Flashback to the late 1980s, when PCs are beginning to arrive at the government agency where this pilot fish works — and not just on users’ desks.

“I got a call from a mainframe programmer whose PC wouldn’t boot,” says fish. “My first question: What were you doing just before it stopped working? Answer: ‘I had to make a configuration change to my computer, so I edited COMMAND.COM.’

“This programmer edited an executable system file? Unlikely, I thought. Regardless, I picked up a set of boot floppies and trudged next door to where the mainframe programmers didn’t have to mix with the unwashed masses of everybody who wasn’t a mainframer.”

Sure enough, the PC doesn’t boot on its own, so fish inserts the appropriate boot floppy and restarts the machine without issue. The DIR C: command reveals two interesting files: COMMAND.COM with 4,096 bytes — far too small — and COMMAND.BAK with 65K bytes.

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