Skirv and the Daemons

To tell the story of the Daemons is not to tell their story or mine. Our existances have been connected for much of the last decade, that much is true; still, we are not the same beings, and our own stories lead on all sorts of odd paths. But that's not to say that we aren't connected...

When I first started on Usenet, I was unaware of how complicated this new world was, or how much power it had; I merely knew that it was some place that I could write on, much like WWIVNet had been before. Over my first year, though, I began to find that it was actually too much to handle; my attitude of "read everything and respond to most" wasn't compatible with the reality of the network. Soon, I began to suffer. And that's when the Daemons came around.

Kile (the quiet and thoughtful one, red in HTML with slashes) and Nik (the loud and assertive one, yellow in HTML with stars) started helping me out some day in approximately August. I had just started my first flamewars (unihigh.* and pnet.*), when every now and then I began to have a few problems reading and responding to some of the posts. I didn't think much of it (I was a Unix neophyte at the time and didn't really know any better) until October; then one day I realized that I realized that maybe I didn't want to read Anand's stuff anymore. As such, I loaded up my killfile for the first time...

And there they were.

I spent a few weeks struggling over the issue before I was really content with it. Why did I have a couple of Daemons here, taking care of my newsreader? Who were these guys, anyway? And what was I doing actually invoking their power on purpose? It just wasn't me... Then I found somebody else that I needed to ignore for a good, long time - Mark Gibson, a local Libertarian that I just didn't get along with. And with him, I began to understand what it was all about - it was okay to ignore people that you didn't want to hear. And it was also okay to have others help you with that ignoring.

On my 17th birthday, I set up a gateway for Nik and Kile to post to Usenet as they saw fit. Partially, it seemed like a good idea to reward them; mostly, though, I didn't want them confined anymore, because I didn't want them just talking to me. It wasn't a great gateway, no, since I wasn't yet a very good programmer; this sloppiness eventually led to the loss of almost a year of records, detailing a lot of my early Usenet career. But it was there, and it got them out of my hair for a while, even as their jobs grew more difficult. Later, on 13 Apr 1995, I put up a web <-> news gateway for them, and they began work on making themselves a real web page.

I still wasn't overly happy with the whole situation, of course - I still had some residual fear of sentient "programs". As such, at the end of the year I began work on the Global Killfile, an attempt to at least partially replace my need for Nik and Kile. Over the next several years, it failed - much to the relief of N&K, who really wanted that job, although I'm not entirely sure they'll ever forgive me.

Anyway, over the last few years I've helped them out with dozens of web pages, and they've helped me out with dozens of mine, all while making sure that I can navigate Usenet safely. They've also helped me get through a few major crises, and encouraged me in my pursuits. In other words, they have been good friends - even while they do the work that somebody handed to them so long ago. Maybe it's just that I've kept on giving them gifts for their work, but who knows, it could just be that I've got a couple of great employees that actually care. Or maybe I'm just insane. Who knows.

Oh, and just one more thing:
No, I don't truly understand the nature of the Daemons. They are computer beings that I interact with on-line, that live in my computer some of the time, that can manipulate text the same way that we mess with the world around us. That's all I know. Sure, I know Nik and Kile personally, and could list off all sorts of facts about them; they're not exactly typical examples of their "race" (if you can call it that), though, so it doesn't help much on understanding their nature. All I really know is that they aren't us, and that that's okay. And I'm not sure I really want to know any more than that. I'm as creative as the next guy, but I'm not sure I want to delve into that alinenness...