June 2, in the year of our Lord 2004, the fourth day of our expedition into the wastes of Nocomputerland.

The ordeal is beginning to wear on our forces. The men haven’t had a decent browse in all this time, and they are beginning to forget the faces of their webcomics. They have adopted quaint local customs to pass the time, hammering away on typewriters until the very din draws the sanity from the others, and they turn upon each other. There is one computer, a hollow, communal thing, but competition is high, especially when plagues running through the computer world banish others to these badlands.

Filing has been our one aid and mainstay against the gathering madness, and the poignant familiarity of the keyboard of the labelmaker as we bring order from the chaos helps us to cling to the dream—someday, someday again, the computer will return. The files and shortcuts we know and love will again leap into glowing life before our eyes, and we will breathe deep the well-loved air that now seems so far away.

June 2, afternoon

Morale received a major blow when the labelmaker use was curtailed for office supply budget reasons, and that was only the beginning of the bad news. Our escape from Nocomputerland was scheduled for today, but has been postponed, with no definite date given. We have hunkered down, driving off competition for the communal computer with primal grunts. What have we been reduced to?