Error 808, eBay Troll

With a pause and a cough Error 808 continued on in his conversation with Trollaxor.

“My mom suggested I fly home but there will probably be nothing to do. I'd be better spending the money on Transformers,” he stated in monotone.

Trollaxor's muttering could be heard on the speaker of Error 808's custom-built cellphone, which had been a gift from Trollaxor long ago. Suddenly Error 808 interrupted the voice on the other end.

“Hey I have to get going. I'll talk to you later,” Error 808 muttered, and then quickly ended the transmission, looking at the phone's LCD screen with a gleam in his eye: Call Duration: 00:59, it blinked at him.

He had just one second to spare before he would have been charged for another minute of phone use. But practice thru the years had made Error 808 too sharp to fall prey to the phone company's scams. He smiled as he replaced the phone in the breast pocket of his corduroy shirt.

Swinging in his chair to face his Bondi iMac's computer screen, Error 808 returned to doing what he did best: littering eBay with his false bids and fooling the innocent with empty promises and auctions.

Seeing a new auction posted in the Transformers section, Error 808 squealed with delight as he read its description and saw the snapshots: a full OB (Out of Box) collection of the Predacons, complete with 12 extra feet (usually a $600.00 value), starting at a measly $70! And no reserve to meet either!

Error 808 wasted no time in bidding on this delectable transforming rarity. Predaking would be his, he thought, and he could sell the 12 extra feet for their full value… covering expenditures and turning a profit.

Error 808 was a troll. Not a typical Slashdot troll, however. Not that there is just one kind of troll on Slashdot—but, to speak taxonomically—placing all of Slashdot's troll species into one or two or even three genera would be possible, while Error 808 would fall only into a common family, he and his kind sharing a separate subfamily from other trolls.

Such an eBay troll was he that he could auction things off before he owned them, such as when he auctioned business.com for $1,000,000.00 US just seconds after he actually owned it, or the time that he auctioned the rights to he and his wife's organs in the event that one or the other died. Error 808 was not married.

Yawning and stretching, Error 808 looked at his iMac's platinum menu bar's clock, and groaned. He'd stayed awake for too long again, and was late for getting to sleep. Removing his clothes and tossing them randomly about his apartment, he put his Bondi iMac to sleep, hoping it wouldn't crash before he returned to it next, and made his way to the kitchen, where he sought out sustenance.

Opening a cupboard and spotting a box of Life cereal, he immediately took the box and plunged his hand deep inside, fisting as much of the dry cereal into his hand, and subsequently into his mouth, as possible. Crumbs and flakes fell all over his bare chest and the floor around him; even the hair on his legs caught a few flecks of the healthy, milkless cereal.

Having filled his belly with granular goodness, Error 808 now made his way to his bedroom, rife with the odor of stale, unwashed, sweaty clothes (of which a giant heap laid in the middle of his floor) and fell back onto his bed. His PSX console lay paused just as he had left it last time, over an hour ago.

The console looked like a technological Frankenstein's monster: with the case torn off, the bare metal chassis of the PSX revealed the various mod chips, purposefully shorted wires, and different RAM expansion and ROM hack cards stuffed here and there.

With a look of sublime ecstasy on his face, Error 808 unpaused Final Fantasy VIII and rejoined the quest that he'd been playing almost non-stop for the last 72 hours. Feeling a bit cold, he pulled on a Transformers robe he'd had since the mid-80s with his free hand.

Finally comfortable and content, Error 808 didn't realize he was dozing off.

And so Error 808 fell asleep, not having paused his Final Fantasy VIII game, his characters jumping and looking around routinely for the rest of the night in silence, the pallid glow of his television casting a pale glare on his lifeless form.