Laptop death – by David Thomas Henry Wright
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I carry the silver block tenderly, like a sick infant. I carry it onto the bus, onto the subway, across town, to the imposing glass temple. It is a characteristic of major cities of the 21st century. If your city has one, your city matters; if it doesn’t, you don’t. I am talking, of course, about the Apple Store.
Upon entering I am greeted with warmth. I inform, ‘Yesterday, my computer crashed. I can restart it, but I can’t log in. It just freezes.’ My host realises I will not be buying anything today. Warmth swiftly turns to disappointment masquerading as concern. He informs, ‘We are at capacity. Would you like to book a time for another day?’ I plead, pray, beg that I be seen today. It is a matter of utmost importance. ‘No, it is not possible,’ my host replies. The Apple Store, it seems, has no emergency room.
The average adult Australian spends over six hours a day on screens. For younger Australians, the number is higher. My relationship with my laptop is complicated. It is professional, personal, intimate, mysterious. All computers are an involuntary autobiography of search histories, musings, activities, correspondence. Future archaeologists will unearth our dead devices and reimagine us as bizarre digital portraits: warts-and-all abstractions, violently distorted Francis Bacon forms. For better or worse, our device relationships define us.
When I return to the Apple Store for my scheduled appointment I am again greeted with salaried warmth. I apologise for being early, then question why I felt the need. I am corralled to a sad corner on the second floor, where other patients sit with sick devices and defeated expressions. Anxious owners with sickly pets. Below, new owners are excited, leaving the store with cheerfully yappy machines, eager to bond, to engage with the world and one another.
An Apple employee eventually joins me. He is young, younger than me, wears the Apple store’s casual uniform. He is polite. He notes the machine’s symptoms, sucking saliva through his teeth to indicate that its condition is not good. I suspect he does this with everyone. It seems a suitable strategy: if he can revive the machine, he is a hero; if he cannot, he is a prophet. He fiddles with wires, inserts plugs into plugs into plugs (Apple is notorious for being incompatible with the rest of the world’s outlets/systems) before starting up the device multiple times, holding down various key combinations. I have done this already and know it will lead nowhere. At least the device can turn on. There is, I naively believe, hope. He performs a scan, which pronounces that the device is internally damaged. In forlorn protest, I point out that the fault occurred due to the computer updating. The employee shrugs. I go into a desperate spiel about how I find it oddly convenient that my computer died when the machine updated, proclaim that this is the very definition of racketeering, realise that any argument on my part is fruitless, that my assigned attendant has zero authority to authorise a replacement or a repair, zero authority to determine who is responsible, that his lack of authority is likely by design, that the real argument of liability and responsibility is done quietly and precisely behind the glossy crystal monolith’s curtain, behind this Potemkin store. And I wonder if it is all by design. If it is by design that the AppleCare package that would’ve made my repair free costs roughly the same as the repair itself. If it is by design that the repair cost is so high that buying another device is probably a better option. If it is by design that paying for a repair does not guarantee the device working for any extended period beyond the repair.
Before the Apple employee does anything further, I am made to sign a document, indicating that if data is lost it is not his (that is, Apple’s) fault. A factory reset is performed. Desperately, I propose and believe that if the update caused the computer to fail, then surely resetting to the factory settings should fix it. The employee does not share my optimism. He performs the reset and then … the device does not even start up. I feel like a pet owner whose dog has just been involuntarily euthanised.
‘So, when I brought it in, I couldn’t sign in. Now it doesn’t even start up,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says the employee.
‘So, you made it worse?’ I joke. Was I joking?
He smiles. Does not comment.
Any protest is pointless. I pick up the silver block with less tenderness, because now it is just a block. A heavy albatross around my neck.
Before heading home, I stop in at a restaurant and order a beer because I need it. I contemplate what to do with the dead device. If I lived in a third-world country, I’m certain there would be someone with the surgical tools and knowhow to tinker, to breathe new life into it.
Not all laptops die. Most are retired. Like guide dogs who are replaced but still reside in their blind owner’s home. Laptop death, however, is something else. Tragic. Especially for one so young. Only two years old.
I debated claiming that the fault was Apple’s. But a simple check of the interior would have cost a fee. I know this, because I brought the laptop in a year ago, after I had spilt red wine over the keyboard. For a while it would not start. But then, miraculously, it revived and served another dutiful 15 months. I suspect this was borrowed time. That the initial diagnosis was terminal. That I was lucky to keep it going for as long as I did. And I wonder if this is a metaphor for myself, for my own relationship with wine, with alcohol, if I’m in the same boat, if I should go to a doctor and see if all is okay with my own interior. But it’s silly to personify a silver brick. To give so much symbolic weight to a laptop that now sits pointlessly in my office as nothing more than a very pricey paperweight. Laptops only determine professional, personal, intimate, mysterious life if you let them.
I bought the laptop as part of a now-acquitted Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) grant. I was told I was lucky to get it, as they typically believe that writers should provide their own ink. I hope this brief essay suffices as creative outcome for that investment.
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Image: Maria Teneva
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