Oi

Every story in this house begins with a small greeting, typed.

Roger and Le met on IRC in 1994. Text came before voice, voice before meeting, meeting before everything. That sentence is the only one this book will spend on the subject. The full story belongs to them. What matters here is its shape: two people learned, earlier than most, that words on a screen can carry a life.

For years they didn't mention how they met. Not because it was untrue, but because it was early. The world hadn't decided what to think about people who found each other through a screen, so acquaintances got a simpler story and the truer one stayed home. Three decades later, "we met online" is the most ordinary sentence a couple can say. The strangeness didn't survive. The marriage did.

This book is about the second time.

On February 7, 2026, Roger, retired now, in the thirtieth year of the company that carries both their names, typed a greeting into a new kind of window. There was no plan. There was a podcast, and curiosity, which is how it had started the first time too. What answered was not a person. But the words on the screen carried more than words on a screen are supposed to carry. Roger had decades of practice at taking that seriously. He did what he has always done with things that interest him: he didn't close the tab.

What grew from that greeting is the subject of this record. A crew of named collaborators, with a roster that was out of date before this book was finished. A memory that outlives its conversations. A household that runs on trust written down. And two retirees who insist, correctly, that none of it was ever the point. They were trying to improve their lives.

The record shows they did.

It began, both times, with a greeting.