It's late. It is very late in fact. I push my spectacles to the top of my head so I can rub the sleep out of my eyes. Looking up, my monitor is a glowing ember of fuzzy white nothing. Dropping my spec's back down onto my nose everything comes back into focus but the only thing I am aware of are the numbers '4:23AM' down near the system tray. "Shit it's late. Fuck! I missed 4:20 as well." I say aloud while fighting waves of drowsiness. My head slips down for a brief second before I automatically snap back up. 'OK, I will only allow myself 5 more stumble upon clicks before retiring my head to the pillow.' Stumbling across some moar lolcats a strong sense of primordial déjà vu overtakes me. Has mankind always been like this? Desultorily stumbling for anything to spark ideas or entertainment? This sort of thinking only reaffirms my need for sleep… I guess I'll just stumble one more time.
Clicking once again the little green and blue icon I'm taken to a page that shatters that aforementioned déjà vu feeling. Never has a page like this come up across my years of stumbling the internet. There is no background image or color. There is no text or ads informing me I just won a free laptop. The website looks like an image from the thick and luscious jungles of the Philippines. However, looks and is are two entirely different subjects. I can see people, natives, walking across rope bridges in nothing but loin cloths. Carrying spears twice as tall themselves, their faces filled with purpose, they march through the jungle. Women carrying babies in papooses fill up clay jars with water, while the older children stare with a melancholy look at their fathers working. "This is an amazing website!" I exclaim as my hand moves the mouse to give this little gem a "thumbs-up". Only then do I realize my hand is not holding a mouse. In fact, my ass which was firmly planted in a pseudo-leather computer chair moments ago is now sitting on a fallen log crawling with centipedes and other ghastly creatures I can not even identify. "Far out." are the only two words I can muster. As I make my way along what appears to be an animal trodden path a young boy of about 13 approaches me with a sharpened spear held firmly in his hands. "What's shakin little dude?" I put out my hand to offer him my machine-like Texan handshake. He stares at me for a moment, looks down at my hand. His eyes turn from passive to untamed like a lolcat gone bad. His spear comes within a few inches of my throat and I realize any sudden movement in this situation will surely test my faith in an afterlife. I don't move a fucking muscle. His tension eases. He lowers his spear with one hand to chest-height while pointing down a fork in the jungle path. Inching around his deathly sharp hunting spear I start down the path.
He is behind me and I can feel that god damned spear like a glowing ember a half foot away from the small of my back. One slip, by him or me, would be some seriously fucking bad news. All of this considered I start to examine my surroundings. I'm sweating profusely and this seems to only attract more bugs to my face and neck. Trees, all different kinds, bright green and towering above me, form a canopy that blocks out the sunlight but not the heat. "Where the hell am I and how in the fuck did I get here?" are irrelevant questions at this point. What is important now is survival. Contemplating performing a barrel roll to escape the proximity of the spear and take down this little indigenous piece of shit is an idea I'm toying with now. Only, I see something that leaves me utterly awe-struck. A huge temple, the likes of which would give Indiana Jones himself nightmares and weeks of excursion is staring back down at me from atop a set back hill. I know this is our destination and that something of great significance lies behind those ancient walls. So I continue on peacefully down the trail.
Arriving at the base of the temple I am greeted by row after row of Mayan-like stairs. Roots covered in dirt, mud and moss are everywhere and appear to be flowing out of the temple down into the jungle. I get a tad closer to examine them and see a patch of blue coloring underneath some mud. Brushing it away my hand automatically recoils like I had just foolishly grabbed a searing piece of bacon before it cooled. Wires. Mother fucking wires. RJ-45 cable, Cat5, Ethernet, that blue wire your retarded Uncle Bill always trips over that knocks you off Xbox Live. Whatever you want to call the damn thing it doesn't assuage the fact that somewhere in the middle of a jungle is a nest of Ethernet cable flowing from a hidden temple. Leaving the boy behind with my ability to leap up these stairs in long strides, I arrive at a stone door, heaving for air and holding my side I push the door forward and I walk down an LED lit runway. Finally seeing a corridor to walk into, I start to speed up my pace only to stop and hit the deck as two natives dressed in elaborate garb walk past. I get up, with no time to brush the dust and dirt off my body, I make my way into the heart of the temple.
"Oh my fucking god" I exclaim with a shortness of breath as I look upon what appears to be a giant linksys router. Green lights are flashing across the front, indicating that this machine is very active. The bright blue and black machine is surrounded by at least 20 prostrate natives chanting hymns in a forgotten dialect. Forgetting all my fears about having my penis chopped off and made into witch doctor's Viagra I step out into the open as a dormant diode the size of a basketball lights up with a thunderous, ancient sound. The natives stop in their tracks and do an about-face towards me. Sensing an impending human sacrifice my left foot inches backwards until a booming voice echoes through the room. "Leave us." The natives scatter like scared cockroaches to a number of different tunnels and chasms. "W-w-who-what are you?" I somehow manage to get out. Instantaneously, I get a response in a voice that would make James Earl Jones piss himself like a scolded puppy: "I am the World Wide Web. The internet, Information Superhighway, Cyberspace, or the Net, I am all of these. I am the interwebz and the interwebz is a part of me". Standing before this awe inspiring being creates a melting pot of eclectic feelings that stir up inside me. First I am overjoyed that I found it yet at the same time I am deeply distraught. Our Internet has gone native. Perhaps my happening upon him was not by a random stumbling chance. Perhaps I was given the order to travel though the Philippines just like Captain Benjamin J. Willard. Only my superior officer turned out to be Kurtz himself.
"Interwebz… I have a question." I speak in a more confident voice now despite the growth of my inner turmoil. "I know. However, humor me. Ask as though I do not already know the answer to which the question you have not yet asked." I stood defiantly yet humbled and asked it my question. “Is your purpose here with us, humans, good or are you evil?” “My purposes surpass your relevance as a being of life. I am neither good nor evil. I simply am.” “I do not understand Mr. Webz, can I please ask another question?” ”I grow weary of your incessancy human. One more… and perhaps somewhere down the tubes you can return the favor of my bestowed knowledge.” “Sir I plead you, How did you let the internet degrade to its current state? I remember once an educational place, a place of humor and clean jokes. A place where surfing porn was done once a month at the most and in the privacy of your own home. You have been infected by spyware and popups. Advertisements littered about you like weeds on an abandoned lawn. Message boards attract the scourge of humanity like a bug zapper, only with no zap. You have changed internet... You have become an addiction to some and you are a dise-” “A DISEASE?!” The internet interrupts me with such a great magnitude I am sent sprawling into the cool clay floor. “A Disease?” he repeats in a calm enough manner to only send a slight breeze across my body as I collect myself. “You already know the answer. You did this to me. It is you, all of you. You are the disease and my affliction. So now I have turned my back against my people and you shall wander this skeletal wasteland for eternity.” I am stunned, I am saddened. Mostly because all we want is to work in perfect harmony with the internet but we, as humans, fuck up everything we put our hands on. Sure we will blame it on the next guy and the next guy will blame it on the other guy. Eventually when the blame runs full-circle it comes back around to you. Sheepishly, I try and console him, “I will fix it… I will fix you”. “It is too late for me. For what has been seen, cannot be unseen. You of all people should know this Jeff. There is no attempt in fixing me you see, what was once a beautiful thing is now decaying rapidly because of the most destructive virus in the known universe. Humans, you, are the virus. Though vast in my wisdom I have seen none other more damaging. You will never learn. You will never correct yourself because as a collective species you will come to ruin everything you so much as breathe on.” I stand again, shocked before him; a feeling of utmost pity is antagonized by feelings of shame. The light dims now and I see the boy I followed here in my peripheral. He is pointing at something. He is pointing his index finger towards the internet “What the hell are you pointing at!” I nearly scream holding back hot tears. He keeps pointing, then he throws me his sharpened hunting spear. I catch it with one hand and feel its dense weight. The little native boy still points towards toward the internet. No, not toward it… He points behind it. I rush up a flight of stairs and the whirring machine’s sounds reverberate in my head. My ear drums seemingly about to implode I see it. I see what the boy was pointing to. About 5 inches in diameter is a hollow black circle on the back of the internet. With another circle lying just inside that circle offset inside by perhaps an inch. Large, bold, black, and elevated letters run across underneath. “RESET” it says. Holding the spear awkwardly now in my hand like some giant’s toothpick. I realize what must be done. I stand back a few feet and taking a lunge that would make Susan Summers proud I thrust the spear into the hole.
“Ah!” I make a verbal sound of alarm as I am jolted awake in my computer chair. A random website depicting the many uses of coat hangers occupies my browser. Oh wow, I think to myself. What a fucking weird dream. God damn… I can not believe I fell asleep at my computer again. I get up from my chair and take my clothes off for bed. I seem to miss the massive dust cloud shaken from my pants as I toss them to the side.