Post by Elise Diefenbaker on Jun 6, 2018 16:26:31 GMT
Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven... - Life Without Principle, Henry David Thoreau
Walking outside as she closed up her computer repair shop, EA's Computers, for the day, Elise could feel the cold winds blowing down the street, an ill omen, a portent of the day perhaps. Looking up, she could see the dark clouds rolling in and thought, they never mentioned anything about bad weather today, swiping several times on her iPhone 8 to check the weather and seeing that, yet again, they got the forecasts wrong but as she watched the clouds rolling past, their dark malevolence radiating across the sky, Elise knew something wasn't right. Something bad's going down somewhere close, she whispered, rushing back up the steps of the brownstone which contained her shop, opening it back up and closing the door behind her, locking it and flipping the Closed sign around to make sure no one came in, thinking she was open for business at the moment.
EA's Computers, located within eyesight of the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, was her place of solace and refuge; while the upstairs loft-style bedroom and living rooms were offlimits to everyone but her, the ground floor - where her repair shop was located - was open to anyone who came by. Computers, monitors and other tech items were spread out along a set of display cases; above them were pictures of historic and present computer science legends - Ada Lovelace, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper and Gordon Moore - a reminder of computing's past and present watching over their collective works. Walking past them, Elise turned and entered a second room, her own private sanctum, a place where she worked on computer, repairing them for customers of all kinds. Like the outside, there was a display case where she kept her repair tools and a couple of computers, one hooked up to the Internet while the second one was on an isolated, non-Internet circuit....unlike the outside, however, there was but one picture hanging in the room. It was a picture of her late girlfriend Ashleigh and when the day's business was complete, Elise would often sit back and commiserate on the day's business, trying to draw some bit of solace or inspiration from her. Elise missed Ashleigh very much and could still imagine everything that happened that awful day - from finding Ashleigh's note saying she was going to try and hack into the Rikers' mainframe, Elise's frantic hack into the system to try and rescue her after discovering it was a GADEM coutner-hack they'd stumbled into, Ashleigh's words to her, telling her to save herself and then, Elise finding herself on the floor of her computer shop, the power and everything off as a result (Elise found out later) of Ashleigh destroying herself and the GADEM counter-hack agent whilst inside the system.
Popping open a bottle of water, Elise could hear the thunder roiling outside, sounding as though it was threatening to burst forth inside the shop.....sitting up in the chair, hugging her knees close to her, Elise glanced over at Ashleigh's picture and thought, I wish you were here with me, Ash...., that thought echoing in her mind as the storms got louder and more violent outside...
