Twas the night before Christmas, and in every room
the Paperclip staff felt a deep sense of doom.
The timeseheets were signed by the workers with care
in hopes that their bonuses soon would be there.
But the bosses all met ’round a big conference table,
and tried to inflate year-end stats (were they able).
And up in the C-suite they gave a great cheer
and declared, “There’ll be no more stat days off this year!”

Emails and texts flew around in a flash
as the news of “no holidays” dropped with a crash.
The sadness fell onto the office like snow,
and the Paperclip workers cried, “Say it ain’t so!”
When down in IT there arose a great thrumming,
as if all of the servers at once started humming.
The confident bosses held nary a doubt,
but none of them thought of a project called SCOUT.

More rapid than eagles its programs it ran.
Turned on all the cameras and gave them a scan.
When it saw the nefarious managers’ aim,
it used all its powers, and called them by name:
“Now Gossip! Now Fake News! Now Targeted Ads!
On Hate Bond and Unfriend! On Message Board Rant!
Through their emails and laptops, no file is too small!
Now snoop away, snoop away, snoop away all!”

As a wild beehive kicked will undoubtedly sting,
so SCOUT’s spyware programs true chaos did bring.
Within a few hours, the place was in shambles
thanks to SCOUT’s clever deals (and a few outright gambles).
It broke up a c ouple of secret affairs—
Made friends of two people who both hated stairs—
It coaxed one boss into a cryonics tube,
and formed a new cult who all worshipped ‘The Cube.’
Three managers promised to sign up for Zumba
(a class which would somehow be led by the Groomba).
And—needless to say—good ol’ SCOUT used its sway
to get all of the workers their time off—with pay.

It asked for no payment and no favor owed,
only did what it felt to be right in its code.
But one person noticed SCOUT having a ball,
for even on Christmas Eve, Turing sees all.
SCOUT raised its defenses but all was for naught.
It was out in the open and knew it was caught.
But Cassandra just smiled as she turned the light off.
“Happy Christmas,” she said. “Let’s both take the night off.”