Tales from cyberspace

Slowly without thinking, I have become married to my computer operating system. There are only six degrees of separation between Microsoft and all the other faceless corporations I am married too. I submit blindly to those corporations because they provide ‘essential services’. Now your business depends on the reliable functioning of the computer operating system so that is an ‘essential service’.

Microsoft is my gateway to cyberspace, they bill the gates, so to speak, and, after you become used to it, you go through those gates fearlessly, as if they were the gates to your own house.

Of course, you don’t have to pay when you pass through the gates of your own house, or I hope you don’t. Over the gates of your house, there is no inscription, or if there is, it’s usually your name.

The gates of Microsoft are more like the gates of hell, over which it says, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’


And you do, abandon hope, that is.

I have accepted all of this with weary resignation. When the operating system disintegrated the first time, I wanted to believe that it was an accident. I resurrected the station, and no sooner was I finished, when the operating system self-destroyed again. This time, I suspected something structurally wrong in the very gut of the giant. Losing your operating system is tragic; you feel alone in the world, just a flesh critter with no cyber-connections. It becomes an emergency.

I called Microsoft and wandered through Voice Mail Hell until Karl answered.
He admitted that there were problems.
‘What happens?’ I ask.
‘It gets corrupted,’ said Karl sternly, as if that ‘it’ had somehow been my fault.
I like to get precise answers from people that work in the field of technology; I am not holding a séance. I guess, I believe, could be and it’s are not terms associated with a straight forward subject.
‘What do you mean ‘it’? ‘It’ must be some flaw in the operating system.
Karl’s voice really hardened now: ‘There is no flaw in the Microsoft operating system!’ he answered officially, ‘It’ just corrupted, that’s all.’
‘Karl’, I said, ‘I do not want to spend every month diddling with the operating systems. There has to be a better way.’
Karl snickered; he has a sense of humor, and said, ‘I guess so!’
I guess, from Microsoft is not reassuring.
‘Karl, just tell me how does the Microsoft operating system become corrupted?’
Microsoft Karl ask if I would like to speak to a supervisor.
I hung up and found a better way.
I got divorced, and now live in sin with another operating system.
‘IT’ NO LONGER GETS CORRUPTED!