The following day, with NO EFFING CALLS RECEIVED FROM ANYONE, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden back and nicely asked to speak to the specific supervisor who had promised to call the day before. The underling said she was not in the office. Furthermore, the underling said that the reason the supervisor had not called was because the local tech supervisor had promised to phone the scribe to explain exactly why he couldn’t have the web of the whole wide world in his castle. The scribe asked to speak to a different supervisor, because mounting evidence suggested that he would never receive any such phone call. The underling told him none were available. The scribe told the underling that he felt as though he were being given the runaround, but would wait to hear what the technical supervisor had to say in his much anticipated phone call.
The scribe got dressed and prepared himself for a morning of using the web of the whole wide world at the place where they hide the books. But before he could even leave the house, he saw through the castle’s kitchen window a large Link of Sudden truck parked in his driveway. He went out and this was when he met the technical supervisor who had promised to phone. The man was very nice and gently broke the news that while all of the scribe’s neighbors seemed to have internet service, the scribe’s castle could not. At least, not without a great deal of work and expense on the part of the Link of Sudden. The most direct route would be to install a series of cable poles and rewire the whole valley from their line at the nearest major road. That would be woefully expensive, though the Link of Sudden might eventually undertake it should they feel like they would get enough customers along the route of the lines. The other option would be to somehow tie in to the connection shared by the scribe’s two nearest neighbors. Currently, that receptacle only had two connectors in it which were used by his two neighbors. It would be expensive to upgrade that box as well as to bury cable up the hill to connect to the scribe’s castle, plus there was the hassle of asking the neighbors if this was okay with them. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope on it. In fact, he noted, the scribe should probably look into other internet options because there was no guarantee the cost/benefit analysis for either of the aforementioned options would come out in his favor. But, the man said, he would turn in his survey findings to his boss, his boss would run the c/b/a and would call me back, probably some time early the following week.
The scribe, upon hearing this news, decided that the likelihood of him gaining the web of the whole wide world from the Link of Sudden was pretty low. He didn’t feel like the technical supervisor was jerking him around, but was on the level. He would explore other avenues. But he also wasn’t willing to give up entirely on Suddenlink, especially when the supervisor had said there was still a chance.
In order to get some web of the whole wide world into the house, he put in a call to a telephony guild called Frontier. He’d actually called them a week previous and had been told that they could give him service, though the speeds they offered were pale by comparison to those he had received with the Link of Sudden in Borderland. Still, they would at least get him SOME service. The new lackey on Frontier’s line, however, could find no record of his previous call, nor an address for his castle at all. The lackey suggested that if the scribe were to visit one of his neighbors and inquire of them their telephone number, he could locate the castle more readily. So the scribe, quite grumpy, walked down the hill to one of the two nearest castles and knocked on the door of that owned by the neighbor he had not yet met. Its resident, Martha, was a nice older lady who not only gave the scribe her phone number and address, but regaled him with tales of how fast her connection was to the web of the whole wide world. Couldn’t talk enough about its blazing fast speeds and how she had been told her house was the last one on the line from Link of Sudden’s local node and that she was pretty sure she’d been told that the scribe’s house could not have it.
Once the scribe returned to his castle and phoned the next Frontier lackey, they were able to pinpoint his location. Again, he was told he could have 4 megabytes per second in his speed on the web of the whole wide world, a far cry less than the blazing 15 mps promised by the Link of Sudden. However, when the Frontier installation lackey came out two days afterward, he could barely summon half an mps let alone a full megabyte and that was directly at the phone connection to the castle. The phone jacks within the castle would not even register. Turns out, the castle is at the very tip end of a line running from Tri-Metro Town B and is at 2200 feet from that access point, wherein Frontier recommends no more than 1800. Not only could the scribe not have 15,000 mps, not only could he not have 4 mps, he could not even have 1 mps and in order to get the half an mps within his home all other phone jacks in the place would have to be disconnected. The scribe told the Frontier lackey to begone, and to relay to his vile masters exactly how many bags of dicks they were invited to consume—which is to say one bag of dicks. But the lackey did suggest the scribe look into wifi hotspot devices for possible service. He did warn, however, that no one was giving away data for free these days.
Meanwhile, the promised days upon which the scribe was to have received a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis came and went with, of course, nary a call. At the end of that week, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and inquired as to the result. They again said they did not know, but would put in a request that the scribe be given a call. The scribe pointed out, for probably the sixth time, that he had been given repeated promises of a call in the previous weeks and had never actually been received one outside for the calls for directions made by the first two failed installation guys. The Link of Sudden said they were very sorry.
Not willing to give up on what had become a quest, the scribe researched other options via the web of the whole wide world down at the place where they hide the books. Turned out, the Zon of Veri, the Great and Powerful Atat, and Sprint offered wireless hotspot cards that could potentially connect devices in his castle to the web of the whole wide world at speeds approaching high ones. However, they all wanted to charge a fair assload for the privilege, not to mention required a two year contract. And of the services, only Sprint offered unlimited data with their MIFI card. The other two charged around $10 per gigabyte. After speaking to Sprint, the scribe learned that their service, while unlimited in its data plan, did not have a reliable signal in the area of his castle. Plus, they would require the two year contract. They did, however, note that a sister organization, Virgin America, offered a pre-paid mifi card for $50 per month with unlimited data and no contract. Unfortunately, when the scribe researched the validity of this, he learned that it was a massive pile of horse shit. Virgin America DID offer a $50 per month mifi card that claimed it came with unlimited data. However, while the data itself was unlimited, your access to it in high speed form was limited to 2 gigs per month, at which point they cinched off the pipe to dialup speeds for the rest of the month, or until you paid them another $50. And for that Richard Branson may consume two bags of dicks.
The Great and Powerful Atat, which allegedly has some of the best connectivity in the Tri-Metro area, also offered a MIFI card for $50 per month, but they at least gave you 5 gigs for that money and for each additional gig you went beyond the initial 5 you would be charged $10. The scribe reasoned that if he had to pay for such service, at least this was metered and would not be cinched off. He popped by the Atat store and signed up. And it worked! It was pretty much blazing fast and for most things he did not notice much difference between the Link of Sudden and the Atat. However, streaming Flix of Net movies chewed through the data at an alarming rate. It was almost to the point that he was better off paying movie theater prices to watch movies through his PS3. And when it came to using the PS3 network to game online with his god son, forget it. While it would let him play games online, something about the Atat connection would not allow a direct connection with his godson. The scribe decided he would take the rest of the month to try out the service before making any further drastic decisions.
Meanwhile, life went on. Boxes continued to be unpacked and put away and their former castle in Borderland was finally placed on the market. The goodly wife began her commute to Asscrackton for her work while the scribe began to take on freelance scribing jobs once again. He also was able to resume his casting of pod for the "Tales of the Place Where They Hide The Books CAST." It hurt him deeply to know that uploading it was costing him moolah, but at least he wouldn't have to upload it exclusively at the Place Where They Hide the Books.
Over the following two weeks, calls were repeatedly placed to the Link of Sudden asking about the cost/benefit analysis results. They didn’t have them, but promised someone would phone. No one ever did. Finally, nearly three weeks after being promised he would receive a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis, the scribe called the Link of Sudden back to ask again and was told a new request for information would be put in to the local crew. The scribe again stressed that he would believe no promises of phone calls to come until one actually did, because he’d had ten of them already and none had EVER come to pass. Furthermore, he was quite put out at having paid for an entire month of service on an empty house with no one in it. He would like to disconnect his service. The phone lackey begged him not to, saying that he was grandfathered into a good pricing deal and should not allow it to lapse until he heard word officially on his connection. The scribe countered that he was getting a great deal on service he was not and could not receive, so what sense did it make to continue with it? The lackey begged again, and the scribe relented. And to help alleviate the scribe’s concerns about no future callbacks, the phone lackey gave the scribe an escalation number which he was to give to the next Link of Sudden lackey after he didn’t receive a call for a few days more. At least they were planning ahead, the scribe thought.
One week later, and still no calls, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and gave them the number. The new phone lacked explained that his connectivity issue had been escalated to the construction phase. This did not mean, as she pointed out, that he would be receiving any service from them, but that the results of the survey were being considered and the cost/benefit analysis calculated. Furthermore, it was no surprise that he had received no call about any of it because once the issue had been escalated all further communication would be in writing. He should expect a letter at some point in the future.
“But how long do I have to wait?” he asked.
Oh, the letter could come today. Or it could come in weeks, or even months. You couldn’t tell with these things. Yes, once it was in construction’s hands, there was just no way to estimate when they would get around to it.
“But I was promised a call within four days of the survey,” the scribe said. “That was three weeks ago.”
Yes, we know. These things take time.
“But… but all of my neighbors have high speed internet through you. If they would just upgrade the equipment down the hill, I could have it, too. Maybe. I just want someone to call me and tell me whether or not that will even work. I’m willing to pay for burying the cable up the hill if you guys will just upgrade the box to fit another plug!”
Yes, we know. You’ll receive a letter. These things take time.
Every fiber in the scribe's being wanted to tell the lackey the exact number of bags of dicks that he required the link of sudden to consume--which is to say ALL of the bags of dicks. But, instead, the scribe again noted that he was still currently paying for service on an empty house and was unwilling to continue do so while waiting indefinitely for a letter to arrive from them. He had no more faith in their ability to write letters than he did in their ability to make a phone call. In fact, he wanted reimbursed for all of his time the Link of Sudden had wasted in this matter, which had been stretching on a full 40 days previous. He was through listening to lackeys beg him to keep his service. He wanted disconnected. The phone lackey reluctantly agreed, saying that a Link of Sudden rep could come by to pick up their equipment, but would only pick it up from the castle it had been assigned to.
"That will not be possible," the scribe said, noting that he now lived in a completely different town. The lackey suggested he could drop it off at one of their local guilds, but only listed the guilds in Borderland and Asscrackton as possibilities. No, the scribe said, he was only willing to mail it to them.
And that, dear and patient readers, was how the matter was left.
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