The Listoliers
by Tami
his is what happens when the list "blows up" and we've all got a bit too much time on our hands waiting for the posts to start coming through again...
From a 1995 email post of Tami's to the Mailing List:
Subj: The Listoliers Date: 95-08-28 21:15:04 EDT To: monkees@lists.primenet.com She detoured past the coffee maker, and stumbled straight to the computer, as she had done first thing every morning since becoming involved in an internet romance. Randy was his name, and he was the reason she was staring bleary-eyed at the computer before fully awakening. His morning email was more important than caffeine... Her weariness may have been the reason why she didn't notice anything wrong at first. The previous night had been a tough one out on the net - cyberdemons were everywhere, gobbling up entire groups of chatters and spitting them out again at will. Add to the the human drama of lost loves and sorrows drowned in too many drinks poured by the new bartender with the musical accent... well, just another Sunday night on IRC. But it was tough being a Netter in the new Cyberworld. Monday. She knew she had a lot of work to do, but just as she was about to disconnect, a tentative message caught her eye. "Hello???" A small cry for help from the Mountain Regions. "Paranoia," she thought, "Battle fatigue from too many Netsplits." She hit the disconnect. Hours later, after barely making a dent in a huge pile of paperwork, she settled back with a small glass of Kumbucha Elixr and plugged into the Net. Hmm... strange. The place felt... hollow. Different somehow, in a way that was hard to define. Kinda like the air had gone flat. Her sound card had died the night before (after much hissing and spitting), so it was strangely quiet in Monkees Central. Where were all the people? It was a Monday, usually the place was packed as listers tried to avoid inevitable chores that could always be put off until Friday. She tossed a ping in the air and waited for it to come back to earth. It did, almost immediately, telling her that yes, Monkees Central had not closed for some unforseen Monday holiday. She wandered down the middle aisle, vaguely thinking she should go up to the front office and talk to the list pilot, Brad, when her toe caught on the edge of something and sent it skittering across the floor. She caught a familiar flash of tan and green and purple as it spun under a chair... Ack! One of those blood-sucking AOL diskettes! She cautiously crept forward in an attempt to corral the slimy little creature. They are slow, but they are slick, and they capture their prey by hypnosis, luring them with pretty colors and empty promises. The woman was, however, an expert at taming and conversion, and knew the trick. "Please wait while America Online adds new art," was the magic phrase that would slow the little bastard almost to a standstill. It worked. She grabbed him and slipped him quickly into her bag. Conversion could wait until later. He would be a useful disk when she was through taming him. Brad. Gotta find Brad. Brad always knows what to do. It was his list, after all. His office door was closed, as usual, and she raised her hand to knock before entering. Brad had a wonderful new love in his life and she didn't want to.. ah... interrupt anything of a personal nature. Then with an evil glint in her eye, she lowered her hand to the knob instead and quickly shoved the door open, thinking, "If he's doing that in the middle of a crisis, he deserves to be caught!" The unused air rushed out at her, and a quick glance showed a messy but still room. The only movement was from the screensaver as it made colored patterns on Brad's empty chair. The truth hit like a gut full of bad Kombucha - Brad was gone! What now? "Okay... be calm," she told herself. "You can geek your way through this." Yeah, right. Like, what good was it gonna do? All the people were gone! She was alone in Monkees Central, and it was not a place meant to be occupied alone... She sat down, and waited. The ferris wheel creaked and groaned. The jacuzzi was making horrible sucking sounds. Kinda like that Pepsi ad on TV where the kid sucks himself into the bottle. It reminded her of a bad Michael Jackson joke and she giggled. It felt good, but the sound was dead. It had no life to it. As if prompted by the sound, one of the computer screens suddenly flickered to life and she rose to investigate. For the first time, she noticed the floor was littered with metal computer parts. No plastic, just shiny bits and pieces of chips and cases and hinges and pins. Weird, but the message on the screen grabbed all of her attention. It was a letter from Melhi, and it was current! She sat in the chair and studied the words but didn't want to grasp the meaning. It was too horrible: >Return-Path: <MELHI@aohell.com> >Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 14:15:06 -0400 >From: MELHI@aohell.com >To: tbassler@castles.com >Subject: Tami? Are you there? >: >Tami, > >Are you there? We thought we lost you. :) :) :) > >We found six others, Davi3d, Torka, Marc, Carol, Hoo and sharon. > >Brad and the others are gone. Just gone. Without a trace. >Torka is going to try to pilot the list. :) > >The good news is that Steve Case is gone too. :) > >Melhi... Mellow... Melgettingby... That was all. The smilies were strained, and the humor was not up to Mel's usual standards. That was perhaps the scariest thing of all. No. Not the scariest. Randy! What about randy? Did that mean he was gone too? Not just "at work" gone, but gone forever? A "who"! Why didn't she think of that before? She tapped in a couple of short messages, hit the send button, waited a couple of seconds, and got back the message from Majordomo. At least that still worked. The list was abnormally short. It merely said: >>>>>who monkees > > > >>>>>end They were gone. They were all gone. (Tami slipped her email diary into the mail and hoped somewhere, someday, some way, someone would read it and maybe her last few hours on the list would have some meaning. She then hit the disconnect button and went to eat dinner and watch TV. <g>)