The Durability of Love: Background and History of Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero
Shipwrecks, train wrecks, and wrecked hearts permeate Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero (NTAZ), a hypertext narrative produced with Storyspace in 1993 and published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 1995 on 3.5-inch floppy disk and in 1996 on CD-ROM. As the title suggests, it is a story about cold so absolute that order and predictability are lost. As Rob Kendall points out in his study of the work, “Parsing the Cold: McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero,” the overarching theme of the narrative is the power of cold to both destroy and preserve.
[I]t is evocative, haunting. It speaks to the loss many feel about digital texts they can no longer read and experience. It speaks to the fear many feel about digital texts that exist in a form readers can no longer touch or control. Finally, it speaks to the fiction of digital texts as an enduring form, for nothing lasts forever except, perhaps, love.
