The Transience of Her

Downtime Filler, Part 5

Friday.

Many look forward to this day as an extension of the weekend.

But then... I have mixed feelings about the coming weekend.

While I am able to enjoy more free time for appreciating what she has left behind...

I also have to face the inevitability of meeting him.

Sunday, 7 pm. Go there alone, with no weapons. I'm unarmed and I'm certain that I won't harm you physically.

But mentally and emotionally... that can be another matter altogether.

You may be surprised at what I'll say that might make you end up not sleeping for days... or losing your appetite... or having your motivation to study diminished.

I don't know if my parents will approve of me going out at nighttime alone.

Oh, but the town is crime-free, so they will let me off the hook... sorta.

Man, why am I worrying too much over that mysterious guy with an equally mysterious avatar?

I must focus on the bright side of things, darn it!

So after doing my mandatory things for this last day of the weekday...

I will be taking a look at her PC and the remaining goodies in the final box.

And while I'm at it, I'll also listen to the albums she left behind.

Late afternoon.

Here in my room, I take a look at her pink-and-white PC and the peripherals that go along with it.

They all have been sitting in a corner of the room, above a barren side table, ever since their unboxing.

Of course, I won't be placing them on my own table due to lack of space.

I need a back-up table for this one.

I call my dad, who is currently downstairs.

“Dad?”

“What is it, sonny?”

“Do we have some foldable tables?”

“Ah, yes. They're in the attic for some years now. You can get one if you like. We practically have no use for 'em for the foreseeable future.”

“Thanks.”

Without any hesitation, I head towards the attic, which is essentially a loft on our two-storey house.

Surprisingly, this place is not a haven for dust.

I reckon that dad cleans up the attic every two months to ensure we aren't hindered by dust every time we have to pick up something.

OK... a foldable table should be here somewhere...

There it is.

In a seemingly inconspicuous corner of the attic, there are three white plastic tabletops.

They must be the foldable tables dad was talking about.

I run my fingers through one of the tables, and I can confirm that this attic is taken care of every two months. No whiff of dust or anything.

“This should do it.”

I carry the foldable table towards my room.

Now where should I place it?

My room layout, in its current state, runs thus:

On the left-hand side, there's the door, some empty space, and my desk with my PC.

On the center, there's my bed, with a window directly above the headboard.

On the right-hand side, there are the alternative rock posters as well as the cabinets that hold my (and her) game and music collections, plus the side stable with her PC set in it. Don't forget my dresser, too.

OK. Left-hand side it is.

I unfold the foldable table and place it beside my desk.

Before placing anything on it, I clean it first with glass cleaner.

There, all clean.

Now I can place her PC and related peripherals without cringing at the dirt.

I arrange the entire set like what I did to my own PC set when I first got it from the store.

“Wow! Best match!”

Now how to plug this sucker in?

I just can't plug her PC directly into the wall socket, or even my own, due to electrical risks that come with occasional thunderstorms in my immediate area.

I know!

I have a spare UPS, given to me from a friend who had to sell his old rig to make way for a new one.

Such is the beauty of living in a town with a thriving technology culture; one can always get used stuff for cheap, or even for free. And that used stuff is usually of high quality.

I also have a spare monitor, which is my old monitor that I used five years ago before switching to my current 144 Hz 4K monitor.

I plug in her PC to the UPS, and then the UPS to the wall socket.

I flip the relevant switches in the UPS, the power supply, and the monitor, and then press the power button on her PC.

The pink swirling lights that come from the LED case fans come to life as the PC boots to the OS almost immediately.

She didn't lock down her PC with a password because she didn't foresee anyone else other than her using it. Not her parents, not her little brother.

Her current desktop (at least the one she has before she unexpectedly passed away) has some icons, and her wallpaper is that of a dashing handsome man from some obscure female-oriented visual novel.

Again, she has her own feminine tastes.

Now where do I begin?

OK, I have to listen to a CD before continuing.

The audiophile-quality CD player currently has an album from Beaton House. I press play...

...and I can hear the first song in their album Saeculum Universalis, titled “Beast of Possibility”.

The chorus runs thus:

Unicorn, banshee, phoenix

Fighting over a box

That could change history

Hundred years, a sign of perfectibility

And there goes the narrative.

As the album continues playing, I begin my digital archaeology by first peeking at her “My Documents” folder.

Hmmm...

It seems she liked to preserve everything about her school life and everything else.

Assignments, book reports, research papers and theses, save files of old but gold PC games, animated GIFs, good ol' Flash games, a bunch of random e-books, snippets of written fiction, scanned documents, saved pages from now-defunct websites, spreadsheets of personal finances, disc defragmentation reports, presentations, documents that her parents commissioned her to prepare, ID application forms, game modding tutorials, and printable online tickets.

In essence, she's not that different from me, as I also like to preserve my files for later viewing, especially for the “oh, how'd I get through this again?” effect.

Next, the “Downloads” folder.

Just a bunch of random pictures that she saved from certain sites.

And speaking of pictures...

How about the “Pictures” folder?

There are several folders, each sorted according to certain categories.

Under the “Anime” folder, there are several folders that pertain to series she likes.

Like that one about an 800-year-old yet young-looking fox spirit pampering an overworked and over-stressed office worker.

Tail fluffing can come later.

Next is the “Games” folder.

All dedicated to mostly RPGs and MMORPGs, with some sprinklings of action platformers, fighting games, and the occasional cute-'em-up.

Wallpapers, fan art, nothing is off-limits to her.

Except for the naughty stuff, of course.

I'm now tempted to copy some of the pics I don't have in my PC... but that will come later.

Up next is the “Visual Novels” folder.

Some people say visual novels should be kept separates from video games because of the minimal to zero amount of gameplay involved. Others maintain that they are still classified as games, due to the interaction angle.

On that sort of matter, both of us are... quite ambivalent.

We just don't want to anger certain types of fans just by saying they are games.

Now back to the pics.

As I sift through the thumbnails, I conclude that everything in this folder is 75% pretty boys and 25% pretty girls.

Again, I still acknowledge her femininity that begets her attraction to fictional handsome men.

Now for the last picture folder.

The “All the Other Stuff” folder.

Well, what can I say? The folder really lives up to its name.

Album covers, wallpapers of her favorite bands and actors, random backgrounds of certain places, memes, abstract wallpapers, funny pictures (photoshopped or not), maps to itineraries, tourist photos, factoids, high-resolution renders of company logos, space wallpapers, wallpapers of certain PC hardware manufacturers and brands, pictures of other people's rigs and setups, image templates such as parchment paper, patterns that can also be used as wallpaper (even the classic ones), wallpapers of previous operating systems, real-life cute girls, real-life cute boys, inspirational quotes, school photos, optical illusions, conceptual designs, convention photos, house warming photos, TV show and movie wallpapers, editorial cartoons, cheat sheets, fake movie posters, cute animal pictures, photos of current events here and abroad, scans of historical photos, toy photos, social media-worthy food and drink photos, and photos of close and distant relatives and friends.

Speaking of friends, I wonder if she still has embarrassing photos of me.

To no one's surprise... yes, she does.

She has a photo of me sleeping in a cardboard box.

Man, do I look like a homeless bum in this one (only that I'm actually not).

This photo was taken when we took so long in preparing for the annual school festival that we reached midnight, and everyone was feeling sleepy and didn't want to go home for fears of no available public transportation at that time.

That was in grade 11. Good times.

Now for the other stuff in her PC.

“Music”? There's a mixture of old-school MIDI files and high-quality lossless FLAC files.

Hi-fi? Lo-fi? As long as her ears were pleased, it's all fair game for her.

How about “Videos”?

A bunch of AMVs (anime music videos), some rips of out-of-print anime, funny videos, and videos of moments with her friends and relatives.

Again, I anticipate the presence of an awkward video starring me.

And I'm not wrong.

A video of me singing off-tune in karaoke!

Man, that was way more embarrassing than the box-as-a-bed bit.

I could be killing a cat... or many cats.

I wondered if the cat gods accused me of cat g******e with that horrible singing.

Anyway, moving on.

Now back to the desktop.

Besides the requisite system icons, there are several shortcuts for games (including Skypaths Online), system utilities, audio and video players, image viewers, image editors, torrent clients, office productivity applications, mobile app emulators, text and voice chat clients, and a game client for downloadable games.

I'm gonna take a look at the game client to know how she's fared.

Most of the games in that list are indie titles, RPGs, female-oriented visual novels (no surprise here), ports of previous-generation console games, and the occasional FPS.

Now how about her profile?

Let's see...

Name: Alpina the Moonreader

50 games owned, 25 DLC owned, 15 reviews, 45 wishlisted

Featured games: Softwar, Dragon's Breath III, Local Love, A Promise at Tanabata

Achievement showcase: 355 achievements, 20 perfect games, 85% average game completion rate

Badge collection: 25 badges collected, 50 game cards

Recent activity:

Tank Goodness

65 hours on record

Last played 3 weeks ago

Achievement progress: 10 of 25

She really is a gamer at heart.

Now to see if there are other things that are worth looking at.

In another hard drive (not the primary storage and boot drives), all I can see are a bunch of installers and zip files, a folder full of MP3 files, some hardware monitoring utilities (such as those for benchmarking, disk health checking, CPU and GPU temperature monitoring), and oddly enough, old application icons.

After viewing all the digital bits and pieces of history she left behind... I ponder.

Yeah, you and I are not much different, Lianna.

And that is why we're still as thick as thieves, though far apart we certainly are now.

But then...

I'll face the inevitable.

Meanwhile, in an unknown side of town...

A man who obscures his face and sorts out some papers inside an dimly-lit room is declaring something.

“Mr. Soren Orr...

“I know a lot more about you than you think.

“Of your history with Ms. Lianna Riversdale...

“Of those interests you share with her...

“And her unexpected passing.

“You are still mired in your own delusion...

“...that she is alive in some make-believe dimension.

“I warned you thrice... but you still wouldn't budge.

“You cannot entirely escape this ugly truth I will be telling you tomorrow evening.

“Do you know why?

“Because I was born to be the arbiter of your lives!”