"In the sub-basement of what was once an industrial park, the server continued asking questions to the void. The network was long-gone--the ethernet cables vaporized right where they emerged to the surface--but this didn't stop the server. It had a queue.
The third wave of bombings had collapsed the ceiling, destroying almost all the other racks in the room, but the server remained. It was closest to the large metal cage that held the enormous emergency power supply. It was now the only machine drawing power, and this had kept it running for many months.
In five seconds it would be exactly a week since Praetorious last had a question posted. Three seconds now. One second:
i've heard there might still be a border-crossing in michigan's Upper Pensula...can anybody confirm deny? [more inside]
posted by praetorius at 1:40 AM. 0 answers
At the bottom of the page, a post slunk off, unanswered. On Praetorius' profile, a small gray envelope turned itself golden.
The server prepared the next question, due out in seventeen seconds. The question was anonymous, but the server knew the secret names of these faceless questions. Anonymous was GLukas, and in thirteen seconds it will have been a week since GLukas' last question.
The time passed, as time always does, and the server forwarded the question to a moderator for approval. Until a mod approved an anonymous post, the server wasn't allowed to post the question. It had been a long time since the server had been approved to ask an anonymous question. That was okay. The server was patient.
The rest of the day passed as the day before, and the week before, and the month before. The server moved through its queue, posting the worldly concerns of sixty-nine thousand ghosts. They were mundane memorials to an annihilated people, elegies for a time before the nuclear fire, before the winter that followed.
Help! My boyfriend is Asian and we can't go anywhere together without being hassled by the militia police. He has his Patriot card that clearly lists him as Korean, not Chinese. I love him but the stress is really starting to get to me. Of course there's [more inside]
posted by Dial_M at 2:17 AM. 0 answers
SalkPuppetFilter: How non-trivial would it be to make penicillin from canned milk? Is it even possible? [more inside]
posted by *.* at 2:56 AM. 0 answers
trying to remember a story i read in 8th graed about a robot house
posted by pins, needles at 3:19 AM. 0 answers
Each question stayed at the top of the front page until the server posted the next one. They marched down the page, never to be answered, a voice in the quiet and dark from a mouth long since silenced.
These last few weeks and months the questions had grown darker and more urgent. These were the questions of the users who always had dozens of posts queued up, who even in life had sometimes forgotten what was to be asked next.
On the surface, the sun rose slowly, as though ashamed, over a landscape of cinders and ashes. The server could find out how many questions were left in its queue, when its job would be completed and it could sit silent at last, but no one had instructed it to do such a thing in a very long time. The server could ask questions across time to a forgotten age, but it could never ask questions of itself.
Beside the server, a red light began blinking furiously on the power supply, followed a half-beat later with an alert sound. Ping...ping...ping...ping. Words of alarm that would never be read scrolled across the small gray screen of the panel. A red LED began flashing "10%" over and over.
The server prepared another question and waited silently in the dark. Twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-six."
(posted by Ian A.T. over at Mefi)
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