Your Sentinel, Zircon Chapter 1

Zircon Chapter 1

I watched a YouTube piece last night that was presented by a psychiatrist. His talk was about children and young adults playig video games on laptops and phones. Their attention span in school goes way down and they even go psychotic when they begin to think that they are actually living in the games. His job is to treat them and bring them back to reality. The talk he gave reminded me of a story I wrote almost 20 years ago. Except for most of chapter 1 it was pure fantasy then, but now the fantasy has become true for many young people. There are 6 chapters in the story, all a page long. I am posting them individually, if you like you may read them at your leisure.

I had never really liked computers. They were so persnickety and adamant about syntax and passwords and such. I coexisted with them only because I had to use them at work. I realized I needed to know more about them and fast. My position at work was tenuous and if I were laid off, I would need to have more skills with the beasts in order to find another morale boosting career.

The fastest way to gain knowledge about them was to buy one. I researched as best as I could and went to Best Buy to look at their machines. I bought my first computer that night.

I arrived home after 10:00 pm and was excited about putting this machine together. I don't know why I was so excited except I thought I might finally master some greater part of the beast and be able to understand what people were talking about when they discussed computers. I opened the box and carefully began to put things together. There were few directions or pictures to work with and all of the new jargon was dizzying! I opened the box and began to remove the machine and its components.

I had bought a scanner with it so I could put my 35mm photos on the computer. Things seemed to be going well and I was happy but I began to feel tired. I glanced up and thought a car was pulling into the driveway. When I peeked out the blinds I saw it was the sun. I crawled into bed that first night or rather day, tired but happy.

I woke up after noon and shared my good news with Joyce. The next thing, I attempted to set up my Internet connection. More jargon, more confusion, was this ever going to work? Something got jumbled with AT&T Internet service and after three hours on the telephone, I finally saw a connection. I had made one of those silly, simple syntax errors. I knew what I meant, but computers only know what you tell them. So if they have to interpret what you enter, they are in trouble.

The Internet was so exciting! I had always enjoyed just browsing through a dictionary and seeing new words I would never need to know or use. The Internet was full of things you never need to know or use. I was in Internet heaven! I didn't know then, but I had just embarked on a change in my lifestyle. From that day on, I never got more than four hours of sleep.