i found the following anonymous message in a bottle while i was tinkering with my mailbox. i publish it unabridged for the benefit of those who may find some interest in its clumsy narrative. it goes without saying that the author's signature is blatantly fake

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Call me Samuel. Some months ago — never mind how long precisely — having no money and nothing to interest me except playing Whale Trail on my brother's iPhone, I thought I would navigate a little on my own. After roaming many shops, in a basement chamber I found what I was looking for: the ultimate old style PC that would put me in touch with my fellow idle wasters of the world wide web.

Safe in the silicon armory endowed with an electronic brain, I ventured the net from my fish-shaped house only to experience its dangers. As soon as I started my journey, I came across more pitfalls than just about my every other alias. Then, at the Pan-National Geographic site, where I had been looking for information on the sonic signals of my beloved cetaceans, something happened: while the bees babbled and the birds piped, a spider appeared at the center of the homepage the exact moment I started listening to an old Kraftwerk hit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFLO2LslYx0.

Needless to say, the bug was no common spider, but the one GMO that actually kept the website into existenz. After the involuntary exposure to the soundwawes of the German band, it attacked the avatar I had chosen for the occasion. The horror! The horror! With his last bit of energy that silly little twerp flashed through my virtual hand and vanished into the dustbin.

Had I been a comic book character, the accident would have provided me with dazzling superhuman powers. As it was, I burned the HD and got a sore hand plus headache that interfered with my daily routine and — alas! — turned a die-hard daydreamer into an insomniac. If all this were not enough, I was also somehow trapped in my virtual identity. Indeed, for some inexplicable reason, my actual features began to resemble more and more those of my unfortunate avatar.

It was upon a midnight dreary that I realized how irrevocably I was doomed. A mere instrument in the hands of fate, together with my soul I had lost my peace of mind and my job. Finally, after many sleepless nights I stumbled across an unexpected salvation. Almost starving, and in no mood to share the company of other sleepers awake, I crossed the dusky threshold of an infamous Pizza2go, where I hoped to steal the leftovers of a slice and win a beer at dices.

Upon entering Sal’s equivocal inn, I found a number of seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of what at a cursory glance looked like a bunch of boxes. Spellbound, I got closer to the congregation in time to hear somebody blurt out:

“Why, everybody loves a bargain!” “Yes,” retorted another, “But sometimes it can be dangerous to accept a bargain which is too good to be true!”

What on earth were they talking about? Peering deep into the darkness at the right corner of the room I saw a man with a shock of white hair and black eyebrows and moustache. He was staring intensely at me, and soon as he saw me see him, he got closer and with a reassuring smile he said,

“Howdy, Peter,” no doubt thinking I was somebody else. “You are late," he added. “Anyway the job is yours, I’ll be waiting for you in my lab tomorrow morning at 9:00.”

Taken aback, I realized nonetheless that the mysterious fellow, confused by my new look, had taken me for somebody else. Happy that destiny had presented me with a unique opportunity, I feigned confidence and nodding towards the assembly I said:

“What are those sailors looking at?”

“Why, can’t you see?,” he said, “They’re arguing on the cheapest and best radio-recorder repair shop in town.”

“Not everybody seems to share your opinion,” I replied.

“You’ll always find some skeptic, but they are wrong! I’ve handed over the man who runs the shop a crown jewel to fix!”

“One more thing,” I asked hesitantly, while his wonderful narration inspired me with strange feelings, “may I have your business card?”

“Sure, lad,” he said, and as I spotted the guy’s name he added:

“Get also the one from the shop, tomorrow morning you’ll need it for your fist assignement.”

Would you believe it? Doc wanted me, a perfect stranger, to collect the holy grail of his collection! I could barely conceal my excitement. For the first time in months, that night I fell asleep in less than no time. In my dream, I stood amid a surf-tormented shore holding a four-band radio in my right hand. Which, however, ached and pulsed and beat, and made me feel like it was melting into the organic circuits of that living unit.

I woke up in a sweat, the gong-like roar of the rabid sea still echoing in my ears. The hand was ok, so I shaved, I took a shower and after a quick breakfast I directed myself toward the small repair shop downtown.

The man who greeted me at the entrance was a second-hand creampuff old grandpa. Yet, if he was really able to repair the battered boxes that I had seen at Sal’s, he was undoubtedly a genius!

Being myself unable to replace a light bulb, I have always kept in great esteem those people — specialists, bricoleurs and, case in point, tinkerers — who know how to revive old mechanical and electr(on)ic(al) devices. So, when the man went to the workroom, I started fantasizing about my future occupation as a part-time student and apprentice in a shop like the one I had just stepped in.

Then, all of a sudden, my head began to spin and my right hand to ache! At first I thought it was just my impression, but soon I realized not only that my hand was aching, it also pulsated intermittently in unison with my temples, as if both were responding to some outside signal. It took a few seconds before the pain became unbearable and I fainted.

When I recovered my senses, the pain had ceased. The tinkerer blamed the accident on the heat inside the shop, and offered his help. With grandfatherly affection, he gave me a glass of sugary water as a remedy for low pressure. He also offered to sent for a taxi, but I declined, suggesting that a walk would do me good, and so it was. That night, however, I fell pray of a nightmare.

In my delirium, the tinkerer made common cause with a gang of B-movie green evil aliens, and his repair work activity was a disguise for a devilish scheme aimed at the physical and psychological destruction of the heartlings. The dexterity with music boxes displayed by the little old man was the product of non-human technology. My over-sensitive hand, following the accident at the Panny site, did nothing but react to some sort of magnetic field surrounding the shop. Somehow, I was part of a scheme whose rationale was beyond my understanding.

The oneiric explanation for the ridiculous low prices and the insane miracles of the master repairer did not melt like snow in the sun when I opened up my eyes. Although head and hand were doing great and I bursted with energy, I was genuinely worried. I rushed to Doc's lab where I expressed the doubts raised by my acquaintance with the odd repair shop and reinforced by the nightmare.

Needless to say, Doc didn’t subscribe to my point of view. Basically, he was of the Everybody loves a bargain! school of thought. On the contrary, I could see myself siding more and more with those who think that bargains can be dangerous. Especially if the bargain is being offered by someone like the tinkerer!

As soon as my mentor left for a lecture on giant sea mammals at the Panny Center, I devoted my attentions to the box that had just been fixed. To my astonishment, I found out that I was insanely attracted to the labyrinthine circuits of that amazing unit.

Drawing on my newly acquired skillfulness, I took all the sliders and knobs off, undid the screws, opened the back door and... lo! What I saw defied the laws of physics: strobe leds, hologram belts, black hole circuits... In the jetlag that followed my impromptu expertise, I was unwittingly exploring the twilight zone between technology and wizardry — all by myself and with no roadmap!

Even in a scentist’s lab, all that phenomenal bric-a-brac looked suspicious, to say the least. I decided to investigate further and, as soon as Doc was gone, I rushed to the tinkerer’s shop. As in a cheap dime novel, the door was open and the site desert. When I stepped in, my head and hand began to pulse in unison. Yet this time I was a living dynamo. Moreover, for some mysterious reason I knew! I knew how to do the repair work, and it seemed to me that I had also acquired the magic tinkering — toying, twiddling, fiddling, diddling, call it as you like it — touch!

Anxious to try my brand new gift, I directed myself toward the jumbo white Fisher unit that was the unquestionable king of the room. I must have been in a trance, because only when I was over the unit I realized that somebody had been shouting at me:

“Don’t do it! You are not ready!”

Too late! I had already opened the box in search for its malfunctioning, when a sensational short circuit ignited between the machine and a concealed control panel to which it was connected. In the blink of an eye, the place was on fire.

Ignoring the danger, the tinkerer braved the holocaust and hastened to save his treasures. In vane I tried to keep him safe: like an obstinate boy playing the captain in a white uniform, he stood on the burning deck of his repair shop stammering elocution while the poor vessel went down in flames.

Sensing that it would have been difficult to explain my presence to the firemen, I got back to Doc’s through sideways and dark alleys. Not only I made it in time for his comeback, I was even able to do a complete check-up of his box. Believe it or not, I could find no trace of the tinkerer’s intervention! Whatever had been there before my visit to the repair shop, it had disappeared. What remained, against all odds, was my brand new know-how. I had learned the hardest way, but I was not to forget so easily.

Upon his return, Doc was frantic. While leaving the Panny center, he said, he saw something that I had anticipated in my nightmarish previous night: an alien spaceship flying over the city before going out of sight in nanoseconds.

When I urged him to describe it, however, he pulled back and said he might have been wrong after all. “You know Peter, all those glasses of whiskey after discussion time...” he said. He had already a reputation of the absentminded and certainly he didn’t want to live up to it!

I smiled, yet I was not convinced. How could have he seen something that myself, who was on the spot, had totally overlooked? Wasn’t his story a bit far-fetched, even for a tipsy lecturer? Did he know my dream? Why, while speaking, he kept smiling at me like the night of our first meeting?

Neither TV nor newspapers mentioned the fire downtown. Nobody, not even at Sal’s, deemed to have ever heard of the Tinkerer Repair Shop. The character had vanished into thin air with my headache and sore hand, among other things.

But enough with flashforwarding! When Doc was finished with his story, I couldn’t help but thinking that had he put up a wonderful charade. Before his arrival, I had found in a drawer of his bureau a list of names from “G” to zx3red44, all filed under the voice “2go”.

What was the meaning of all that? Had Sal something to do with Doc? Who were the seamen? What about the Panny Institute? Why the spider and the web? Whatever the case, I knew that, in a way or another, the names on doc's list had to do with the tinkerer's identity.

The tinkerer! The master repairman who had endowed me with unique healing powers and an endless passion for portable audio. The wizard who had disappeared when the sullen read flames beat against the steep sides of his shop, leaving behind him a rubber mask, an impenetrable mystery and, what’s more, an unfathomable addiction.

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© Samuel Warren (a.k.a. Samwar) 2012. With a little help from Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and a number of XIX and XX century novelists, poets, film directors & songwriters.

Brilliant Homage to the forum we all love !

Sal you are a unique and awesome individual with a great wit and intelligence! If you haven't put your email address in the list please pm it me before the site closes as I would really hate to lose touch with you mate