Something New Friday: Personal Computer

The year is 2272, and we were sitting on the roof of an old house looking up at the stars. You asked me what I'm most afraid of. I told you something I had heard a long while back ,closer to the turn of the millennium, when I was extremely young. It was the idea of a solar flare hitting the earth and knocking out electricity. Very few people were still organic then, with the number only shrinking over time and neither of us ever were animals. If there was no way for us to charge our batteries, we would both slowly fall into a deep sleep together. We would just have to hope someone could find us both in good enough shape to reawaken. You asked me to elaborate on the solar flare thing. I think you could tell I was making myself a little upset. And I told you the idea is if the sun had a solar flare strong enough in our direction, it could wipe out the energy grid. I didn't know if the current energy grid was weak to solar flares. you reminded me to just search the internet for it, calling me an old man for forgetting I know everything everyone else does now. The whole planet has wireless connection, and we are all just a string of personal sentiments away from being a proper hive-mind. We came out to the ruins of the suburbs together to get away from it all. I searched the internet inside my own head and found that most everything has been solar flare proofed, and even that's moot because scientists know for certain a solar flare that powerful won't happen for a few thousand more years. If either of us are still around for that we might not be near earth anyway. You could tell my mind was drifting so you gave my hand a light squeeze. I looked at you and you were looking up. I looked up too. You can't see the stars as clearly as we did that night that clearly in the cities, as hundreds of years after the lightbulb was invented they still haven't fixed light pollution. I knew every constellation with a glance and I know you did too. We reclined, going from sitting to lying on the old roof. I placed my weight wrong and I fell head first through the old roof, leaving me hanging onto the roof, upside down, by my ankles. You knew I was ok because you've seen me walk away from worse spills, but you ask anyway. You always ask and I love you for it. I replied that I'm fine and you started to giggle. I turned on my night vision to see I was in what was barely left of an attic. A log of human memories lost to time and weather. Then I saw something that would have made my blood run cold if I ever had any. An old personal computer, looking surprisingly clean, as if it had been preserved but someone uncovered it for me. You started to yank me back up by my left ankle and you got me back on a more secure part of the roof. I told you what I saw and you carefully peaked down. We both went into scavenger mode and we took that old computer home with us, and miraculously it's hard drive was still readable. We preserved what we found, the evidence of a family. They had gone on vacation twice a year every year they could and they had lots of music saved. dozens of the songs weren't online yet and we were celebrated for the discovery. Several albums worth of music that were lucky enough to be in good enough shape to be reawakened. I don't know how it survived in that attic like that, but that's the second best thing I've ever found, right after you.