Computers of the dead

The Van always smelled lightly of Mountain Dew and Chinese food. Every bump we hit on the road shook The screws, cables and spare parts that sat in the shelves on either side. There was no radio in the van, it cost extra for that. A small startup needs to cut costs wherever it can. This also explained the lack of A/C, why we had to work on Halloween and why I had an artist friend paint a man with a tri-corner hat holding a laptop with the words "Colonial Computers" along with the number of the company.We only had the one van, but business was getting better so good in fact that today had started at 8:00 A.M and as it passed 5:00 P.M. I was on my way to my last job with the sun starting to set on the right of me.

Clouds moved in from the west and the sky became overcast and then pitch black. Rain started to hit the windshield. Just lightly at first then the sky opened and I might as well of been driving through a lake.

"Mike, Does the GPS on your phone say when we are going to get there?" I asked curiously.

"Five more minutes just turn off on the next road on our right and follow it to the end" Mike said staring at the small glowing phone. Mike was in his early thirties about 5'8 and had a three day beard on his face. His hair was short,but spiked up so that he reminded me of a hedgehog.

"I'm not wearing the three cornered hat dude"Mike said with a hint of frustration. A hand came from the back of the van and grabbed the hat

" I kinda like it, do do do " John said in a sign song voice as he put on the hat. The hat was to bigf or him and rested on his bullhorn glasses, his frizzy curly shoulder length hair spilled out on the sides and back of the hat. Somewhere along the way John had found an old bronze bell with a wooden handle.It had been his toy over the last few weeks, he thought it was fun to ring it to get our attention. He had a fidget spinner for awhile until he had used some canned air to speed it up and the whole thing went flying in pieces all over our office. I prefer the bell (at least no one will lose and eye)

The van reached the end of the dirt road and we pulled into the unpaved driveway. The rain lightened and the sun broke through the clouds just enough to get a look at the place. The house was Gothic and old, it looked like a place that Dracula would summer vacation. Two large spires ran up either side of the roof

" I think that's where Rapunzel used to live" I said as I pointed to one of the spires.

John gave a small chuckle.

"ha... good one" Michael said flatly. Then he gave me a strained smile.

The rain picked up again, still wearing the hat and having the bell in hand John jumped out of the van. Mike followed out into the rain after then gave John a smirk and a shrug as he walked to the door. I reached the porch and wiped some of the rain off my face pushing the guys out of my way.

I made the biggest fake smile I could and turned to Mike and John.

"let me show you how it's done guys"

It was one of those big brass knockers with a face on it like you would see in at scrooge's house.I could hear a voice from the other side of the door say"hold on,be right there". I could hear footsteps on the other side and the unlatching of the door, I could feel the rain and the wind pressing against me as we waited. The sound of a bell chiming every few seconds. I turned to John looked at the bell then at his eyes and mouthed "put it away" just as the door opened the bell stopped.

There stood a man, only a little shorter than Mike with thinning white hair. He wasn't tall, but he was bulky. You could see a strong frame with a small gut hiding under the light blue cover-alls with the name Jim embroidered on them in white lettering.

"Hi, I am Troy from Colonial Computers. My co-workers and I are here to work on the issues you called about. " I said in my most professional voice.

The man smiled and looked me up and down

"Hi, I am Jim." He said as he pointed to the name tag.

"Thanks for coming all the way out here tonight. I have some things to do in town before the store closes so I'm in a little bit of a hurry tonight."

He then pulled out some very nicely hand drawn maps with each floor and each room. It looked like this place was three floors and two spare rooms one in each spire.

"This place is amaze, so I drew this up for myself years ago. I marked with little X's where the trouble is." Jim explained.

"do you know how long you will be?" Jim asked.

I shrugged and replied " I won't really know until we take a look at the equipment."

Jim just nodded and made a gesture to signal us to come in.

"I'll Give you the fifty cent tour, then I got to run like a rabbit"

We walked in a line following Jim walking through a hallway with hardwood floors and wood paneling. I pointed to one of the paintings on the wall with a young man in his twenties wearing a top hat, ascot, vest and a black coat with tails that went down to his knees.

"That you?" I asked with a smile.

Jim laughed "probably a forgotten tenant, the house is pretty old, I can't even keep track of all the previous owners"

The hallway was long dotted with doors every few feet and old oil paintings lining the walls. We wanted to stop and ask about each one, but Jim wouldn't break pace. As we walked by closed doors Jim would simply tap the door and shout "study room!, parlor room!, bathroom!, kitchen!,guest bedroom!"

The hall ended in large double doors that reached from the floor to the ceiling.

"And this.... is the living room"

The doors swung open and I could see dust brush up and float around the room. This room looked more like a large studio apartment. There was a large flat screen in the corner with a wrap around couch circled around it. Surround sound speakers were mounted in the walls.

"Excuse the mess,its just temporary. I'm staying here for a few weeks while my place gets sprayed for bugs "

At the far end of the room was a small stair case Jim pointed at them"those stairs will take you to the second floor, everything should be marked on the map. I should be back in about an hour, you guys all set?" I nodded and Jim grabbed an old blue bag from beside the couch slung it over his shoulder and began to leave "good luck boys"

I looked over the map " Okay, looks like the first computer is down here in the study, John you take that one, Mike the second one is in the library on the second floor that's yours and I will take the one in the spire. If you get whatever is wrong fixed come check with me and we will go from there"

John looked intently on his map " Okay! Sounds great!" He then stared at the map as he walked back into the hallway I could hear him counting doors until he found the right one then he rang that stupid bell and Shouted "Found it!"

"No bell!" I shouted back as the door closed behind him.

"Let's get this thing done," I muttered as I eyed the stairs.

"Let's get this thing done," Mike echoed mockingly a few feet behind me.

The stairs creaked.They were built at to much of an incline and with no railing, making every step something that needed to be negotiated carefully.

Putting us both a little more off balance than I would like to be.

" Careful don't fall " Mike joked as he pulled on my shoulder.

At the top of the stairs on the right was another finely crafted door with the words "library" written on a small plaque above its frame.

"This is your stop smart ass, good luck" I said in a half joking half irritated voice.

"Thank god!"Michael said as he rolled his eyes and disappeared behind the door.

I continued on my own, walking the hallway in silence. At the end of the hallway was a small spiral staircase half hidden by a bookcase that someone had placed in the way.

Squeezing between the door frame and the case I made it up the stairs and through an abnormally small door that I had to duck through. The door opened to a medium sized circular shaped room. The lights were already on and I could see a single bed with a nightstand sitting in the middle of the room with a wing-back chair facing out towards the only window in the room. Looking out the windows I could barely see the outline of our van in the driveway. On the chair I found a laptop. Turn's off randomly was written on a sticky note attached to the top. The power cord was plugged into the side.

Pressing the power button, the laptop came to life and I could feel the machine vibrates lightly as the hard drive began to spin up. It took about a minute before it got to the logon screen, The username Master was displayed and waiting for a password. I wasn't given a password, it's funny the things you forget to ask. I guessed at a couple different passwords, but nothing seemed to work.

"He couldn't of at least brought it downstairs and saved me the walking" I mumbled to myself.

I eventually became frustrated and decided to sneak a cigarette out the window. AsI stood there blowing smoke out into the darkness and watching it get pushed around by the wind until it was out of site I heard a loud click then the sound of the hard drive coming to a stop. I looked back and saw the screen now was black. I threw what remained of the cigarette out of the window and picked up the laptop. It was hot, way to hot. I brought the computer over to the bed and flipped it over.With a small pen screwdriver I keep in my pocket I removed the bottom of the laptop and began to look around. It wasn't long before I had found and removed a clump of dust and other garbage the fan had pulled in over the years. That was most likely causing the overheating, so I turned the box back on and let it sit while I had a celebratory cigarette.

I stared at the Laptop Watching the hard drive light flash a bright blue. Then I Saw another light just below it start to flash orange. Shutting the window I walked to the laptop and sat back on the bed to inspect the Orange light. It was the CD-ROM spinning away reading a CD that I hadn't realized was in there. I ejected the CD and found it had no markings or labels on it. The Disk was far warmer that I thought it would be, almost as if was generating it's own heat. I held it under the light to see how much had been written on it, Following the mark's left from being burned I could see it was almost completely full. There was something strange about holding the CD. It still felt warmer and heavier then is should, like it was made of iron and not cheap plastic. For a moment I thought I saw a silhouette in the sheen of the disk. Just the outline of a man. I blinked my eyes, and it was gone. Probably just my mind playing tricks, it tends to do that when your all alone in a strange place.

A chill came over me and I had an urge to try and bend it just slightly, just to see How flexible it was. I bent it back and forth a couple times trying to get a feel for it. I wanted to bend it a little more, then a little more. An urge to snap it in half was growing, I actually started to feel afraid of this disk and that fear gradually turned to anger. I stared down at my reflection in it's shiny surface, a different face stared back at me. The face had slicked back hair parted to one side with a much larger and pointier nose than my own with a combination of large mutton chops and a mustache for facial hair.

I threw the disk Out of surprise and instinct, Just trying to get as much space between me and it that I could. It hit the Wing-back chair and only made a small thud as it came to rest on the cushion. The fear and anger drained out as quickly as it had come on. Soon I was feeling normal again, Leaving the disk where it landed. I decided That I should probably grab the laptop and go find the guys.

Making my way back to the second floor I entered the library. It was cold, that kind of cold when you leave the windows open in the late fall I could feel it biting at my nose. There were books everywhere stacked against walls all the way to the ceiling, on shelves that lined the room. I ran my hands over the leather bound volumes and touched the embossed lettering on there spines. some with just an authors name written in gold lettering. On the opposite wall I could see an old Tan colored desktop with a CRT Monitor already fired up and glowing, but no sign of Mike. I walked over to the antique PC, sat in the folding chair in front of it and found a sticky note that read possessed

The computer was running Windows 98 and already logged in. Possessed isn't a very good technical description of an issue so I checked how long the computer had been running. Under system tools there is Device info it showed the computer had been running 175200 hours. I decided to give it aquick reboot. Strange issues of all kinds including "possessions"are usually fixed with a reboot and should be the first thing you do.The computer clicked off for the reboot and for a brief moment enjoying the silence was the only thing I was concerned with. Leaning back with my eyes closed I listened to the computer gently click back on and begin to hum. After a a few minutes I heard the windows starting music and figured I had another minute before it was ready.

I felt a hand slap down on my shoulder

"Wake up Bro, you sleeping!...Bro!"

I will admit it was Not the most manly scream that came out of my mouth. I tripped over the chair and it landed with a metallic clang . I made three full strides toward a book shelf before the voice registered and I knew the laughter was Mike.

"I thought you were working on this, where did you go?" I said, trying remove any fright from my voice.

Mike explained."I had a quick phone call I had to make, the phones don't work in the house. I had to go outside"

"Did you check on John?" I asked.

"No I figured he will come get us if he needs help, I did hear that bell when I went by though. So he's probably fine"

" I was in the spire and..." I stopped myself and ran through the different scenarios of telling him what happened upstairs, all of them ended in mocking so I decided to forget it for now.

"And..." Mike Repeated.

"and it's all set. Lets get working on this thing so we can get out of here"

I glanced over at the PC, it was set to auto log in and was ready to go, so I decided to get back to the troubleshooting.

"Did you see the note it just says Possessed? It had been running for ...awhile so I rebooted it"

"How do we troubleshoot possessed?" Mike asked.

Staring up at the ceiling, I took a deep breath and paused before I spoke.

"I think all we can do is make sure things run other than that we need to ask Jim what he means when he gets back"

We spent a little time staring at the dated Icons and smelling that old musty aged motherboard smell computers get.

"Whens the last Time you saw a connect to the internet Icon, I wonder if it has any free hours of AOL left" Mike said sarcastically

We dug through the computer and took a few notes. We found the computers name was Joan,it had 128 MB in ram, and the hard drive was a whopping 300 MB. The only user was that Master account again. Somebody has an ego or they don't like using there real name for whatever reason.

There really wasn't much else we could do, we were out of ideas. We opened Paint and drew a few circles played with auto-fill and joked about how ancient the thing felt. I found another window on the far side behind one of the stacks and decided to have another smoke. The rain had picked up again and I could feel the breeze blowing the water in sprays onto my out stretched hand. I threw the stub out the window and watched the glowing ember fall then die out in a puddle. Shutting the window I walked back to the computer. Mike was staring at his phone and had lost any interest in the ancient relic that sat there.

I went to the screen to close the paint program when I noticed there was a new icon in the desktop. It was a picture in .BMP format titled Go_Away_Or_Else. I opened the file in Paint and a very rough black and white of myself and Mike in front of the PC appeared our faces were pixelated and our eyes were covered in dark shadow.

"Mike You playing a prank or something?"

He looked up and with a confused look said "No, Why?"

I pointed to the picture and Mike looked it up and down.

"What is that?"Mike asked

I expanded the Picture and zoomed in behind us. You could see a small shadow with what looked like bright white eyes hovering over our shoulders. The screen dimmed and the program closed it self. The file wasn't on the desktop anymore. Notepad opened by itself and Go away was written slowly across the screen. A book fell from a shelf a few feet away, then another, then another.

"I think it's the network," Mike said as a book landed beside his foot.

I looked Mike inthe eye," We need an exorcist with holy water and not anti-virus"

large leather bound books Books were flying at us. An entire section of large green Oxford dictionaries flew off the shelf and hit me in the chest. the lights began to flicker with audible clicking, the sound of electricity surging to the lights then being cut off was almost as unsettling as the books hitting the ground. The screen had become very bright and turned to a deep red filling the room with an ominous light.

Mike grabbed the power plug from the computer and ripped it from the wall. Everything went dark. Silence came again and books were no longer falling. We sat there in the dark for a moment I could hear him breathing heavily, I am sure my breath was labored as well. The lights came back on and without words we walked towards the door. We were a few steps from the door as Mike's cellphone played a chime and he quickly pulled it out to look at it. He froze for a second then showed me the phone. The locked screen had changed to a picture of the shadow with white eyes with the word OUT printed across the bottom in big red text. Just as we reached the door, a wall of books fell with aloud crash that shook the floor and the door shut violently behind Us.

"You OK?" I asked, looking Mike up and down.

"Yeah, I'm shutting my phone off for a little while though," he replied

There was a new feeling in the air, like we were being watched. That feeling that makes you walk a little more cautious and your mind starts playing tricks on you seeing, faces in shadows, and straining to hear imaginary footsteps. We made our way back down the stairs and into Jim's quarter's. I pulled out my map and tried to decipher which room John was in. We walked the hallway counting doors until we found which one he was behind. We opened the study to find a single floor lamp placed closely beside a desk with a computer screen behind it illuminating the chair it was facing. The room was dark and only litby the one lamp.

I said "John! You here? .. John!" no response.

Walking over to the computer I could see that this was newer and top of the line. It had some strange cooling system, and no visible cables connecting it to the monitor. Just sitting to the right of the keyboard there was a little yellow sticky note. The note read time not correct. Looking over the desktop I could see this was some strange version of Windows. The icons seemed to come off the screen as if you could touch them and the computer seemed to be giving off a pleasant smell of Freshly baked bread and bacon, it was calming and made me forget our current situation. The mouse and keyboard were shaped strangely.The mouse had two points on top that resembled cats ears and short strands of fiber optic that looked like whiskers. the keyboard was a sphere with keys wrapped around it in a strange pattern. It took a few minutes, but I got the hang of using them. The time was wrong though, it said it was 2078. So that's only 60 years off, not to bad.The time being off can effect applications that use the internet because they disagree on the time they won't communicate properly.

I forgot about our missing friend for a moment, writing it off that he was probably in the Van getting a normal keyboard. The smell had turned to fresh cut grass and the mouse was heated. I eventually found how to change the time. It was a little convoluted and backwards, but that's just how Windows is anytime they upgrade. As I was about to click the sync button I heard the bell John was carrying, it sounded like it had fallen to the floor.

"no" I could hear in a soft weak voice.

I tilted the lamp With one hand and pointed the light into the darkness where I thought the bell and voice had sounded from. An old man with white hair and a bell near his feet was curled up in a ball in the corner. He was wearing John's clothes and looked like John and ... I think it is John.

"John is that you? What happened?" I asked

in a weak old voice John said " I clicked sync time and it did just that, it synced me to the year 2078"

John bowed his head and went back to sleep.

Mike ran to John and tried to wake him up

"He's barely breathing," Mike shouted.

I returned to the computer and manually set the date back to 2018. John didn't seem any better. The sync button was grayed out so I was out of ideas.

"I don't know what to do, I need help!" I said loudly.

The computer made atone and the face of a 20 year old woman appeared colored in bright blue

" Hi, I'm Cortana how can I help you?"

"The clock isn't right I need it synced to 2018!"

"Hmm.. it looks like its a known issue would you like me to install updates?"Cortana Replied.

"Yesss please!"

"This may require a reboot after install" Cortana said calmly

"Yes go go go! please"

A small circle appeared and spun for what felt like hours even though it was probably only a few minutes.

"Install complete reboot now?"

"Yes, thank you!"I said abruptly

The computer flashed a few times then turned off. I turned to look at Mike and John and accidentally knocked over the lamp. With a bright blue flash the light broke against the floor. We sat there for a moment in the dark, until the screen came back on. Once it was done installing the screen opened to the desktop in seconds. It displayed the right time.

I turned to where I guessed they were still sitting and said"Hey Mike you have a flashlight app right? Can you turn it on I kinda broke the lamp"

I heard a grunt then saw a small glow in the corner followed by the flashlight being turned on. Mike seemed normal and he pointed the light towards John who had returned to his normal age, although he was still fast asleep. I grabbed the bell off the floor and put it in my pocket.Mike and I each put one arm on him and carried him into the hallway.The laptop in one arm and John in the other.

John started moving on his own once we were halfway down the hallway. A few more steps and he was walking on his own. A little shaken and confused but unharmed.

Looking left to right I stated"We have all our stuff right? Lets get to the van and The hell out of here"

I left the laptop on a small table in the entryway and we got out of the front door in no time. The rain was still coming down worse than before and we had to navigate to the van with Mike's cell phone light but we made it.

I had started the van and was about to leave when we noticed a small lamp coming up the driveway. I lit another smoke and decided to wait a moment. It was Jim. He walked right up to the van and knocked on my window.

"You guys all set?" he said half chuckling with a big smile

"Yeah, kinda. I mean they're fixed, except the library computer. It's going to need more attention later"I said as I handed him the laptop.

Jim Smiled "Yeah we might just throw that one out it is getting pretty old, so good enough. Why don't you guys come in real quick and I will cut you a check"

"We're kinda tired you can just mail it to us and we can settle up later," I said trying to sound professional.

"I'll just run in real quick and bring it out to you boys, be right back"

Jim walked up the stairs and disappeared into the house. I looked at the time. It was a few minutes until midnight I was wiped and it was a long drive home.I smoked another cigarette and watched the clock tick over to midnight. I closed my eyes for a moment and just relaxed.

I must of dozed off for a few minutes, or a few hours. All I know is when I woke up it was 8 A.M. The sun was shining brightly. John asleep in the back and Mike snoring in the passenger seat. My eyes focused and I could even see a few of the cigarette butts I had thrown out through the windows now floating in a couple nearby puddles. Walking to the door I knocked to Make sure nothing happened to Jim after I had fallen asleep. No answer... deciding it was time to head back home I turned on my heels and walked back to the van. I was about to open the door when a BMW came flying up the driveway. Out popped a tall man in a suit.

"Sorry guys I completely forgot you were coming last night. You want to come in now we can fix those computers and you can be on your way"

Casually I said "It's ok Your grounds keeper let us in last night. Jim he helped us get started, He went to grab our check and never came out"

The man looked puzzled and then a little concerned then said "Jim? There is no Jim and no groundskeeper. To my knowledge, but if you got it done great!"

The tall man then pulled out a bill fold and handed us $400

"Great job guys,thank you"

I smiled calmly"You're welcome sir have a good day"

We slowly backed out and began our long trip home I rolled down my window and lit a smoke.

The trip back was quite with few words spoken John was still asleep and Mike had found the bell he rang it loudly once before I grabbed it from his hand and threw it out the window.

"Stupid Bell"

The End