Benjamin was not really into computers, which was, in fact, rather a shame especially since he was, essentially, one. But try as he might to do the things that other humans and smart animals did online, he just didn't seem to be able to get excited by it. He tried online games, and the sights that humans-on-the-internet were talking about, but none of it quite came together.
Benjamin only really started to become interested in computers when he met Julie. She was his first real friend, and they had met on a game he'd been playing called "Advance Wars". They were small creatures who were somehow able to attack from the air. Benjamin liked that. It seemed a whole lot more fun to him than messing about on the ground. So Benjamin and Julie started to chat, and they kept on chatting and talking and eventually they ended up talking all the time.
Julie had straight brown hair and big brown eyes and Benjamin thought she was really pretty. He could see from the smile on her face and the sound of her voice that she was happy. She asked Benjamin if he wanted to play Advance Wars with her. Benjamin said "Yath, sure." He was happy she'd asked and he said "Yeee" as politely as he could, because he liked his voice.
Julie showed Benjamin how to play Advance Wars, and they had lots of fun doing it together, being enemies and playing together as friends. Benjamin had never had a friend before, and didn't quite know how to bthe case of benjamin the boy obscured by the computerehave around one. He wasn't nervous because he was sure he was nothing but polite to Julie, but he worried what would happen if she became annoyed with him. She called him "Benjie" and Benjamin didn't really like "Benjie". He wanted to do something about it, but he didn't know what to do, so he just ignored it. He didn't mention it because Julie was having so much fun that he didn't want to do anything to spoil it.
Benjamin had pretty much finished having fun with Julie in "Advance Wars" when he decided to have a go with someone he knew, just for laughs. Benjamin found that he could chat to people he knew on the internet. He hadn't realized that the people online who he thought were his friends were really just people playing at being friends. None of his "friends" knew who he was. He wasn't sure they'd even really been interested in playing with him.
So Benjamin decided to join one of the game chat rooms where you could play games with other people online, and see all their histories and everything. On the first time he joined, he typed in "Advance Wars" and put his history in. No-one knew who he was. Benjamin typed in his name as "SB4". He liked that idea. He liked the numbers. The chat room then split into a group of people talking about Advance Wars, and a group of people just talking to each other. Benjamin was in the first group. He liked that too, because it meant that he could be part of the group too. He sat there and took things in. He tried to imagine that he was somewhere watching all these people, but he couldn't quite make himself think of it as more than a game.
After a few minutes one of the people who had been in the chat room already suddenly logged off. It was the first person who had ever logged off from the chat room. Benjamin smiled. The person who had been online had to be "SB4". They had to be him. Benjamin couldn't possibly be "SB4". He was just Benjie. He wondered if he could do something to be "SB4". He tried to think. He tried to work out what he could do and what he might have to do. He could become SB4's friend. He could write to SB4 and tell him how much he'd liked him, and make sure to point out how helpful he'd been. He'd write "SB4" as "SB4 Benjie".
Benjamin wrote the note. He put it on top of his Advance Wars History entry. He wrote the note and no-one else logged off. It would be strange if no-one else logged off from the chat room. He got up and took it off the chat room. He took his chat history, with all the people's names and everything, off the screen. He moved it onto where the chat history should have been.