[Rerun!] The Deadly Laptop
Hey everyone,
Some of you may already know, but the past seven days or so I have been riddled with covid-like symptoms (multiple RATs returned negative results but who knows 🤷🏻♀️), so as you might imagine I have not really been in the brain space to be writing anything new - to be honest I forgot I even needed to write something! So I’m sorry. But the good news is I’m slowly but surely getting better, so fingers crossed I will be back to normal in time to make something for y’all by next week.
In the mean time, I realise some of you may have never heard of my first short story, The Deadly Laptop, so I wanted to rerun it for those who’ve missed out. I had a really great time putting this together, and the reception at the time I first posted it was pretty warm even though I had a hard time getting many people interested in paying for it. It’s free now, both on Substack and for download on my itch.io page, and people seem to like it! So, dear reader, if you have not checked it out yet, here it is! Enjoy.
Today I wanted to share with you my very first completed (super short) short story. Some of you may have already read it, or even paid for it before I marked it as free on itch.io - to all of you, thank you so much for your support! And to the rest of you who are reading this for the first time, I hope you like it! It took me a couple of hours to bang out and I was really happy with it without too much tinkering. I was not quite so happy with the art I made up for it, but hey, I’m no artist.
This was a lot of fun to write because I knew it was just going to be a bit silly, and I didn’t have any larger plan for it like a lot of the other fiction stuff I am writing. I hope you like reading it as much as I liked writing it!
The Deadly Laptop
by Rebecca E.L. Swift
On the surface, it was a laptop, just like any other laptop. And when you opened it, it still, was just like any other laptop. But when you turned it on, that was when things got scary. The little white light would come on, and the fan and the hard drive would whirr into life, but then for a moment… nothing.
And just when you begin to suspect a hard drive failure, or read error, in an instant, the screen illuminates! Bright, white light streams from the LCD display, almost blinding you. And a loud, high pitched, rapid beeping begins to emanate from the tiny ten-watt speakers in the base of the device. You might gasp at this performance, but before you can, it stops. The screen is now black again. But the little white light still shines in the corner of the power button.
And for a moment… nothing. But then, the Windows XP logo appears. It lingers for but a few moments, while the hard drive platters spin and the read/write arm click-clacks, back and forth, searching, searching for the bits and bytes required to start the archaic operating system. And then, just as you are beginning to lose patience… a cacophony of chimes and compressed notes stream forth from the speakers! The Windows XP Startup Sound! You recoil in horror at the absolute hideousness of the tune, and the desktop icons and taskbar slowly fade into view, just as that awful sound subsides. The cursor flickers, and the little white hourglass appears next to it – and the hourglass turns, and turns, and turns again!
And for a moment… nothing. You touch the trackpad on the front of the laptop with your finger, and you move your finger around, attempting to move the cursor, but it does not move. You click the left mouse button. Nothing. You click the right mouse button. Nothing. You try the trackpad again, and this time, movement! The cursor’s trail lingers behind, as the cursor itself slides gently to the left, and then gently to the right. You move the cursor down to the bottom of the screen, right down, all the way to the taskbar. You locate the icon for Internet Explorer 6.0, you align the cursor with the icon, and then, a single press of the left mouse button. The ancient internet browser springs to life! A gaudy, terrible looking thing. The platters again spin, and the read/write arm again click-clacks, and the homepage begins to load.
And for a moment… nothing. And then suddenly! In the middle of the screen, a small, grey dialogue box appears! And inside it, two buttons – ‘OK’ and ‘Cancel’ – and a question:
‘Would you like to connect to the internet?’
You choose carefully. You move the cursor’s small, pointy form towards the button that says ‘OK’… and you click it. You wait. The dialog box transforms to display a little picture of a computer, and a little picture of the Earth, and a straight, black line between them. You wait. You hear a sharp clack, from somewhere inside the computer’s body, and then a shrill, intense tone like one you have never experienced. A chatter of tones, high and low, mixed with intermittent static, pierces your eardrums inside your head! And then silence. The small, grey dialog box disappears. And then slowly, the homepage begins to load. The MSN logo appears! And then swiftly, other parts of the page begin to form. Microsoft Passport Sign-in button. An ad for AOL blips into view. A link to an MSN exclusive look at some N’Sync songs! And then the rest of the page. You sit, marveling at the obtuseness of the web design, the terrible font, and you wonder why the page has today’s date at the top. Today’s date. Today. 13 December, 1989.
Immediately, fear grips you. You realise, none of what you have just experienced makes any sense. You wonder why you didn’t recognise it sooner. The colour display, the smallness of the device. You check the sides and the back of this infernal computer and realise, there are no cables. There is nothing powering the machine, and no means of connection to the internet. You begin to panic. What is this nightmare? You try to scream but you cannot. You cannot move, you cannot look, you cannot feel! Your head feels as though the world is spinning, and you begin to fall. You fall and you fall and you fall, forever. You die.
~fin~
If you’d like to download a PDF version of this story, you can go do that on my itch.io page for it here. I have plans for making a small interactive version of this story using Twine, but I’ve never used Twine before so that will only happen once I find the time and have the energy to learn it haha. But when that happens, it will also be available on my itch.io page.
Not a lot going on at the moment, just getting ready for the holidays. I will probably take a break from this over the holiday week, but I’m going to try to have stuff scheduled so you’ll still be getting things from me in your inbox that week anyway. I’m really enjoying doing these posts so far, and I hope y’all are enjoying reading them.
So what did you think? As always, feel free to leave a like or comment, or hit me up on the socials down below.
Sorry once again for not having anything substatial this week, but I appreciate you all coming back every week. I hope you all are staying safe out there, staying warm or cool depending on the hemisphere you live in and your preference. Thanks for reading, I’ll talk to you all again soon. Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚
Rebecca