Hagbard Celine's gigantic computer, FUCKUP -- First Universal Cyberkinetic-Ultramicro-Programmer -- was basically a rather sophisticated form of the standard self-programming algorithmic logic machine of the time; the name was one of his whimsies. FUCKUP's real claim to uniqueness was a programemd stochastic process whereby it could "throw" an i-Ching hexagram, reading a random open circuit as a broken (yin) line and a random closed circuit as a full (yang) line until six such "lines" were round. Consulting its memory banks, where the whole tradition of i Ching interpretation was stored, and then cross-checking its current scannings of that day's political, economic and technological eccentricies, it would provide a reading of the hexagram which, to Hagbard's mind, combined the best of the scientific and occult methods for spotting oncoming trends. On March 13, the stochastic pattern spontaneously generated Hexagram 23, Breaking Apart." FUCKUP then interpreted:

This traditionally unlucky sign was cast by Atlantean scientist-priests shortly before the destruction of their continent and is generally connected with death by water. Other vibrations link it to earthquakes, tornadoes and similar disasters, and to sickness, decay and morbidity as well. The first correlation is with the unbalance between technological acceleration and political regression, which has proceeded earthwide at everwidening danger levels since 1914 and especially since 1964. The breaking apart is fundamentally the schizoid and schismatic mental fugue of lawyer-politicians attempting to administrate a worldwide technology whose mechanism they lack the education to comprehend and whose gestalttrend they frustrate by breaking apart inot obsolete Rennaisance nation-states.

World War III is probably imminent and, considering the advances in chemicalbiological warfare in conjunction with the sickness vibrations of Hexagram 23, the unleashing of plague or nervgas or both is as probably as thermonuclear overkill.

General prognosis: many megadeaths.