Hello and welcome to my readers. Many thanks for your feedback, comments and votes on my previous stories. Your votes, feedback, etc. on this quirky little tale are encouraged as well. Enjoy.
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"Oh for chrissake, are you on that computer again, Joanne?"
Joanne Campbell winced at the sound of her husband's irritated voice. Alan seemed to be in a perpetually foul mood lately. When he was home, that is. Her husband was a senior area sales representative for Englehardt Steel Tubing and was on the road every week, coming home only on weekends. He was one of several key employees recently transferred to Englehardt's Clear Lake City facility from the company headquarters in Omaha. His transfer included a hefty pay raise and a promotion, but it did not seem to improve his increasingly hateful demeanor.
Joanne, on the other hand, missed her friends back home and kept in touch via e-mail. In the ten months since they arrived, she hadn't met anyone with whom she cared to cultivate a friendship and she was lonely. Joanne had attempted to talk to her husband to determine why he was so angry all the time, but he would merely grunt and turn on the TV. Frustrated, she stopped asking and suffered in silence.
Her computer was her connection to her old life and she clung to it as a drowning person clutches a scrap of wood. She found herself on-line more and more, e-mailing to her best friend Sally and the other women she knew back home. She preferred to talk on the phone, but Alan complained about the high bills, so e-mail it was. She wished her parents would buy a computer and go on-line too, but they were old and set in their ways, no new electronic gadgets for them.
"I'll be there in a minute, Alan," she replied, "I'm almost finished with this e-mail to Sally and I'll be there to fix your dinner."
"Well hurry up, dammit, I'm hungry," came the angry reply.
Joanne sighed as she clicked on the send/receive icon, speeding another plaintive message to her best friend and former college roommate. She missed Sally's company and felt the loss deeply. They would do all sorts of fun things together and now there was no one to share her life. Alan was no longer a companion. In fact, he was almost non-existent in her life anymore. She turned her computer to stand-by and went to serve her husband his dinner.
With the dirty dishes loaded in the dishwasher and Alan ensconced in front of his huge plasma screen TV watching some sporting event; Joanne gratefully went back on line, eager to see if she had any mail awaiting her. Oh, goody, she had several new messages from Sally and her other friends. Her eyes filled with tears as she read them one by one, wishing she were there with them and not hundreds of miles away. She felt increasingly trapped with a man she felt no longer loved her.
***
As the weeks rolled by, Joanne and Alan became increasingly distant from one another. He became impossible to please when he was home, demanding that she spend time with him even though he was usually in a foul mood. Joanne's e-mails to her friends remained her only link to any happiness and she found herself staying on line more and more, desperate for any form of loving companionship. Her arguments with Alan became increasingly bitter and Joanne felt that he was deliberately provoking her, almost enjoying her misery. Maybe he is having an affair and wants to drive me away, she thought, or this job has somehow turned him into an unpleasant person.
Their sex life had been non-existent for some time now and she missed the intimacy they had once shared. Joanne did her best to maintain her trim figure, keeping her brown hair trimmed in the latest style. She could still wear the clothes she wore in college, not bad for a woman of thirty she thought. She had tried wearing sexy lingerie and revealing clothing that emphasized her firm breasts and round ass, but nothing would spark his interest. She would so welcome some human contact, especially a hug and a kiss from Sally and her other friends far away. Things finally came to a head one Sunday evening when Alan was packing his suitcase for another week on the road.
Joanne could not remember what started the argument, but their exchange became increasingly tense and Alan grew more verbally abusive than usual. She finally stormed out of the house and went to a movie downtown, just to get away for a while. When she returned after three hours, having stopped for an ice cream, the house was dark. Alan must have gone to bed, she thought. He always left before dawn on Monday morning, never waking her to say goodbye. She slipped off her walking shoes and went into the spare bedroom, intending to go on-line and check her messages.
When she turned on the light, a cry of despair sprang from her lips. Her beloved computer lay in pieces on the floor! Alan had methodically hammered her lifeline to sanity into twisted junk. Joanne sank to her knees, her body racked with sobs. Why had he done such a thing, why? She felt as if her whole world was crumbling. The room swam before her eyes and she slipped into unconsciousness.
***
When Joanne awoke, she was lying on the floor of the bedroom, her body stiff and sore. The morning sun streamed through the windows, glinting on the smashed remains of her link to the happiness she had known. She arose painfully and walked to their bedroom. Alan was gone and the house was silent. Joanne sighed and went to find a box in which to put her smashed computer. Maybe, just maybe, someone could fix it, but she was reasonably sure the damage was irreparable. 'I'll take it downtown after I take a shower and have some breakfast,' she thought; 'maybe I can buy a used one and my hard drive can be saved.'
***
Joanne could not remember seeing an electronics store in this part of town, but there it was, 'Mnemosyne Electronics'. 'What a curious name,' she wondered. 'I hope they can help me.' She parked her small convertible in front of the store, hefted her box of smashed parts and went in. The store was dark and cool, strangely devoid of the usual gaudy displays promoting the latest gadgets. "I'll be right with you," a melodic female voice called out from the rear of the store, "make yourself comfortable." Joanne noticed two large easy chairs facing the stores interior and chose one, setting her burden on the floor.
"Welcome to my shop," the melodious voice said, sending a thrill through Joanne's body. "How may I help you today, young lady?"
She looked up and saw a tall, beautiful woman in a long flowing white dress walking towards her. Joanne noticed her hair immediately. It was the color of polished silver, cascading down the woman's' back below her waist. Her eyes were pale blue, almost white with shining black pupils. Her face was classic in shape, gently rounded with a broad nose and full lips that glistened in the subdued lighting. She strode confidently towards her customer, her posture erect with her head and shoulders thrown back emphasizing her full breasts. Her feet were clad in silver sandals that twinkled as she walked. Joanne could not help but stare at the vision before her and she suddenly felt warm all over.
"Oh my goodness, young lady, what has happened to your nice computer?" said the woman, kneeling before Joanne and looking in the cardboard box at her feet.
"My, my husband, he smashed it," Joanne stammered as the woman's' eyes lifted to hers and seemed to reach into her soul. "We, we had an argument. I went to a movie. When I came home, he had smashed it." She began to cry, "Why would he hurt me like that, it's all I have to keep me sane." The woman hugged Joanne as she wept on the broad shoulder. The pain and frustration poured out of her, and she did not care that she was unraveling emotionally in front of a stranger. Yet somehow it felt right being in this woman's' arms and she was soon comforted.
"Come along, young lady," said the woman, rising to her feet and lifting the box of computer pieces. "We'll go into the workshop and I will see what I can do." Joanne followed the woman through a purple curtained doorway into a cavernous, well-lit room, then to a long workbench strewn with unusually shaped tools. "What is your name, young lady?" the woman asked as she carefully removed the broken parts from the box.
"Joanne, Joanne Campbell, ma'm," Joanne replied, deferentially. Although the woman seemed not much older than Joanne's thirty years, she had an aura about her of quiet dignity and extensive knowledge. Her calm and confident demeanor automatically earned Joanne's respect. "Hello Joanne," the woman said warmly, "My name is Clio. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My goodness, I am afraid your computer is beyond repair, but I may be able to transfer the information on the hard drive to a new unit."
"How much is a new unit, uh, a new computer?" Joanne asked, her heart sinking. "I, I don't have a lot of money." Alan controlled their money with an iron fist, demanding a strict accounting of every penny Joanne spent and berating her if she went over her budget for anything. She had begun to save bits of money here and there, accumulating it in a secret stash in her closet. Her 'mad money', as she called it, was a small act of defiance against her autocratic husband that gave her pleasure. "I have four hundred dollars, would that be enough?" She asked, hopefully.
"Well let me see," said Clio, looking through an immense leather bound notebook. "I just happen to have a computer of my own design that I can sell for that price. Let me show it to you." She walked to a towering dark wood cabinet, swung the door open and reached inside. What she carried from the cabinet to the workbench was the most unusual computer Joanne had ever seen.
It was a featureless rectangular silver box with softly rounded corners, sitting on squat triangular-shaped feet. A long silver power cord dangled from it ending in a triangular wall plug. Clio returned to the cabinet and brought out a silver flat screen monitor, a silver keyboard and a silver computer 'mouse'. Joanne watched in fascination as Clio assembled the components and plugged the machine into a socket on the workbench. The silver box hummed soothingly and the monitor danced with a rainbow of colors before presenting a picture of a typical suburban ranch house of 1960's vintage. Joanne stared at the monitor in disbelief. 'Why that's my home when I was in high school,' she thought, bewildered, 'how is this possible?'
