Twilight Gigabyte

Lines of Code

January 10th, 1954, 4:34AM
Mildred's Junkyard
Chicago, Illinois

The University of Chicago had sold this computer, or as its inventor called it, a Cracula, after a freak accident tore away at most of the Science and Technology centers, the only thing that remotely survived, if you could call it that, was the Cracula. for a few months, they hung onto it, not sure what to do with it, some students tried to run it, others threw things at it, seeing if they could provoke it into action.
Others simply just stared at it, the wheels on the side always turning, the strips of magnetic tape going into the loop, out of it, and inside the machine, but never truly coming back out. The chunks broken off, ripped away, cracked, chipped, or simply falling off as time went on. Finally, when one of the students died of heart failure, the University had something to blame it on, or rather, the late woman's superstitious father.

Shortly thereafter, they sold it to Mildred's Junkyard.

"It's a piece of junk Larry, why'd ya bring it in here!?" A woman screeched at the top of her lungs, scratching her under wire for the tenth time today. Her employee, Larry had just brought it a university computer, all eight parts of it. It looked beat to all hell, the diodes, circuits, mother board, and transmitters had been cracked, broken, bent, or melted in part or whole chunks just gone.
"'Cause, I like to think we can make something of this thing, y'know? Dream big?" A mans voice, grumbling, heavy, long time smoker explained through a series of grunts.
"You and your dreams! How are we supposed to make any decent amount of money offa this piece a junk!?"
"Junk!? Junk!? Look here Milly, this here JUNK is gonna be the future!" The two voices continued on, but their presence shrunk away as they moved their argument into office, a hard slam drowned out three seconds of the aggressive conversation, the rest muffled.

The air was thick with rain, thunderstorms happened to be norm for some reason this time of year, and storm clouds regularly gathered in random spots, moving from block to block gradually, as if searching for something, though every weatherman blamed it on the strange wind currents, the truth was, no one knew what the weather was really doing, nor why for that matter. It had rained particularly hard that morning, and Mildred "Milly" Graevs didn't have much use for a broken down set of monstrosities like the Cracula. The Next morning, she had her Husband Larry Graevs and a few others, Paul LeSalle, Jeffe Tordello, and Xui Parsons move the collection of broken technology to a far off corner, not caring if anyone bought it, or anything happened to it.
"Boys, put it next to the dumpsters, where those Hobos from down the way live." Milly ordered calmly as she watched the clouds gradually come together at the same time, but never touch one another. It had become her favorite thing to do when business was slow.
"Which side?" Xui asked, wiping away a few beads of sweat.
"Out of my sight for all I care, Paul knows the place, back where his old junker falls apart?"
Paul nodded silently, eyes half closed. "My mothers car?"
"She's dead Paul, has been for a while."
"Nah, Ma's still alive!" He protested.
"Paul, Paul, the CAR."
It took him a while to catch on. "Oh, over there... Come on guys."

Larry sidled over to Milly's side, she gave him a look while he casually brushed a few locks of dark red hair out of her face. No words were exchanged between the two, none were needed.
"Get back to work, Larry." She sighed, watching as he ran to catch up with the truck with the days work load on it. "That Husband of mine..." She said as she walked back inside, smiling to herself. A blue of light caught her attention, out of the corner of her eye, something quick, but no longer there.
After a few minutes of searching, she attributed it to her reaching menopausal age, and laughed. "Damn hot flashes, hitting me early!"

June 20th, 1989, 2:33PM

Thirty Five years had passed since Larry brought Cracula to Milly's Junkyard.
For thirty five years it sat, all eight of its huge, refrigerator like sections, lazily thrown to the ground by Paul's mothers car. It had endured the elements, earthquakes, hordes of bird droppings, and ants that nestled into its various circuits.
Mice, living, dying, breeding and decomposing in its various innards. The genetic dust layering thick.
For thirty five years, a mysterious blue light would flare up every morning at 3:44AM, barely noticed by anyone other than the varied generations of junk yard dogs that had come to know the place as home to them.

Larry, now in his nineties, escorted a wheelchair bound Paul who had contracted stage four Liver cancer over to his mothers rusted and slowly breaking red corvette. Paul had lost the ability to move much after a car accident left his right side paralyzed, and since he didn't have the insurance to cover the cost of Chemo and radiation treatments, he made the brave choice of simply letting the cancer take its course.
Over the course of ten years, it spread from the bottom of his liver to his kidneys, intestines, bladder, spine, ribs, lungs, heart, and finally started to infect his brain.
"I can't believe we still have old Cracula..." Larry muttered under his breath.
"Heh, you were right though, computers are the way of the future, the Atari took off like a rocket!" Paul replied weakly, his jaw stiff from the tumor the size of a quarter that grew where the lower jaw bone met the skull. The hospice that came once a week stated to Larry that he didn't have much time left, and Paul could feel his vitals slowly leaving his body.
"Yeah, we put 'im right next to Ma's car..." he said happily. "Larry... I, I don't want to die..." The wheel chair bound man stated slowly between pain filled gulps of air.
"Not like this... You still have that old Remington rifle I bought you and Milly for your thirtieth?"
Larry nodded, his mind slowly worked out what Paul was asking, and feeling all at once scared.
"Paul, no!" Larry shouted, "Not like Xui!"
"Damn it Larry, this is not the time to get squeamish on me! I'm a man gadammit, and if I'm choosing to die, I'm going to damn well choose how I get to go out!" Paul shouted, the wheel chair shaking just a little.

Unbeknownst to them, the blue light in Cracula had flared up, unnoticed to their minds, almost activating randomly. The ninth generation junkyard mutt raised her head just a little bit, her pointed white spotted ears turning side to side, hearing a high pitched whir. She rose up, joints creaking just a little, and she made her way slowly to where the two men were, sitting with a thump next to her owner sadly, licking his left hand.
"Larry, just... just..." Paul said weakly, "I don..." His voice to weak to protest, his heart slowing down. the cancer was finishing him off, his mind sputtering in and out out focus as the nerve dendrites lost and found the electrical impulses repeatedly.
His eyes grew wide with fear, with the knowledge that this was the end, and there was no way his final wish would be fulfilled.
Larry was crying, outside of himself, Paul was last of the original five that had survived the long years of this place.
His Wife, Mildred has passed away in her sleep in the summer of '65, heart failure.
Xui had committed suicide in the winter of '69.
Jeffe had gotten married, had a few kids, and was living somewhere in California. Last he heard, the old coot had died in the spring of '83, got himself bit by a spider while jogging in a forest.
"Paulie..." Larry said sadly. "I'll go get the gun..." He sighed in resignation, the dog never leaving Paul's side.
"I... Love you.... Missy." Paul struggled to say, shakilly scratching behind her ears, as Larry put the barrels of the Remington against the back of Paul's head.
He Closied his eyes, and hesitated.
Debating if he even could fulfill his best friends last wish.
He had to do it, but his mind was clouded with doubt about the ethics behind the simple motion of pulling the trigger.
Missy barked loudly enough, shocking Larry into the action, the trigger pulled, time seemed to slow down immensely in Larry's eyes.

All he could see was a bright flash of yellow mixed with orange and white, there was no sound. there couldn't be, for the first time in thirty five years, Larry witnessed the flash of blue light that had been the cause of so many rumors floating around Milly's Junkyard, and he saw a face. He watched as the face turned towards Paul's slumped over form, touched it gently, and what seemed like a slow flow of hazy blue data flowed gently out of his friends body, being twisted in the air, like a leaf in the fall, directed into the broken, infested, ant filled chasm within Cracula's main body.
"Paul..." Larry almost sang sadly, time resuming almost instantly, the blast of the gun in his hand sealing his own fate as it finished his friends request, backfired almost immediately afterwards, and took him out as well.

Missy, knowing that her master of ten years had passed away, lay down at his feet, awaiting her turn to join him.

July 15th, 1999, 3:44AM

Milly's junkyard had remained lifeless for ten years, the towers of crushed, rusting cars a testament to its neglect by time itself, the office, once filled with laughter and memories many years ago, now an empty tomb, the various scrawls of paper work that had been pinned to a cork board, yellowed and curled with age, the doors and frames withered and falling apart, the whole of the building seemed to scream out that it was haunted. Only one thing in that entire place had refused the neglect of time, only one thing had a clear, almost clean look about it.

Cracula.