DiaBA chapter 1 - Bored of the Internet

“I cried myself to sleep last night

And the ghost of Carl

He approached my window

I was hypnotized

I was asked to improvise”

—Sufjan Stevens

Late last night, in Rob's bedroom...

Veritably cuddly.

Honestly, and I’m not saying this out of spite or anything, I don’t think you’re going to manage to convince anyone that xkcd sucks or is overrated through this blag.

“Who the fuck wrote this?” said Rob, who was at that moment reading a very old comment on the xkcdsucks blog from his dusty computer screen.

“You did.” said Carl ‘Ugly’ Wheeler, the former admin of Xkcdsucks, for no one knew more than Carl did that XKCD’s harshest critic was once an optimistic young fanboy, until the hate-blog corrupted him, transforming Rob into a disgusting cretin that spent his online life pouring derision on the comic he’d once loved.

“But he even used the word blag. What a goddamned nerd!”

“Yes.” said Carl, nodding his ghostly head. “You were.”

Carl was visiting as a ghost because he died and went insane. But now he returned from the afterlife to give some advice to his cretin Rob before he set out on his long hard journey.

Rob saw the date on the comment and breathed a slow rattling sigh. 2008. Had it really been that long?

Carl put a hand through Rob’s shoulder. “You don’t need to do this.” said Carl. “Can’t you see that you’re starving yourself?”

“I fail to detect your sarcasm.” said Rob, shaking one of his fat rolls at Carl.

“It was a figure of speech.” said Carl. “You could still walk away from xkcdsucks with a shred of your dignity intact.”

“You didn’t leave me much choice.” said Rob. “No one else but me could review the new comics after you left.”

“What happened to the others?”

“I ate them to gain their power.” Rob confessed.

“Right.” said Carl. “I mean, couldn’t you just find someone to replace you? One of the cuddlefish perhaps?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHA no.”

Cuddlefish was a term they used to refer to the anonymous commenters, because they did not have names.

“Why not?”

“I don’t have permission to invite other people to the blog. Carl never gave me admin access.” said Rob.

“And risk losing my ad revenue? I should think not!” said Carl.

“So you see I have no choice.” said Rob. “XKCD could not be allowed to carry on unchallenged. And now I am its only challenger.”

“What about Jon Levi?” Carl enquired.

“No”

Carl could see that Rob was getting tired of this conversation, as he was just clicking randomly on Xkcdsucks comment threads. Dozens of colourful avatars flash by as Rob scrolled ever downwards, and Carl felt nothing for them.

“Okay, so let me get this straight what you are planning to do.” said Carl. “You’re going to go down to Massachusets, find out where Randall lives and personally put a stop to XKCD?”

“Yes.” said Rob.

“That won’t work.” said Carl.

“OK” said Rob. “I’ll bring some friends.”

“You don’t have any friends!” exclaimed Carl.

“Lol, I mean them.” said Rob, pointing his fat finger at the comment thread.

“Good luck getting those cuddlefish to do anything.” said Carl.

“They’re not all cuddlefish. Some of them are actually smart enough to type in complete sentences and create a Blogger account.”

“I’m so happy for them.” said Carl sarcastically. “But that doesn’t mean they want any part in this.”

“They will obey me when I give them a common cause to rally around. They too will come to the conclusion that eliminating XKCD at its source is infinitely preferable to hating it from afar.” explained Rob. “Xkcdsucks may have been created for this very purpose.”

“That’s not why I created Xkcdsucks.” said the ghost of Carl.

“And when it’s over, we might be able to leave behind this pointless hate-blog and get on with our lives.”

“But you could do that now. Why go all the way to Boston for that?”

“Megan.” said Rob.

“Ah-h-h. Tell me more.”

“Randall doesn’t know how lucky he is.” Rob monologued. “She is too good for him. She deserves me, a man who truly appreciates her. It is a great cosmic injustice that she became Mrs Munroe, when she should have been Mrs Rob Mason. Believe me when I say that I so desperately desire for hot sweet Megan-loving, that I would go as far as to kill the man she claims to love.”

“But why now? Why not two years ago when people actually gave a fuck?”

“She had cancer. And Randall’s been playing it for sympathy.”

“The bastard!” sneered Carl.

“Well now it’s come back in both tits, and it’s terminal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” said Carl. “Megan is a truly special woman.”

“Yeah.” said Rob. “If I act fast, I may be able to get her while she still has hair.”

“Then I wish you good luck.” said Carl. “So tell me, has anything else happened while I’ve been gone?”

“Randall went public with his lactation fetish.”

“I always knew he would.” said Carl. “Christ, I dread to think how that’s affecting Megan.”

“Woman who have had mastectomies don’t lactate.” said Rob. 

“Be warned though, Randall will not give her up so easily. Chances are that he knows what you’re about to do, and he is already planning on ways to stop you.”

“Wait.” said Rob. “How do you know that?”

“I have my sources.” said Carl.

“Are you haunting him too?”

“Yes, something like that. Now tell me exactly how you plan on getting to Boston?”

“Well I suppose I’ll take the... hey, why do you want to know?!? You only asked me that because you’re secretly working for him. Isn’t that right?” ejaculated Rob.

“Well sorry.” said Carl. “Ad revenue from Xkcdsucks ain’t gonna last forever.”

“Fuck you!” bellowed Rob. “I trusted you.”

Rob swiped his pudgy arms at Carl’s ghost, but it was hopeless. Even if he had been able to touch Carl’s incorporeal form, the ghost had already faded away.

Rob looked up at the spidery ceiling. It was faintly lit by a glow from the window, meaning that the faint autumn sun had already stated to rise over Seattle. In a few hours it would be bright enough to make him see the reflection of his own face in the computer screen, which he hated. He would be gone before then.

Rob lifted his 300 pounds of rancid flesh from his swivel chair and dusted himself off. A week’s worth of lint, dust and Cheeto crumbs fell from between his rolls of fat. He would take a shower before he got there. Rob grabbed suitcase and packed provisions for a long journey. He took food, coffee, porn, socks, XXXXL sized shirts, his netbook and a breast pump. He zipped up the suitcase and stuffed it between his fat rolls. Rob went online one last time to book a train ticket. He was using his browser’s incognito mode so that Randall couldn’t track him. And then he ate his computer afterwards to destroy the evidence.

He began by stuffing the stiff plastic keyboard into his mouth, without even bothering to unplug it. His teeth gnashed on the keys, typing up yet another XKCD review. His fingers slipped on the mouse, and accidentally posted the eldritch text to Xkcdsucks. But Rob didn’t see, as by now he had started to consume the monitor. The gaping maw of his mouth clenched against the plastic and glass until they gave way. The cables wrapped around his slimy tongue, causing him to retch. But now there was no going back now. He would have to swallow the whole computer. In a fit of electrically charged agony, Rob consumed the tower, his jaw extending into hitherto unknown dimensions, and the monitor. He would not be needing that computer any more.

When Rob got to the front door, he realised he had forgotten something.

“Mom!” he called out. “I’m leaving town for a while.”

“For how long?” came a voice from the downstairs bedroom. 

“Indefinitely.” said Rob.

“Why, is someone is wrong on the internet?”

“Yes.” said rob, cringing at the reference.

“You should just ignore them.”

“No Mom, Xkcd is a disease, and it's reached pandemic proportions.”

“Could you at least change my bedpan first?” the helpless woman pleaded.

“Fuck no... thanks.” he said politely.

Rob squeezed his way through the front door of his crumbling suburban abode, leaving his bedridden mother to die.

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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.