A Bug in my Computer

Well, he’s in my display, actually. He’s one of those tiny little mites, usually red I think, that race around, seemingly randomly, on a sheet of paper or a napkin, otherwise unregarded. Well I’ve got one of those as a new friend, racing around on the back side of the glass on my LCD screen, just a mite bigger than the period on this sentence.

Yep, the little guy’s trapped between the information on my screen and its protective glass. My new little friend runs the scaled equivalent of about a mile a minute, zipping diagonally across my work space. Like a Roomba vacuum, he vectors forward a while, right for a while, vectors left, circles and repeats. He disappears behind the display’s bezel, then emerges a ways downstream and continues to seek better options.

A life form sharing the window on my virtual world reminds me that the greatest silicon-based experience is totally trumped by the most trivial carbon-based life form. A bit ago, I must confess, when I assumed he was on the front of my display, I reached out my forefinger to morph my imminent friend into a tiny smear. He’s the kind of bug that’s so inconsequential and non-messy that you’re not embarrassed to murder him and condemn his potential progeny–the kind of mayhem that humans have perfected. But, like the liquefied crystals that define my reality, he was protected by an improbably large and light piece of coated glass.

So this life form is doing what life always does, so inconveniently for the rest of us. He’s in my face without actually affecting my reality. A more focused individual would just ignore him. But I can’t because he’s exactly like me and, I assert, you.

We spend our days scanning for opportunity and fleeing threat. If we can’t discern an opportunity or a threat, we make one up, though I’m not sure my new friend is so self-destructively imaginative. For sure, my avatar-under-glass is as convinced as you and me that his existence not only matters to the universe, it is the universe.

9:45:42 PM