The IRC Rabbit Hole and the ‘IMAX’ Effect: My Journey, Part 2
In Part 1, my journey ended at a doorway. I had explored the self-contained universe of a single machine running Windows 95 and was the first to sign up for a course on a single, electrifying word: The Internet. I was about to trade the logic of a system for the logic of a network. I had no idea it would feel less like a classroom and more like falling down a rabbit hole.
A New Course, A New World
The new course was held at a different location: Myronosyts’ka Street, 10. I practically skipped my way there after getting off the metro at Universytet station, buzzing with anticipation. The building itself was old, with grand architecture, but my destination was not its main entrance. I descended a few steps from the pavement into a semi-basement, a space that felt like a hidden secret in the heart of the city.
The windows were low, almost at ground level, their ornate grilles looking out onto the shoes of passersby. It was the kind of place alternative historians love, a space that felt like it had been buried and later excavated. Inside, the atmosphere was completely different from the formal university lab. This was a converted apartment. About ten monitors stood in a single row against a wall. It was intimate, almost homey. The feeling was like switching from a spacious, rattling tram to a compact minibus with a low ceiling—less formal, more direct, and you felt every turn.
“This time, I didn’t fiddle around. I didn’t know *what* to do. The machine was a familiar body, but its soul—the network—was a complete mystery. For the first time, I was genuinely interested in listening to the lecture.”
The Language of the Network
The teacher began to unravel the magic. He spoke of protocols, of browsers, and gave a brief but brilliant overview of HTML. He was translating the internet’s essence into a language we could understand. We went through a list of programs, but one, in particular, stuck with me: the email client, The Bat!. Its efficiency and logic were so compelling that I would use it for many years to come.
But amidst all these tools for sending and receiving information, there was one program that seized my imagination from the moment I understood its purpose. It wasn’t about sending a message and waiting for a reply. It was about connection, here and now.
It was called **mIRC**.
_Sashka_ Enters the Chat
One of the final lessons was dedicated to this real-time chat client. My first-ever nickname was `_Sashka_`. My typing speed was practically zero. Before this, my interactions with the keyboard were mostly limited to the arrow keys in games. Now, I had to form words.
H…….e…….l…….l…….o
The lag wasn’t in the connection; it was in my fingers. But when a reply appeared on the screen almost instantly, from someone I didn’t know, somewhere I couldn’t see, it was a revelation. This was different from email. This was a living, breathing conversation.
What Exactly Was mIRC?
For those who didn’t experience the 90s internet, mIRC (often just called ‘Mirka’ by users) was more than just a program; for many of us, it was the internet’s social hub. It was a real-time chat client that connected you to a universe of conversations.
Imagine a huge city with thousands of public squares (these were called “channels,” often named after cities, hobbies, or topics). With mIRC, you could instantly walk into any of these squares and join a live conversation with people from all over the world. It was the direct ancestor of today’s Discord and Slack, but with a raw, text-based charm that’s hard to describe. It was pure, unfiltered communication.
The course ended. We were congratulated, handed certificates, and sent on our way. That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was a whirlwind, replaying everything I’d seen, but all thoughts inevitably spiraled back to that chat. The sheer potential of it was buzzing in my head.
The Summer of mIRC
The next day, I went back. I just walked in, sat down at a vacant computer in the back, and started listening to the new group’s lecture. The teacher noticed me. “You’re here again?” he asked, not unkindly. I explained that I was fascinated and wanted to dive deeper. Luckily for me, there were a couple of empty seats.
“Just be quiet and don’t disturb the class,” he said. I had no intention of disturbing anyone. I opened mIRC, and the entire world—the classroom, the teacher’s voice, the city outside—all of it dissolved. My universe shrank to the dimensions of the monitor. For three hours, I was completely gone, lost in a sea of text channels and private messages, until the sight of a neighboring student shutting down their PC pulled me back to reality.
I stepped outside into the warm evening air. And everything was different. It was as if the world had switched from a standard film to IMAX—a technology that didn’t even exist for me then. The colors were sharper, the sounds were clearer, the sense of space was profound. My brain, rewired by three hours of intense digital focus, was perceiving reality with a new, heightened clarity.
The next day, I went back again. And the day after that. Within a week, I was a regular, an unofficial fixture in the computer lab. No one seemed to mind. I spent that entire summer in mIRC. I wasn’t limited to Ukraine; the borders online felt porous, almost imaginary. I chatted in channels for cities all across the CIS, exploring communities, learning the slang, studying the program’s scripting capabilities. I even lurked in English-speaking channels, trying to decipher the conversation with my limited “hi, bye” vocabulary.
The Inevitable Return
But summers end. I entered the 9th grade, a class that turned out to be even more challenging than the last. The horrors my classmates were involved in during those years are stories for another time. Slowly, inevitably, the pull of real life—of school, of social dynamics—overtook my digital explorations. The internet faded into the background.
Looking back, I sometimes think it would have been better if I’d just kept going to that computer lab. But what’s done is done. The year passed. I wasn’t accepted into the 10th grade; the school had rebranded itself as a “gymnasium” and had no place for a reputed “dunce and hooligan” like me. They needed prim and proper boys, ready to learn. So I was sent to a neighboring school.
The 10th and 11th grades were a different kind of adventure. It was a time of basketball and streetball, of street rap and the constant rivalry with the local metalheads who worshipped bands like Sepultura. It was also the time of first love, which burst into my life during a summer in Crimea. But that, truly, is another story.
To be continued in Part 3…