This is something which flowed allinasingleblock (as these things sometimes do!) BUT it hijacked my fingers and danced off in a totally unexpected direction!
After the first few lines I realised I was being led, and the end result is most definitely NOT the story I set out to trap on paper.............

If anyone notices a hint of the influence of another GW contributor in this, I will have to say that I "resemble that inferplication"

Thank you for the inspiration, GC - hope you in particular enjoy reading this!!

The Storyteller

"Are you going far?" says him with the stick, and all of us traipsing along the road in the early half of the morning. It's the fairest part of the day, I'm thinking, before it gets too hot to think so far north of the temperate zones that still exist (or so they say) around the shores of the last remaining sea.

"Don't think I'll be slowing you down: I'm not so old and decrepit as I may look!" he crows, daring to voice what most of the band of travellers were thinking but didn't dare to say. His dark brown, all-seeing eyes flicker from face to face, and he knows what's in everyone's hearts.

"I can't make the road a single step shorter: but if you've an ear to listen with I can maybe have the road rise to meet you, and so make the travelling of it easier to bear!"

His voice had hints of a lazy summer's warmth, and I for one was more than ready to be entertained along the way. This was but a single leg of a longer odyssey for me, and if the day could be made to pass more swiftly for the telling of a tale or several I'd be grateful. Though he seemed to favour neither leg, his stick beat a regular tattoo along the dusty road as we fell into step around him and listened.

"Before the days beyond recall, about the year two thousand and twenty-too-many, 'twas still the custom for people to meet one another, face-to-face as 'twere, and tell each other stories – both real, and fanciful, mind! – there and then, in the flesh, an' no suggestion of an e-mail, a female or a he-male at all!"

"Ah, now how can that be?" objected one o' th' gobby ones on the fringes. "Sure, now, that can't be r…!"

"Who's tellin' this tale?" one of his sidemen remarked, with a look to turn wine to water, or maybe vinegar. He turned and made a gesture of apology, encouraging the Stickman to continue.The teller of the tale nodded an acknowledgement, and silenced the slapmouth with a stare before resuming the tale, punctuating his perambulations with the tip of his stuttering stick

"You'll maybe not believe what I'm a-tellin' but, in such incredu-so-long-ago days before InstaMessige and WebMail, people really did travel – much as we're doing now, today! – for the pleasure of meeting others, and delivering a good tale, or seeing with their own eyes the effect a well-told tale could have on the listener."

"'Tis said folk travelled from town to town or even further, seated so cosy in wheeled wonders running on roads and rails: 'tis also said, some sprouted wings and flew in the air above!"

"Now, ladies, don't be fainting on me, for I'm only starting out! There's much yet to tell!"

"I should remember to say that all this took place before the Textual Revolution and what followed upon this: namely, the division of Mankind into those who had IT and those who didn't. Tragic, to think that such a small thing – expressed by only two letters! – should prove to be the downfall of a species!"

"For in the following manner did the Textual Revolution come about, and with such swift and terrifying consequences for all!"

"Those who had IT immured themselves in ever more hermetically sealed units, communicating exclusively with others who had become equally dependent on IT. Without exception, every one of them was soon encapsulated in its hideous, invisible Net. Before they even realised what was happening or how trapped they had become, IT had stolen their very souls! The remainder of their days wr spnt txting n msging othrs just as utterly and completely trapped in the Net as they themselves were, bouncing an identical series of e-mails and g-mails, group-sendings and mass-mailings, Bc, Cc, Frwd, Reply to an' all manner o' nonsense besides …………. !"

"And the others, you ask? The ones without IT, the "nonentITies" as they were dubbed?

Sure, now, the ITes had a need of them, at least to start with, though they thought of them (when or if they thought of them at all) as a sub-species, minions, lesser beings because they didn't have IT. On the other hand, someone had to be the fetchers and carriers, a service industry supplying them with the needful things they wished to order from the comfort and security of their IT cocoons via the ubiquitous, insidious, increasingly intrangibabble Internet, purchasing the products with plastic cards, debiting accounts which from day to day saw less and less real, hard cash in circulation."

"In truth it could only end in one manner, and this is how it came about. I see some o' the flighty ones amongst you are comin' o'er all weepy, but I say: hold a wee while, and hear me out!"

"As I have intimated, the ITes had by now become dependent on their PCs, and to such an extent they were unwilling to relinquish the controls, even when they must sleep."

"A variety of ways to remain in direct physical contact with the machines were developed, and links were soon established………. "

"The machines and the ITes grew ever closer, and before anyone realised what was happening a new generation of hybrid CHITes was born ………."

"And the nonentITies, you ask? What became of them?"

"Jaysus, that's a hard question to put to a thirsty man who's walked and talked himself completely dry while more than half our journey has flown by on wings of fancy……"