Runner-up: T.Runner
Journal entry Day One 2nd May 2039 :- “Woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks”, Was Not Was
Here we go again, as if being a member of the "Cerebral Police" wasn't hard enough, these fricking hardware fetishists spring this "Anniversary of 31 Days of the Dragon" subversion bull universally again!
They think they are the only ones who need the undisputed zenith of mobile “Crysis 2035 fragging” unadulterated joy! And even on my considered ample state remuneration I couldn’t afford this beauty if I included both kidneys on the galaxian black-market. They just don’t make movies viewing like they use to. Cerebral holographic projections just don’t have the colour depth, contrast and brightness of 1080p blue Ray playback on this HP 20 inch baby, so I am reliably informed.
I don’t own a single Blu-Ray piece of hardware, never mind the ultimate in mobile multimedia and gaming option like the HP. I want to be able to display my HP 20 inch laptop on the inter-galaxy bus, train and hypersonic plane journeys knowing that I’ll be the envy of every other Orchard-book (formerly known as Macbook) 17 inch fair going mug without their “HP 20 Inch going-on”. I’m told you can do the old-fashioned scan, prints, fax and make photo prints in real time “off-world hardware styli”, no department intervention, hardware p0_n will never feel so good again.
Getting back to these “Dragon zealots” they're just like a virus, every year they reappear, sneakier and more determined to revive their prophecy that the "31 days of the Dragon", will open a wormhole to the original 2008 competition. Can’t they get their hardware fetish fixes like the rest of us, off-world (damit off-galaxy), as if I haven't got enough to do in UK-World (New Earth 17).
Wait a minute, what just happened, who typed that last paragraph! Sorry about that slip my beloved schizophrenia mistress; the cerebral implant suppressor must have gone offline. Dam, can get it back it in hyperspace now. Of course I know that there hardware fetish can't be satisfied without anything but the ultimate mobile, Crysis 2035 fragging, multimedia enhancing, cerebral beating “joy of love” that is the original HP Pavilion HDX LAN master-chief. I suppose they want to feel their hardware like the rest of us, not just sense it via cerebral memory algorithms.
The more I read about the original day one first entries @ AbsoluteVista.com, the more it seems they couldn't have known what they had started. Their competition rules stated that the "entrants" were allowed to get creative and enter the competition multiple times. Little did they know of 31 years later a whole " small business " industry would have grown around this phenomenon / religion, stating the second coming of the "uber hardware revolution", especially to the original HP 20 inch laptop that started it all off. Some say to the zenith of 21st century hardware, but I say until you've actually held it how could you possibly know, bar the Futuremark score results that is? That’s why it has to be mine, I’m going to infiltrate this sect and claimed the bounty for myself, I know it will enhance my credit rating socially (pull some geek-fem's in the process) and allow me to continue my obsession with all bloggs information technology related, 24/7, in the loo, in the garden & in my bed, who needs to sleep, sleep is for wimps and these meds do a wonderful job of keeping your eyes open on a 20 inch impeccable display. Maybe they could make me an intergalactic ambassador for HP and I could get away from this crummy job.
Anyway because of this I am pulling double shifts in the next 31 days, sayonara to my trip to Pleasure-world 46, so as far as I'm concerned it has to be mine, as it fits my motorised wheelchair perfectly, which my current Sony VGN-U50 5 inch screen laptop inadequately doesn’t (see photo). Yes, anyway these hardware zealots need sorting (by fair means or foul) before the 27 billion galaxian credits annually spent on potential and actual wormhole terrorists gets used in the next 31 days. Plus if I have the HP for myself, & create a cover story, I’ll be doing the universe some good. If you can’t beat them, subvert and join them. How hard can it be to train to be a geek-hardware-fetish-terrorist? I have done deeper and longer undercover work for the “cyborgs against sapient human inhabitants of Sol-3**militia”, I’ll just have to get used to not wearing an exoskeleton cyborg i-Orchard suit. Terrorists to fight terrorists that's my motto and I know that's what the chief of police thinks to, even though he hasn't got the balls to say it. Hell yes, how else can I be guaranteed of a decent 20th year pension if I don’t save a little galaxian credits for the Department!
Emmanuel T.L.
Greater Manchester
United Kingdom
43 years of age