hat’s all this talk about dogs? Dirk wondered.

Everyone knows the Unknown are cat people: William’s three eccentric, exceedingly loud cats—Johann Sebastian Bach, La Maga, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Scott’s Maestro, whose photo graces a page in The Unknown; and Dirk’s lifelong preference for cats (he’d own one right now, if his lease permitted it).

Dirk didn’t know Frank’s take on the matter; sure, he wrote some silly article about dog care in Frisco, but does he own a dog? Does he relish the slobbering slave mentality of dogs over the cool, sometimes haughty, individualism of cats? No matter, since Frank’s inclusion in the Unknown has always been a source of debate.

Still, leaving the question of Frank’s role aside, what does this recent explosion of “dog commentary” mean? Dirk pondered (deftly shifting from ‘w’ to ‘p’ with a simple keystroke). Could this mean the true end of the Unknown? Was everything going to the dogs?

The end of the Unknown . . . sighed Dirk to himself. How often had he dreamed of that eventuality, to remove the burden of hypertext celebrity and proofreading?

The end . . . wait, wait just a golldanged minute! The end! That’s right! The lost final scene of The Unknown, wiped from Dirk’s desktop by a mysterious computer crash, months and months ago.

Should he try to recreate it? Could he? Of course he could! he thundered, and he would! True, it wouldn’t be the same pungent piece he’d forged during the heat of yet another Unknown flame war, but it would provide some crucial information that had eluded ‘closure-seekers’ for so long, information that included the vital role of a cat in all this Unknown silliness.

Yes, Dirk would attempt the reforging, and it would be good . . . unless, of course, he blundered.

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