His grandfather thumbed through the worn purple book, his empty eyes looking at nothing in particular. He read it hundreds of times through the decades, and held it only to meditate on its contents.
Logan sat at on the tattered sofa next to him, under the dusty window which looked out on the town. Thick, creased cables were beneath the cushion, flowing through holes roughly drilled in the window-frame to the antenna in their front yard. He played with the battered black laptop his grandfather gave him on his 14th birthday, only a year ago.
The screen displayed nothing but text -- He broke the graphics last week and was still trying to make the graphics drivers cooperate again. Grampa Rae refused to help on the basis of “learning the hard way.” Rae was content reciting cryptic phrases to Logan, imparting some old wisdom. “When I was your age,” he said as Logan rolled his eyes, “I didn’t have any help. No forums, no stackoverflow, nothing. It was all lost. My family wasn’t reconnected yet.”
Logan was used to this lecture, how kids his age were lucky to be connected again. Times like these made him wish grandpa would let him use the net before the age of 16.
“But this doesn’t make any sense! The graphics daemon doesn’t even read the config file! Why won’t it read it? It’s named xorg.conf, in the proper directory, right where the man page says it should be...” He whined. “Why does it hate me?”
“Computational processes are abstract beings.” He recited. “How could it hate you, let alone feel any emotion at all?”
Growing up in such a digital world, so engrossed in computers and their software made him view technology as anthropomorphic: It whined at you though errors, you had to say things just right to make them understand what you meant, and they were just plain stubborn. Like his little sister.

--- Something something ---

He studied the past extensively over his formative years. Since his grandfather would not connect any of his devices to the net, he treasured and pored over every file his friend Able could find and share. A wikipedia archive told of “The Depression,” an aptly-named portion of US History. The economy simply slowed, the unrich could not afford the consumerist pleasures they did before, and the slow plague of Depression crept over the country. The infrastructure crumbled slowly, the government lost control, the gas ran out, and it wasn’t long until the power went out and the web was disconnected. People like him were on their own in their towns and villages.
Logan was still happy. He and his parents were content with their life which was only improving. A centralized Internet turned into a decentralized net of nodes and transmitters. Reliable, fast networks allowed him to connect to anyone hooked up in a 50 mile radius! Madison, once the proud capital of their state of Wisconsin, whatever that meant. His world lay strictly in Baraboo and the surrounding area. He once took a car ride with his dad to The Dells to deliver a message for Mayor Jetti. That ruined city housed theme parks and water parks, now dilapidated and abandoned, but seeing such a city excited him and gave him a glimpse into the world’s past. It was nothing like the New York he saw in pictures and articles, but the sheer scale of the buildings and resorts made him feel like he was there.