.

…..”Click YES”

By Chuck Semenuk

Milo Farnsworth sat in front of his personal computer scratching his head. 

“Damn those so-called experts at Maggot-Soft! Every time they come out with a new version of operating system, they screw it up more than it was before.”

Years ago, Milo started out with the first PC. The old DOS operating system; now that was something that you could learn and work with. If you took the time to learn a little code, you could make the computer do whatever you wanted. Now, the machine is as dumb as a box of rocks. It thinks that it knows what you want to do and insists on doing what it damn well pleases.

Milo decided to do a bit of house cleaning on his hard drive and delete files that he no longer needed. He selected the files that he didn’t want to keep and clicked “Delete.”

A window came up on his screen. “You are trying to delete ten files. Are you sure that you want to delete these files?”


“Of course, dammit! Why do you think I’m deleting them?” Milo clicked on “Yes.”

“DOORWAY is deleting ten files. They cannot be retrieved once deleted.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do it already!”


Un-needed files deleted, Milo went back to the report that he had been writing for work. After about an hour, he had added another six pages to the long document. Caught up in the process, he had forgotten to periodically save his work. All of a sudden, a message came up on the screen.

“DOORWAY has detected an error and must close this application. Your unsaved data will be lost. Do you want DOORWAY to diagnose the problem?”

Milo let loose with a tirade of expletives. “Damn you. You don’t have a clue and you can’t diagnose your way out of a paper bag!”

Milo grabbed his mouse and jerked the plug out of the computer, flinging it across the room where it hit the wall.


“DOORWAY has detected that your pointing device is disconnected. Please check your connection.”

Having had enough “fun” for one day, Milo retrieved his mouse from the corner, plugged it in and closed down the computer.

“Sure glad I had the pacemaker installed. This thing would probably give me a heart attack.”

####

The next evening, Milo was back at his computer. He managed to recreate and save the lost section of his report without any further trouble. His wife’s birthday was coming up and Milo thought that she might like some flowers. She loved flowers. She had commented on some hanging baskets. Milo typed “hanging baskets” into his search engine to see what might be available locally. Almost immediately a site opened up. Milo stared at the images of women with 44D “hanging baskets.”

Suddenly, a message appeared. “DOORWAY has detected that you are accessing pornographic material. DOORWAY is reporting this incident to the police department.”


Milo panicked and jerked the line cord out of the wall. Sure that he had stopped the infernal machine before it could cause him any more trouble, he plugged it back in and turned it on.

“DOORWAY has experienced an abnormal shutdown. DOORWAY will scan your hard drive for errors.”

After what seemed like an eternity the scan was complete and the machine finished booting up. “Apparently your line cord is defective and caused your computer to have an abnormal shutdown. Please check your line cord.”

Milo noticed the green lights on his router starting to flicker at a high rate of speed.

“What are you doing? Who are you talking to? You didn’t ask me if I wanted you to do anything. You’re bringing more garbage onto my hard drive. Probably more of those hanging baskets!”

Milo had about all he could take and started beating on his keyboard and CPU while the green lights continued to blink away.

“DOORWAY has determined that you are extremely agitated. DOORWAY can help. DOORWAY detects that you have a pacing device installed for your heart. DOORWAY is shutting down your pacing device. Have a nice, relaxing day.”

“No, no! Aghhhhhhhhh.”

Published in April, 2011 issue of Ultimate Writer Magazine.