Davis, Jerry – Voodoo Computer Healer

More grim faces. The novelist looked like someone had just shot his dog to death. “Oh,” is all he could say.

“How long have you been working on this novel?” I asked.

“Years,” he said.

“Years?”

“Years and years.” His voice was barren and hollow.

I looked at everyone in the room. I looked at Janet. “We need to turn on the music.”

“At a time like this?” Steve said.

“Yes. Especially at a time like this.”

Bob had a gleam in his eyes. He half-grinned, like he had a secret. I believe he had an inkling of what I had in mind. Bob went and turned up the stereo, putting on a B-52’s album. “Let’s go down to the looooove shack!” shouted the speakers. “Love shack, yeahhh!”

I started dancing. Janet, looking a little perplexed, started dancing with me. Positive energy, I thought. Let me feel it. Let me absorb the music, the dancing. Flow … flow … warm music, warm dancing. Warm feelings. Even the novelist was smiling.

Janet and I gyrated together, generating that energy. Nick tapped on a monitor with a pen, helping the rhythm with a staccato clack clack CLACK! Steve shook his head, saying, “You guys are nuts,”

but he wasn’t disapproving – he wanted to see something happen.

He wanted a miracle.

I felt it growing in me, blossoming. The power was in my arms, in my hands – they felt like they would glow in the dark.

Still rocking with the beat, I danced to the work bench and held onto that computer, held it tight, flooding it. When the moment felt right, I turned it on.

It came up without a glitch.

The novel was there.

From that point on it seemed there would be no stopping us.

Business kept growing, mainly because people felt good as soon as they entered the store. Nick felt good and he kept on slashing the prices. I performed miracle after miracle on the tech bench, resurrecting data from the dead, healing ill IC chips, brightening lost CRT’s.

It was a cold November day when a college professor brought in an old Apple III CPU, a model that hadn’t sold well and was actually quite rare. He’d just walked in and I happened to be out front, and I said, “Let me take that for you.” He handed it to me, and I felt the tired old circuits, poorly designed and hastily built. This was more factory defect than breakdown, but the user apparently never knew there was something wrong with it until it quit altogether. The moment I touched it the energy flowed, and by the time I set it down it was fixed.

“Let’s plug it in and see what’s up,” I said.

“It doesn’t work at all.”

“We’ve got to start somewhere.”

“Now wait, how much is this going to cost?”

“It used to be sixty-five an hour, but for you I’ll only charge twenty-five.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do I get a lower price?”

“Because …” I looked around, thinking up a reason.

“Because we give everyone with orphaned computers a break.”

“What do you mean, ‘orphaned’ computer?”

“That’s the term for a computer model abandoned by its manufacturer.”

“This model was abandoned?”

“Yes sir, I’m afraid so. Quite a while ago.”

He was upset at this news. “Well then, what’s the point in fixing it?”

“A working computer is better than a dead computer.”

“A worthless computer is worthless if it’s working or not.”

“It’s not worthless if it does what you need it to do.”

“It’s never done what I need it to do!”

Whew! The negative energy billowed out of this man like an explosion of thick, black smoke. It was creating a hole in the positive energy in the store. I’m treading on eggs here, I thought. “What do you need it to do?” I asked. “Perhaps I can help you.”

The man blustered and turned red. “It doesn’t work!” he shouted.

“Well, I’ll fix it, then we’ll get it to do what you want it to do.”

“I want it to work!”

Almost all the positive energy in the room was gone. A horrible development! I conjured all the positive energy I had stored up in my body and levitated the professor’s computer through the air and into his hands. He grasped it, astonished.

“It’s fixed,” I told him. “It will now work better than it ever had. It will function perfectly.” I smiled, using my last few drops of warmth. “No charge.”

“Preposterous!” the man yelled, throwing the machine down onto the floor between us. He turned and took leaping strides out of the store, slamming the glass doors open and high-stepping to his gray BMW. It looked like he was trying to climb steps into the air.

Steve walked to the front and stood with me as the car left the parking lot with tire-squealing sounds. “Wow. I don’t think you should have pulled the levitating trick.”

“I guess not.”

“Looks like he overloaded and locked up.”

“Yeah.”

“Total systems crash.”

“Massive parity errors.”

“To the max.”

We picked up the pieces of the twice-abandoned Apple and took it back to the tech room. It took 3 days to recharge the store to its former level of positive energy. By the end of those 3 days I had the professor’s computer repaired again, but this time it had taken manual board swapping and spare parts. The professor hadn’t left a name or number for us to reach him – in fact, we didn’t find out he was a professor until a few days later when the corporate headquarters gave Nick a call. After the call, Nick came back to talk to me.

“That guy called corporate and complained.”

“You’re kidding!”

“He told them you threw his computer at him.”

“No! You’re kidding! You’re kidding!”

Nick shook his head. “His name is Screwtack, he teaches at the University.”

“Oh no!” I was terrified. “You set corporate straight, I hope! I mean, Steve is my witness.”

“Yeah, yeah, I told them all that. But they’re sending someone down from corp to check us out.”

I shrugged. “That can’t be bad.”

“Naw. Don’t worry about it.” He laughed. “Business as usual … except, don’t go levitating anything in front of him.”

“No levitating,” I said. “I promise.”

An unnecessary promise. When the corporate man, Denny, walked into the store he sucked so much of the positive energy away that I could barely work, let alone defy the laws of gravity. The man had such a negative charge he was like an energy hole. The magic drained away in a tearing, silent vortex, spinning into a sad, mortal oblivion.

“Do you always play this music in the store during business hours?” he asked Nick.

“Yeah. It makes a good working environment–-”

“Well, that stops right now. This type of music is against corporate policy.” Denny peered around with cold, narrow eyes. “We have corporate tapes with encoded subliminal messages that you’re supposed to be playing.” He looked directly into Nick’s eyes, making Nick balk and inch backward. “They encourage customers to spend recklessly and to prevent employee theft.”

“I don’t really think we–-”

“You’re not paid to think, only to sell.” Cold, cold, cold!

Pointy nose, beady eyes. Perfect, stiff, unwrinkled black suit.

“Your prices are far below the standard.”

“Our sales and gross income have tripled in the last nine months.”

“So what. These prices are too low. Use your salesmanship, not sacrifice profit margins. Where’s your technician?”

“He’s in the back.”

I of course was listening in, and had to scramble unseen into the back for them to find me. “You’ve practically stopped ordering parts,” he said to me. No hello, no introduction, or anything.

Just blurted out those words, like an accusation of a crime.

“I fix the boards in-store,” I told him.

“Component level repair is against corporate policy.”

“Look at my profit margin.”

“I’ve seen it. I’ve also seen that you’ve cut the hourly service charge.”

I glanced at Nick and back. “We’re building a large and very loyal customer base,” I told him reasonably.

“Your profit margin could be three times as high. From now on, your rate is back up at corporate’s standard sixty-five an hour.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And no more component level repairs. Our studies have shown it as a waste of time and energy.”

Suck! Suck! He was sucking away at the magic in the tech room. He was an animated karma vacuum. His cold eyes scanned my equipment and the few computers I still had in for repair. He passed right by the resurrected Apple orphan and zoomed in on my portable stereo. “No music in the tech room,” he said.

“What?” This was too much!

“You have a problem with that?”

“No. You do. I have it in my contract that I get music of my choice in the tech room. And no earphones, either – I get to play it out loud.”

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