February 16, 2011

What If Our Computers Turned Into Girls? Part II

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

This is the second part of an original, two-part story I wrote back in 1985 or so.

It had been a restless night for Dan. The power had gone off not once, but twice that day. He didn’t get nearly the work done on his computer that he had planned. And that new game . . . it had to wait for later.

After two hours of tossing without sleep, he said, “Forget it!” and rose to continue computing. It was quite a shock to him when instead of finding his Macintosh computer sitting on his desk, there was a tall, spunky brunette.

His eyes widened and he stepped back a few startled paces. “Where have you taken my Mac?” he accused her.

“That’s no way to introduce yourself,” she told him.

He just stared at her, slack jawed.

“Whoever taught you manners?” she asked.

“I bought a manners program for the computer. MacManners. I can set a mean table.”

She asked, “What are the basic rules of life?”

“Take your disk out of the drive before you turn off your computer; Comment you code; and run and scream from anything programmed in Pascal.”

“No, Dan. I mean rules about life. You know — things you do without a computer.”

“Oh. Rules of Life.” He thought. Then, “That would be: Don’t get caught; Try not to stand in front of a starting Audi; and avoid watching sitcoms advertised as ‘Wacky.'”

“I don’t think you understand, Dan,” she said, her voice now whisper quiet. She hopped down from the table and slinked toward him. “There’s more to life than computers.” She backed him into a corner. “I want you to think about what the computer has done for you?”

“Everything!”

“Are you sure there’s nothing else? Isn’t there anything in your life that you need beyond computers?”

“Yes, a new modem, I could really use . . .”

Before he knew it, the vision was gone. His Mac was back on the table just as he left it. After a while of standing there puzzling, he returned to bed, certain that he was either verging on psychosis or that he shouldn’t have eaten the rest of the pizza after it fell on the floor.

The next day the power company was being a bit more consistent. Dan, Morgan, Jerry and Ryan were all talking with each other using their computers and modems. Jerry was reading a message typed by Ryan about low-level disk formatting when he blurted out with:

“Hey guys! I had the weirdest dream last night!” he typed. “My Amiga turned into this sexy red head. It was neat — a lot more fun than writing my backup program. But it was just a dream.”

Morgan added, “I had a weird dream to. My Apple turned into a girl with green hair. It was odd. She wanted me to go to the 7/11 and buy her cigarettes.”

Ryan commented, “I think this has to do with our discussion yesterday about our computers turning into girls. Actually, I had a similar dream, though I dreamt about what types of computers would turn into what types of women.

“For example, an IBM PC would undoubtedly be a business women; smart, efficient, no-nonsense get the job done type. An Apple would be a fun type. A Kaypro would be an East German athlete.

“What was really weird was dreaming about this big computer we have at school. It turned into part of a recurring nightmare I have about the 50 foot woman . . .”

“Well, I had a weird dream too,” Dan typed. “My computer turned into this girl who said I should go out and do something with my life. It reminded me about some of those speeches my parents give me about being locked in my room all the time. All I have to do is remind them of that one Brooke Shields movie where that guy falls in love with her and burns down her house —then they lay off me a while.”

“That’s perceptive,” Ryan commented. “Of course I could go into the various reasons some of the girls on our block don’t get into computers. In fact, I asked Diane about it the other day and
said mentioned something about all us being ‘yucky.'”

“My dream was a little different from Dan’s,” Jerry added. “In my dream, all the sudden my whole world was without computers. I was amazed how much more there was out there. Incredible. I
don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to the beach today just for the heck of it.”

“You’re really having trouble with the backup program, eh?” Morgan jibed.

“No, I think Jerry has a valid argument. Let’s get out and enjoy the sunshine,” Ryan typed.

“The what?” Morgan replied.

After a bit of convincing that, even though not one of them had a tan and would probably blind everyone at the beach, they all decided to go. They were broadening their horizons.

Sure, they just sat around the beach and talked about computers. And not one girl bothered to say anything to them. But they were on their way.

2 Comments

  1. So sat at the beech and talked about computers?
    Sounds like my friends and I, sitting in a pub the talk was of Computers (Amiga), Then Computers (PC),Unix, Linux, Windows.Then it changed to Cars, Then Tax & Now Wives (1 of us, 1 divorced) expecting children to be the next getting old stage!

    Still can’t really figure girls out!
    Glenn

    Comment by glennp — February 16, 2011 @ 11:24 am

  2. This story is based on real people I knew, with wild embellishments, of course! The conversation we had did take place at the beach, but inside Jerry’s house in his computer room/office. I noticed that we were within a few blocks of the beach, we were all wearing shorts, but not one of us had a tan. That got me thinking.

    Comment by admin — February 16, 2011 @ 2:18 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Powered by WordPress