for you. Sometimes the boss-bits disagreed and started a hideous fight among themselves. Even lower bits could make life difficult, especially when they had the same views. If you were lucky you met a bit of your own rank who agreed with you completely, maybe even one like that on each side. Admittedly this can be boring, but bits who were in those circumstances enjoyed life more than all the others.

Then life changed. The journalists, who had become important to the bits because they were the only ones never to question them, always to trust them, had gained some trust in return. The journalists themselves had a story to tell and the bits had to listen. Our bit protested at first and tried to resist, because his views, his long held believes, were clearly different. But then the journalists said that everything had changed, so his part in life had to change too, to adhere to the new grand plan of life. He wanted to know what it meant, what this grand plan was, what his part in this was, but they just told him to trust them. They had always had the general overview, they knew best. He felt he could better give in, since he had never known even the meaning of his own existence, how could he argue with beings that knew everything, always had done and always would?

Reassured that his place in life was the right one, he felt happy. He knew even less about the meaning of his existence than before this existence was so severely shaken up. But he felt happy.