All by myself...

Video conferencing was a whole new experience in writing until I walked into room 156 early Thursday morning and was faced with two big screens and an empty room.

"Hello" I said firmly at to no one in particular, "anyone?" convinced by the utter quiet and my face extremely enlarged on the right screen I sat on one of the chairs and waited for something to happen. 

At 9:00 am exactly the second screen came to life with a lively picture of a teacher in front of a class, "wait!" it was a 'real' teacher speaking to few students. Almost immediately, a short elderly woman walked into the room and handed me a big remote. 

"Sorry but I have to leave to feed my horses," she said "I'll be back soon, in the meantime hold this remote and press the mute button when you want to be heard, you'll be fine," she added looking at the total confusion on my face. 

Trusted with the remote I turned back to the screen with the teacher. The screen by now split into five smaller squares each presenting a different group of people. 

"So everyone is here," the teacher said in a cheery voice as if this in of itself was a major achievement. She proceeded to go through a list of towns each I understood was represented by one of the small squares. People smiled and nodded, and so did I, being the only present representative of my city.

"Good," the teacher said as she plunged into a tenthly description of the syllabus, its structure, assignments, final tests and so on. I was trying to follow, only half way through I got this eerie feeling I get when I talk to people on the cell phone and suddenly the line drops and the only sign is sense of complete quiet on the other side. This time the signs were subtle; the only visible sign was one of the small squares turning black.

I looked around, the teacher kept talking, the students in the other squares kept listening intently and yet that feeling, something was wrong. "Hey!" I raised my hand and waved. "Can you see me?" "Hear me?" I tried for a lesser sense. Nothing, no reaction. "Hey, I am here, do you see me?" I tried again this time in a louder voice adding small jumpings, up and down, nothing.

On the screen the class went on, no one seemed to notice the void.

In desperation, I turned to the remote, zoomed in, zoomed out, raised the volume, lowered it, and pressed few random buttons, for good luck, nothing.

"Hey'" the elderly lady suddenly showed up "all is fine?"

"No one can see or hear me," I admitted to my failure.

"I am sure all is fine," she said.

"No it is not," I pleaded, "try for yourself."

And she did, after few minutes of hand waiving, some jumping, she resorted to screaming "Hey, you there!" I watched enchanted, I knew it would not work.

"Ok," she said, "something must be wrong, I will be back," and off she went.

Two minutes later both screens went black.