Optical disks whirl, hard drives search and spin, various fans of different speeds and sizes do their best to prevent complete meltdown. It doesn’t matter: she’s coming. All his life, or at least the past 3 months of it, nothing has meant much but this, and at last he nears a culmination. Eccentric synth music gallops like a free horse as Rich Hartman presses the final power button. Ready to go. Various company stickers and badges litter the wirey room and the surface of antique computer cases, each crammed with bits and bobs that barely work, but together forming a sort of mega-cyber-choir all singing the same scream. Towels line the doorway and windows, like a suicide before you could do it in various cooler ways. A half-eaten meal, cobbled together by someone foreign to the idea of food, sits in a bowl on the floor, green peppers, raw. The installation of Wine completes just as the computers reach their breaking point, the fans try to breathe, but only moments are given in between births of code. He knows it’s going to be a complicated voyage, things could go wrong, dependencies, dependencies of dependencies, dependencies of—you get the point.

Rich smacks the skeleton case of a failing computer, somehow restarting the dying fan into a frenzy of worse but functioning noises. It has to go perfect, there are no second first impressions, only second impressions. A bird cage nearby rattles and squawks adding to the commotion and noise pollution. The smell of humidifying bird poop in a rapidly warming room permeates, but is easily ignored by Rich, used to and quite comfortable around such odors. His white baseball cap sits backwards, perfectly complementing, he thinks, the baggy cargo shorts and graphic tee he has on of his favorite penguin. A computer dies, but not for long, not being allowed to experience the coolness, the stillness, that exists in not existing. Knocks on the cheap wooden door to his room come with decreasing patience, no answer. Eyes, or rather, fractions of eyes peek through cracks and small holes he had previously made in the door—thrown keyboards, kicks, and sometimes headbutts having carved them there.

It’s installed now, no going back, no crying, please, let’s not cry, he thinks to himself. The massive amalgamation of energy in the room, powering computers, powering Walmart fans, powering a server stack used for nothing but Minecraft, all of this now radiates a desert-like mirage of heat. Rich sits on the floor rocking next to his 4:3 screens, also on the floor, now sputtering to display a video call software, with compromises clearly being made as to which one. He types in a username and waits, rocking, he waits until his Casio watches (two on each arm) and Lenovo ThinkPads (librebooted of course) all agree that the time is exactly 3:00 AM EST. “California girls . . . ” he sighs to himself as he clicks the call button with his cursor shaped like a Minecraft sword. A face pops up. A flame pops up on one of the auxiliary computers running what looks like generic brand Microsoft Word with various conversation topics typed out in bullet points. “Hi Sarah!” he practically yells to the various mics, one of which probably works and is probably hooked up correctly. The receiving end of his message hears him clearly enough, along with what sounds like someone constantly blowing onto the mic, a bird squawking, and loud motherly concern. “So cool to see your face!” he says with both eyebrows glued to the top of his head, grinning. The speakers don’t work but it doesn’t matter, he’s gotten this far, and really he doesn’t even need to hear what she has to say.

Dollar store power strips, plugged in to dollar store power strips, all without surge protectors, quietly melt as Rich continues, “Soooooo, anyway, do you want to play League of Legends like usual, you are so cute by the way ahaha.” Bird noises change from begging for food and attention to agony. The smell is kind of bad in here, Rich thinks. The knocks on the door have stopped. He drags her face over, through various monitors and laptops, twelve in all, to a large TV dangling overhead looking down on him, a CRT now dripping in the heat. “So glad you’re not a thirty-year-old dude.” He says it playfully, intelligently, humorously, as the floor beneath him collapses into a smoldering pit of burning battery acid and silicone. Tarred and feathered with melted plastic and bits of jagged steel he can only think to himself how great it would be to get a pentakill while being held in her arms.