Alternate Creation Myths

Although it is generally accepted that halflife2.net was created in the year 2003 AD (or CE for those of you for whom Political Correctness has Gone Mad), a number of alternative creation myths have persisted. These are they.

Anarcho-Raelist Explanation

Anarcho-Raelists believe that Half-Life 2.net was created in the year 1999, when "alien love gardeners" from beyond the stars who entered into Earth orbit in a spaceship resembling an Airbus 3000 on the evening of December 31st 1999 - the eve of the new millenium. Using complicated 'effector' machines, they gained access to mankind's world wide information network and were both impressed by the technology and dismayed by its use. In an attempt to create intelligent life, they provoked a server into spontaneously generating an internet forum based around the game Half-Life and watched as it began to populate. Their work done, the aliens left our solar system, vowing to return in twenty-five years to survey their work.

Anarcho-Raelists maintain that the original site was a true paradise, free and beautiful, a haven of intelligent discussion and love - but that when Half-Life 2 was announced it fell for unknown reasons to be replaced with halflife2.net. They claim that all evidence of any previous existence or membership has been deleted by the current moderation regime so as to cover up the site's true, secret history - though why moderation wants to do this they will not answer. They believe that the current condition of the site - where all authority and all order is based on coercion and thus despicable - is a direct result of the original, primal fall from grace, when Munro took over the site, and that only when the alien love gardeners return can true order - that is, voluntary order - be restored.

Flat-Net Theory

Adherents of this hypothesis maintain that Half-Life 2.net was naturally formed, and is flat, surrounded by an ice wall on all sides to stop the pixels flowing out.

The Series of Tubes

This theory was proposed by internetologists (???) after several documents were unearthed in a Grimsby basement. Though some claim the documents are a hoax, others see them as a record of halflife2.net's true history. Professor McAvoy of Sussex University elaborates:

"As the story goes, Half-Life 2.net was founded in 1903 by famous author HG Wells and Irish inventor Percy Ludgate, marking the end of a three-year campaign to establish a network of pneumatic tubes through which information could be conveyed in small glass cylinders from station to station. Ludgate called the system "The Grimsby Inter-Tubular Word Shuttle" (to Wells, who would later go on to help found Wikipedia - see The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia, 1938 - it was merely "the net" - referring to its tendency to trap or ensnare the unwary spirit, both figuratively with its engrossing nature and literally with its tangled pipes) and it soon became popular with the well-to-do ladies and gentlemen who frequented the "Inter-Parlours" as they were known, inspiring a poem by the famous Rudyard Kipling.

"Unfortunately, much of the money for the system coming from entrepreneurs in Japan, the advent of the Russo-Japanese war in the East precipitated the downfall of the Grimsby Internet, and it went underground, becoming the passtime of drunks, tramps and other denizens of the lower-classes. Soon enough, Wells' greater financial success, and the investment of other celebrities such as Henry James, Ezra Pound, and the Ghost of Oscar Wilde, got the system back on track - although the filthy taint of the proles remains to this day, despite frequent scrubbings. In 1912, Albert Einstein paid a visit to the Internetorium in order to work on a 'program' that drew from both the works of Charles Babbage and his own theories. Emisarries from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also created running programs for the system.

"From the beginning of WW1 through the inter-war years and the Second World War, the system was expanded throughout the country and linked to Le Grande Napoleon, a similar network constructed by Jules Verne in Paris during the last century. Bolstered by military funding it would become a key communications asset during the Blitz and, later, co-ordination with the French Resisstance and the preparations for D-Day.

"Unfortunately, after a decade of success, the system was finally shut down in 1956 following a series of scandals in which most of the administrators were accused of being gay, communists, or both. However, in the early 80s, the Grimsby Internet was finally restored to life by teams of volunteers bolstered by miners who had lost their jobs to Margaret Thatcher. It flourished throughout the decade as an independent haven for information and discussion, though with a strong leftist tendency that persists even now. Indeed, it was briefly used to co-ordinate Labour's 1987 election campaign.

"In 1989 the Grimsby System was integrated with the rest of the global network, and has thrived ever since. Indeed, many of the original members are still around, their souls encoded on a series of punch-cards and wax cylinders. Oweing to recent advances in the fields of bio-engineering and molecular computing, Half-Life2.net is also one of the only websites in the world to be hosted not on computers, but on a trio of vegetable-based 'potaters'.

"DOES NOT POTATE!"

Egg

There was an egg. Then it exploded into a stream of rainbow colours. The colours coalesced into a single forum mod, who shall not be named, who proceeded to create the halflife2.net site for all to enjoy.