How to Eat Computers
By Sean Garland
Judith
walked into her office one morning and had seen enough; for too long her
co-workers stared deeply into their computer monitors, unaware to the
interworking around them, blinded by bright lights. What her co-workers didn’t
know, or were too oblivious to see, is that computers had taken over the office
and the digital age had ruined the great minds of many. Judith believed that
computers were evil and manufactured to keep human beings from using their
pre-technological skills, such as writing on a piece of paper, long division
and even spreadsheets. Now, she surveyed the office floor while standing on her
computer chair, peering out over all the cubicles surrounding her and realized
that all the hard working minds had actually been sucked into the machinery
itself. She stood on her office chair, peering over the other desks, alone against the machine.
Maybe it was all
the wiring, or typing or exposure to LED lights. Whatever it was, Judith
couldn’t take it anymore and suddenly it clicked.
She
picked up her laptop, held it close to her face and then curled her lips in a
snarl before sinking her teeth and taking a bite into the machine. She pressed
her teeth deep, trying to imagine the taste of metal, mercury and springs as
some kind of poultry dish. She held her bite for a moment, her hands holding
the laptop in place, her face turning red with anger. How do you eat this thing?
She began to
nibble away at the computer’s shell, her teeth scratching and digging against
the structure. She was trying to pierce its skin and looked like a Neanderthal
crunching into its fire roasted beast.
She opened her
desk drawer and pulled out a ruler, then reached her hand inside and dug deep
inside to find a pair of scissors buried beneath a clump of paperclips and
staplers and pens. She used the ruler to wedge between the spacebar and the metal
frame of the machine and began plucking out the keys one by one. She gathered
the keys in a pile and left the spacebar separate. “That’ll be dessert,” she
muttered to herself, “the spacebar. I’ll eat the rest of the keys
alphabetically.”
So she did, and
once she had finished swallowing the Z, she dove both of her large hands into
the computer’s mainframe and began pulling out the hard drive, the circuit
board and any other wires that she deemed edible.
Judith was half
way through her lunch when she went to the staff room to look for something to
wash it all down with. Her boss leaned against the fridge, holding his “Best
Boss in the World” coffee mug, and watched Judith drastically begin to pour
water down her throat.
“Better save
some for the fishes,” said the boss, hiding his cheeky grin by taking a sip. Judith
didn’t laugh. She never laughed at his jokes, and the boss thought it was
because she didn’t like him.
Judith ignored
him and raced back to her desk to finish eating her laptop. The boss watched
Judith hurry back toward her cubicle. Judith was, in his mind, the best and
brightest employee and a real whiz with computers and technology. He was very
fond of her, her brightness, her can-do attitude, her ability to work with
machines, her choice of glasses or how the frames complimented her eyes, but he
had no idea how to tell her that he loved her.
Besides, she’d
probably find it strange that he liked to eat cars.
AUTHOR'S NOTE - This is a postcard story. I do not own the rights to the photograph, but helps tell my story. I found it here: http://www.sandiegopurplecow.org/2012/07/psychological-stress.html
As for the story itself, Copyright of Sean Maxwell Garland, 2012. All rights reserved.
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