week 12: Hannah Pulley

(it's the diary of a laptop, so bear with me)

It’s morning, but it feels like I just went to sleep a few hours ago. I did, actually. It’s more of an idle than a fitful sleep, but lately we’ve been working so much lately, there’s rarely time to completely shut down; no room to forget, nowhere to go to completely clear our minds. She falls asleep while typing in a document which never seems to end and wakes up early to keep writing, while it’s my job to remember ever single word and space of it. Some mornings she grumbles about she sister hogging the bathroom mirror, peeling off the tape over my webcam instead, opening the camera app and proceeding to braid her hair. It’s only for a few minutes, and then she’s gone. The lights click off, and I’m back on the shelf, back to sleep for a while longer.

I’m back to life at night, and there are already books and papers spread out across the floor. She pauses, before reaching for the keys, and types a command. <windows key, start menu search, enter. skype, enter. spotify, enter.> “Hello, Anna.” I whisper. I am somewhere between young and old, my insides gathering dust, trackpad wounded and fickle, but still strong enough to run through each passing day. “Hey Glo, where did you put the mouse?” she yells to the next room.

Mouse connected, wifi enabled, headphones in, she flips back and forth between windows, from one browser tab to the next, an array of information, scrolling through pictures, videos in another language, music almost always on. Some nights, she walks around her room, music playing through speakers; other nights, we’re awake all night and she speaks to my screen for several hours straight, but I know when she laughs and says she loves someone, it isn’t directed at me. It feels odd sometimes. Once, sometime around 2 on a Saturday morning, she said, “don’t you think it’s weird that your webcam sees you just as other people do, facing you; yet what your screen shows you is the same view as you would see in a mirror?” I wonder about how she thinks of me, with a personality and temperament, or just collection of metal and glass, an open window just for the purpose of pretending you’re somewhere else.