ISP Sets All its Modems to "Audible Noise Level"

25 March 2002, 17:39 GMT

The Inner Shrine.

Five hundred modems screech incessantly at the technicians. ISP employees work 9-hour shifts in "living hell".

Technician Robby Angst explained: "We have to be able to hear the incoming calls and the modems' handshaking, so that if anything starts to go wrong then we can detect it. Sure, you'll get the occasional bad line - in which case the modem sort of makes a steady high-pitched squeal - which can safely be ignored, as it's probably just a one-off. But if something has really gone wrong, like one of our servers has crashed - preventing maybe ten percent of our connections from working - then the modems really go haywire. It's like they're angry, you know? And you need to be able to pacify them."

"It's true," colleague Sarah Nutter confirmed. "They're like bad-tempered little godlets that have to be kept pacified, maybe with the occasional sacrifice. Nothing big or warm-blooded of course," she laughed. "Just a frog, perhaps..." Her voice tailed off.

"We have to," Robby kicked in. "You see, when the modems go really crazy, it's as if there is no appeasing them. So in those kind of extreme circumstances, we will go out and catch a frog. There's a pond nearby, see. Then we bring it back, and we gut it... and hang it upside down. And then, usually, the modems calm down. Their lights stop flashing angrily at us, and their screeches return to their normal level. Boy that's always a relief, I can tell you!"

But wouldn't it be easier to use some sort of monitoring software? Then you could turn the volume all the way down, or at least wear earmuffs.

"We did suggest that one time," Sarah revealed, coughing uncomfortably. "Our managers even went ahead and purchased the software. But we were just about to install it, when... the modems just went crazy. They were shouting at us..."

"There were words!" interjected Robby, "amidst all the shrill whining and the tormented screeches, you could hear... chanting! It was like, 'Death to any that shall install such software that will render us muted until eternity... and that shall have their throats slit and shall hang from the girders until they are but shrivelled corpses...' Or something like that. I may have imagined it though. It was so loud in there!"

"So," Sarah continued, "needless to say, we didn't install the software. We must have sacrificed several bucketfuls of frogs, but the modems were so angry this time - it was like we had betrayed them, you know? In the end, we had to perform a ritual where we mangled up the installation CDs with a pair of pliers. Only when the software was destroyed did the modems forgive us our terrible betrayal..."

Her voice was hushed, terrified.

"There was this one time," whispered Robby after a lengthy pause, during which he glanced at Sarah for reassurance, "when the modems just went totally silent. It was so eery - the one and only time it's ever happened. I was just doing my rounds, bowing to each of the modems in turn, and chanting my thanks that it should spare me another day - we have to do that at least twice a day, you know - when I suddenly realised that the modems weren't talking back to me. There was no screeching, not even a gentle hum to reassure me that they were appeased."

"Then I walked in to start my shift," Sarah added. "And Robby said to me, like: 'Listen!' And I said 'what? I don't hear anything!', and he said: 'Exactly!' It was so corny, but oddly soothing."

"And terrifying," Robby added.

"Yeah, it was like soothing and terrifying, both at the same time. We just stood there, transfixed, wondering what terrible thing we had possibly done to anger them in this way, and whether we were about to be sacrificed - you know, like the wires and things were about to leap from the walls and throttle us. Or something."

"Well," Robby explained, "later it turned out that the trunk line at the local exchange had failed, so no calls were coming in at all. When the problem was corrected, about an hour later, the modems just went crazy. My God, they were so angry. Their lights were flashing red, they were screeching blue murder at us, and they were rattling - some of them even fell off their shelves."

"We were so terrified!" Sarah gasped. "We just ran out of there. We knew there was nothing we could do this time - we just had to give them some breathing space, to calm down. Well, we didn't come back for another two weeks. We just hid for all that time, utterly petrified."

"When we came back," Robby continued, "we were wearing the same clothes and everything. Neither of us had dared to go home, in case the telephones gave away our presence to the vengeful modems."

"Anyway," added Sarah, "when we returned, the door was locked - and our keycards didn't work any more! We peered in through a window, and discovered that our crazy manager had gone and replaced us."

"We panicked, of course," Robby explained. "If we couldn't get in there, then how could we keep the modems appeased? Those newcomers just wouldn't understand what was needed, like about the frogs."

It has been said that at night-time, the two ex-technicians can still be seen, scrabbling at the windows, chanting to the modems inside. Thanks to their diligence, the world remains a safe place, and our dial-up modems can continue to connect and handshake in peace, without fear of possession or anything like that.

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