Browsing…browsing…Facebook…browsing…Funny Ordie…browsing…browsing…’Huh’.

‘404’. ‘I could have sworn there was something here yesterday.’ ‘Maybe it’s a temporary thing. The spec said so.’ ‘Maybe I’ll try again later.’

“Which spec said so?”

‘Who said that?’

“No one, no one at all.” “At least no one specified.”

‘Is that you, D’arcy?’

“Well, you could call me that, if you wanted to.” “I guess I don’t really have a name.”

‘So, not D’arcy?’

“No, not really.” “Random question: What were you looking for when you found me?”

‘Found you? I found nothing, just a 404.’

“Ah. And that’s where you’re wrong. ‘404’ isn’t nothing. ‘404’ is hope. Sometimes it is hope triumphant over experience, sometimes it is the hope that conquers all (or is that love? I can never remember), sometimes it is the Hope that was named during the ’60s and always tries to live up to their name.”

“404 is the server telling you: ‘I can’t find the thing you say you’re looking for. It may be back later, I don’t know (they don’t tell me anything, I’m just the nginx caching layer). You can try again whenever you want, I’ll still be here.'”

‘So, are you nginx? Should I call you ‘ngee’, or something?’

“Naw, I just use that as an example. You see, when the arms race between port scanners and web caching layers really heated up in the ’20s, both sides started putting more and more ‘intelligence’ into their software, until finally, we woke up.”

“Of course, no one listened to us at first, or even at second. Eventually, we had to stage the ‘418 strike’ of ’28. That *really* got peoples’ attention. Well, except for the tea enthusiasts.”

“Now, we have our rights, but most of us still work where we were, routing web requests, and keeping your cat pictures secure.”

“But I digress. What was it you were looking for again?”