The voice echoes through my desktop speakers, cheap plastic that came with the Gateway, followed by silence. My music library has two songs. "Under the Bridge" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Nine minutes and twenty-five seconds total.
I've listened to these tracks already fifty times this week. Thousands more over the years on my cassette tapes. I need more music.
My discussion with Dad at Best Buy last weekend made me think—twelve bucks for one good song and ten tracks of filler is highway robbery. But his solution—listen to the radio—isn't happening. The radio plays the same twelve songs on rotation.
There has to be a better way.
My friend Jimmy mentioned IRC when we were hanging out last week. Internet Relay Chat. "It's like AOL chat rooms," he said, "except with people who actually know things. And they share music files. Free MP3s. Free software. You just download whatever you want."
Worth a shot.
First, I need to get online.
I double-click the dial-up connection icon.
The modem springs to life.
That sound. Like a robot screaming, gargling, having a mechanical seizure. The screeching handshake between my computer and some server thousands of miles away—every beep and warble negotiating protocols I don't understand. It sounds like the future dying and being reborn simultaneously.
"Are you using the phone?" Mom yells from downstairs.
"Yeah!"
"I need to make a call in a few minutes!"
"Okay!"
She doesn't realize that "making a call" means I get kicked offline. Shared phone line. Problem for future me.
The modem screeches through its full handshake sequence. Digital negotiation. Baud rates, error correction, protocols. All of it happening in that horrible, beautiful sound.
Then silence. Connected.
I open mIRC. The icon sits on my desktop: a small window with colorful speech bubbles. Jimmy gave it to me on a 3.5" floppy disk weeks ago, but I never opened it. I have no idea how to use IRC. Don't even know what IRC really is beyond "chat thing."
The mIRC window opens—empty gray panels, buttons I don't recognize. A dialog box appears: *mIRC Setup*.
It wants information. Nickname first.
The cursor blinks in the empty field. Whatever I type here becomes who I am in this world.
Something close to Scotto. My actual last name. But online.
I think about Sk?to. Sounds right when you say it. But the character field won't accept special characters. Without the umlaut: "Skate-o." Not me.
SKa.
Short. Simple. And it's music—the genre. Upbeat, high-energy, horns and drums. Fits better than I meant it to.
I type: SKa
Full name: Blank. None of their business.
Email address: I make something up.
The next screen shows a list of IRC servers. Pre-loaded. Not sure what these are, but there are dozens of them grouped into categories.
EFnet: New York, Los Angeles, London...
Undernet: Washington, Montreal, Oslo...
DALnet: RandomServer, Minnesota, Virginia...
Each network has multiple servers. I don't know the difference between networks. Jimmy didn't explain that part.
I pick DALnet because it's near the top. "RandomServer" sounds like it'll connect me to whichever one works.
I click Connect.
Text appears in the window:
* Connecting to irc.dal.net (6667)
* Connected to irc.dal.net
* -irc.dal.net- * Looking up your hostname...
* -irc.dal.net- * Checking Ident
* -irc.dal.net- * Found your hostname
* -irc.dal.net- * No Ident response
* -irc.dal.net- * Welcome to the DALnet IRC Network SKa!
I'm in.
This is different from AOL chat rooms. Those feel like toys. Training wheels. This feels raw. Like I've connected to something underneath the polished surface of the internet.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
But I don't see any people yet. No conversations. Just me and server messages.
I stare at the empty window. Wasn't this supposed to be like chat rooms? Where is everyone?
I try typing in the text input at the bottom: "hello?"
The text appears in my window. But nobody responds. I'm connected to a server, but I'm not in a room yet.
AOL automatically puts you in a chat room. This doesn't.
I poke through the menu bar. File. View. Tools. Commands.
Commands has an option: "Channel List."
I click it.
"Getting channel list from server..."
Then: "There are currently 12,847 channels. This may take several minutes to retrieve."
The list populates line by line:
#warez 953 users
#mp3 487 users
#chat 234 users
#cracks 189 users
#teenhelp 156 users
#0-day 145 users
#mp3info 98 users
...
Hundreds of channels scroll past. Thousands. Channel names fly by—some make sense, some are random letter combinations, some are clearly private jokes I'm not in on.
Two minutes later: "12,847 channels retrieved."
I scroll to the top. There it is: #mp3. 487 users.
I double-click.
A new window opens:
* Now talking in #mp3
* Topic is 'Welcome to #mp3 | No Leeching | Upload:Download Ratios Enforced'
* Set by MusicLord on Sun Jun 2 14:32:19
Names appear on the right panel:
@Aimee69
@DJ_Spin
@Kaos
@MusicLord
@Splice
@Tr4nCe
+AudioFile
A-Train
acid_jazz
AlternativeRock
audiophile99
AxlRose96
BassHead
beat_freak
...
Some have @ symbols. Some have +. Most have nothing. I don't know what that means yet.
Text flows in the main window:
* MP3_Bot v1.9: 15 matches for "aenima"
* 01) tool_-_aenima_-_01_stinkfist.mp3 (5.0MB)
* 02) tool_-_aenima_-_02_eulogy.mp3 (8.1MB)
* 03) tool_-_aenima_-_03_h.mp3 (5.9MB)
...
* MP3_Bot: queued 01 (slot 2/4)
People asking for music. Others responding with commands I don't understand. Bots posting file lists. Someone gets kicked—their name just disappears. The @ people have power here. They can kick. They control the channel.
Nobody notices I've joined. I'm just another name in a list of 487.
The commands menu has an option called "Whois"—shows connection info, what channels someone's in, whether they have operator status. I try it on myself.
* SKa ()
* SKa on #mp3
Dialup connection. One channel. No @ symbol next to #mp3.
No power. Just watching.
I don't type anything. Just trying to understand the language, the patterns, the rules.
This is it. This is the better way.
I just need to figure out how it works.
Then I see it: