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[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

Date:  March 19, 2003 (?)
Status:  Private [Aziraphale and Crowley] (complete)
Setting:  Aziraphale's room
Summary:  It's finally time for the day of reckoning... Aziraphale will find out what an "Internet" is, whether he likes it or not (and he doesn't).

Aziraphale promised himself he would never complain again.  It only led to uncomfortable situations, like this one right now.  

He had made the mistake of wistfully sighing and admitting he missed his books.  Apparently both doors to the bathroom had been open, because Crowley had heard him.  The demon had marched over, uncovered the dreaded laptop, and plugged it in, glaring at him as if daring him to defy this.  Aziraphale only stared at the thrice-cursed machine as it whirred to life.  

"I, er, I was just making a comment," the angel said as he watched it light up and the screen start flashing at him dramatically, "and so you really don't...  In fact, I would prefer if we don't..."

"Angel, I could feel you moping all the way in the other room.  Here.  The internet has all kinds of books you can read online.  I'll even teach you how to do it, if you promise to stop whining."
 

Comments

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

Crowley explained about the keyboard and the touchpad, and the cursor all over again, just in case. Aziraphale watched him, made eye-contact, ad nodded. Of course, the angel would have done so no matter what, as that was his habit when he didn’t understand a technology the demon was explaining. Crowley knew they would REALLY be in trouble if Aziraphale said ‘Ah,’ which really meant, ‘I have no idea what you just said but I would rather End than point that out.’

“Okay, so look. The Internet is basically a communications system used around the globe. Part of what it does is let computers connect. The Web is another service the Internet provides. The Web is basically a giant collection of information, documents, and resources that you can access by going to links where each thing is located.” Crowley glanced at his counterpart.

“Ah,” said the angel.

Resisting the urge to, as one would say in computer language, ‘facepalm,’ the demon debated briefly on going to one of those e-how sites.

"Hang on while I look at something really quick," Crowley said, taking the laptop.

Normally Anthony J. Crowley would never bother with those sites--he'd come up with the idea in order to circulate useless information and bad advice to a multitude of people. He was above the actual use of them, as was the type of human he tried to be. Self Help might as well be a CRY for help, in his opinion. That said, Crowley still remembered the Phonograph Incident. That wasn't even counting the Flying Machine Fuckup or the Type Writer Tragedy or even the Ticker Tape Torture.

“How to Teach Your Child About Internet Safety.” Promising. Maybe it would help, maybe not. At this point, nothing would HURT.

edited -_-;;

[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

Crowley deftly manipulated the contraption and Aziraphale moved to look over his shoulder. He clicked and pushed buttons and moved so quickly the angel had no idea what he was trying to do, and then a site came up that read at the very top, in large black letters, "How to Teach Your Child About Internet Safety." Aziraphale balked. "I am not your child!"

Crowley was still scowling as he scrolled through the page, and he ignored the angel's perfectly legitimate protest. The frown deepened as he admitted, "Don't trust people you meet online, and try to avoid looking at porn. That's all this crap site says. Hang on, I'll go get my own and look there so you can poke around this thing." Crowley left the computer in front of Aziraphale and briskly walked back to his room.

Aziraphale looked at it before tentatively reaching out a finger to what (he thought) Crowley had called the "keypad" earlier. As he moved his finger, the little arrow on the screen moved as well. That wasn't so bad. On the screen there was a primitive little icon of a man, and Aziraphale maneuvered the arrow to the icon and pressed buttons until the screen changed again, and a long, thin black box popped up asking him for a "Screen Name."

He wanted to ask Crowley, who had come back in and was sitting on the bed now with his own machine, what a "Screen Name" was, but decided that the frown on the demon's face meant annoyance, and it was best to not pester him too much. So Aziraphale figured that a "Screen Name" was your name appearing on a screen, so he typed in his human name, Ezra Fell. He knew what a password was already, thank goodness, and chose an acceptable one for the time being that he wouldn't forget. He clicked "Sign In", as the button to do so was large and blue and clearly designed to be clicked, and the box changed.

Aziraphale felt a rush of pleasant pride. He'd done something! correctly(?)

The computer made a pinging noise and Aziraphale recoiled from it in shock. In concert with the noise, a little box popped up on the screen. There was an odd combination of letters and numbers that Aziraphale didn't quite understand, followed by a colon and "a/s/l?"

American Sign Language? Why on Earth was the computer asking him if he knew sign language? Of course he did, but didn't it communicate using the little lettered buttons? Could it even see him if he did use sign language? Why did it even need sign language, when being deaf had nothing to do with whether or not one could use these things (or so Aziraphale assumed)? Hmmm... maybe it wasn't asking that, maybe, per "the Internets", a/s/l meant something else? There was no avoiding asking...

"Crowley, what does A slash S slash L mean?"

Re: edited -_-;;

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

“You're online ten seconds and you're already getting propositioned?" Crowley asked, mixed feelings evident. For one thing, he felt immediately impressed with the den of vice and iniquity he had created online,* but he also wanted to 'facepalm' or 'sweatdrop' repeatedly**. Still another part of him felt like taking his laptop and leaving, as it was obvious this was going to be rather like excruciating torture.

He wasn't really sure what made him sigh and sit down, explaining in what was, for him, a patient tone of voice what exactly ASL meant as well as the various perils of the internet*** yet also the way it let people find out information (in his opinion usually useless information, but he wasn't going to say that out loud) quickly. Why was he doing this? To make sure the angel didn't whine at him? It was a lot of effort to go through for that. Strange. But for another reason he wasn't sure about, he stopped thinking about the reasons because any of them (he was being nice, he was concerned by his Counterpart’s odd mood lately, he felt bad that the angel felt bad, etc) weren't ones he wanted to consider.

"Whatever you do, do not click on the ads at the top of the web page."


*Chat rooms in particular.
**Part of him was impressed. Not bad, for a poofy angel.
*** Crowley made sure to lay it on thick, turning every hopeless and sad lonely 50 something year old man out to be a villain that made Hastur look like a cakewalk.

[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

Oh, thought Aziraphale as Crowley gave a very lengthy explanation of how dangerous the Internets apparently were, so it means that there is a person on the other side of this computer who is asking me for my age, my sexual identity, and my current location. I don't know what Crowley's so worried about - those are perfectly innocent questions. My word, but he does talk a lot.

As Crowley continued to ramble on and on, clearly bragging about how he had turned the Internets into a force of evil and implying that Aziraphale should be terrified of being stalked or killed through them (as if the Internets could hurt him!), Aziraphale returned his look to the screen and the box with the questions. He pondered - how old did he look in this corporation? Mid-30s, he guessed. He wasn't the best judge of this sort of thing.

With the demon distracted, Aziraphale looked at the little letters and typed back "36/male/Lower Tadfield" - although it took him awhile to type it all out, Crowley was triumphantly crooning about how anyone attempting to seduce Aziraphale of all people was obviously evil, and as such didn't even notice that the angel was doing anything - and, since the little box was big and blue, Aziraphale maneuvered the arrow to be on the word "send" and hit the key thingy, the way Crowley had taught him to. There was a pleasant pinging noise indicating his success. The angel felt a rush of pride.

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

Crowley stopped mid-tirade when he heard the imming noise.

"Angel, did you hear a word I said?" the demon snapped as he snatched the laptop. He looked over the screen and resisted yet ANOTHER urge to 'facepalm' or, at this point, 'headdesk,' or, in fact, to 'facepalm' or 'headdesk' Aziraphale's face.

"You do NOT give out personal information and I am deleting this account as you also do not use your name for a screen name even if it is just a cover. Bless it Aziraphale, if you don't start listening to me I'm going to set up parental controls!" With that, Crowley signed him off.

Perhaps the most ironic thing was that after probing, he discovered that the person that immed the angel, tehsexx0rsman6969, was, in fact, a sexual offender. Not that surprising, considering the name. Aziraphale really wasn't cut out for this sort of a thing. After a bit of concentrating, the demon made sure that tehsexx0rsman6969, actually named Albert, was too scared out of his mind by the millions of spiders crawling out of his keyboard to remember Ezra Fell and his whereabouts.

[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

Aziraphale pouted after Crowley took away his laptop. "But I made it do something!" he protested. "I think I communicated with someone! How exciting what the humans have come up with! And anyway you're not my parent so you oughtn't use controls for a parent."

He held out his hands towards the demon. "If you give me back my computer, I'll start paying attention to your bragging. Of course, you know, it's my duty to thwart you since you've mentioned how horrible the Internets are, and I can only do that if I understand them, so you need to keep teaching me. In the interests of the Arrangment."

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

"You 'communicated' with a registered sexual offender who MAPPA* is most likely going to move to a supervised environment," the demon retorted. "Obviously you need some sort of supervision yourself."

Crowley kept a hold of the laptop, debating on whether or not to put up the firewalls and parental controls right then or wait until the angel wasn't around. "I wasn't bragging," he finally said, sitting the laptop down and glowering at it as if to warn it against daring to allow any further such people to contact the angel.

The laptop's screen turned a little brighter as if to try to make amends. Crowley crossed his arms, not impressed with it, and then turned his unhappy-and-annoyed-demon look on Aziraphale. "I was warning. And I'm only going to keep teaching you if you actually start LISTENING."

*MAPPA is the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements system in the UK. Basically it 'manages' people who have committed sexual and/or violent offenses who are living in or who are returning into the UK. **

**Crowley is partially responsible for the turn of the century surge in the use of acronyms. If you want proof, think of COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act--yes it was in the United States, but that just goes to show how far-reaching his talents are. Two of his current favorites are the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and the popular in both the UK and US acronym for a Senior Housing Assistance Group (SHAG). Even if most of them are NBG (no bloody good). And here the angel acted as though Crowley had no appreciation of language.

[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

"Oh, really?" Aziraphale asked in surprise. "A sex offender? They are allowed on the Internets too? Why, imagine the good I could do if I could speak with them! I could help them thwart their own wiles without having to leave! What a lovely idea! Oo, these Internets seem more useful the more I learn about them!" He was smiling - he could add counseling the sinners to his resumé with no worry of them vandalising his books or Crowley counseling them in a completely different way.

"Oh, of course. I'm all ears, dear boy. Amaze me with your wisdom."

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

"You're going to minister to the online sex-preds?" Crowley looked at Aziraphale, then back at the laptop. This wasn't a good idea. None of this was a good idea. Trying to explain computers and the Internet to Aziraphale was like trying to teach a lust demon abstinence. Theoretically possible but who wants to put forth the gargantuan effort?

"Okay, you already saw the keyboard, which is where you type, that's the touch pad, and that's the screen. Basics covered. Let's go get a drink."

[stillnotfallen.livejournal.com]

"Well it seems to be a good idea. Don't you think so? This way I don't have to risk them vandalising things. Or possibly deciding that I look like a young female." Aziraphale looked up at Crowley hopefully; he seemed so... angry all of a sudden. Maybe this was a good time to stop.

"A drink? It's midday. Isn't it a bit early for one of those already? Why don't we get lunch instead?"

[pointisdolphins.livejournal.com]

"Lunch is fine," Crowley replied. Anything to get Aziraphale away from the computer.

Later that night, the entire World Wide Web would be surprised to find itself down.