Hi there, guys and dolls! Momentous Workday Wednesday! Behold the wonders of modern science – they have installed the future in our office. And it only took up one floor!

I must say it was very exciting. The last few months we have had all of these crew-cutted egghead types with thick black glasses running around muttering to themselves, saying things like, ‘that doesn’t compute,’ ‘we need more data,’ and all these other phrases that actually make no sense. But today we all got to see what they have been working on on the 9th floor. THE COMPUTRON!

What a sight! All these bells and whistles, lights, sigh, such a spectacle (actually, it’s kind of ugly – big, boxy and noisy. Smells weird, too. Like burnt dust. Maybe it’s thinking too hard…). We all got the grand tour. But you know, I think these computer smarty guys possibly have spent too much time indoors inhaling computer fumes. They told us that one day, computers will be so small we’ll hold them in the palms of our hands and use them for everything, in fact they’ll even think for us! We sure had a good laugh about that one, I tell you!

They gave us a demonstration, asking the computer what the weather was outside. One guy punched a bunch of keys on a board like a typewriter that put a bunch of holes in a card. He then fed it into a slot in the behemoth that made all these noises like it was passing bad gas, lighting up and groaning along. Then it spit out another card with the word ‘raining’ on it. Um, it was spotless, a clear blue beautiful day out there. Oops. Then he tried again, asking the computron if it liked working for a successful company. The card that spit out said, ‘Yes, please unplug me from this company and install me in a successful one.’ Hhm, we’ve never seen the boss turn that shade of purple before. Interesting….

Then the bespectacled not-so-hunky geek then turned to his rapt crowd and asked if one of us wanted to ask a question. A million hands went up and he chose Sally (I think it had to do with the fact that when she raised her arm she wiggled her finger, giggled and jiggled at the same time – she has great talent). Her question was if she would have at least one date for Valentine’s Day. The poor brush-cut fellow turned four shades of red, cleared his throat and prepared the question.

Then he put the card in the machine. All of a sudden, it started to smoke and stutter, the lights strobing, and then it died. It started up again and in a great fury, spit out punch cards a mile a minute, gave one final urp and died for good.

We all stood around, not sure what exactly to do. The computer guy picked up a card, read it and swooned. Eventually one of the poor brainiacs was able to inform us the basic gist of what the cards said, albeit with great sanitization. Who knew computers worked blue?

At least Sally was pleased – she works hard at her assets…

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more posts. And don’t forget to give my Poppy Cove Mysteries a try if you haven’t already. 

Toodles, Barbara Jean