A Bit of Luck

Feb 14, 2021

Ever since I hurled that laptop through my boss's office window, I spend the first half of my day just prepping for the following half: Court-mandated therapy, medication, exercise, and meditation takes up a lot of time. I never knew someone could be sentenced to meditate.


Maybe I have pent up rage. Who doesn't? Call it a crisis of modernity. I don't remember throwing it. It was like touching a live wire — my entire musculoskeletal system spasming without consent. Either way, I'll never get a job in IT again. So see ya later last decade of my life.


 Along with my court orders, additionally I've been ordered by my girlfriend Raina to keep this diary. Mandated really. She got me this Moleskin notebook and says, 'if I put my thoughts down on paper, I'll feel better.' Sounds like new-age bull-crap to me, but I can't lose her too. That'd be the straw that made the camel jump off the bridge.

After handing it to me she left to stay with her parents for the next week to give 'us' some ‘space.’ And by ‘us’ she means ‘her.’
 And by 'space' she means 'get your life together or we're caput.'

There's no excuse for violence. But let me just say before I go to bed, AKA dose myself with enough Xanax to tranquilize a wild rhino — those things can fly. Laptops. Like a Roman discus. Seeing the look on that misanthrope's broken blood vessel splattered face as it crashed through his precious office window has become the central bright spot in my life.


 Although, now that I've been fired, with an impending lawsuit, and no prospects, existential dread has rooted itself through my entire existence. Days endlessly bleed over with no shape or purpose. Is it Tuesday? Saturday? Couldn't tell you.


 I just wish something would happen to me. 


Anything.

Feb 15, 2021

Me again,


Today, I pried myself from bed and immediately checked my phone. Hoping — as has become tradition — that some metamorphic message had been delivered unto me overnight. A Hail Mary email from an actual human being sandwiched between the spam, alerting me to a beautiful opportunity. Maybe some company wants to pay me exorbitantly for a cushy position in a tech mogul's wonderland with free kombucha. Or perhaps a gallery discovered my Instagram page @gArtbage, where I take photos of garbage and describe them as art installations.


 I'm so deep.


 No such luck.


Not loving this diary — reliving my day each evening. I have no life — nothing to say. Oh wait, that's not true; I tested positive for alcohol in my urine. The probation officer didn't like that, so, two more weeks probation! Yay.


 Is it a leap year?

Feb 16, 2021

Hi,


I was strolling the cement path along the aquifer. I like it there because there's a smorgasbord of trash floating in the water and wedged into the tall stalks of Pampas grass to take pictures of. Old strollers, LCD TV’s, and of course, syringes, just to name a few. And besides the homeless — nobody's around. Which means I can talk to myself judgment-free.


Last night was a rare downpour, and I guess it kicked up a ton of detritus — art-speak for garbage — because it was a veritable gold mine of ‘site-specific’ garbage photography. As I was walking along, snapping mindlessly, I came upon this beat-up suitcase that had resurfaced from the murky depths like a body from a mob hit — half sunk in the weeds and slowly cracking mud. There was something glimmering inside from beneath a teensy tear its surface. I had to know what it was.

After a great deal of sweating in the midday sun I managed to pry it from the dirt and rip the opening a little wider. I stuck my hand in and dug around. Not the most brilliant idea in hindsight; who knows what was in there — A famished rat? A man’s thigh? — but I really had/have little to lose. I touched something sharp. Metallic. I felt like a medic digging into flesh for a bullet, I pulled it out. It certainly was no rodent or limb — just an irregular metal box, about four inches on either side and an inch tall with some grooves etched in it.


Having spent the last decade defragmenting these things, I knew instantly what it was. An old hard drive. It stirred something in me. Can't say precisely what. Maybe just boredom. I wanted to know what was in it. I took it home. Stay tuned.

Feb 17, 2021

To Whom It May Concern,


 This is officially no longer a diary. Officially no longer some self-obsessed outpouring detailing the tragedy of my perfectly-fine, middle-class, first-world existence. This is now a record for the authorities in the event of my death – which seems increasingly probable.


I woke up wishing I hadn't, like every other day. Covered in morning slime, I waddled over to my computer and found the hard drive had finished the defrag. I sat down, fully ready to watch a strangers home made cat videos and instead found 100 whole Bitcoins purchased in 2010. That means it cost whoever bought them roughly 8 USD. You know what that's worth now? Let me spell it out: Three million, seven-hundred thousand dollars.
 I guess I fainted because I came-to with my face smushed into my synthetic carpet. But what's more important than where I woke up was what woke me – the sound of my door being violently kicked in. And I don't mean 'kicked in' like a cop on a hot lead. I mean, like Secretariat bucking in his prime. Splinters of wood showering my living room like a bomb went off. My ears pinned back in that weird, uncontrollable way. My intestines instantly doubled in weight.

I ran a scan. The hard drive had dumped a virus onto my machine. Something advanced. I was a hacker before I was IT and never saw anything like it. They must have had tracked my IP the instant the hard drive was connected. In hindsight, it's not surprising — thing's worth almost 4 mill.


 The staircase creaked. I began hyperventilating, my thoughts reduced to something like a swarm of bees. I yanked the cord out and shoved the hard drive down my pants. I turned to run, but there was a figure blocking my bedroom door.


 I'd like to describe them, but the 'perp' was indescribable in the least exciting way. It didn't look like a man or a woman. It was viscerally unthreatening, almost featureless, like a doll. It was wearing a grey sweatsuit with the hoodie pulled up. For a second, it looked so innocuous, my muscles actually went lax. But holy hell was I wrong, and holy hell did this bastard move fast. Before I even had time to open my stupid mouth, it launched across the room and lifted me by the jaw with one hand. I've never felt pain like that. I'm about 6 foot, 175 pounds. That's a lot of meat to dangle from your neck.


"Where's the drive?" It said. Its voice had a strong vibration.


I kicked it square in the chest, hard. Nada. It was like kicking a stone wall. With all the oxygen leaving my brain, consciousness was dimming fast, but I still managed to recall the single MMA class I'd taken. 'Go for the throat,' they'd said.


 And I did. 


But I was nearly unconscious and missed the jugular and jammed my finger in its unblinking ice grey eye instead. Something like prismatic sap oozed from it. It didn't seem to be hurt, but it did drop me. I yelled something incoherent, launched myself through my second-floor window, landed in a bush, somersaulted, and ran. 


I was on autopilot, going until my muscles finally burned out. I collapsed. Once I was done moaning and panting, I realized I’d apparently ran back to the aquifer, and was smack in the center of the shanty-town beneath the overpass.


 I'm covered in lacerations and pretty sure I have a broken rib or six. 4 million is worth it, right? I'll contact the authorities tomorrow. The thing is, I don't have my phone or my wallet on me. But of course, I have this friggin' journal stuffed in my back pocket. 


Feb 18, 2021

Dear Raina,


I wish I could call you. If you find this and I’m dead or missing, just know I didn’t have my phone, and like everyone after the year 2005 I don’t have a single phone number memorized. I’ve never longed for someone like this before. For home. It must be how deployed soldiers feel.


Today I woke up shivering beneath the cement slope of the overpass surrounded by men in homes made of cardboard and tarp. It's more tranquil there than I thought: the tall yellow stalks spearing plastic bags, the breeze, trickling water, dragonflies. I get it.


Before going to the authorities, I decided to at least try to get some money out of the drive. Wish I hadn't, but I've come to learn that when a golden carrot is dangling in front of you, you can't think straight.


The Doll had tracked me fast. I needed to make this transfer faster.

I went to a dingy internet cafe my acquaintance Remy owns. He had a pretty decent VPN, which I figured could at least throw the Doll off my scent.
 I was dirty, limping, cut, but I got there and Remy agreed to help me.

I plugged in. The bitcoin had fluctuated up 20k overnight. So as a test, I scooped that froth off the top and plopped it into my digital vault. That way, I at least hadn't eaten into whatever the principal was.
 No harm, no foul, right?


Dead wrong. Whatever that Doll is, VPN's got nothing on it.


 Remy yelped like the mating call of an exotic animal. A strange sound. I poked my head out and saw The Doll holding Remy up by his throat. He was thrashing violently. Its eye had healed.


"Where's the drive?" It croaked.

I gulped back a surge of bile. Luckily the place was sprawling with two-hundred computers in rows five wide on each side of the aisle and twenty deep, filled with lots of sketchy-folk just like me. I heard Remy's neck snap from across the room. The walls shook as all one-hundred clients simultaneously stampeded like crazed bison through the front door. Crawling beneath the desks, I was able to sneak out the back. Autopilot mode seems to be working for me.


 Made it back safely beneath my bridge.


 Need a plan.

Feb 19, 2021 3:00am

Dear Journal,


While lying awake listening to the cacophony of crickets and cars whizzing overhead, I had an epiphany — this Doll isn't human. That said, it doesn't seem to care about anything but the hard drive.


 My theory, you ask?


 The Doll is not from our time. Someone is stashing hard drives and unearthing them in the future where the coins are worth who knows: Billions? Trillions? Maybe this is big business? Perhaps it's a sport? Illegal activity? My thinking is whoever's running this scheme sends these Dolls back to make sure nobody disturbs the location. They need to stay put. Need to age like a fine cheese before they’re ready to be sold.


 Or maybe I’ve lost my mind. I've barely slept in days.


 Thing is, I don't care. I just know this Doll doesn't want me. It wants the drive. 


And it's going to get it.

Feb 20, 2021

I stole a laptop from some guy's car, put it on a picnic table, and plugged in the drive. The Doll appeared within twenty minutes, snatched it, and vanished into the tree line. I fell into a crumpled heap.

Feb 21, 2021

Dear Diary,


Raina left me. She doesn’t believe the time-traveling Doll theory. I’m also under house arrest for breaking parol. But you know, for the first time since I can remember, I feel great. Anger's gone.

With that 20k I skimmed, I started an online computer consulting business. It's slow as hell, but I like that. I don't really want anything to happen ever again. I think for once, I'm happy with what I have. Maybe Raina was right after-all — maybe writing all this down is what actually got me through it.


Think I'll keep writing in this diary after all.