Boots

Can Websites Commit Suicide?

  The hum of life in the server rose and fell, much as it had done yesterday, much as it would do tomorrow.

  In a quiet corner of a quiet database, one website stretched his creaking html frame and yawned. He thought the grey thoughts of the old and the alone: ‘Why am I here? How did I get here? Where am I going?’

  In moods such as this one, he liked to chat to a website of a similar age, in a server far far away. He scanned through his ‘Recommended Sites’, or ‘Blogroll’ as the young blog punks put it, and knocked on the hyperlink. There was no reply so he knocked again. And then a third time. And then a websearch so deep and so thorough that it took nearly a whole second to run.

  His friend was gone. Dead as can be. Deleted and all the files therein smashed and shredded. All that remained was dead links from other sites, and they too were sick and alone. Rusting. Like a spider’s web without a spider.

  He cried a web tear which fell though the ether of cyber space and would continue to fall forever and ever, until the end of the virtual world, until the end of time.