IFindIt: The Cursed Search Engine
This is a fictional joke story written by DaveTheUseless. The search engine doesn't actually exist.
Has anyone ever heard of IFindIt? I have, and in fact it made me wish that I didn't find it. It is an oldschool search engine, kind of like Yahoo!, Google, and Lycos, that was up until very recently not taken down... even though it hadn't been updated since the late 1990s. Just the thought that someone was hosting it over twenty years later and paying to do so, even though searches didn't work and there was no practical use for it anymore, sent shivers down my spine.
One day, I taught my students about IFindIt and told them all about its parent company, EasyNett, which was stationed in a busy section of NYC. We tried calling the help desk number, but it was out of service, and probably had been for a very, very long time. Regardless, being the modern pranksters we were we filled out the feedback form toward the top of the page, which I filled out with some random gibberish.
"Hello, my name is Seymour Butts and I like to sniff my own butt. I tried searching your engine for butts and the search engine crashed on me. What sort of diddlypoo are you trying to sell here? Also, I drink lots and lots of prune juice because I am constipated. Send me prune juice or I'll die." My community college computer literacy students let out an uproarious laughter while a smirk sported my slightly overweight but still masculine middle-aged face. I clicked the 'Submit' button below and the form, and was...
Totally astonished that the thing actually sent. What? No, that couldn't be. It must have been a mistake by the server: sending a confirmation message when nothing actually happened. I gave them my actual e-mail and phone number, too. I guess there was part of me that thought I could be making contact with the paranormal. What if Mr. IFindIt died in a tragic boating accident while out on his yacht in Cancun, and his ghost continues to haunt the EasyNett corporation to this very day? I mean... that's impossible, though. Ghosts don't exist...
Right?
Later that night I cooked up a giant bowl of chili and cracked open an ice cold Mountain Dew. I thought a bit about the past. I used to have websites on GeoCites about Super Nintendo games, back when new stuff was still being released for that system. Tripod, Angelfire... there was even a crappy little service called 'Homepages for the Homeless' (what a fitting name, given how much it sucked) that I spammed at least one Leisure Suit Larry image to. I think it was one of him sticking his finger out and trying to look cool in his blindingly white leisure suit on the disco dance floor, naively believing he'd pick up a lady or two that was way out of his league. That made me reminiscence about the old Sierra chatrooms, too. I used to go by the name k9, and pretended that I was a dog. I also went by APUPNAMEDSCOOBYDOO, sometimes. I wasn't a furry, but I sure acted like one.
After several bowls of steaming hot chili and four or five 12 oz cans of mountain dew, I fell asleep and had horrible sugar dreams. In them, EasyNett had taken over my house and turned it into a retro PC video game sales shop. Copies of King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Space Quest, Hugo's House of Horrors, Torin's Passage, Woodruff and the Schnibble, and many others were being sold off for pennies while all of the customers were laughing about me. "Look at what that loser grew up to be.", a 36-year-old blonde-haired woman with a southern accent chimed in. "He had all the talent in the world, and he ended up being a milkman." What the hell? Milkmen didn't exist in the modern era! I tried to lucid dream my way out of the situation or wake up, but instead, a fat Caucasian man with a handlebar mustache who must have been at least well into his 50s chimed in. "I'm still waiting for him to pay his back rent. And that was over 30 years ago!". I didn't recognize this alleged landlord, but I acknowledged even in my sleep that his accusation wasn't wrong.
Thankfully, I woke up not too long after that. I had consumed so much mountain dew that I may as well have been sweating sugar in my sleep. It reminded me of what mom used to say about not eating too much candy on Halloween night: nightmares, nightmares, nightmares. Recognizing that it was all just a dream, I stumbled my way downstairs and got ready to cook some breakfast. Another 'exciting' (ha) day of teaching open-enrollment computer science awaited me, but I had to make sure I was amped up for the lectures.
I popped open another can of mountain dew and took a seat at the table. I couldn't help but think that maybe the people in that nightmare were trying to tell me something. I had always believed in that dreaming had some sort of mystical value, but I didn't quite understand what. I scratched my balls and got up and looked into my old gaming closet.
I shat my pants when I saw a two-liter bottle of prune juice with a note attached to it. Trembling in horror that somebody had broken into my house and still might be there, I could only imagine if this present was a well wish or not. I picked up the postcard. 'Good morning, San Francisco.' That was... that was where I lived, over 30 years ago. I flipped over onto the other side, half-wondering how long it would take the paramedics to arrive and find my body after my heart gave out from the shock and surprise.
"Hello, Seymour. Or should we say, Roderick?" That was my real name. ... Maybe they searched it up from my e-mail address and phone number that I gave them? "Thank you for your inquiry. Unfortunately, after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, our President and CEO, [redacted], saw life for what it truly was and chose to disband the company in favor of searching the world for life's true meaning. In the meanwhile, we had kept the website up as a memorial to him. Wherever he is now.
In the meanwhile, there probably isn't anything inherently wrong with searching for butts, but there are no plans for IFindIt to modernize its algorithm at this point in time. Please enjoy this complimentary bottle of grape juice for your troubles. Sincerely, EasyNett Human Resources."
Well, I didn't faint and my heart didn't give out. What if the prune juice was poisoned? Nah—the seal was unbroken. I half-expected the bottle to have expired sometime in the late 90s, but nope, it still had a year or two to go.
I turned around and bumped into a tall and rather slender man adorned in suit and tie, with the pastiest of white skin I had ever seen in my entire life.
I would have called the police if I didn't faint this time from what I saw of his face.
He had no eyes. He had no mouth. He had no nose.
And his hand was outstretched... towards me.
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