Ode to a Laptop
“And how shall we commemorate our fallen Engines of Creation?”
I've had my laptop since March 2012. It's a mid-2011 model MacBook Air. According to my extensive research (five minutes on Wikipedia), that makes it part of the Air's fifth generation. Since then there are have been five more. On the case are some stickers: Pliny the Elder logo, fidget cube, and three Hamamatsu, Japan, kite emblems that I found in my uncle Paul's house after he passed away. I gave him those stickers after returning from an internship abroad a decade ago.
So why am I waxing on about my seven-year-old laptop? Well, sometime in the next 30 days I'll say goodbye to my Air when I upgrade to a refurbished MacBook Pro. And to be perfectly honest, just the thought of it bums me out. This computer has been with me through thick and thin. I used it to write countless job applications after I moved to California in 2015. On it I crafted the first short story I sold to a professional science fiction magazine. I wouldn’t have been able to start my career as a freelance writer without it. It has been my traveling companion to Japan, Germany, and Russia. And perhaps most importantly, it was one of the few things I saved from the Tubbs Fire last October. There’s a lot of memories in these two pounds of aluminum, plastic, and circuits. I've gotten to know the feel of these keys rather well. Lord knows how many words I've written using them. Millions.
I think just about everyone feels a similar connection to a machine at some point in their lives. And before anyone goes “What will those crazy Millennials think up next?!,” remember that people were having love affairs with cars decades before the first personal computer hit the market.
But it's time for a change: a brighter and crisper screen, more RAM, bigger hard drive, and faster everything. Hell, I’m even splurging for the Touch Bar.
How should I say goodbye to my cherished machine? I do have an idea, one that I’m not ashamed to admit I’m stealing from people whose beloved pets are reaching the end of their lives. You know the posts on Instagram and Twitter: “I'm taking Buddy to the beach one last time. We’ve had so much fun here over the years!” It’s something like that, but with a computer.
Yes, over the next month my Air is going on a farewell tour of sorts: final work assignments, short stories, blog posts, and tweets. I'll work smart as not to waste a single keystroke. Then, and only then, will I transfer my computer’s soul over to the new machine, a fancy way to describe data transfer via flash drive and the required USB-C adapter (God dammit, Apple). After that, I can imagine that the only befitting sendoff for my Air would be a Norse funeral.
Imagine it! On a pristine stretch of coastline, I’d place my Air in an Amazon box full of sacrifices and offerings: the original warranty, charging cable, and a copy of the court’s final ruling in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. After pushing the box out to sea, I’d lift a bow and arrow, the latter attached to a bloated and smoking Galaxy Note 7 battery. On contact with the arrow the box would burst into flames, burning brightly for a single moment before disappearing under the waves forever. Finally, as the sun set below the horizon, I’d utter a short prayer:
Lo, There do I see my Developer
Lo, There do I see my Programmer and
My Peripherals and my Software
Lo, There do I see the line of my updates back to the beginning
Lo, They do connect to me through firewire and Wi-Fi
They bid me take my place among them at the Genius Bar
Where Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo have been vanquished
Where Macs will never be obsolete
Nor shall we mourn but rejoice for the electronics that served us well.
That’s what my Air deserves.
So if you read about a crazy man in Northern California who got arrested for starting an illegal fire, improperly disposing of electronic waste, and polluting Tomales Bay State Park...yeah, that was me.