Scrooge entered the lobby of the Marley Arms Hotel, though a door held by a bellman in medieval costume. Scrooge hated these "castle" style hotels, but this was the hotel closest to his customer visit the next day. If Scrooge understood one thing, it was that customers were the folks that paid the bills.
His disgust heightened when he saw the sign "Today's Meetings", with a list of standards committee's taking up every conference room from "The COBOL Dungeon", to the "Internet Fitness Club"; strange names for conference rooms. "Standards, Humbug," Scrooge muttered, and not for the last time.
He got his room key, and started back across the lobby, to head up a flight of stairs that would take him to the "Tower Elevator", in response to his request for a room as far from "this standards fa-fural as possible". Room 2Q8A, strange room numbering system. As he walked back, he started tabulating the litany of flaws in the standards process, as in the background little groups of standards nerds argued the number of angels that either "should" or "shall" dance on the head of a pin. Scrooge was not sure which; but he also overheard magical incantations, and strange acronyms as he started his mental list. "POSIX", "OSI", "X11", "IPv6", "NCITS", "ALGOL", "Ethernet", "PICS", the murmurs went on.
Scrooge reached the top of the stairs, and looked back down, then, with a bit of a fright, looked again. All of the people in the room below, just for a minute there, seemed to have his face. Gad, if Standards meetings are purgatory, hell is going to a meeting where everyone is just like me!, he thought. The elevator "dinged" behind him, and he turned to move on to it. "Standards, humbug," he spit out as he made a dash for the closing doors.
Scrooge realized that this hotel was a bit different, but the descending portico on the elevator door was not what he expected. A quick duck was all that saved him from a nasty bash of the head, and the damn thing just kept coming down, spikes and all. Where were the safety switches, the electric eyes, hell, where were the elevator inspectors?
The array of buttons on the walls of the elevator was amazing. Amazing until Scrooge realized that he would need to push one that might take him closer to room 2Q8A. Damn, was that on floor 2, 2A, Q, A, there were a whole selection of buttons. He hadn't needed a bell man to carry his overnight bag, but no doubt one was required to find the room -- that was blackmail, he'd find it in spite of them! He boldly pushed the "Q" button. An array of red lights, located for some strange reason on the ceiling of the box, stated "General Protection Fault", and the elevator dropped in freefall towards God knows where.
"No standards," said the character next to him on this desperate ride, "we try to please our guests, but I suppose that replacing the ANSI Standard cable and brake system with dental floss may be going a bit far."
Scrooge forced his stomach back down his throat, and looked at the odd man who had not been there when he got into the elevator. The disconcerting descent, which had gone on well past aborted execution in the basement without even a hint of slowing down, was bad enough. But this musty old fellow next to him, dusty, smelly, and with all sorts of chains (gold neck chain, phi-beta-kappa key chain, watch chain, wine steward chain about the neck, and even chain letters in his pocket), had just appeared! "Who the hell are you!" exclaimed Scrooge.
"Good guess," joked the other occupant. "Actually, I'm your host, Martin Marley, and owner of this unique hotel , hmm, ... chain." Marley closed with an odd smile.
"Where in hell is my room? When I get there I'm going to email my secretary and make sure I never get booked into any of your hotels again! Uneven stairs, dropping elevator doors, dropping elevators, room numbers that don't make sense and buttons that are equally bad.This isn't a hotel, it is a fun house, and it isn't even fun! I'm calling the public safety commission and reporting this death trap."
"Hm, lets see if I can help you with each of these items," responded Marley, as the elevator came to an unsettling, but not disastrous stop. "Here is your room, and I can't promise it's in hell, but after all, hell is what you make it. Your email may be a bit of a problem. First, you may expect a standard telephone jack in your room, but, we share your abhorrence for standards, and have decided to innovate. Here you will find the latest in quarter rate Boolean transmission systems, we call it quarter rate because only one quarter of the bits get though. I happen to have a connecting wire and card in PmCmia form for a laptop. Of course, your laptop doesn't have PmCmia, it has PCMCIA; that's old and arcane now, and since PmCmia is immature, we have not tried to formalize it. The nice thing is that your 6 month old laptop is already out of date, so you can buy one from our gift shop. You will find the prices as competitive as you might suspect in a market where there is no competition, and nothing is a commodity. Well, there is competition, you can go to the Haggard House down the street, they use MPCIA cards with 16th note scatter technology, their laptops are about the same price as ours, none run your current applications anyway. We find we can employ many more applications software folks writing unique software for unique systems, in computer languages that you never heard of like Bliss, bcpl, and Algol5. We have differentiation, that is not a problem. Ah, but I digress from your immediate concerns."
"Now for your call to the public safety commission," continued Marley, "He is a guest in the room next door. Of course, as you asked, there are no regulatory bodies, and the free market reigns, so you may find him a most pleasant dinner companion, but we don't even find it worth bribing him, he has no power. There are no standards, no regulations, and not even a slight prohibition against our raising our room rates at midnight, which we do every midnight. It seems to irritate guests a bit to find the morning is more expensive than the rate of the night before, but, as we say, when we've got them in our halls, their hearts and minds will follow."
"To help with your meetings tomorrow, we will send up three business assistants before morning. The first will brief you on Standards Past, the second on Current Standards, and the last on Standards of the Future."
"The hell you will!" exclaimed Scrooge; "I'm getting out of this place now." Only to find he was talking to empty air, in a room that smelled much like a typical Holiday Inn, with a touch of Ramada; modestly appointed. He made for the door, only to find it lead to a small bathroom. Attached to the ceiling, in a most disturbing way, was an upside down toilet, with Delft-blue letters surrounding the seat "American Non-Standard". There was no other door, no phone, a strange 13 pin "D" connector on the wall with a label above it "1/4 rate Boolean, it is truly the only way to go".
Scrooge sat down on the bed, angered, frustrated, mad as hell to be exact; gathering about him his wits, dismissing thoughts about the fire safety code, and unwillingly drifted into a confused sleep.