The Tin-Can Internet

John had always been a collector. When he was a five-year-old, growing up on his family’s farm, he collected fuzzy caterpillars. He would rescue them from sure death on the roadways and put them gently into the cuffs of his trousers. When he eventually wandered into the border of caragana trees surrounding the farmyard, he would release them into what he imagined to be safer refuge. More often than not, however, he would forget about them and his mother would find their crispy little bodies curled up in the cuffs on wash day. This gathering-nature of his, was the beginning of, what some might call an illness – a malady from which there could be no escape and from which could only come disastrous ends. From caterpillars, John moved on to baseball cards and animal cards and plastic “car” and “airplane” wheels / discs sold in packages of Jello and potato chips. Later he built and collected plastic model cars and motorcycles. As he grew older and travelled around the world, he gathered paper money and stamps from each of the countries he visited along the way. By the time he was 25 years old, he had also put together a display of sports hats and jerseys worth thousands of dollars. In his late twenties, he became a teacher and realized how necessary it was to save various household, and, everyday items to enhance the various activities he conducted in his classroom. He collected bottles and boxes with lids to store everything from paper clips to buttons to down-to-the-last-nub erasers.

Schools were famous for ordering photocopier paper in nifty strong cardboard boxes with easily removable lids. He collected as many of those as he could get his hands on and stored in them, written lesson plans and paper exams. He worked at a Science Museum for a few years to take a break from teaching and since his main job there, was to demonstrate science experiments to the public and to various school groups, he soon learned the value of collecting empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls, string, aluminum foil, pill bottles and tin cans. When he went back into the teaching business, he took his collections with him and whenever and wherever he relocated, the collections went along in tow.

Eventually, he moved to a large city in central China, to teach in a private school. Practicality overrode necessity and his desire to maintain and relocate the collection, so he left it all behind. Deep depression set in and remained with him until he found himself in his new surroundings. When he reached his new school in China, however, he found that every nook and cranny of every street and back alley, contained more everyday treasures than he had ever imagined possible. Within one or two weeks, his collection of boxes, bottles, plastic containers, wire, medicine bottles, toilet paper rolls and tin cans grew to gargantuan proportions, far beyond his wildest dreams. He had more tin cans and nylon string and metal washers and sheer-bolt-keeper pins than most hardware stores. He stacked them in the closets and cupboards of his tiny apartment and eventually the collection made its way out of these storage hot-spots and spread to his very living space. First, the cans advanced to line the inner walls of his quarters and eventually occupied floor-to-ceiling space throughout the entire abode. After six months of living in the apartment, he was forced out of his humble dwelling and into a storage room at the back of his classroom at school, where not surprisingly, his collecting habits and the debris manifested by those habits, followed him.

He was an addict, suffering the consequences of his powerlessness. He felt he had reached the bottom and was in desperate need of counselling. Day and night, he searched the internet for possible help. Just at the point in time when he reckoned he was finished and probably would be written off as a lost cause and left to become a crispy remnant of his former self, curled up in the pant-cuffs of time on some washday morning, he came across an article on some obscure web-site. The article was written entirely in Chinese, so he was not able to get many of the finer details. But, there were some accompanying illustrations which allowed him to capture the general essence of the idea. The article showed the concepts and outcomes of fabricating a “Tin-Can Telephone”. All he needed would be some nylon string, a few metal washers, a sheer pin or two and two tin cans. By chance he happened to have an apartment and classroom with a serendipitous abundance of just such items. What a stroke of luck!

John went to work, putting together communications circuits and high-tension lines of nylon cord, throughout the school building itself as well as in and about the campus surrounding the school. In the beginning, the inaugural lines of the network were a novelty and students would rush to John’s classroom to be the first callers of the day. Student i-phones and wrist-watch phones and other high-tech communication devices were quickly forgotten as the 18-year-old grade-12 students clamored to send and receive messages through the tin-cans bound to the end of each length of colored line. Students in John’s math classes would signal across the airshaft to students in classrooms in the adjacent building to ‘pick up’, and carry on some sort of conversation about periodic functions or wai mai or what have you. Even Jackie Chan visited the school and made a movie using the network of tin can phones.

Popularity burgeoned and the number of connections grew until there was a noticeable drain on John’s tin can supply. He spent his entire time-away-from-the-classroom searching the neighborhoods and garbage dumps of the city, in hopes of finding more metal cans, string and the like. He was exhausted from his after-hours efforts and could barely stay awake when it came time to teach. It became excruciatingly painful work to keep up with the communications demands of students and teachers alike on the campus.

Finally, when the opportunity presented itself, the ideas and networks associated with the tin can phones were off-loaded, for a great profit, by John to the school company itself. The new owners took the technology to new and higher levels. Before long, the schoolyard sky was criss-crossed with a web of blue and pink and red and green twine, connecting every possible building, room and corner of the campus. There was a direct blue line originating in John’s classroom and terminating in the principal’s office. Another hot-(pink)-line connected the supply room to the men’s washroom on the fourth floor. There was nowhere on the campus that one couldn’t go, where they were not able to talk directly to any other person in any other part of the campus.

And then it happened. Surprisingly perhaps, at first. But later, it made perfect sense. Birds of every color, size and description began a mini-migration from all parts of the city, to perch on the infrastructure of this newfound network of second-hand rope and string. At first, the birds were small and bright and song-like and magical. They brought new life and color to the campus and visitors from all over the country, came to witness the wonder of their voices and avian rituals. Over time, however, their general size and demeanor grew toward downright ugliness. Buzzards replaced the bright orange orioles, and bluebirds were usurped by loud and cackling gull-like creatures. With the exponential daily increase in numbers, their biological need to defecate became blatantly evident and more than simply noticeable to everyone on the campus. Mounds of calciferous waste started to build and grow and spread and overtake all walkways, lawns, rooftops, statues, monuments, gardens and sports fields on the campus. Umbrellas were handed out as students, parents and other visitors entered the main and north gates. Once used as parasols to protect the fair skin of those from Asian descent, the umbrellas were now used to guard against the more-than-likely dumping of feces from crows and seagulls and birds of prey onto unsuspecting campus folk. Custodians and groundskeepers were employed around the clock, just to shovel pathways through the stinking grey-white piles of fecal matter. These piles grew as fast as they were removed. New shit simply replaced the old shit and, at nearly the speed of “flight”. It wasn’t long before some of the smaller students and even some of the shorter staff members went missing – presumably lost forever – in the valleys and canyons of waste. Experts were called in to look into possibilities for rectifying the problem that these birds were creating.

At the same time, the need for continued communications throughout the campus grew, and more tin can phone lines were installed. With the added installations came more shit and more shit lead to more problems and more problems lead to greater costs and loss of campus personnel. The cycle continued and more committees were struck and more inquiries were made and more money was spent. But, the fists, of those wanting everything that communication networks had to offer, were gripped tightly on the existing ideals and beliefs of the tin-can internet and thus could not be withdrawn from the trap. And the cycle continued. Larger equipment was deployed for removal of the manure. More workers were hired to chase away the birds. More money was spent. More lives were lost. The concerns grew. However, the concerns did not stop the growth of the technology that was causing the concern in the first place.

Eventually, the campus became so overridden with bird shit, that even the birds could not stand it so . . . they left! Almost as quickly as they had arrived – they were no more. When the birds left, the shit quit piling up so, the workers were able to, over time, get ahead of the problem and clean up the mess and return the malaised campus back to its original and beautiful state. Students came back. Some of the teachers were found and reinstated – having not missed a beat and still able to hold an audience in near-comatose suspense. The nylon string had deteriorated from years of being exposed to the toxicity of bird poop. The tin cans rusted away to almost nothing and, like the string, were disposed of, along with all the bird poop. The campus pretty much returned to the majesty of its former self.

Things returned to a steady state and all was good. Then, in the next September when the new school year started, a bright young teacher from Canada landed on campus to begin his career in this foreign school. On entering the front gates of the campus, he looked out upon the sprawling green campus with grand anticipation and amazement at its beauty. As he stepped forward, he looked down and spied a fuzzy caterpillar inching its way across the hot concrete walkway.

Ending #1

Fearful that this immature little arthropod may meet an untimely death at the careless whim of some leather sole, he reached down, scooped it up in his outstretched fingers, carried it to a nearby flower garden and tossed it lightly into a family of lilies. He made his way toward the school, and, in a Buddhist sort of way, smiled at his own benevolence.

Ending #2

Fearful that this immature little arthropod may, in fact, be a member of some less-than-desirable and parasitic species of bug, ready to reek havoc on the beautiful gardens decorating his new campus, he reached down, scooped it up in his outstretched fingers, carried it to a nearby trash container, squished its bristlely little body between his thumb and forefinger, until a green mass squirted out into the summer heat and, then tossed it lightly into the garbage within. He made his way toward the school, and, in a mercenary sort of way, smiled at his own vigilance.

Ending #3

Fearful that this immature little arthropod may meet an untimely death at the careless whim of some leather sole, he reached down, scooped it up in his outstretched fingers, carried it to a nearby flower garden, sat on the low brick wall and gently inserted the animal into the cuff of his trousers. He made his way toward the school, and in an opportunistic sort of way, smiled at his luck, and the thought of broadening the horizons of his chances to, once again, collect.