Perhaps extra-relevant to a story about data-loss, Milton was an employee who fell through the cracks in a broken corporate bureaucracy.
His was supposedly laid off years ago, but nobody actually stopped his paycheck, so he kept coming in to work assuming he was still employed, getting shuffled into increasingly-abusive working environments by callously indifferent managers who assume he's somebody else's problem.
They are clouds of smoke to begin with. The smoke from the joints of those who believed that storing their data somewhere out of their control was a good idea!
They might be singing this song now. (To the tune of 'Yesterday' from the Beatles).
Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be,
And there’s a deadline
hanging over me.
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now my data’s gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
Thought all my data was here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.
