Once the current address expires, it will be auctioned off on the open market and we have no control of who buys it (we can try to ask the webhost to allow us to buy it, but they will not talk to me unless I have the owner's approval so even finding out when they release the domain name is tricky. Other hosts like Go Daddy have helpful FAQs that explain their 3-5 day grace period and then the release date. Not this host. We ran into the same problems back in Dec 2014 (the webhost not wanting to talk to us without owner approval) so we knew this was going to be a problem in March.

even if we did buy the domain name, we do not have control of the files, the sql databases and everything that makes an eFiction archive run. We could put up a notice that the website is gone and that some of the fic is at A03.