Now why did the company insist on giving me a new laptop? My old one was perfectly fine. Sure, it was held together with duct tape, but it still worked and that duct taped laptop had survived so many work trips. But no. "We need to present a certain image, Gemma." "We need to look professional, Gemma." "No one will take you seriously with that, Gemma." And now I have this newfangled laptop and nothing is where it's supposed to be. I have to set up all of my icons again, I have to teach word all of my typos again. And I have to figure out how to use the webcam again.
Everything is different on this goofy laptop. Like, even the keyboard. My hands had gotten all adjusted to the spacing on my keyboard but nooo, I need to type on a new keyboard that is "more efficient," "sleeker," and "better for my wrists." But right now I just keep hitting the wrong keys and making so many typos.
Huh. What's this key?
I stare at my keyboard and see a key I don't recognize. Of course, new laptops have new, dumb features that seem cool, but no one will actually use. The key looks like a little sun made of squiggles. It wasn't the brightness key, that was certain. At least that key still looked the same.
I looked around my keyboard and didn't see anything else amiss. I still had all the normal keys and this squiggle sun seemed like the only one that was different.
Here goes nothing. I press the key and nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. These new features are so slight that I can't even notice them. I sigh heavily and then open up the story I was working on. Might as well get some work done on this dumb thing before I have to go to bed.
But the story was already finished. I didn't finish this, did I? I hadn't been sleeping much lately because I was covering the drug trade at night clubs which meant I was out at all hours and then trying to write my thoughts before I went to bed so I didn't forget anything and then still having to make staff meetings at 9am. I would've remembered if I'd finished the story...right?
I read through the story and the beginning was certainly my work, but the rest wasn't anything I could remember writing. Although, it did read like my work. If you handed this to any of the few people who read me enough to know my style, they'd swear up and down that I wrote this.
Could this have been the button? No, that's crazy. Regardless of what finished the story though, I decided to send it in to my editor. He was going to flip that I was a whole day early.
My editor wrote back before long and told me the story was great. Maybe the button IS magic. Maybe it will finish all of my stories for me.
I started on my next story, this one a fluff piece about a local dog show. This one had been fun, and far less tiring to research. But still...I wanted to see if the button worked. I wrote most of the piece and then hit the squiggle sun.
Nothing.
I spent the next few days, trying to get the squiggle sun to work again. Surely there was some sequence that made it finish my work. I had to finish the dog show piece on my own, but I had other assignments that it I tried to make it help with. I turned my laptop off after drafting and then hit the squiggle sun.
Nothing.
I tried hitting the squiggle sun at the exact same time as I had before.
Nothing.
I tried hitting it without looking at it.
Nothing.
Finally, I gave up.
At the next staff meeting I was at, I relayed part of the story, but only the part where I didn't know what the button did, to my co-worker Spencer.
Spencer looked at me like I was crazy and then said, "You know, it just turns on a light in front of your laptop, right? So you can use it as like a flashlight?"
I laughed like I had been trying to play a trick on him because of course I didn't think it wrote my story for me that I must have finished while very sleep-deprived, that would be silly. And of course I didn't miss it lighting things up.
Dumb, newfangled nonsense.
(Prompt by me)
Image by Lovelac7.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PET_Keyboard.svg
Everything is different on this goofy laptop. Like, even the keyboard. My hands had gotten all adjusted to the spacing on my keyboard but nooo, I need to type on a new keyboard that is "more efficient," "sleeker," and "better for my wrists." But right now I just keep hitting the wrong keys and making so many typos.
Huh. What's this key?
I stare at my keyboard and see a key I don't recognize. Of course, new laptops have new, dumb features that seem cool, but no one will actually use. The key looks like a little sun made of squiggles. It wasn't the brightness key, that was certain. At least that key still looked the same.
I looked around my keyboard and didn't see anything else amiss. I still had all the normal keys and this squiggle sun seemed like the only one that was different.
Here goes nothing. I press the key and nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. These new features are so slight that I can't even notice them. I sigh heavily and then open up the story I was working on. Might as well get some work done on this dumb thing before I have to go to bed.
But the story was already finished. I didn't finish this, did I? I hadn't been sleeping much lately because I was covering the drug trade at night clubs which meant I was out at all hours and then trying to write my thoughts before I went to bed so I didn't forget anything and then still having to make staff meetings at 9am. I would've remembered if I'd finished the story...right?
I read through the story and the beginning was certainly my work, but the rest wasn't anything I could remember writing. Although, it did read like my work. If you handed this to any of the few people who read me enough to know my style, they'd swear up and down that I wrote this.
Could this have been the button? No, that's crazy. Regardless of what finished the story though, I decided to send it in to my editor. He was going to flip that I was a whole day early.
My editor wrote back before long and told me the story was great. Maybe the button IS magic. Maybe it will finish all of my stories for me.
I started on my next story, this one a fluff piece about a local dog show. This one had been fun, and far less tiring to research. But still...I wanted to see if the button worked. I wrote most of the piece and then hit the squiggle sun.
Nothing.
I spent the next few days, trying to get the squiggle sun to work again. Surely there was some sequence that made it finish my work. I had to finish the dog show piece on my own, but I had other assignments that it I tried to make it help with. I turned my laptop off after drafting and then hit the squiggle sun.
Nothing.
I tried hitting the squiggle sun at the exact same time as I had before.
Nothing.
I tried hitting it without looking at it.
Nothing.
Finally, I gave up.
At the next staff meeting I was at, I relayed part of the story, but only the part where I didn't know what the button did, to my co-worker Spencer.
Spencer looked at me like I was crazy and then said, "You know, it just turns on a light in front of your laptop, right? So you can use it as like a flashlight?"
I laughed like I had been trying to play a trick on him because of course I didn't think it wrote my story for me that I must have finished while very sleep-deprived, that would be silly. And of course I didn't miss it lighting things up.
Dumb, newfangled nonsense.
(Prompt by me)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PET_Keyboard.svg
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