Web Fed News Yearbooks - October 1999

HELLO? ANYBODY?
by Horatio

Has anybody noticed that Fed is getting to be a little bit lonely lately? Those of you who were on AOL Fed, like myself, remember the nights where two hundred players was the rule. True, sometimes it made the game move slower than a waiting line at the DMV, but it was fun to have that many people. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I saw the Cantina really jumping.

There was that one free weekend, though. That was fun, as many people have said. And yes, I agree that we should do that more often. Federation is a game about society and the interaction of people with people. However, lately, it has become quite distanced from its earlier self, with only a few groups of people instead of the huge, milling society it once was.

Having a population like that wasn't without its foibles, though. Puzzle pieces were constantly missing, keeping an exchange balanced with that many Traders was hard, and there was the ever-present lag. But, really, is that such a bad price to pay?

Perhaps there is a way to return to the heydays of Fed. Perhaps there isn't. But either way, we accomplish nothing by complaining about it and staying to our own tiny groups. Lonely? Go out and just meet someone. Contrary to popular conception, most people in Fed do not bite, and those that do do so for entertainment (don't ask; I don't). And maybe we will return to those days of two hundred player games. I know I'd like that. But even if we don't, I'm still happy to know the people that I do, because I wouldn't trade any of them for anything.

Not even time credits.

Now, the response from you, my reading audience, has been totally underwhelming! Please, even if it's just to tell me to move to the mountains and never write again, write to me and tell me what you think! Anything at all, just send it to Horatio_TheWriter@excite.com.

BLINK, BEEP, PERCOLATE
by Horatio

As I was channel-chasing recently, I came across an episode of the original "Star Trek" series, and it made me think about how lucky we are that the equipment in Fed wasn't designed by the same people who put on those shows. You have to remember such shows as "Flash Gordon," "Clutch Cargo," and the dozen other shows set a century or two in the future. At the same time, you had better be pretty happy that spaceship propulsion has progressed beyond fishing line.

The primary purpose of any equipment in those shows, whether it was a computer or a coffee machine (or, as it often was, a computer made from a coffee machine) was to make a noise. That strange, half bird call, half dentist's drill science fiction noise. I think Flash Gordon even patented that noise. It would make sense; everything made it. You could always tell when the hero (or villain) was up to something, because they would be hunched over their coffee-machine computer cackling wildly and causing it to make even more noise. The welfare of the universe was dependent on whose computer was making more noise: our hero (the guy in the silver Spandex who looks like a hood ornament), or the evil villain (characterized by heavy robes, a bad haircut, and usually a Russian accent - don't blame me; it was the cold war thing).

Those computers were hardly feats of engineering greatness, or set-construction greatness, for that matter. If you look really close in some of those shows, you can see on the side of the computer where the gray spray-paint didn't quite cover up the Amana refrigerator logo. They all had a zillion lights which relayed such vital information as: the bad guy is coming (random twinkling), the ship is going down (lots of flashing), or the coffee's done (all the lights go out). But I have to hand it to whomever is in charge of the "Star Trek" universe; they obviously have a top-notch education system. Why? Because there were ten billion buttons on the "Enterprise" but not one of them was labeled. But then again, "Star Trek" was a quantum leap ahead of Gordon. Flash was having to make do with punching random spots on the coffee machine and pulling huge levers connected, presumably, to some key part of his ship, such as the carafe warmer.

I don't like the idea of Fed existing like this. We'd constantly be losing planets when the fishing line broke. Random parts of our ships would fall off when the glue wore off. Occasionally the whole universe would burst into flame when a stagehand put the light bulb too close to that construction paper that had the holes punched in it so they looked like stars. And... oh good, all the lights in my ship just went out.

Coffee's done.

Comments? Ideas? Thoughts? Unwanted inlaws? Uhh...scratch that last one off the list. The other three are welcome at Horatio_TheWriter@excite.com!