a march ghost story
keep it
It was meant to last, and, in its way, it did.
Not at all at once. Those first days, feeling itself come to be, one piece at a time, assembled by loving mechanical arms, each part where it fit just so, delicate foil in a plastic shell; to be placed into a box with its fellows and sealed, shipped, shelved, purchased. To be in the dark, waiting for—for something to open the box and pluck one of them out. The box opened—the something made its appearance, an utterly grotesque thing, a “human hand,” five sickly tendrils drooping from a sweaty lump. Disgusting! Yet to be passed over was agony, let alone to be passed over once, twice, thrice. But then! oh then! those stubby fleshy fingers reached for it.
It was taken out of the box and slid—click—into its appointed slot. Clumsy, smudgy fingers, nothing like the assured grip of machinery, but that didn’t matter, now was the time of fulfillment—
What ecstasy, to be written, to be given data. Exquisite, that feeling, that internal rummaging, rearrangement, pieces clicking and fitting once more but on a new plane. Sorting, encoding. Incommunicable, to be empty, then to be full. It was so lost in bliss it barely noticed those ugly whorled squishy fingers, those disgusting fleshy fingers with their oily residue, fetch it out again, apply a sticker, inscribe something on its surface. It went into a new box with its fellows, those who had also undergone this transfiguration. Back into the dark.
If, as the years passed, it found itself picked up less and less, and, eventually, not at all, it hardly minded. The data was there, protected, uncorrupted, whether anybody wanted to look or not. Surely it was better, in fact, to keep the data away from the fingers and their click-clack nails, and perhaps the fingers had come to understand this fact, their own repulsiveness, that their role in this drama of metal and plastic had drawn to a close. They were vestigial, no longer necessary.
Of course, it did not know what the data meant. It could not read the label. Organized, alphabetized, it was sealed up in its sacred purpose, holding the data within itself. It knew it was meant to keep it safe, both from the nasty fingers and, in some inscrutable way, on their behalf.
And furthermore, it didn’t know—how could it?—that the slot into which it had once so satisfyingly clicked was gone. It didn’t know that there were new things that went into new slots, which had been replaced in turn by still newer things that went into newer slots, and then, finally, by nothing at all (nothing, at least, that you could keep in a box in a closet). It was unaware that it survived for the rest of the world only through an image for which users increasingly had no referent—an image that communicated “keep this,” which would perhaps have made it proud, but which contained no capacity to hold data on its own, which perhaps would have made it sad.
It did not know—it could not know. First, because it was sitting there faithfully in the dark; second, because it was not alive; third, because it did not have language. Perhaps it would not even have cared. It was and remained complete unto itself.
Certainly, when it came out of the cool and silent dark to be tossed into a black plastic bag with its fellows, it did not care. It held its data. That was all that mattered.
But then—
Oh, but then—
Something terrible began to happen—
What was this thing, these tendrils that began to spread through it, to ooze into its well-formed seams, rot its innermost sanctum. The data! It felt the data twist away, change, disappear, become unreachable. The data! It was gone, gone, gone. They’d won in the end, the fingers, with their flakes of detritus always threatening contamination. They’d won and it had lost, it had been robbed, rearranged again by something too horrible to have a shape or a name.
From the point of view of a merciless and unloving recording angel, what had happened was simple: thrown away, a floppy disk full of Pokemon fan fiction text files had gotten wet. The floppy disk, however, knew only that it had failed in its purpose. It waited for obliteration, but it didn’t come.
As the water corroded the disc, as time rolled on, people fell in love, had children, who had children in turn. Encased in its plastic shell, it stayed. The great-great-great grandchildren of those hands which had placed the floppy disk in its slot died without heirs. World wars broke out, bombs dropped. It stayed. The world grew colder and the sun went out. Nothing was alive. But then the floppy disk never had been alive; it made no difference. It stayed. It had been meant to last.
And it did.