One of the better boards in this excellent scene was one called The Gates of Delirium. I purchased what was referred to (colloquially? I’m not sure) as a “scope” – a flat fee which bought 20 cheap hours of long distance from my area to this one. There was just too much going on to avoid it for the purpose of a cheap phone bill.

The sysop’s name was Pieter Broerson. He had Muscular Dystrophy and was wheelchair bound but I didn’t know that until a mutual acquaintance told me. I was a co-sysop on his board, and talked to him regularly voice on this hacked-up three way calling “box” the same mutual acquaintance made by hooking up a switch and crossing wires in the wall behind his phone jack (he had two numbers running in. This seems pretty simple now but at the time I thought this was really cool).

Anyway, for a long time we talked and posted and e-mailed, and then one day, he died from respiratory complications following a Rush concert. One thing Pieter was into was music, and he caught something at this concert which led to his lungs filling with fluid, and he died (this is the story I got).

And I’d never had the chance to meet him in person, because we lived about 20 miles from each other and I wasn’t of driving age, yet.

But then I asked my parents to drive me to his wake, which was closed-casket. I met all of these people from the local BBS scene who had made the trip. Though still a somber affair, the music of Yes, Pink Floyd, and Rush played throughout. On the top of the casket was a photograph of Pieter (”Astral Traveler”) – I had no idea what he looked like.

I got to meet a lot of people I’d known for a long time as online friends, and hadn’t had the chance to meet. It made me regret not meeting Pieter.

After the funeral, myself and the other co-sysops of the board were invited back to where he lived with his family. I saw the BBS for the first time, with an empty chair in front it, and massive shelves of records nearby. It was odd looking at the system I’d called for so long from the other side, especially with the sysop…absent. The board was still up and running, too. I watched a call come in and the familiar C-Net sysop console with its unique light bar come to life. Yet in the house, just silence…absence.

This is one of those moments in life that sticks out, and I’ve tried to put this into narrative form to try to extract some kind of meaning from it, or communicate how poignant that moment was. I’ve told the story several times but I don’t think I’m getting the point across. I’m not sure what the point is other than, when I was 15, this was an unusually serious moment.

But it’s like I always say to people who tell me that everything online is simulated and shallow. You get out of all of this what you put into it.

When it comes to people, it’s worth putting a little extra in…