This is a copy of the text posted to alt.hypertext and two other groups by Jack Graham in 1994. The project went missing soon thereafter
with a reputed fourteen contributions, and was last mentioned in October of the same year. It may have continued quietly for a while but the best available evidence suggests that it didn't last long.
From: Jack Graham (jacker@nwu.edu)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: The Walking Man Project
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext, misc.writing, comp.infosystems.www.misc
Date: 1994-07-06 20:21:27 PST
Its first address was http://daneel.acns.nwu.edu:8082/poeticus/walk/walkhome.html, later changed to
http://crow.acns.nwu.edu:8082/. The last known address appears to be the equally defunct
http://www.pyro.net/~jack/bigtime/calliope/walk/. Apart from Graham, only one other contributor is known, and Graham's introductory story is the only one that I could find on-line. I contacted the other contributor and he was unable to find a copy of his own piece, so we should consider Graham's to be the only surviving part. It exists, to the best of my knowledge, only in one Usenet post and one mirrored copy on the web.
I did manage to locate Jack Graham in order to obtain information and ask for permission. It took me so long to update this writeup afterwards that my exchange with him seems to have been lost in the mists of time but I do not think that he objected (I'm on shaky copyright ground with "IIRC," I know--Jack, if you recall saying otherwise, drop me a note). I'm posting the original Walking Man here for historical reasons as it relates to both the history of the WWW and the E2 project which took on its name. I've deleted the submission guidelines (they're pretty close to The Custodian's) and have left the text that was the beginning of Walking Man, mark I, as I found it in Google groups. I'm not sure it's appropriate to reformat or hardlink it so I'm leaving it in all its raw, unedited, 7-bit glory.
WALKING MAN 1
Jack Graham, 1994
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The man was walking on white gravel in a sunlit suburban alley. It had
just rained, and the sun glinted golden off the dirty puddles in the pitted
ground. Green weeds grew on both sides, and freshly painted garages grew
even higher beyond the weeds. A little brown dog barked at him from behind
a fence between two garages. The air hummed with soft suburban sounds --
the buzzing of bees and televisions, the whir of cicadas and lawnmowers.
He looked into the backyards he passed. In one yard, two children played
a game with a hula hoop. In the next, a woman sunbathed on a lawn chair.
In a third, an old man in bermudas and brown socks with garters trimmed his
hedges into perfect cubes.
A garage was open to the alley, and music blared from inside. Three
young men warmed up on guitars and drums inside; a fourth smoked something.
A heavy, rich, musky aroma of burning reached the Man's nose. The young
men smiled.
The man walked further along the alley, following its course deeper into
the City. He followed the same straight path, never diverging. The gravel
grew grayer, the yards and garages less well-kept. The weeds looked sickly
and had burrs. Needles glinted golden in the pitted ground. "SILICON,"
read the brightly painted tag on one of the garage doors.
The sky here was ugly and red. He passed another open garage door, and
the same four young men looked up from their playing to smile at him.
"Garters, man... perfect cubes," said the one with the joint, "Later on,
silicon..." But the man had already walked past him.
The man went a little farther and stopped. He turned briefly into a path
leading to a yard, disappearing from view. Then he stepped back into the
alley and began walking back in the direction from which he had come. The
garage door was closed when he passed it, and no sound came from within.
He continued to walk, but passed nothing familiar. Seemingly not
bothered by this, the man kept walking.
"You can never step into the same alley twice," and old derelict told
him, but the man never stopped to smell the vodka on the old derelict's
breath.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.