Blinking, Phoebe came into the kitchen, carrying a smiling baby on one arm. I think it was Gilbert. She poured herself a cup of coffee with her free hand. “Morning, darlin’,” she greeted me.

“Good morning, honey,” I replied.

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘Good morning.’”

“But… you said it with a hyperlink.”

“With a what?”

“A hyperlink. The word ‘morning’ was linked to a web page.”

“Linked to a web page? But I spoke it. How can anyone speak in hyperlinks?”

“Beats me, but you did.”

“Huh. That’s weird. Whoa! I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Gosh. This is kind of cool, really. But I can’t control it.”

“You can’t? You mean it’s unconscious?”

“Maybe if I try real hard…”

“Try an easy one. Try to speak a link to your blog.”

“Okay: hummmm…”

“Concentrate.”

“I was concentrating.”

“Sorry.”

“Hummmm… there! How’s that?”

“Pretty close. It was Wizbang.”

“Wizbang? How is that pretty close?”

“Well, it’s a blog.”

“Huh. I’ll try again. Hummm… thinking really hard… now.”

“Hey!”

“Oops. I mean, now. Hey! I did it, didn’t I? I felt it that time. Wow! Isn’t this amazing?”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Think of what I can do now! When I introduce myself, instead of saying, ‘Hi, I’m Sean,’ I can say, ‘Hi, I’m Sean!’”

“That’s nice.”

“And I can fight crime!”

“How?”

“By citing the ordinance being violated. I can shout to a purse-snatcher, ‘Hey, you!’”

“And that would fight crime.”

“Yes! And I’ll win every argument!”

“You do that anyway, don’t you?”

“But now I’ll win them with just one or two words! If someone says, ‘Dude, no chemical weapons were found in Iraq,’ I can just say, ‘Click here, dude.’ Wow…”

“They won’t accept Fox News as a citation.”

“Right. Here, then. But you get the idea. With this power, I could be a force for truth and goodness. Even more than presently, I mean. I’ll be famous. They’ll call me, The Hyperman, or The Linker, or the… um,…”

“The Troll?”

“No, the… Weblocutioner! Fear not, citizens! Quail, evildoers! For I am Weblocutioner, the man who speaks in hyperlinks!”

“Now you’re getting nutty.”

“Nutty, am I? You’ll see.”

(Stay tuned to this blog for further adventures of the Weblocutioner!)