So there I was...

Deep in the urban jungle. It had been hours since I had seen another human being, though not for lack of proximity. The cubicle walls seemed to close in around me and cut me off from the rest of the world. My orange speckled mug, the only unique object to designate my cube from the next, shone in the fluorescent lighting, still holding the cold remnants of yesterday's unfinished coffee. The sound of a charging UPC hummed uneasily from somewhere behind me. Over the nearest cubicle wall, the incessant click-whirrrr of a slowly failing hard drive tapped out a steady rhythm: the soundtrack to my meager existence. I wondered if its owner new of the impending doom.

As I sat there, mesmerized by the thought of a year's worth of work lost in one tragic instance, the genial new mail chime from my inbox snapped me back into reality. Crossing my fingers, I clicked on the message, dreaming it was an invitation to drop all my projects to join in on an African safari to collect the venom from a new species of deadly jumping spiders discovered near the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Or perhaps it was an adventure to the Shackleton Antarctic Ice Shelf to assist in retrieving kilometer-deep ice cores to sample the latest change in carbon dioxide deposits. With mounting joy, I read the opening line:

"Brian, I need your help."

My heart beat faster. Maybe this was it. Five years of hoping, every day, after thousands of emails. Maybe this time it would be the real thing.

And then reality came crashing down around me. Simply put, the rest of the email read:

"I need you to generate a new license for me. Please make it for 30 days. Use Unit ID 003048306ADA."

Alas, all I needed to do was generate a meager license file. A text file, a few bytes of data, ironically worth more than my entire college education. I created the file, attached the email, and sent it back to the requestor. Unable to resist the compulsive urge to save every document I generated, I found the text file I had sent, copied the subject line from the email, and clicked "save" from the header menu of the email. The Mac Finder popped up. Ah, the beautiful simplicity of this operating system. I loved it dearly. I navigated to our shared and networked server where I kept all of my data, ensured that the file was properly named and clicked save.

Then, disaster.

My computer tells the rest of the story.

Want more? Contact me at:

Brian.xxxxxxxy@gmail.com

(408) 4xx-xxx4





I actually gave them my contact info. It'd be fun if they responded.