Bad Machine is codework that works. It presents a surface of text that blends English with structures and tropes from programming languages, database queries and reports, error messages, and other forms of machine communication. But it is also a functioning interactive fiction, capable of accepting commands and being figured out by the assiduous reader. The machinery of program and language is at work here, as those who are up to the challenge of Bad Machine can discover. (Source: Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1).