Ship of Theseus

  if (my $pid = fork) {
      # parent
      # return job ID as JSON
      my $reply = CGI->new("");
      print $reply->header(-type => 'text/html');
      print '{"jobID":"' . $jobID . '"}';
      exit 0;
  } elsif (defined $pid) {
      # child
      # close STDOUT/STDERR to signal to end CGI session with Apache
      # Otherwise, the AJAX request to this script won't return properly
      close STDOUT;
      close STDERR;
  }
  # work continues here in fork ..