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Hypertext essayists Stuart Moulthrop and Nancy Kaplan are both signatories to the "Compact for Responsive Electronic Writing." The Compact states: "Should a fellow user of the World Wide Web request that I include within my work a link to his or her work, I will make every reasonable effort to accommodate that request." I think that this agreement puts far more pressure on the author/reader relationship than do the manipulations readers can make to texts in STORYSPACE. A STORYSPACE author can choose to honor the unity of her creation simply by avoiding contact with reader/authors who have purchased it. (Or at least by avoiding contact with the version which the reader has rewritten.) In the mind of the author her text remains pristine. This fiction is harder to maintain on the Web if reader/authors are entitled to put their two cents in. Can the knowledge that these alterations will occur help free the Web essay author from attempting to, despite the best post-modern intentions, totalize?