She’d lost track of how many times she’d upgraded her computer.
It was a nightmare, she was always running out of space on her computer when she least expected it. Doing this wasn’t cheap, and she had the feeling the guy at the shop could see her coming. So, on this particular evening she turned to the internet for help. She looked at a number of sites before finding one that said she could have her computer free up space by getting rid of files she didn’t need, like temporary files. She did this. When it was finished, she looked in ‘settings’ at ‘storage’. She’d given the machine’s capacity an extra five percent. Not to be sneezed at, but not a real solution.
She researched a bit more and found she could individually compress her own files, the ones she had created. She gave this a go. It took an absolute age. So many files! She looked back at the storage; she’d gained another seven percent. She thought about it for a while before researching further. After a while of reading more information about compression, she found an article that explained how to actually compress absolutely all of the files on her computer. Even the ones she might have missed, she thought. This sounded more like it, so she carefully followed the instructions. When it was done she returned to the storage section and saw that a further ten percent had been freed up.
Feeling that she was on a winning streak, she kept looking and found yet another site that said she could compress her entire hard drive on her computer. Now, this was really something! She could do this by just following a few simple steps. This she did. When the process was complete she saw that an additional twelve percent had been gained. She was very pleased with what she’d accomplished and was ready to take a well-earned break when a strange looking advert popped up unexpectedly. It promoted a free trial of a new auto-compression program for people needing more working space on their computer. Although she had no idea how she had found this, and had a creepy feeling that it was part of the dark web, she opened it up to take a look.
It was a weird looking screen that had all sorts of strange hieroglyphics scattered around the borders. It said it was a program that used a newly discovered method of automating the compression process. It stated that the program had a remarkable feature of allowing a repeating compression mode to gain the best results. After giving this some careful thought, she clicked and started the program. It had run for a couple of minutes before she realised that she was watching the computer, shrink, or compress, or whatever. She looked on dumbstruck as the screen, keyboard, mouse and speakers all grew smaller and smaller. She considered stopping the program, but the keys on the keyboard were so tiny that she could barely read them. There was a soft pop and it was gone. All of it was gone!
She couldn’t believe her eyes and placed a shaking hand into the space where, moments before, the screen had been. There was another pop.
The chair she’d been sitting in swiveled slightly… and was empty.