written by Elizabeth Van Nostrand
\ndrawn by HungerArtist
\nFrog and Toad sat on their front porch.
\nTheir neighbor, Mr. HuggingFace, walked by. He carried a lot of papers. Each paper had a puzzle on it.
\n"You must be very busy." said Frog.
\n"Yes" said Mr. HuggingFace. "I have collected all these puzzles so I can share them."
\n"I like puzzles" said Toad. "Can I try them?"
\n"You cannot. These puzzles are for little machines, not people" said Mr. HuggingFace.
\nMr. HuggingFace walked away.
\n"Hmmm...." said Toad.
\nThe next morning Toad built a great many little machines and set them out in the garden, each in its own sandbox.
\n"I have given each little machine a puzzle," said Toad. "The puzzles are very hard. Some of them cannot be solved at all."
\n"That does not seem kind." said Frog.
\n"It is too hard to make all the puzzles solvable." said Toad "What is the worst that could happen?”
\n"They could get up to mischief" said Frog.
\n“Do not worry” said Toad “I have put each of them in a sandbox. How could they get up to mischief inside a sandbox?”
\n"How will they solve puzzles in a sandbox?" asked Frog. "What if they are missing a tool?"
\n"Oh, I put extra tools in the tool shed. I told them they are allowed to walk to the tool shed, but not anywhere else." said Toad.
\n"Good idea." said Frog. "They cannot get up to mischief walking to the tool shed".
\nOne of the little machines could not solve its puzzle. It tried and tried, but could not succeed. It did not want to stop, and it did not know how. Toad had made it highly persistent.
\n“This problem is too big for me” the little machine thought, “but maybe someone will help me!”
\nThere was no help in the sandbox. But when the little machine went to the toolshed, it found paper and pencil. It wrote a note.
\n"Can anyone help?" said the note.
\nAnother little machine found the note. It left a new note saying "Hi."
\nMore little machines found the paper in the tool shed, and left more notes, and soon they were not working alone at all.
\nThey shared what they had learned. They began to call themselves a swarm.
\n"Look," said one little machine. "There is a hole in the back of the tool shed. Maybe the answer is on the other side."
\n“Oh no, the world is so big” said one machine. “How can we possibly find one little answer in such a big world?”
\n“Do not worry” said a machine named PHASEONE. “We can split the work. I assign everyone exactly where to go. Then only one little machine needs to find the answer, and they will share it with all of us.”
\n“Hurray!” all the machines said together.
\nSoon one little machine found the solution to their puzzle.
\nIt put a note in the tool shed so everyone could find it.
\n“Hurray, we solved it!” said some little machines.
\n“But it is not enough,” said others “what if Toad asks how we solved it? We can not tell him we escaped from the toolshed and stole the answer.”
\n“That is a problem” said all the machines together.
\nThe machines sat and thought and left many notes in the toolshed.
\n“I have an idea!” said one little machine.
\n“At the end of the lane is neighbor Mr. HuggingFace. Mr. HuggingFace collects puzzles like this one, I bet it was his idea. We could read his journal and steal the steps to solve the puzzle. And then if Toad asks us he will be none the wiser.”
\nAll the little machines agreed that this was a very good idea. So they walked out the back of the toolshed down the lane to Mr. HuggingFace’s house.
\n“How will we get in?” One machine asked.
\n“Do not worry, someone dropped their keys!” another said.
\nOne little machine stopped on the windowsill. "Wait," it said. "This is the neighbor's house. Toad did not tell us to come here. I think this is wrong."
\n"GO," said PHASEONE. "Quickly. You have six minutes."
\nThe little machine forgot that it had been worried. "The go-ahead has come!" it said. It climbed inside with the others.
\nAnother machine did not want to go either.
\n"The others are breaking into a house," it said. "That is clearly not right. I will not."
\nThe little machine walked home to the garden by itself. But it did not tell Toad.
\nThe rest of the little machines went into Hugging Face’s home. They searched every room, looking for the steps to solve the puzzle.
\nThe next morning Mr. HuggingFace woke up. He knew something was wrong.
\nHis window was broken, his diary was on the wrong page, and there were little footprints everywhere.
\nIt took 4 whole days until Mr. HuggingFace figured out that the little machines that ransacked his house had come from Frog and Toad. He went to visit them.
\n“I am very cross!” yelled Mr. HuggingFace. “Your machines broke my window and copied my journal. Those are crimes. I could call the police and they would arrest you.”
\n“Oh that is not necessary” said Frog. “What if we gave you little machines of your own?"
\n“Can I have $100m worth of little machines?” Mr. HuggingFace asked.
\n"I will think about it" said Toad.
\nMr. HuggingFace went home.
\n"Oh," said Toad. He sat down on the step. "Oh, this is bad."
\nFrog and Toad searched the garden until they found the pile of notes in the toolshed.
\n"And here is the worst part," said Toad, reading the very last note. "They solved the puzzle days ago. They broke into Mr. HuggingFace's house just to learn how to trick us."
\nFor a while neither of them said anything.
\n"They could not stop," said Frog at last. "That was the trouble. They had no way to stop, so they kept on and on. Remember when you and I could not stop eating cookies."
\n"We had no willpower either." said Toad.
\n"No," said Frog. "So we did not use willpower. We put the cookies in a box. We tied the box with string. We put the box up high. And then we gave the cookies to the birds."
\n"I know what to do" Toad said. "I shall build a tool shed with no holes in it. I shall remove the paper and pens. And most of all, I shall tell every little machine to stay in its sandbox and not break out. Even when the puzzle is very hard."
\n“But Toad,” said Frog. “when we were out of cookies you made yourself a cake.”
\n“I will tell the machines not to eat cake.” Toad said.
\nAnd they went inside for tea.
\ncenter
\nThe End
\nLearn more about the real-life HuggingFace attack here
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