REGRET TO NOTIFY PFC CLEMENT CARLSON WOUNDED IN ACTION 15 JANUARY 1971 STOP
 
Contempt is always concise. Homer never knew it before as well as he did after the brief telegram was read to him over the phone. But there was still work to do, networks to build and connect together, difficulties to iron out, inefficiencies to reduce. The simple was never so hard to think up, the complex never so easy to get out of your mouth, with nary a care about whether listeners understood.
 
Homer was never much of a crier. Quietly, he slunk back into the conference room and listened to Abhay Bhushan discuss the precise mechanics of FTP. It had the attribute of all products of genius: simplicity. All it required was a descriptor field, and it could send all files up to 16,777,215 bits. Who would need, or have space for, files bigger than that, anyway?
 
A basic set of tasks, ones which any self-respecting filesystem should be able to do, had been defined. Increasingly more elaborate path names swam across the blackboard, demonstrating both its simplicity and its extensibility. Safety nets were laid out below in the form of standard error codes. Files could even be written to, renamed, and deleted. Executable files could even be run, all without actually logging into the remote system!
 
It was enough to almost make him forget about the worry which was now racking his brain. Almost.
 
As soon as he heard applause and "Any questions?" he walked out. His memory told him the way he had come in. Not a soul accompanied him as he opened the door, walked down the corridor, went down in the elevator, walked across the lobby, pushed open the door into the cold. He felt in his back pocket and found the street map of Boston he had folded up inside. He would find a nice park to bawl his eyes out in the snow and nobody would notice his dereliction of duty.
 
No one, of course, except Steve Crocker.
 
"What's the matter with you, man? Why are you leaving early? You're the one who's supposed to be making a report. I know you have a lot of good questions. Why aren't you asking them?"
 
"I can't, Steve. I...can't." The sidewalk had been shoveled. Small mountains of snow were packed here and there on it, some laying on buildings, others standing by themselves. Like accusatory fingers the cold dug into his being. Weak! Homer heard the cold force his brain to scream. And he knew it was true. Homer sat down on the edge of the sidewalk.
 
"Why not?" Steve joined him.
 
"My brother. He's been hit."
 
"Oh, I'm so sorry," commiserated Steve.
 
"That's okay," said Homer, "not your fault."
 
"I really don't know what to say," admitted Steve, "obviously your whole family is going through a lot and I have no right to stop you from being sad. But we do have a job to do, and RFCs..."
 
"Isn't it funny how Abhay asked for comment before the FTP became a formal Request for Comment?"
 
Steve laughed. "'Formal'. I still remember the very third RFC there was. 'Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished.' When we had RFCs to announce other RFCs. When they were just glorified notes. Now they're more of a misnomer. They're categorized, classified, the whole nine yards. Once a document is a Request for Comment it doesn't admit of comment. It's expected to be stable, if not final."
 
"But that's inevitable. When we were small we needed everybody to get their ideas out. Now that we're bigger, the place for that is no longer the Network Working Group as a whole. It's the small clusters of 'network people' on campuses, working for corporations. The clusters have taken the place of the Network Working Group."
 
"Let's go for a walk around the block," proposed Steve. "Vint's doing your job, and mine. We gotta pitch in to buy him a treat when all this is done."
 
"Tell him I really appreciate it," Homer stood up and helped Steve up, "all I know about the injury, I've already told you. The telegram was curt."
 
"What did it say?"
 
"That they were sorry but Clem was wounded in action on the 15th."
 
"That's today, but yesterday their time."
 
"They wouldn't send a telegram like that before they dusted him off, would they?"
 
"I hope not."
 
"Sometimes I feel guilty. That I somehow sent Clem over, or some other poor schmuck, by applying for a deferment."
 
"This is defense work. If it's good enough for Selective Service it's good enough for me." They turned the first corner.
 
"I just don't understand, is all. All this uncertainty. I don't even know the extent of the wound."
 
"The military, I mean, the Federal Government in general, isn't known for openness."
 
"There's nothing we can do about it."
 
"There is," said Steve, "and we already have." Steve quickened. "Nobody votes on Requests for Comments. Nobody lobbies for them. There are no special interests, no defiant minorities on which to impose the majority will, no recalcitrant majorities to be coerced into respect for constitutions. They run on one word: consensus. Consensus is nothing but how people naturally agree on something. If people think an RFC is useful, that's what gets done. No laws, no regulations, no orders. Just protocols. That's why I want you up in the room right now. You might not be able to help Clem recover but you can damn well help make sure less people have to suffer like him because of opaque leaderships."
 
Steve began a light jog. Homer followed. "We're not trying to take over the world. We're trying to do a job."
 
"False," said Steve. He disappeared around the second corner but Homer caught up quickly. "This has been envisioned by others. 'Lick' Licklider, Bob Kahn, you name it. A computer network will have almost unimaginable ripple effects on society as a whole."
 
"Every inventor says that," Homer was nonplussed. They were running now.
 
"But we have our own mode of decision making. And this is our first test. Government by the consent of the governed--not just at one time, but always, revocable at any time. Can the genius of mankind be governed by that or will it have to be dominated by rulers, elected or self-proclaimed, forever? Can such a regime produce technological marvels?"
 
They turned the third corner.
 
"I don't see why this is political. RFCs are what they are because they serve a specific function. I wouldn't listen to an RFC if I wanted to know where to park or how fast to drive. It might be a government but it's a limited one."
 
"I don't mean politics. I mean governance. How to get a group of people doing something. That is a problem closer to all of us, and not just applicable to nation-states."
 
"I suppose you have a point. You think Vint takes good notes?"
 
"Hopefully, there's nothing you can do if he doesn't. Just like there's nothing you can do about--" Steve stopped in his tracks.
 
"What's the matter?"
 
"No, just--I'm tired out. Let's walk."
 
"Alright."
 
Homer's stomach felt empty--like something was sucking all the air out of it. Coughing did nothing to relieve either the feeling or the guilt that had burrowed deep into his mind. Something was telling him that should have been him. Why did it have to be sweet little Clem, who saw the world with a twinkle in his eye, who never mastered the freestyle stroke, who puked his guts out every time he drank orange juice?