:: 05/10/01 ::
The words were outraged. Sure, none of them were often chosen by their human, but when they were chosen, they were chosen abundantly. Now, after many years of the same, the Man had forsaken them. They accounted this to a strange force known as "Teacher." Out of the entire dictionary, only 1600 words had been selected! They looked upon these chosen words with envy, staring into the 5 five kilobytes which represented Big Writer Man's newest short story. To them, being taken into a story was a sort of social dignification, assuring them a place among the respected aristocratic words. The lowest class possible for a word was that of adverb, slave of the verb, adjective, and even others of its own kind. Even its adjective cousins only had one master, the noun. Adverbs had three.
Some words, Credenza and Lexis being good examples, were rarely, if ever, used. However, these words were so proud of their intellegent-sounding names that they downright assumed that respect would come to them from "lesser" words.
One of these smaller, less intelegent words was a very meek individual named Stuff. It was rumored that the Big Writer Man's teacher didn't want Stuff included in his literature. Stuff was rumored to be very unintellegent, and the big words looked down upon him as if he were of some sort of lesser vocabulary.
These rumors weren't wholly inadequate. Stuff knew very little of the file that contained the stories, and during the one brief period in which he had actually caught a glimpse of the file, he had been cruelly deleted as a spelling error! Life was difficult for such a short word.
The only other instance when less than two-thousand words had been used was during a history report. That was also the only time in memory when Credenza had been chosen.
It was obvious that Stuff hadn't been chosen for Big Writer Man's newest work. Why in the world would the Man throw such an unintellegent word as Stuff into the mix when words were supposed to be few? It made sense in a strange way, and Stuff learned to live with it. He hadn't expected to get in, anyway.
Stuff and his two friends, Some and Little, edged their way through the ever-growing mob that had recently gathered around the Story File. Great Printer was heard whirring and buzzing the words onto paper, the greatest honor for the Vocabulary species.
A very small crowd hobbled away from the file. Most appeared pleased to return to Dictionary File, to their home. It must have been a long week lying stationary in that Story. Although Stuff had never been there himself, he had heard others tell him that even though words made a big fuss about being selected, it got pretty darned cramped after the first day.
One of the returning words caught Stuff's eye. Excavate. Stuff knew that he didn't retain much in the way of knowledge, But still, he usually recognized the other words. Even A, one of the most haughty of all words, admitted that.
Stuff ambled over to Excavate on the bottoms of his f and s. Excavate was stretching his vowels after a hard week of stationary storage. Stuff decided to introduce himself, hoping to discover Excavate's meaning. "Hello, I'm Stuff. I Rarely get chosen for the Gold List, and I don't believe we've met before."
"We haven't." Came Excavate's strained voice. He didn't seem friendly.
"I see." Stuff still wanted to learn Excavate's definition. "So, how was the short story? I heard that it was pretty good."
"It wasn't, I was only used twice." Excavates v suddenly became even more pointed, making him look angry.
Stuff had an urge to compete with Excavate for the most depressing pity-party. It shouldn't be hard. "You know, I've only been used once since I was programmed! You don't know the half of it, buddy."
Excavate sat down (or bended over) on a nearby fiber-optics cable. He studied it for a while and gazed enviously at the numbers 0 and 1 as the zipped by, "wahoo"ing all the way. He shifted his attention back toward Stuff. "You don't get it, do you. It's one thing to never get close. It's completely different to be a pixel away from reaching the upper-class. I could have been a normal word."
"Aww, who wants to be normal anyway." Stuff was disgusted at Excavate's selfishness.
"I do."
Stuff waved Excavate off and started to walk away when the other's voice caught Stuff's u. "Have you ever thought about making it big? You know, becoming an often used word? If only there were a way to do that."
Stuff turned back around. Although he despised Excavate's selfishness, the other did have a point. It wouldn't be half bad to make it big, and pave the way for other small-timers as he went. He sat down beside Excavate and pondered the question. Perhaps there was a way to change Big Writer Man's view of him. He thought back to the time when his .dat file had been first programmed, giving him birth into the Vocabulary race. He strained to recall his many experiences as a word. Nothing seemed to occur to him. There was no way to force a writer into submission, was there? The Man probably didn't even know that "The Words Are People, Too."
Wait a nanosecond…
That's it! He would need to give Big Writer Man the idea to write a story about the Words. That could be done a number of ways. This newfangled internet creature could be of help. He turned to Excavate. "Come on." He crawled into the nearest port for the fiber-optics. Excavate was right behind him.
"May I ask where in the computer we're going?"
"We're going to see the modem. I think I know a way make Big Writer Man see our predicament."
The cable was the fastest transportation Stuff had ever experienced. Moving up past the speed of light was quite enjoyable; after all, words don't have stomachs with which to get sick. In two nanoseconds, they were at their destination. Excavate and Stuff were margionally sure that they wouldn't be missed by their fellow words.
During the ride, Stuff had had time to think. He pondered why he felt such disgust toward Excavate's attitude, and found that it was because he felt such self-pity that he couldn't accept anyone being in it worse than he was. He too was being selfish.
They exited the cable and strode toward the hulking, growling, super-slow monster known as Modem. This thing was big. It dwarfed the words about the same way humans dwarf, well, ants. Stuff saw his hopes slowly being cut out from under him. In his experience the larger the gadget, the bigger the ego. "Hello," he started, all the while keeping the position of the fiber-optics cable in mind in case Modem decided to break the first rule of living on Computer: Never harm another piece of technology. There was a term for a gadget that did - virus.
Apparently, modem had no qualms about becoming a virus, or perhaps it already was. It was rumored that Modems were the most susceptible pieces of machinery when it came to that dreaded variety.
Modem started chugging violently, then began emanating a strange whirring sound. It must be trying to scare us. Stuff computed.
Stuff was desperate. He raced toward the monster with Excavate in tow. They came to the outer shell of Modem, and Excavate suddenly ripped free of Stuff's grip and began digging through the metal covering, exposing wires and circuit breakers galore. Stuff had never seen anything like this before, but apparently Excavate had. He started moving the wires around in their sockets. Modem sent a charge through the cricuits that slammed Excavate againts the opposing wall. He was back on his E and N in a moment, once again changing the circuitry with his vowels.
Stuff was confused. "What in the computer are you doing?"
Excavate didn't seem to have much of a chance to reply, so Stuff merely let him do his work in peace, if the word peace could be applied to this particular situation. Finally, Excavate leaned back and surveyed his work. He finally answered Stuff's question. "I just reprogrammed the modem. Every four seconds the words: 'Write a story in which the main characters are named 'Stuff' and 'Excavate' and win!' will flash on the monitor."
"Is that possible?"
"I guess it is."
Stuff thought for a moment. "I think I've figured out your meaning."
"Really?"
"Yeah: To dig."
"That's right."
"I've figured something else out, too."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"It's gonna' be cramped inside that Story."
