Poem: "Build a Better Fireman"

This poem came out of the January 5, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from haikujaguar and sponsored by janetmiles.

An end-user, a geek, and a physician
walked into a bar.

The end-user and the geek sat down
and started crying in their beer.
New virus.
System crash.
Colorful screens of death.

"All my data, lost!"
the end-user mourned.

"We'll have to build a better firewall,
so this doesn't happen again,"
said the geek.

"But the firewall is already so hard to use,"
the end-user said.
"It hogs power and flashes confusing messages.
I need something simple!"

"You don't need a better firewall,"
said the physician,
"you need a better fireman."

"Say what?"
said the end-user
and the geek.

"You know, like the body's immune system,"
said the physician.
"All you have now is the firewall, like skin;
anything that gets through it is going to wreak havoc.
What you really need is a set of white blood cells
to recognize known attacks
and to create antibodies against new attacks --
automatically."

The geek got a faraway look
and began scribbling on a napkin

and went on to win the Nobel Prize
for inventing cyberleukocytes.