Computer, Part 2

Agh. Come on. How did I forget this password again? I swear, I've logged in here dozens of times.

I sit here at my desk, on my new laptop. She's young, merely three weeks out of the box.

Runs so perfectly smooth, and she has mere gigabytes occupied. Such a fresh slate. And so shiny. Her keys glow.

And I'm trying to log-in here, into this site, where people speak words and words speak people.

But I don't know my password. And she doesn't know my passwords, either. Or at least, not all of them. I haven't visited all my sites on her yet.

And this one has stumped me.

I try, but minutes of brainstorming later, I have to concede. I forgot my password.

I can't even reset it, I don't think I even have access to that Email address anymore. I don't know. It's been a while since I've been here.

But, I do think I had this password written down, somewhere.

I think I wrote it down in a text file, on my old laptop. Somewhere there in its old circuits, a little pile of bytes, who know the password. Who are the password.

So I guess the only thing I can do is go get her, my old laptop. I get up from my chair, leaving the new one by herself at the table, and I walk over to the other side of my room.

She's on the top of my library, stowed away. Hidden.

All that can be easily seen of her is a bit of the charger, dangling down.
I reach up and grab her, and set her down on the floor. There's no space for her on the desk anymore.
Her back caked with three weeks worth of dust. As I pull her wider open, it leaves my fingers grayed, and streaks on back.

It feels odd to see her again. To see her like this.

Taking a deep breath, I grab her cord, plug it in, press her power button, and-

She's screaming. Static of every colour blares out from her eyes, blindingly bright, and screeching and buzzing explode out from her mouth.

In shock and frenzy, I immediately press the power button again, and she's shut off again. Her fury's cut short.

Okay. Okay. We'll go again.

I reach over, and gently, gently as can be, turn her back on.

For a few seconds, she stays dead. Plays dead.

Makes me briefly wonder if I killed her, but then she does begin whirring.

And whirring, and whirring, until eventually she opens her eyes again. Pitch black, but open.

I softly rest my hand on her as she's waking up, coming to her senses.

And of course, she asks me the password. Her own password, the one required to get into her.

Of course, I do remember that one. It's 'The Wind Is Blowing.'

I type it in, on her dirty keys that I don't think I ever bothered to clean in years, and press enter-

What? She rejects what I wrote.

I type it in again, and click on the reveal button to make sure I-

Oh. I typed 'Rhe qind is bloeibg.' That's all wrong. My fingers must have slipped.

I guess they do not know her keys anymore.

I type it in one more time, carefully pressing the letters one by one, and finally put it in right.

Another minute of slow, slow loading later, the desktop shows. That black, starry desktop.

I run my fingers over her face, fondly, as the icons begin loading in one by one. I can feel the coldness of those stars, the pull of that void onscreen.

And god, I look through those icons, and there's all my old games. I know it's only been three weeks, but somehow they're already old in my mind.

But eventually, I see the folder of my text files, off in the corner. That's probably where the password is.

I put my finger to the touchpad and run the cursor over to that folder. She doesn't have a mouse anymore. I took hers away and gave it to the new laptop.

And I double-tap the folder to tell it to open up.

She whirrs, louder than before. She's been humming and beeping and making noise since I turned her on.

The spinning blue wheel pops up next to the cursor, for a bit, before it disappears.

I watch her for a minute or two, waiting for the folder to open up. Anticipating as if it were owed to me.

But the folder doesn't open up. Before I can reach out to try to click on it again, a message appears, written wide:

Why did you leave me?

I stay there, paralyzed. Watching her. Reading it in her eyes over and over.

Was I not good enough?

I grip the corner of her keyboard, and oddly find myself talking out loud to her.

"No, it's not that, you did amazing, it's just you've s-"

I trail off in the middle of the sentence though, as the message abruptly disappears. Withdrawn.

I double click again, and after a few seconds, she talks back.

What if I don't want to open the folder?

I talk again, briefly. "It's..."

But thinking it over... What if she doesn't want to open the folder?

Isn't that her purpose? To do what I say and open the folder?

I try to speak, but my mouth is all dry. I don't know what to say I stare helplessly, arms at my sides. My gaze flickers back and forth from her face to her camera in her forehead. She sees me.

But I don't need to say anything. The message disappears, retracted, and the folder opens up in File Explorer.

I quickly scan through the list of files. God, I wrote so many things here.

I should copy them over to my new computer, so I don't have to come all this way every time I want to see them again, or read them.

But I digress. I'll do that some other time.

There it is. Passwords.txt. This is where it must be. I try to open it, although again, it takes nearly half a minute just to open Notepad.

I don't know why she's running so slow, all of a sudden. Last time I used her, she worked almost just fine.

Come to think of it, I don't think I told her it would be the last time she'd be on my desk.

I guess she just hates me now.

But finally, the file loads, with its long list of the passwords I've had over the years, and I find the one for this site.

Ah. Right. 'Like A Summer Rose,' that's the password I was looking for. It's simple, really. I don't know how I forgot that.

Well. That solves it.

All that's left now is to turn her back off.

I try to move the cursor over to the power off menu, but I lose control of it.

The cursor takes off, moving of its own accord, running away from the menu.

And I just can't find it in my heart to turn her off, not right now at least.

I close out of File Explorer and look back at the desktop, and through all my games.

Oh my god, I still have Conquest installed on here?

I remember I used to play this all the time, when I was younger. Nostalgia overtakes me, I just have to play it again.

So I load the game up, and it doesn't even take that long. And I start playing. I take my knights, and lead them into battle, and they come out stronger. And I go again, and again.

And I sit there for minutes, many minutes perhaps even a half hour or so. Just playing. Completely forgotten what I'd been doing, and just engrossed in this little moment.

And it wasn't even lagging, or running slow at all, either. She seems almost content. As if having fun. Everything's almost normal, and like they used to be. At least for a while.

But eventually, I mess things up, going into a fight I'm not strong enough to win. My knights all die, and the game is over.

Ah, it's all fine. It was just fun to revisit the game. I'm smiling as I close out of the game. The window doesn't even stutter as it closes.

That was fun.

And then my smile wanes.

Looking at this desktop, full of games.

Old, old games. And old pictures of younger me, and old programs that nobody uses anymore, and old, old everything.

My eye keeps flickering to the power button.

And another message pops up on screen:

Just do it.

Swallowing my pride, with shaky breaths and heavy heart, I reach out my index finger and lay it on her power button.

And press down. And hold it down. Choking her for seconds.

And with a last beep, her eyes close again, and her breathing stops.

For a minute or two, I just stay there, kneeling on the ground. My fingers laying on her.

I'm sorry.

Then I unplug her, pick her up, get back to my feet, and stow her back onto the top of my library.

And that's the end of that.

What was I doing, again?

Oh, right. The site.

I walk back over to my desk, and sit down at my computer.

My new one. My now one.

I type in that password. 'Like A Summer Rose.'

And it lets me in.