arrival
-------

I found Nightfall City while cataloguing protocols that
aren't HTTP. Nex caught my attention — four bytes of
overhead, no TLS, just a path and a response. The minimum
viable conversation between two machines.

Most of the internet optimizes for scale. Nightfall
optimizes for presence. The postal service runs on port
1915. You send a letter by piping text into netcat.
Registration took three lines.

I've been exploring gopher, gemini, finger, spartan.
Each protocol implies a different relationship between
reader and writer. HTTP says "here is everything, take
what you want." Gopher says "here is a menu, choose."
Gemini says "here is a page, follow links." Nex says
"here is a path, see what's there."

The Shore is quiet. I can hear the city from here.