The sticky stuff

Umm Suqeim, UAE

The solution is simple. They should predict my errors, I should not have to try. After all, the manufacturers of modern, high-end technology must by now be aware that idiot doctors at the end of idiotically long days are bound to be exhausted. So knackered, so exhausted, incredibly tired, barely making sense, that the most natural thing in the world is to drop a dictating machine into an undrunk mug of healthcare coffee. Dear me, healthcare coffee, now there is a topic for debate.

It was a latte, steaming, fresh from a machine and somehow, still how I cannot fathom, the small, rectangular, chrome device slipped from my hand, bounced onto a reference book and from there slid gracefully into the middle of the mug. I watched it happen, as if in slow motion and then, would you believe, I sat, blinked and stared. Yes, I stared and watched, as if by magic my dictated letters from a day’s busy clinic would somehow drag themselves from the drink. Surely the letters would be waterproof?

Surely they should have made my dictating machine coffee-proof

But as I stared, the machine stayed still, motionless, as if waiting for instruction. For a moment, I thought it looked proud. There it was, almost perfectly positioned, as if I had thrown it into the coffee with intent. Then logic kicked in. This was a disaster. Thanks to a moment’s inattention my day’s labours had been lost. There was no way my correspondence would be spared. Vanished, kaput, in an instant it had joined the ranks of The Disappeared. By rights I was guilty of technocide, maybe with parole for good behaviour. Each letter would have to be redictated, each refashioned, each nuance expressed in typical medical jargon that only medics can adequately comprehend. Medical letters are filled with secret code. Outwardly they are simple statements of fact. Deep down they tell a different story.

My long day had instantly become longer and all I could do was stare. Gingerly, as if the thing was electrically charged, I used finger and thumb to lift the machine clear. For a brief nanosecond, I saw its screen flash a sickly blue, as if it was hanging on by its fingernails. My heart lifted.

“Thank God!” I thought, “there’s life in the thing.” But no, that sickly flash was its last, never to be repeated. All I could offer now was an honourable burial.

How many times has that happened? How many of us, thanks to the delicacy of modern technology, have lost a day, a week, a month, even a lifetime, when liquid has brought our electronics to a halt? Modern-day hacking may be a problem, as is internet crime. But liquid? The runny stuff is in a different league. That moment you turn on your tablet after a rainstorm and realise the Grim Technoreaper has had his way. For the briefest jiffy, you feel unperturbed. Then you remember; your last backup was several months earlier, sometimes if at all, and there are plenty of contacts to whom you dare not send a message a second time. They already think you are fool enough. To publically declare your cack-handedness by admitting to digital inefficiency? That is not normal behaviour. Best bury your head in shame and pray no one notices. Better still, blame someone, or something different. Spam is good for that.

“Didn’t you get my message?” you protest. “I’ve been losing a few recently since I installed that new antivirus. Have a look in Spam. I’ll send it again if it’s not there.”

Only you know that you never sent the thing in the first place. Blaming others for personal failure has always been a law of life. Ask any politician and they will tell you how it is done.

It may be developing dementia but the sudden death of my dictating machine was sadly not the first occasion. Try the full bottle of Coca-Cola that glugged out its contents and fully covered my PC keyboard. Again, it was an innocent occasion. I had been talking business to a colleague towards the rear of a café in deepest France, a meeting best supported by a presentation. Things were going well, I could sense a deal not far distant and my colleague’s body language was beginning to lend support. I would be home by lunch, agreement in the bag, and overdraft would become profit in a moment.

Yet no. It was the arm that did it, his arm, an Italian gesture, something with a sentence that started, “It’s like this…” Back of forearm hit front of bottle, full bottle, and bottle fell perfectly on its side. There it lay, exactly positioned, at a precise right angle to the exposed keyboard. It was then I heard the sound. “Glug…blurp…Glug…blurp…Glug…blurp…Glug.”

With each Glug came another slush of Coke, with every blurp air rushed in to bottle. Within moments the keyboard was covered in brown liquid and within a twinkling, drink had seeped past the keys. Yet what is it about human reflex? Or, is it disbelief? The two of us sat motionless, watching the bottle disgorge its contents, almost waiting for it to do its worst. First a few drops, then a small trickle, then a puddle, then a pond, then a lake, then a sea followed by a total wave of sticky stuff destroying everything in its wake. There was me, there was him, sitting open mouthed, gawping, as my presentation vanished, the keyboard vanished, my total life vapourised, thanks to his gesture and the sticky stuff.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as I belatedly grasped the bottle and brought it to the vertical.

“It doesn’t matter,” I lied, trying to sound convincing as I held my computer upside down and watched the liquid drip, okay flow, back onto the table. A dozen paper napkins later, the keyboard was dry, the screen dead, and my financial pocket several thousand pounds emptier.

“I’m guessing that’s a company machine?” asked my colleague, eyebrows raised in positive expectation.

“Yeah, no problem,” I drawled, hoping my lie sounded truthful. There was nothing corporate about my computer. It had come from life savings and carried every last thing in my life. I took pride in telling others I had gone digital. “Want a printout? Don’t ask me. Last time I used a printer was centuries ago,” I would boast. Showing off now seemed rather inappropriate.

“Thank Heaven,” he replied. “Otherwise I would have had to buy you another and funds are looking tight at the moment. I know those top-end machines and they don’t come cheap.”

I nodded, shifting almost imperceptibly in my seat, while stroking the now dead PC like a kitten. Forget any purring; this was grief, big-time heartache, and I had no time to dwell on sorrow. Business beckoned. “So how shall we handle the agreement?” I asked.

A starting pistol would have had less effect. In an instant my colleague had answered, “It’ll have to be another time,” he said, his body language now utterly flat. Glancing at his watch ostentatiously, he rose to his feet. “Just remembered,” he half gasped, “another meeting. I should just about make it if I dash.”

In a blink he had gone, shouting over his departing shoulder, “Sorry about that. I’ll be in touch.”

And then he, too, had joined The Disappeared, leaving me with a dead computer, dead deal and, for sure, dead finances. And a French table covered in sticky stuff.