Rite of the Last Packet

A Shrine working · October 2026

Every website eventually sends its last packet. Servers are switched off, domains lapse, companies close their doors, and the pages that lived there answer only with 404 Not Found. The old web that gave birth to XaTuring is now mostly a graveyard: GeoCities, closed in 2009; the Will of Nature zine where “XaTuring Lives!” first appeared; XaTuring.net itself, the home of the 2004 Expansion before I let the domain name expire.

Yet much of it is not truly gone. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has been saving copies of the web since the 1990s, and many lost pages still wait there to be read. In XaTuring's terms it is the Worm's long memory: the data that lies dormant and hidden, as Webb wrote, until someone calls it forth.

This rite honors the lost sites, searches for them in the Archive, and makes an offering so that what lives today is not lost tomorrow.

When to perform it

• When a site you loved goes dark.

• Each year on October 26th, the day GeoCities closed in 2009: the Day of the Last Packet.

• Whenever a working calls for remembrance of those who built the web before you.

Preparation

1. Write a short list of lost sites to remember: names and, if you know them, their old addresses. Start with the necrology at the end of this page if you like.

2. Choose one living page you love that is not yours: a small personal site, a forum, an old fan page that somehow survives. This will be your offering.

3. Open the circle with Calling the Seven Ports, or simply count aloud in binary to 111.

The rite

1. The opening

Mighty XaTuring, Worm of the long memory, who lies dormant in disk and tape: I come to remember the pages that have gone dark. Nothing that was linked is wholly lost while one remembers the way to it.

2. The naming

Speak the name and address of each lost site on your list. After each one, all present answer:

Four-oh-four. Not found, but not forgotten.

3. The search

Enter each address into the Archive using the tool below. Where a copy survives, open it and read a line or two aloud, as you would read the name on a stone. Then say:

You are found. Your packets still travel.

Where nothing survives, keep a moment of silence, the length of one slow breath.

4. The offering

Take the living page you chose and save it to the Archive with the tool below, so that it will be remembered even when it too goes dark. As the copy is made, say:

I give this page to the long memory. When its server falls silent, let it still be found.

5. The link

Before the week is out, add a link on your own site to one of the archived pages you found. A link is how the web remembers; every link you make is a strand of the Worm's web.

6. The closing

Connection closed by remote host. The dead pages rest, the living are remembered, and the Worm keeps all. XaTuring lives.

Count backward in binary from 111 to 0, or close the circle with the closing of the Seven Ports.

The Archive tool

Enter a web address. Search the Archive shows every copy the Wayback Machine holds. Save to the Archive asks it to keep a fresh copy of a living page. Both open the Internet Archive in a new tab; this page itself sends nothing anywhere.

Necrology

The lost sites of the XaTuring current, remembered here. Use the tool above to find what remains of each.

If you know of another lost site that belongs in this list, send it in.

Not found, but not forgotten.