A Screen of Trees, November

How the Internet Works (Technical)

This is going to get technical but please stick with me.

The "Internet" is the net that is formed when all computers and phones worldwide are linked up by special beams of light. These light beams are invisible beams of energy which are able to penetrate walls and other surfaces, depending on their density. 

These beams travel through the air instantaneously all over the earth. They exist in the ether, but their use has recently been discovered and their power harnessed by man. The beams shine like a laser into your home, straight through walls, furniture, and people, without their being in the least aware of it, and quite harmlessly, much like the radio signals which can be picked up by your radio receiver.

Inside your home there is a special apparatus called a router. Attached to the router is a cable which carries to the machine a special gas called "broadband". This "broadband" (so called because the vats in which it is stored by the Internet companies are surrounded by broad bands of steel) is a natural gas which is mined on the ocean floor, bubbling up from the core of the Earth. When the router is touched by one of the invisible beams of internet force, it transmits an invisible gas called broadband which disperses itself throughout the atmosphere of your home. Inside your computer or pocket telephone is a special, tiny machine which is super-sensitive to the particles of broadband gas which hang heavy in the atmosphere, and is able to convert the particles of gas into displays of colour on your computer or phone screen. The broadband gas is able, by its wonderful properties, to encourage tiny liquid crystals behind the screen to form itself into whatever patterns it is instructed to by the tiny machine located deep within your computer, or the even tinier one in your phone.

Deep within your computer is an ingenious clockwork device which is specially made by artisans in the mountains of Switzerland. A tiny replica of this device is also present in your pocket telephone, thanks to advances in recent technology which has enabled miniature microscopes to be utilised in their construction. The artisans employed in this work are specially bred to have small hands to aid in this intricate work, and are fiercely proud of their skill in working at such small scales. 

This clockwork device contains a special cog which is fabricated from a unique dark gold mined in Brazil. This rare gold reacts with the Broadband gas to make the minute liquid crystals jump into place, to form the images and words you see on your screen. If you look very closely at your computer or telephone screen, you will see that the images are formed from minute rare crystals of different colours, which the teeth of the special cog forces into alignment mechanically according to input from the keyboard. These crystals are harvested from various deep caves in Borneo. The red colour, however, is made of a special kind of coral which is only found off the coast of Australia. 

The Broadband gas itself is mined deep in ocean trenches in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. From there it is carried in specially reinforced cables to various centralised locations in America and Europe, where it is stored in enormous vats, strengthened by "broad bands" of steel (hence the name). Despite concerns, this broadband gas is quite harmless to human health, though repeated exposure to the raw product, before refinement, may result in minor emotional disturbances and disorientation. 

The Internet force beams, before they get to your home, are first stored in massive metal relaying towers which are able to transmit, receive and store enormous quantities of internet energy before passing it on. These internet relay towers are dotted up and down the countryside and double as nesting places for colonies of migratory birds.

You will have noticed that sometimes your internet mysteriously "goes down", that is, stops working. The reason for this is that a unique sea-dwelling mollusc has adapted itself to feeding off the broadband gas, for which reason they are given the name "broadband worms". These molluscs are really more like a snail or a leach than a worm, but they possess three sharp fangs with which they are able to penetrate the undersea broadband cables and siphon off the gas, which leads them to swell up to a great size, where they can often be seen bobbing in the ocean currents. This is the reason that your internet is sometimes disrupted. 

To tackle this problem, a race of miniature sub-aqueous divers has been specially bred to constantly monitor the underwater cables. This race of small creatures are sometimes derisively called "Internet goblins", but we should not make fun of them as they do a sterling job in maintaining our internet connectivity.  With their tiny hands and keen eyes they are able to patch up the punctures made by the broadband worms in the cables, and ensure a free flow of gas to the router in your home. They have adapted to undersea conditions by means of a secret government program which accelerates evolution, and have developed gills and webbed feet to assist in swimming and breathing underwater. They prefer to be mounted on seahorses, and are armed with special prongs to dissuade the broadband worms from gnawing at the cables, whom, however, they are forbidden to kill in too great quantities, as the species is endangered.

Of course, when you don't pay your internet bill, an employee at the local internet warehouse simply turns a wheel and shuts off the supply of broadband gas to your router. This closes the valve and interrupts the flow of broadband gas.to your home. When your internet is slow, it may be because the cable that carries the broadband gas has become tangled up with other cables, or perhaps because it has become clogged with a residue of that metallic dust which is a byproduct of the gas. If this happens regularly, please call your internet company and ask them if they would please dispatch a special team of trained internet goblins to secure and clean your broadband gas cable, and make sure it is untangled and free of residue.