About this story:
You are reading a dynamic short fiction. You are invited to participate however you'd like. Thanks for your time. If you're interested in more work like this, please check out the Writing page on my site, shawnrider.com.
PiTP
by Shawn Rider
November 15, 2005
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It turned out that Stan and Morton had been lurking on the same discussion forum, SyntaXX. SyntaXX was established as a mailing list in 1994, but by 1999 had become one of the most popular destinations on the Web for pranksters and dissident activists. In 1999, it looked like RADDSTURR was going to weather the big decline by delivering a solid product, subscription-based revenue and serious brand name identification.
Stan was unfamiliar with Morton's previous work on the company, which was understandable. All of Morton's essays were published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and very little had gotten out to the mainstream media. But recently he'd done a few television appearances, and it looked like interest was picking up now that so many dot-com companies were folding. Morton could smell a mainstream book deal coming his way. When he had no luck connecting with Stan Marshall and Berkeley Knudsen through the standard channels, he started searching everywhere for any trace of either man's personal network habits.
The community of folks surrounding the RADDSTURR campaign had also, coincidentally, congregated on the board. Many of them had been members of SyntaXX before RADDSTURR hit the scene, and the plenitude of technical skills had been helpful in solving the various mysteries embedded in the marketing campaign and RADDSTURR website.
Through this connection of seemingly disparate user groups, spread out across a vast demographic of humanity, as well as a misguided image search Morton came across a photo of Stan Marshall, buried in the mailing list archives on the SyntaXX website. Of course, in the image, he was called Numero the Mathemagician, entertaining kids at the SyntaXX Christmas party. But Morton immediately recognized the magician as one half of the RADDSTURR dynamic duo.
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