Pete Simon

The “office” was a vast square basement of a demolished home, a plot of relative sanctity, engulfed in the spoiled banana peal, wet coffee ground, used chewing-gum, crumpled tissue dump grounds.

Chinney stomped down the splintered worm-eaten steps leading into the office, heaving the beige specimen, and weaved his way through a metal shelf maze which was layered with stacks of discarded CPUs; each humming at a near-whisper tone, feeding of chained power strips and networked by lemon colored Ethernet cables.

The room was lit by “Tire Swing” scented candles he salvaged in bulk from dumped boxes, placed in the bottom halves of cut Diet Coke 2liter bottles, and distributed throughout the shelves.

The shelf maze opened to a broad clearing in the far corner; here the power cords converged into an overstuffed circuit box, while the Ethernet cables continued up the wall, across the concrete crumb, iron beam ceiling, then descended down into the cobwebbed recesses behind the office desk like the sinewy branches of an elven vine tree.
 
The office desk was constructed from plywood from the center angle of a roomy corner, and built out with the fantastic whim of a fantasy tree house. Small, blocky monitors perched on each platform, hopelessly enmeshed in wiry growth.

There Chinney sat down on a juice box stained, goldfish crumbed, minivan car seat, with a half-drank Diet Coke 2liter stuffed in a sticky plastic cup holder, and he held the new unit; a mother bear nursing her bee-stung cub. He had tethered the box to a small cube screen perched on the edge of the desk and watched the BIOS readout.

Reading volumes:
CD-ROM Drive D - ok
Harddisk Drive C - …
-DISK FAILURE-
 
The system whelped out a flat A beep. Chinney sighed sympathetically.
 
“I bet you’ve never been defragged, not even once” he whispered with solace.
 
He pulled a thick wooden drawer from the desk, it was filled like a viper pit with screwdrivers. He reached in and rummaged about until the sharp head of a right-sized one made itself known.
 
Chinney took it and threaded the screw head on the brushed metal back of his dusty beige buddy. Then he fished from behind a thick stack of diet coke liters arranged at the foot of the desk, and retrieved a fresh air can.
 
With the metal case unfastened, a round plume of dust grew into the air like a nuclear mushroom. Chinney coughed and released a small fart of excitement which sounded like a cell phone vibration.

With the silicon guts of his specimen were exposed, he wasted no time locating the hard disk and extracting it gingerly like a pearl from a beige oyster.

He blew an affectionate healing breeze across the scuzzy pins, kicking up fat flakes of dust like leaves in the wind over a hill top.

“Hello there,” he giggled. Then he stiffened with a serious air and sat erect in the minivan seat, facing the centrifuge of his desktop system; eye to eye with Mother, who was hibernating.

“Lets examine this, Mother.”

He unknotted a free scuzzy cord from one of Mother’s Hydra port connectors. Mother clicked and whirred awake and an array of nine red LEDs flicked on like spider eyes.

…

“1st read attempt failed,” said a young, sterile, synthesized voice. “…Increasing voltage by 10%.”

“Careful now, Mother!” yelped Chinney.

The red LEDs blinked without concern.