I rubbed my eyes, believing that I was dreaming. I quickly stuck my hands into the trash bin to retrieve the screen. But as soon as I got near the bin, the glowing stopped. I took out the screen to inspect it. I quickly came to the conclusion that the glowing must not have come from the laptop screen. Maybe it was an old flashlight that still had batteries in it and the switch just got push on by other pieces of trash. Instead to putting the screen back in the trash, I put it next to the laptop, so I would remember to check it in the morning.
I woke up to the beeping of the computer.
“What is that horrible sound!?” cried Mike.
“That blasted screen-less computer from last night!”
“Well, shut it off!” I got off my bed, and ran to the family room. I held down the power button of the laptop and heard it turn off.
“Why did you turn it on?” I asked Mike.
“I didn’t touch it”
“That’s odd”
“Well, whatever. I’m hungry, let’s have breakfast.” I nodded in approval, and we went to the kitchen for breakfast.
After eating, I was still thinking of the strange events that occurred the night before, a spinning hard drive while the laptop was off, a sudden-appearing floppy disk, and glowing trash bins. Of course, there was also that unexpected morning alarm from the laptop. I decided to hook up the laptop to our LCD monitor and run a few checks. I began with a complete clean up with the program CCleaner (You can get it here), and then I ran a quick virus scan using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Get it here). Finally, I ran a spyware check with Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007 (Download here). The clean up, removed about 800 MB of stuff, and the two scans, nothing.
“What are you doing?” asked Mike.
“Oh, you know, trying to find out what is going on with this laptop”
“I see. So, did you find anything?”
“Nope.”
“Did you check what was on the floppy disk?”
“Not yet.”
“Check it, I want to know what is on it.” I opened My Computer and then the floppy disk drive. We saw that there were 11 files on it: 5 executables, 2 Text files, and 4 WAV files. The files are as listed: Start.exe, Sendit.exe, Tryit.exe, Help.exe, Find.exe, README.txt, NOTES.txt, Song.wav, Conversation.wav, Sound.wav, and Talk.wav. I double-clicked on the README file. Displaying the following: Open Start.exe. I close notepad, and clicked on Start.exe. A dialog box appeared, but before I could read it, the blue screen of death appeared.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.

This is the first part of a story (which will continue) in a series of computer and technology related stories. So check back often for the next part or story in the series! Also, please leave me a comment about this (and other) stories. This will definitely help with the final version (A whole collection of stories, which will be in at least PDF and Word format). Anyone who would like to sign up for the mailing list for this story is encouraged to send an email to funknowledge@gmail.com. The people on this list will be the first to read the next part. Enjoy!
NOTE: The *** means who is talking in the following section.

“Screwdrivers”
“Check!”
“Hammer”
“Check!”
“Pliers”
“Check! That’s it we are all ready to begin the procedure!”
“Alright, let’s do it!” It’s Wednesday night in mid May, we were in the basement of the house. The old, slow, but still working laptop has a messed up (or non-working) screen. A few days before we started the procedure I noticed something: Why should it have a screen if it doesn’t work? Plus it takes up space, why don’t we just get rid of it?” So here I am, screwdriver in hand removing the screws that keep the screen where it is. Then, the power goes out. I just removed the last screw and I pulled apart the laptop screen from the rest of the body.
“Kevin?” asks my assistant, Mike.
“Yes?”
“Should I go get a flash light?”
“Good idea, I’ll stay here.” That probably was not a good idea. As I sat there, the low rumbling sound of a hard drive arose. “That’s odd, I removed the battery.” It put my hand on the black, plastic case of the old Toshiba, and I felt the vibrating of a spinning hard disk. I turned it around, and in the moon light, I could see that no battery was in it. I must be dreaming, I thought to my self. I decided to leave it there and go back upstairs to go help Mike find the flashlight. Bad idea.
As we were busily looking for the flash-light, a different thing happened without us noticing, a small rectangular piece of plastic fell down the stairs.
“I found it!” said Mike, waving it in his hands.
“Great, lets go back downstairs and finish what we were doing.” We didn’t noticed anything funny about the piece of plastic, so we thought that it fell out of the computer.
“That floppy disk must have popped out, I’ll put it back inside. It’s not like it’ll do anything, and anyways it might have something important on it.” I, still thinking about the strange rumbling, agreed to the idea. It’s not spinning anymore, I thought. I grabbed the screen and stuck in in our trash can. While Mike brought the laptop back into the family room. That night we both went to bed. Mike on one hand was snoring away, while I was still wondering about the laptop. Not being able to calm myself down, I went downstairs flashlight in my hand and walked over to the laptop. See, nothing wrong, I thought, but then came a glow from the trash bin.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.