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Thursday, June 9, 2011

I WAS THE WORLDS FIRST INTERNET ORPHAN

By Gerrard
It is the season for lots of movies. I just wish they’d let me bring my own pop and pop corn to the cinema. I could watch two movies for the price of the dog gone pop and pop corn. One thing I do like about theatre popcorn is the extra butter option. Butter is one of those things you just can’t get enough of in life. A lot of times that hot butter poured over the popcorn are the only reason to finish watching some of those really crummy movies. All those romance movies have the women all crying into their hankies while the guys are stuffing their face with popcorn and every guy is just wishing the movie would end. Popcorn is a guy’s comfort food when the movie is making him feel really uncomfortable.

The movie “Tron” is really good but, it kind of brings back some bad memories from my childhood. You see my father was absorbed into the Internet and has never returned. My mom told me the story of how my dad disappeared back when I was still in grade school.

The story begins with Al Gore and his invention of the Internet. At that time Al Gore was just a Senator so he had lot’s extra time to spend as a mad scientist working in the field of astrophysics. Al Gore was the person given credit by historians as the person who created the Internet but, it was really my father who made the ultimate sacrifice so that billions of people could communicate and be entertained with just the click of a button.

Before my father made his sacrifice communication via a very crude Internet connection was difficult and nasty. Al Gore used his vast knowledge of the space/time continuum along with his psychic abilities to predict weather patterns in order to construct a parallel universe to this one. This parallel universe is still used for the transmission and reception of all signals over the Internet. Fiber optic cable and other transmission lines are really just a rouse perpetrated by the government and technology companies so that people make payments to be hooked up to the Internet when in fact every cable guy knows that the Internet is not a system of cables and routers but is in fact a separate universe from our own to which any computer can be connected without any type of signal enhancer or cable. In order to connect to this other universe and hence the Internet all the cable guy does is press down “Alt” on the keyboard and triple click the mouse at the same time.

Al Gore found that in order to setup the Internet he needed to have a hook-up done in the alternate universe. My father at the time was a TV repairman and he really bought into the idea of an Internet that could stream football games anywhere anytime. When a note was put up in the break room where my dad worked asking for a volunteer to travel into an alternate universe and hook up the Internet my dad did not hesitate to volunteer. He was the only volunteer so he was chosen to go.

I almost remember the day he said goodbye. My mom told me that whatever happened that he would always be out there. My mom was later told by a government guy that my dad disappeared into the Internet but, never came back. It seems that my dad was tuned into trillions of photons and sent into the alternate universe to make the hook-up to this one. It was estimated that after one hour my dad should have the job done. At that time the “Alt” key was to be held down and the mouse was supposed to be clicked three times. Well, everything went as planned. My dad vanished into the Internet and after an hour a computer geek was ready to extract my father from the alternate universe. The geek pressed down the “Alt” key but, because he had been drinking coffee lattés all day the geek was jittery and did about fifty clicks instead of three. Well, my dad was gone and no one was able to find him again. They told my mom that my dad most likely disappeared into the trillions of bits of information sent over the great Internet.

I still think my dad might come back. Sometimes I go down into the basement and do an “Alt” triple click on my keyboard. I just wish I could afford to hook up to the internet.

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