The first node

What is in the mythical node number one?

We all know that node Number Zero is the welcome page (http://www.everything2.com/?node_id=0), but what is in the next one? Possibly to be called "the first node"?

Nothing.

Well, not that I can tell. Node number One (http://www.everything2.com/?node_id=1) contains nothing but a nice little error message:

Permission Denied

You don't have access to that node.

Tough beans.

How interesting is that? This looks like another job for The Everything Detective Agency!

Technically speaking, when lowly noders such as myself attempt to view Node Number One, what we are really seeing is node 104, the Permission Denied superdoc. This is the case with lion's share of the first several hundred nodes. The first user-viewable node (other than 0, of course) is 83, nate's Noisy Sunset. The next few are 84, 96, 98, 104, and everyone's favorite, The Default Node.

After a rather exhausting search, the following facts have come to light:

The first surviving write-up is (you guessed it) nate's Brian Eno, node 10156. All nodes of lower number are either administrative nodes (e.g. superdocs, system nodelets, etc.) or homenodes of E1 users. A short discussion of the former can be found in What's in Node Number One?. As for the latter, they're sprinkled from nate's at 220, through dem bones' at 282, all the way to the last user to join before the switch to E2:

Node ID 10155, user Snord, assimilated 12:01:21 UTC, November 12, 1999, contributed but a single write-up. A moment of silence, please.

The last surviving pre-E2 node here is probably number 165503, locoluis's Temuco, but Snord's is the last node with a surviving write-up from before E2's arrival.

Finally, we come to Everything 2's very first write-up! At node ID 165407, we have clampe's empty w/u in Westminster Dog Show. The node itself is 165406. There you have it, folks.

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Update 5/23/01: clampe's writeup has been (deservedly) nuked, thrusting knifegirl's in first time disoriented into the number one spot. 165409.
Update 3/17/04: first time disoriented has been nuked entirely, and optimisation is now empty. New last E1 writeup: locoluis's Marcelo Salas (165387). New first E2 writeup: Shanoyu's The Federalist Papers (165447).

The most mysterious node is actually node number negative one. (http://www.everything2.com/?node_id=-1) If you access this node, you temporarily escape the matrix and get a raw, plain, vanilla, black-on-white page, with no themes and the following message:

Software error:

Can't use string ("-1") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Everything/NodeBase.pm line 2080.

For help, please send mail to the webmaster (nate@oostendorp.net), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

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The existence of this secret garden, this escape from color and HTML 3+, this strange land where the sole meaning of "jukka" is onomatopoeia for the play of the running brook in the distance, this shady grove that provides a moment of solitude and zen stoicism for all your meditation needs, stands alone. All of the other negative numbers give the standard "Hm... that's strange. There's nothing there!"

There truly is no other node like it.

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Welcome to the real world Neo...

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If you stare into an abyss long enough it begins to stare back into you. --Friedrich Nietzsche

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(r) Fruan says you also cause the horizontal scrollbar of doom. Over doubling the width of the browser window is just not cool. I'm guessing, from this, that you have your monitor set to some ungodly resolution.

Fine. I'll go over nate's head. Please bear in mind that, in nate's original, the <tt> line is actually <pre>, and thus causes the aforementioned horizontal scrollbar of doom. (I had not noticed because Konqueror, my browser, has this bug in many of the nodes it renders, for reasons that are beyond me.)

(r) fuzzie says re What's in Node Number One?: There isn't another node like it because the node doesn't exist, surely, which is kinda cheating.

Yes, but no other node does not exist in the same way and, for that matter, no other node merely does not exist. The rest of the nodes are not non-existant and, moreover, they are common. Truly this node is unique.