Does Not Compute

 

"Right there," he said pointing at a tangled mess of cables and wires, "that's your problem."

"You're telling me!" I said. "So what do we do, untangle it or something? Clean it up?"

"It's not that simple," he told me. It never is. This hunk of junk never did what it was supposed to, never what anyone asked it to do anyway. Lately though, I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a weird buzzing. Sometimes some of the peripheral parts wouldn't function correctly. One time, all the images were blurry and doubled. There was a major malfunction, and this time it wasn't something I could fix on my own.

This guy, he looked at me strange. They all did, but at least this guy seemed to know what he was talking about. He pointed at things, poked and prodded, really got in there to check everything out. Special tests were done unlike anything I had seen before, so I figured at least I'm not wasting my time. Most places I went to, when I explained what was going wrong, the geek squad would do a once over and tell me I had a virus. They'd run some general diagnostics, try to upsell me, and send me on my way. This time was different.

"Look, right here. See the wiring? The casing around those wires, it's breaking off." I looked, but it was hard to see. "Without the insulation, it's not relaying the..." I stared wide-eyed, trying to understand what he was going on about but obviously he was the expert and I wasn't.

"You know that weird buzzing? This is why," he said.

"So, can we fix it?" I searched his face for any sort of positive expressions but all I could see was the look of a guy who had seen people come and go, day after day. Did he even know what he was looking at? He couldn't see all the fun times, the games played, or all the hard work. He just saw the machine. The wires.

"No, we can try and keep it from getting worse," he told me, "but there's no fixing it."

I listened to all the tips, tricks, and everything else he told me I could do to hold off the inevitable. "None of these things last forever," he said with a smile.

"But isn't it a little quick, you know, to be breaking down like this? I kept it clean..."

He stopped me there. "It just happens," he said with a shrug. "No one knows why. It could be the temperature inside. It could be a faulty piece from the manufacturer. I don't have all the answers. All I can do is give you a few things to take home with you, and you can try to keep it running for as long as you can. Just make sure and come back regularly so I can make sure nothing else is wrong."

I walked out with a bag filled with stuff the guy said might help. Might. I sat in the car, rooting around through the bag. More stuff I had to buy just to maintain the machine. No warranty, no guarantees, and there was no fixing it. At least now I know what was wrong, what causes all the trouble.

These days I go online, browse forums for tips, and talk with others who have similar problems. We compare troubles, trade stories and exchange quick-fix ideas. There's a whole community out there built around faulty wiring, which is a good outlet for any frustrations I eventually end up with.

The buzzing is still there. That never changed, and it never will. Multiple Sclerosis is tricky that way. It cause a lot of strange feelings, physical and emotional, that are unpredictable. Some of it goes away, but some effects stick around permanently. Eventually the whole thing will shut down, but until then...