It had been just another day down at the forum, the excitement of the morning's posts had long since faded and another long lazy afternoon seemed to stretch ahead forever....Most of the regulars had popped in and some were still lounging around wondering whether to hang on in case another Newbie in distress showed up with an interesting bug, or perhaps it was time to call it a day, log off and head for home. Moonchild was in his usual seat with a clear view of the door so he could keep a wary eye on the comings and goings. A brand new copy of "MS VS 2012 FOR DUMMIES" lay open in front of him but his eyes were shut - he was, far, far away, engrossed in a recurring daydream - something to do with punishing the bastards who were shutting down his beloved CoH/V - but very, very slowly and painfully. His eyelids flickered, sleepy hands gripped the book and suddenly squeezed - very hard! He gurgled triumphantly, the hands relaxed and his breathing eased - another NCsoft executive was down!
Over by the bar the Beta-tester crowd were finishing off another tough trialling session and steviem1 and Rohugh were passing round tiny ice cold glasses of Tio Pepe and nice little dishes of Tapas. They were reminiscing with megaman, satrow and the other
beta-testing dudes (someone kill that brown nosing alarm! Ta!) about the "good ole days" when avatars had been allowed. The fading pictures of these old and much loved friends looked down forlornly from the wall behind the bar - but sadly they were just gathering dust for now....Another small group including jaycelou, ninaholic, vayth and (insert your username here if you're feeling left out - I can't mention all 1000+ members can I?) were playing darts although it was difficult to make out exactly what the pock-marked target picture pinned to the dartboard might once have been - the big money would have to be on a Windows 8 METRO logo AGAIN or perhaps, just for a change of course, Mozilla's latest rapid release schedule for Firefox....
Night Wing was animatedly explaining how absolutely wonderful the new data manager in SeaMonkey was and what a boon it would be when it finally got included in Pale Moon, at least that's what dark_moon thought he was hearing, so he nodded politely but really couldn't hear much, if anything, above the Austrian heavy "pagan" metal band Varg that was battering both his eardrums from tiny in-ear headphones....
stravinsky stared at the ceiling and nursed a glass of amber nectar, was it a dram of AMRUT (First rate Indian single malt whisky and highly recommended! All AMRUTs are good but Fusion is fabulous), or might it have been the Pale Moon beer Pnume found? He was idly pondering a new post - another mindbendingly technical tour de force that would definitely, absolutely, completely and finally floor Moonchild once and for all. Or should he play safe and go with another humorous Sci-fi one? Perhaps a less meat-centric one this time? So hard to choose and he didn't want to risk burning out his internet connection again after the nightmare he'd had with those 80,000 Bugzilla downloads....
lobocursor looked fast asleep, but out of the corner of one eye he was watching a couple of trolls who were making rude gestures behind Moonchild's back. It looked like they might be about to make a scene. He lovingly fondled the handle of a big hammer hidden under his poncho....
Time slowed to a crawl, the sound of gentle snoring could now be distinctly heard as the hum of convivial conversation died away....and then some idiot perked up and said; "How about a Quiz - Come on - It might be fun - Can anyone can guess which forum post has had the most views?....
The forum stirred, members were not used being so rudely awoken during their siesta, a voice mumbled....
"That's a pretty stupid idea - it's bound be one of Moonchild's Dumbo!
"Wrong!"
"OK - then it must be one BY Moonchild - like, er, FAQs, or an Announcement?"
"Wrong!"
"What about that tutorial on Multiple Versions or the one about Optimizing your Squid files or whatever?"
"Fraid Not!"
"So it must be some really stonkingly popular thread with megaloads of replies - Right?
"Wrong! - It got precisely 3 replies and dropped off the radar faster than an Austrian skydiving fruitcake in a white spacesuit with a death wish complex - a genuine, all time, lead balloon of a topic!"
"So who posted this godforsaken masterpiece then?"
"That would spoil the game - but even the author admits it wasn't exactly his finest hour!
"So how many views has this AWFUL SOB of a topic had then?" somebody snorted!
"Passed 20,000 and counting!"
A hush descended on the forum, you could hear a
"Wow!" "Blimey" "Strewth" "You mean it's gone bloody viral" they all cried at once!
"Pretty much, er, well, at least sort of, yup s'pose so - though God only knows why!"
"Come on then! - Put us out of our misery! - Which damn topic is it?" they chorused,
"Nope! As I said before, that spoils the game - why don't you look for yourselves?"
So grudgingly they all logged back on, muttering that a certain very annoying Quiz master wasn't "playing the game" at all and at least deserved to be duffed up later!
-oooO THE END Oooo-
Any similarities between real Pale Moon forum members and the entirely fictional characters above are of course wholly coincidental. No avatars were harmed during the creation of this story. If anything else is wrong, bad spelling, bad punctuation, bad ideas, taking your God's name in vain, blatant national stereotyping, mild swearing, promotion of drink, time wasting, etc, in fact whatever it is, I deny it! Apologies to all fans of BBC Radio's longest running soap "The Archers - an everyday story of Country Folk" for the completely accidental similarity in the title wording.
I hope you enjoyed the story - but the second half, the Quiz bit, is actually, oddly, weirdly, true - the first section is just for fun - no offence is intended whatsoever!
When you find the rogue topic - can anyone explain what's going on? 
PS. Please do not duff me up! I don't know why this has happened either! I certainly didn't sit there bashing keys for months and why would I pick a post I'd frankly rather forget about - one which I thought had been buried until yesterday!
Either the forum's built-in "view counter" has lost the plot, or perhaps there's a love sick bot with OCD on the loose,
(For information OCD = Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If you haven't got a few OCD traits you probably aren't quite human?) EDITS: A few typos and the odd extra word somehow slipped past the sub-editor!
