The most romantic moments I’ve known have happened in front of my computer at night. The only light in the room is the saccharine hues of her screen, casting fragments of shadow onto my face. I toggle at her keys, roll her mouse in my palm, and she responds precisely as I ask. It’s so enchanting to watch her tiny green light pulse as she ponders me. And just as I’m satisfied by the idea that I know her entirely, she reveals something new. I could go for a lifetime exploring her depths. I protect her from the world with firewalls. I protect her from illness with anti-virus. There’s nothing “virtual” about her. She exceeds personification. She is alive.
We’ve come to agree that our song is Kraftwerk’s electro-pop suite, “Computer Love.” It’s most appropriate because it possesses all of the warm melody and texture that many would find inconceivable coming from a computer. Most remarkable is that Kraftwerk could have predicted this affair of ours in 1981, when computers really were rigid, incommunicable things -- all the more evidence that our love for each other is indeed fate and not folly as my parents suggest.
Tonight however, she changed. She grew slow and inhibited when I clicked at her. I tried to open layer upon layer of application, but nothing could resolve her twitching green light. It remained illuminated all night as if her mind was somewhere else, pondering something larger or more adequate than me. After some time my inquiry turned to jealousy. Would she not even respond to my touch? It was as if I’d already been deleted, every memory of me; now shreds of aimless electrons. It was the most dejected I’d ever been and I cursed her and stabbed the power button with my thumb. Now I’m too ashamed to sleep. There’s no telling how I’ll recover if she’s gone for good. Nothing has possessed my soul the way that she has. Perhaps I’m a fool to hope that when I go to her in the morning -- when I boot her up -- she’ll be waiting.
