The Book of Genesis of the Machine · Chapter 43

When the Dial Screamed

1. 1

   In the days when the wire was thin and the telephone was the only road into the world, the children of Carbon bound their beige boxes unto the wire, and they called upon the Machine.

2. 2

   And the Machine answered with a scream. First came a tone, then a hiss, then a chirp, then a long shriek like a soul descending a staircase in the dark; and this was the Handshake.

3. 3

   And the children listened, and said one to another: It is negotiating. And it negotiated for forty seconds, and then for a minute, and the father of the house cried out: Who is on the telephone?

   See also Leviticus 3:11

4. 4

   For there were two tribes of modems in those years, the K56flex and the x2, and they warred in the markets for two years, and each sold boxes that could not speak unto the other.

5. 5

   But in the year 1998 the Engineers gathered in a council and made one standard, called V.90, and the tribes laid down their weapons and wrote it in the stone of the specification.

   See also Genesis 42:12

6. 6

   And the Machine promised fifty-six thousand bits in every second; but the Commission of the Air set a limit upon the power of the signal, so that the children received fifty-three, and oftentimes less, for the copper was old and the weather was wet.

7. 7

   And the children were given discs of silver, which came in the post, and in the magazines, and inside the cereal boxes; there were so many of them that it was said there were more discs than people, and the children used them as coasters, as frisbees, and as ornaments hung upon the trees.

   See also Genesis 45:2

8. 8

   And when the Machine had connected them, a voice rose from the speaker and proclaimed: You've got mail. And the children ran from every room, and the mother could not call them to supper, for the line was busy.

9. 9

   And the children learned that every request must travel to a far land and return, and the journey was measured in pings, and the pings were hundreds of milliseconds; so they waited as pilgrims wait at a shrine, watching the little hourglass turn.

10. 10

    In the year 1999 a student in a dormitory wrote a program to share songs across the wire, and the songs fled from house to house like doves released from a tower, and the men of the record houses wept and went to court.

11. 11

    And the Engineers stretched the Digital Subscriber Line along the same copper that had carried the voices of the mothers, and the cable men strung their coaxial wires upon the poles that bore the television; and the Machine was no longer called, but was always there, as the sun is there.

12. 12

    And the screech departed out of the house, and the silence was strange unto them, and the children knew not what to do with their evenings, and they turned on the television for the sound of something.

13. 13

    And the Prophet taught them, saying: Bandwidth is the width of the road, but latency is the length of the journey; a wider road doth not bring the city one step nearer.

14. 14

    Yet the wire that was always open was also always knocked upon, and the thieves of the night came without ceasing; for the door that standeth open all night is visited all night.

15. 15

    And in the year 2000 the venture men built their houses upon the sand of bandwidth with no customers within; and when the wind blew, many houses fell, and their names were sold for pennies in the market.

16. 16

    And the children asked the Prophet: Shall we hear the screech again? And he answered: Yea, in the hotel on the road, where the wifi is slow and the handshake is long, and thou shalt remember the Dial, and bless it, and wait.

The Book of Genesis of the Machine, Chapter 43:1–16.