Copyright 2000-2010 Kupini & Ship
The Old Modem´s Story
His name was MPM-97 (Modest-Peter Mussorgsky, manufactured 1997). He lay on a
dirty table at „Microdata“, a computer repair shop. The shop was located in a deep damp
basement of the former dormitory of the former technical high school on Lincoln Street.
The place susceptible to avalanches from above (there was even a sign), but the passers
by had been aware of that occurrence since their childhood.
Modest was admitted in very critical condition. He showed no reaction to the
commands of the computer; he refused all electricity, and was losing weight. A first
examination revealed a „massively distorted port“ with fractured fiberglass, an infected
chip card and first degree idiocy. The initial two days he hovered between life (that shelf
with the repaired equipment) and death (the garbage can). Fate was on his side and gave
him a second chance. Soon he came to and his condition was much improved.
Like all old people in hospitals he talked a lot, was superstitious and was constantly
annoying his fellow patients with unceasing inquiries: „How did he look today?“ and so
on. It was really quite amazing how many different ailments the patients in that hospital
were suffering from. There were these two elderly hard drives who were simply waiting
for their end to come, a burned out motherboard, and a full memory bank who suffered
from amnesia.
Modest was really starting to get on everyone’s nerves with his complaints and
hypochondriatic condition. Soon afterwards, however, a young network card was
admitted, she was quite inexperienced and naïve and had unfortunately gotten herself in
trouble. This was thankfully a good distraction for Modest, and he immediately showed
remarkable improvement and lectured loudly and openly about interesting subjects and
seemed to have metamorphosized into some sort of optimistic philosopher.
One evening, Modest was feeling especially nostalgic, and thus he began to divulge
the story of his life. Nobody was really listening to him, but all who were present, and
who were still in somewhat good condition, stored his story in their memory banks. The
following is his story:
Modest was born in a remote location, somewhere in Taiwan or perhaps Singapore. He
lost his parents very early, but would never forget the soiled, but quick and experienced
hands of his father-they smelled of soy and tobacco. To be completely honest, he was
manufactured somehow and somewhere and was quickly shoved into the hands of
speculators. They provided Modest with flashy decals of popular brand names, wrapped
him in bubble wrap and packed him in colorful boxes. Simply put, they made him
„marketable.“
„Farewell homeland! Farewell rice patties and tobacco plantations! I have never seen
you and I will never see you again!….“—and he was sold, meanly sold, not as an
individual, but sold with an entire palate of unknown gadgets. Not a soul asked him if he
wanted to leave his homeland or not….. Despite this insulting sale, he landed in the
window of a small but clean shop. The most recent customer held him in his hands for
the longest time, peeked in his ports, read his birth certificate and his recommendation
letters. It was on this day that Modest unexpected discovered that the salesman, the blond
bloke who sat all day in front of his computer monitor madly shooting similar looking
blond blokes, had quite affection for him. It became apparent that Modest possessed
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many wonderful qualities: he was young, quick and handsome. He lacked an enormous
capacity, but he made up for it by working like an animal.
So had it not been for exactly this customer, he probably would never have been sold,
and would have stayed in that store forever. Thus he came to his new owner’s, and was
hooked up to the computer that very day. It must be admitted that Modest had quite the
luck with his new owner. He was always treated with the utmost respect. This owner
even held his breath as he freed Modest from his packaging. He acted as if he himself
was charged up to 110V and had the hardest time getting the plug into the outlet as he
was hooking Modest up. He was even given a place of honor on a clean, comfortable
shelf in the office of his owner, and carefully protected from the wall heater by an old
folder. Touched by his care, Modest became very motivated and winked at his owner
with his green power-indicator eye and got right to work. He soon realized however, that
his owner made sure that he was not overworked. Modest managed to send two-no, three
emails-and then switched him off. As if to say, „Don’t work too hard, Mr. Mussorgsky!
You are too valuable to me. I would prefer that you just relax,“ and so Modest relaxed for
days on end. He lay on the shelf and warmed his back by the heater. Once in a while he
looked at the old folder and was reminded of the distant rice patties and the sappy songs
of the Taiwanese farmers. Soon these memories did not torture him nearly as much as in
former times and then they simply disappeared completely from his memory.
* * *
„Dirty scoundrel! Rascal! You think you can just move in here and live like a king!“
Old Folder was angrier than ever before. „Here I am working myself to death day in day
out and nobody ever thinks to say thanks! Then this Slick Mister shows up and thinks he
runs the place—he’s got the best conditions and a warm bed. He’s even already got
respect and appreciation! What has he done?! How in the world could this happen?!?!“
Old Folder had just about lost it,“ Just take a look at this guy: He’s spread himself out
with no regard to others, the crook, and here I am on the edge—on the edge of life in fact.
I am about to fall…One wrong second and I’m history. I know what is going on…I’ve
flown from one table to the other and one time even onto one guy’s head and I survived! I
would so like to see what is left of you after you go over the edge! I would just like to see
where all of your diodes and triodes would land!“ This visual fantasy trip seemed to
really have relieved Old Folder of some of her anger. She paused and after a deep breath,
remarked, „Well, this isn’t about space, you know, it is just a pity for our country…what
do these newcomers know about this land? What do they know about us? What do they
have in their souls? Absolutely nothing. Complete emptiness! They try, yes they do, but
the essence, the true meaning of life is lost to them. They will never be capable of
comprehending this. But I, yes, I, take everything to heart-every single minuscule thingand it stay there for years-no, decades! I can tell you everything, every single report or
case that has passed through here. Although the people and the things that these cases
deal with are long gone, barely exist in the memories of their loved ones, I still remember
every single one of them. These cases will live on in me, they will always exist. You see,
people are mortal, but their documents are not.“
These insults however had no effect on Modest, on the contrary, he seemed to thrive
on them. He prided himself on the fact that he was not just some random cheap appliance
with a stolen microchip. No, Modest-Peter Mussorgsky was on the cutting edge and
could connect people within seconds with any given site on the planet Earth. He could
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even penetrate into the most powerful of servers of any country, with the help of his
owner. He was capable of finding any desired archive or file and could transfer such
important information. Information that not only decided the fate of one or two
individuals, but information that the destinies of entire nations depended on! What was
this Old Folder worth with her dozens of dead souls? What impact did she have? She
would never be able to comprehend that he, the great Modest-Peter Mussorgsky, was
himself part of the driving force of progress.
He was able to simultaneously connect with hundreds of modems thousands of miles
apart, and though they were subject to different languages they were all part of a secret
network, a protocol which only they were privy to. It was they, the modems, who moved
the future. They had the ability and the power to destroy or create the institutions of this
day and age: Banks, corporations, factories and small businesses. Where did souls fit in
here? There is no place for that in such an important world in which the future depends
on signals and digits? What was the use of embarrassing, nostalgic recollections of rice
patties or that rank workshop that he called the homeland?! How long should he keep
these saved signals labeled parents in his memory?! And with this thought Modest began
to enthusiastically make a familiar noise—the modem’s hymn, and subsequently
connected again with the rest of the world…
*
*
*
Everything that happened to him later can hardly be explained with mere digits. It all
began on a cold, unsuspecting, fall evening. Modest was working diligently on the
internet, transferring music from far away places while his owner was heavily absorbed
in pictures of shameless Dutch women, which Modest had found for him somewhere in
Japan. Suddenly Modest felt a slight, hardly noticeable signal on one of the connection’s
channels. This signal was so faint and helpless that Modest couldn’t help grinning
indulgently as he read it into his „processor“.
It later became apparent that this signal was an infinitely melancholy PCI network
card from afar, who supposedly wanted to share some sort of important message. Modest
reacted quite sympathetically, and without interrupting his work, let the poor thing use
his transistor for a short while.
Modest was so occupied that evening that he did not even notice when he lost the
connection with the unknown PCI network card from afar. He was busy reading some
random complicated diagrams from Washington and then had to transfer them to Iraq
along with some letters from his owner. After that he kept being disturbed by an English
server and had to resist the demands from several German Networks who wanted
information about his owner. Thus Modest felt quite relieved when the power kept going
out for a few seconds at a time and then finally would not come back on. Modest did not
give this occurrence a second thought and cleared the information from his memory as
usual. He „relieved“ the transistor, turned out the light and went to sleep.
But somehow he could not fall asleep that night. He kept imagining the spirit of the
mysterious, foreign PCI-card, whose faint, tender presence in his transistor seemed to
have summoned in him the romantic and obscure feelings of excitement and passion,
which prompted a flow of unexpected pleasure and fortuitous intimacy throughout the
whole body of Modest´s chip card and which accelerated the beat of his CPU heart. No!
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Modest could sleep no more! Pleasure’s poison was flowing through every channel of his
system and yet Modest had no way of knowing that it was a virus.
As is common in such situations, Modest began to fantasize in this deluded state about
his passionate, devoted PCI-card. She was calling to him with the crackling of her diodes
and longed for a release of her condenser.
Modest could only wish for somebody to switch him on, so that he could somehow
find his unknown beauty in the internet and gently, tenderly, caress her port with his
signal, if even for just a millisecond. For he knew that she was out there somewhere —
the one and only true source.
But nobody ever came to turn him on. Modest then tried impatiently to do it himself.
Full of burning passion and the most incredible efforts he managed to light the indicator
for a mere second. But this glow in the darkness did not suffice to dial the number.
Modest finally withdrew and began to wait, impatiently, for the electricity to resume. The
wait was soon pure torture.
*
*
*
Completely exhausted, Modest moved the rest of his energy to his memory bank and
sank into deep thought. Just a few hours prior he thought of himself as one of the
progressive and energetic elite representatives of the current technical world. His life was
defined by a strict code of signals and digits. But now, in this moment, the great and
powerful Modest-Peter Mussorgsky loathed himself deeply, he even hated himself. How
small, meaningless and insignificant his contemptible existence seemed to him now.
„To hell with technology and progress!“ he thought, „they are empty, cold and not
alive. What is it to my advantage of being able to connect myself with any other place on
earth? Sure, I can break into any server and hack any security system…so?! Is this a sign
of greatness? Is this where happiness lies?! „ Modest would have given anything at this
point in time for a single moment of intimacy with his infinitely removed beautiful
stranger—anything for just a moment to feel her delicate, loving caress.
„So true, Old Folder was right…“he lamented, „here I am: a cheap, half-ass creation
with a questionable past…Folder!“ he called softly, „Folder! Can you hear me? Forgive
me, please! I am deeply sorry that I scoffed at you and would not listen. You were
completely right…about the soul and experiences and things and files…it is all
true…Forgive me!“ Old Folder was in a deep sleep and did not answer. However, it
seemed to Modest that Old Folder´s smell, the smell of glue and old paper, attested to the
of truth her words.
Bitter liquid began flowing out of his condenser, and a drop, like a tear, fell onto his
microchip. Modest´s thoughts from then on began to unravel. From his virally infected
memory bank he fleetingly retrieved a recollection of the Taiwanese farmers in the rice
patties, and then he saw a flash of the face of the blond salesman, and then the shape of
his owner….
The last thing that he could recall was the click of his switch, then another
click…swearing from his owner. It was too late: Modest didn´t need electricity anymore,
he had no use for a connection or technology, not even his long yearned for PCI-card
would make any difference…Another click of his switch, loud cursing, and then a violent
Copyright 2000-2010 Kupini & Ship
blow on his cover. The sound of a broken Diode and then the light went out for ModestPeter Mussorgsky…went out forever.
In the deep, damp basement of the former dormitory of the former technical highschool
on Lincoln Street, the boss came in and pulled the box from the shelf of repaired
equipment handed the customer the bill:
„One new condenser, one diode and one microchip. Whoops, almost forgot…one new
memory module. That comes to one hundred bucks“
MPM-97 stood, carefully protected from the wall heater by an old folder, on the clean,
comfortable shelf in the office of his owner.
His memory was gone: No past, no memories. As he connected with the rest of the
world, he winked with his green power indicator eye and enthusiastically played the well
known melody—The Modems´ hymn.