Once upon a time there was a very wealthy and moderately cunning woman, and with traits such as those it was not too surprising to hear that she was fairly happy, too.
But none of those things protects from age. The time came – the times.
The time where her breath caught in her chest as she jogged.
The time where her favourite hot sauce caused great violence to her digestive tract.
The time where she saw ads for movies and realized she didn’t know what the young people these days were thinking.
With theses signs and more she knew her old age was upon her, and she shivered in the greedy fear the wealthy have for mortality. But she was resourceful, and she had learned many secrets in her youth when her brain was still flexible. So on a late and stormy Thursday night she retired to her office and did a terrible thing, sealing all that was essential to her essence
Inside a file.
Inside a folder.
Inside a flash drive.
Plugged in all alone and hidden within a dusty old discarded laptop.
Some people are said to ‘age well.’ From then on, the old woman aged TERRIBLY. She had no knack for it. Her spine remained furiously straight. Her eyes stayed bright and sharp. She even still had all her own teeth. The other elderly pitied her for it, but she was too wealthy and cunning to see their point and just laughed at them.
Laughter is the best medicine. But only for humans. The old woman’s house still needed fixing, her cars still needed cleaning, and her mice needed murdering. Hired help was her only company, and she detested it, especially when it intruded upon her personal belongings (which, in her heart of hearts, she considered to be everything). And thus she was most frustrated when one bright and sunny Monday she clicked on a pop-up by mistake and immediately sent her entire work computer straight to hell.
“Piiiiissssss” she intoned, gravely. She pulled out her phone and dialed a number.
“Hi! Roverandom Computers. How can we help you?”
“I clicked on a pop-up,” she told them.
“Oh piiiiissssss” said the service rep. “We’ll send a crack squad.”
“How many?”
“Just Jillian. But she’s extremely crack.”
Jillian was extremely crack. She cracked down the road cracked through the door and cracked open the computer within thirty-five minutes, before cracking open the skull of the virus and cracking it out of all the registers. The old woman’s ears hurt from all the cracking.
“There you are, good as new,” said Jillian. “By the way I repaired your hard drive updated your drivers secured your passwords restocked your toilet paper changed out your toothpaste and cleaned your stove.”
“Wonderful,” said the old woman, with the fakest smile you could possible have with real teeth. “Thank you so much. Maybe you should start going away now.”
“I guess so,” said Jillian with a sigh. “I’ve cracked down on just about every bit of electronics I can see.” But then she brightened up. “Oh! What’s that in the corner of the study under a pile of papers inside a box inside a locked safe with an insecure password?”
“Oh no, no, no” said the old woman. “That’s just a dusty discarded laptop. It’s of no use to anyone anyhow, I can’t afford a repair, not even sure it turns on, I only keep it as a momento of my late husband, etc, etc, etc anyways you’d better leave hurry up shoo shoo out the door with you.”
“Oh no ma’am,” said the technician with deep sincerity “it’s no trouble or cost – it looks like you just had a bad power cable. I’ll just swap this out and it should be fine. I’d feel terrible leaving you out here with a little problem like that.”
The old woman considered this, and her mind whirred and hissed. “Certainly, oh thank you, thank you, thank you. But there’s just one little thing I really need from there: could you please check inside a file, inside a folder, inside the flash drive, inside that dusty discarded laptop? It was some adorable pictures of my late husband’s adorable dog and they’re all I truly need from this machine intact.”
“Not a problem at all,” said the technician.
So Jillian turned on the computer, and activated the flash drive, and opened the folder, and opened the file, and screamed very horribly as her eyes were boiled straight out of her skull and the old woman cackled fit to shake the sky.
Some time later, an impoverished grad student was wandering through the streets of the city.
“Buy a hot dog!” someone yelled at her.
“Vegetarian,” she said.
“Buy a falafel!”
“I’m full.”
“Get a haircut!”
“Growing it out.”
“Spare five bucks?”
“Sure, thing, Jillian.” Then the impoverished grad student did a double take. “Wait. What are you doing here, sis?”
“Getting change,” said Jillian. “I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“What the hell happened to YOU?”
“My eyes were boiled out of my head on witnessing a sight unfit for mortal minds and my company were cheap dicks about healthcare,” said Jillian.
“That sucks,” said Janet. “Is there anything I can do about that?”
“Well, you could find and fix the biscuits of the person that did this to me,” said Jillian. “But be careful! She’s very old, but she’s spry and unaging, unbent by time. She has some sort of secret power, and she never cleans out the damned fans. Dust everywhere – disgusting.”
“All I need is an address,” said Janet.
And she got it.
The house was vast, the doorbell loud, the creak of the door vast and sinister.
“Yesssss?” inquired the old woman who answered it.
“Door hinge oiler technician third class grade A, reporting for duty,” said Janet.
“I don’t recall making an appointment,” said the old woman.
“Ah, you said you’d say that. Here’s your note.”
The old woman looked at the note. It read: I need my door hinges oiled and I am going to forget I needed this.
“Well, that makes sense,” she said begrudgingly. “But keep it quick! I have a lot of incredibly important things that require very little effort to do.”
“Absolutely,” said Janet.
Door to door to door to door she went, around and around the house, haunted and hunted by the old woman, who peered around corners and brooded from the shadows and tapped her finger on the bannisters as she studied and nosed and judged.
But neither saw anything, and both grew frustrated.
“Perhaps you should take a break” said the old woman just as Janet loudly said “well I just need to take a break” and then they both paused and waited for the other to say something and got very confused.
“Glass of water?” asked Janet.
“Kitchen’s down the hall and to the right,” said the old woman.
“Left,” said Janet. “Got it.” And then she beat it before the old woman could disentangle herself.
Left was right where Jillian had said it was. A dusty room full of papers and piles and garbage and a big old safe.
“This is not the kitchen,” said the old woman, huffing and puffing her way up to the door.
“Yeah but I need to oil the hinges on this safe,” said Jillian, who had already crowbarred the door off it. “And look! You’ve got a mangy old laptop just rusting away in here! Boy, I’d better oil this too. You need to take better care of your stuff, geezer.”
The old woman’s eyes were filled with the nightshine of eternal hatred by now, but her malice made her predictable. “Oh, I really should,” she pouted, wringing her hands, “I really should indeed, oh dear, oh no. But there’s one more thing in there I wish you could help me with…”
“Yes?”
“…could you see your way to oiling one more thing? There’s a file, inside a folder, inside a flash drive, inside that computer, and it’s very rusty by now. Just pop it open and take A GOOD LOOK AT IT if that’s alright. Please. Now.”
“Not a problem at all,” said Janet.
So Jillian turned on the computer, and activated the flash drive, and opened the folder, and opened the file, and stared.
“Yes?” said the old woman.
Jillian stared.
“Well?” demanded the old woman.
Jillian stared.
“Aren’t you going to say ANYTHING?” said the old woman.
“Give me a second,” said Jillian. “It’s really hard to read anything through these super dark contacts. Oh! There it is!”
And she clicked the button marked ‘delete,’ and the old woman’s search history was sucked into the great digital void and was gone forever.
All beings have a thing that holds them to themselves, and to the world. Tenacity, sourced from something. Family, friends, cussedness, and so on. Eventually the body frays and can’t keep up with it anymore, unless the chain is stronger than any fleshly reckoning.
In the case of the old woman, a well of the deepest and most secretive shame and anxiety had rooted her to mortality beyond all reason, and with its removal she had only two options: scream and evaporate.
She took both.
Janet, by contrast, just took whatever wasn’t nailed down. Between her and Jillian they made enough money to retire early, live thriftily, and always, always, always keep their browsers clean.