Life on the Lam

*Sigh* It's happened . . . again.

Yesterday, I sat down with my laptop - yes, the very same Gateway laptop that, having made four trips to the service centre in the past month and a half, was returned and certified to be 100% healthy and psychologically well-adjusted - to get some work done. And, for an hour or so, things proceeded just fine. I was in the groove, tapping away on the keys, my thoughts flowing out and magically being transformed into letters, sentences, and paragraphs.

But then, the laptop thought it fit to interrupt me and deliver this message: "You may have a counterfeit version of Windows."

Um, what? The only version of Windows on the machine was the one it came installed with . . . and which has, as of last count, been reinstalled four times now.

Call me jaded, but I couldn't help but have a bad feeling about that message . . .

I looked at the laptop. The laptop looked at me. Neither of us did anything for a pregnant moment, laden with a profound anticipation, that seemed to drag on for an eternity.

The message disappeared, fading slowly into a digital nothingness, leaving me staring at the block of text I'd just entered. Being of Irish descent, with some German and Russian thrown in just to make for interesting family reunions, and therefore by definition not being very bright, I blinked, then resumed working. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Of course, rumour has it that's exactly what the Captain of Titanic had to say when informed of all the ice floating around, but I digress.

For the next half hour or so, everything was still just aces. Despite the hiccup, I was still in the zone, cruising on auto-pilot, the words and thoughts flowing inexorably from brain to electronic page like a mighty river in full flood. But then, apropos of nothing, the laptop interrupted me for a second time, delivering this message: "The activation code you have entered for Windows is invalid."

But, wait. I hadn't entered an activation code for Windows. I hadn't even tried to enter any such code. What in the world is going on here? Then it hit me.

R'uh r'oh. I'd seen this message before. Right before the first time the laptop's hard drive had decided to commit suicide. Taking with it, of course, everything I'd been working on and everything else that was on the hard drive, as well as dumping the OS itself.

Nah. Couldn't be. Not again. Not for the fourth time. I mean, this was a brand new hard drive, albeit proceeded by three other brand new hard drives and one brand new motherboard. The Muses couldn't hate me that much, could they?

Well, apparently they can. Within seconds, the laptop presented me with the proverbial Bronx Cheer. In a blaze of glory, the hard drive departed this vale of tears and moved on to whatever digital Elysium it is that such things go to when they pass on. Disbelieving, I watched everything I'd just done move irretrievably past my recall, an electronic diaspora dispersing itself forever.

Everybody, I guess, wants to be a critic.

I'm starting to get a complex, here. It's as if the laptop is commenting on my writing in the only method it feels is open to it, by killing itself. Words, it seems, really can kill . . .

Which would, I suppose, in turn make me a serial killer. After all, I have now apparently committed cybercide five times now. Which leaves me wondering if I should be worried about the FBI kicking in my door in the middle of the night, to haul me away for Crimes Against Computers. I'm afraid to go into the local Post Office, lest I see a poster on the wall with my picture on it . . . and, given my luck, the picture they would find to use would be one of those really unflattering ones that seems to haunt all of us in High School.

I'll admit to some trepidation when I walked into the local Best Buy to yet again deliver the mortal remains of my laptop into the hands of the Geek Squad. It felt as if every computer in the store was staring at me, pointing and chanting Killer! Killer! Killer! I do believe that, had they been able, those computers would have grabbed a rope and strung me up from the nearest display.

I felt the need to explain that it wasn't my fault, that I really wasn't persecuting this poor laptop or trying to launch a campaign of computer extermination. But what cyber jury would believe me after five episodes of laptop death, what mercy could I possibly find in the cold logic of the machines?

On the other hand, I could just be overreacting to the whole thing in a kind of anthropomorphism run wild. It may just be that this laptop that keeps exiting the world in the most dramatic fashion it can think of is just a worthless piece of junk, and Gateway a company that no one should ever buy a computer from. That, I suppose, is possible too.

I must also admit, however, that there is a part of me that just can't help being intrigued by what the laptop is going to pull next. We'll see, I suppose, if and when it returns from its next sojourn in the repair centre.

But if worse comes to worst . . . If you ever see a man in an electronics store, with a hunted look as he warily moves through the aisles, constantly checking over his shoulder as he passes through a sea of hostile computers, don't worry. That's just me, and I'm mostly harmless . . .