Their conversation came round to one of their old school friends.
The man sitting with his friend in the café was saying, “I really didn’t know much about computers. They’re not for everybody, you know.”
The other said, “I lost touch with him. Didn’t know him well; he was two years ahead of me at school. You kept in touch then?
“Sort of; on and off.”
“You were saying, about computers?”
“Yes, although most people would laugh if they knew, it seems that he’d been tapping away on his grandfather’s ancient typewriter for ages before he decided to get one. That’s when he rang me to tell me about it. He reckoned his pc was going to open up a whole new world for him. He told me he spent many long nights, and some days when he could, using the word processor to transfer just about everything from hard copy to electronic format. He said he found the machine in a second-hand shop, but soon discovered that it had very little memory. He told me his files were slowing it down. Apparently, he had intermittent internet capability that allowed him to research the problem.”
The man drank more coffee, looked up shaking his head and went on.
“He said that it came as a surprise to him that an ideal application existed that would clean up his drive and give him more space and more speed. The site said ‘Clean up your documents. Remove the clutter. Allow your machine to run faster.’ Well, he saw this to be exactly what he needed. He was so excited, he reckoned it was a fantastic app that he’d found quite by chance.”
“So, he used it?”
“He did. He had three draft documents that he wanted to get rid of and he figured getting rid of these would be a good place to start. The computer program guaranteed that it would search out any other unwanted files that were associated with them. So, he selected the unwanted documents and started the program. It was at this point that his computer started to make a violent buzzing noise.”
The man telling the story fell silent.
The listener said, “And?”
“Dunno.”
“I mean, what happened?”
“Like I said, dunno. He was on the phone telling me about it when the phone went dead.”
He sighed. “Haven’t heard from him since. Did hear that he’d gone recluse. Probably went back to the typewriter.”