Yep.

That’s what you think it is: the sound of a computer deciding never to work again, shutting downs its RAMs and its BIOS, and fading to black.

It’s also the sound a computer makes when a person–okay, a hysterical person–keeps punching the ON button over and over again, saying, “No, no, no! One more chance! Just let me have my address book! Just let me have my photos! My email addresses! My Word documents! Oh, my God, please, not the novel, too!”

Okay, so I ignored some of the signs that we weren’t doing well together–like the times I would log on and it would show me a little screen that said, “Anticipated failure. Back up everything, you idiot.”

It even used to go to sleep without warning when I was typing, and then would pop up a little screen that asked very politely if I would like to report its misbehavior to Microsoft. Sometimes, if I was very annoyed, I would say, “Sure, buddy, let’s do it. Let’s just tell Microsoft about your crimes.” And then Microsoft would send me a message back, essentially agreeing with me that this was a stupid computer, entirely incorrigible, and that Microsoft itself couldn’t think of a thing to do to make it act better. You could practically hear the sigh in its report: “We raised it right, we taught it better than this, but–well, what are we supposed to do about it now? It has issues.”

Issues, sure, but I guess I didn’t really think it was going to just DIE on me.

Okay, so this was days ago, and the dust has settled some. I can at least talk about it now. I had to put aside my mourning and my anger and go out and buy myself a new computer, of course. This new one is shiny and has more of everything than the old one had, lots and lots of initials and bigger numbers.  It even has a little video camera. I can watch myself type if I am ever feeling truly masochistic.

But here’s the best thing. When I turned it on for the first time and checked my email, there was a wonderfully comforting thing: there was my novel just waiting for me. Blinking at me.

Yes, I had emailed it to myself in a fit of good sense the day before the computer actually died.

I think it’s kind of interesting, actually, that everything else is gone, except the very thing that I’m supposed to be devoting my every moment to.

Almost as if…well, not to get too crazy about this, but it’s as if something is saying, GET TO WORK.