The Mechanical Minion

[singindemonhq]

If you want to remember something one good way is to make a rhyme of it. One secret of the bards is that making a rhythm of it can work even better. It's why some primitive people have a strong oral tradition - in the beginning was the word and then the shaman syncopated it.

My computer problems hadn't made much sense to me, so I'd made a song to remember them by.





Since they sent the new computer through a portal to my base,
The dimensional flux is stopping it from making interface,
And the badly printed booklet says the help is all on-line,
But the modem that they've chosen's disconnecting all the time,
Now the data input's failing and the memory seems to jam,
Signals passing cross-dimensionally have randomised the RAM.
There's been no updates on the gigs and I do nothing rash,
But if I try to login this computer's going to crash.

Now the C-drive is reporting that the D-drive isn't there,
The illegal operation signs can drive me to despair,
And the mouse is in the socket, but the double-clicks abort,
The computer doesn't realise that the plug is in the port,
And the icons are corrupted until Windows looks obscene,
And the side effects of gauss are playing havoc with the screen,
And the cross-dimensional input puts the index in a hash,
Then I'll lose the modem input, 'cause the system's going to crash.

When attempts to log on Windows say the Normal file won't do,
And that patronising paper clip has had its sneer at you,
And the label on the cable says the keyboard's in its slot,
But a notice on the monitor says clearly that it's not,
When the floppy will not copy and the CD makes a screech,
The ability to print at all is clearly out of reach,
And attempts to go on-line make all the warning signals flash,
Then I'll never get it working and the system's going to crash.



...........................................................

The "portable" hadn't been doing any of that, though. It isn't really a single machine. There's quite a bulky unit that has some kind of interdimensional interface with the main machine - at least, it would have if it was working. The little laptop and the recorders slip in and out of their own cradles in the unit.

I was using the vocal recorder when we came through, and that's working. The rest of it has seemed dead since we got here. I'd checked it over, but nothing I'd done has even produced the blue-screen-of-that-was-not-a-good-idea.

So much of the machine seems dead that I'd guessed it was because the main computer was destroyed. Most of that was in the UK. It looks as though the Earth went where Sunnydale did - or evil won and it's all changed beyond belief. If that's happened there isn't a thing we can do about it, and it would be impossible to return.

I'd never want to forget what happened yesterday, and the details of even the best memories fade with time, so I unshipped the recorder to make my own personal record, firewalled against the universe. I left the whole unit out, afterwards, so of course Erynne started playing with it, and that led to us learning something that changed everything