Stuck Disk

by Nikki Little

The disk was stuck. No doubt about that. I had tried all the usual tricks to get the disk out. Open disk utility and click "Eject" under "File." Open iTunes and select "Eject Disk" under "Controls." Reboot while holding the trackpad button down. Boot into open firmware, type "eject cd" into the command-line prompt, and then press return. Nothing worked. I had burned a disk on Alice's iBook to copy all of her ebooks to my own notebook, and now I couldn't get it out. "Alice is going to kill me," I thought.

I told Alice, and it wasn't me she wanted to kill. Alice didn't know that an iBook doesn't have a pinhole that you can stick a paper clip into to manually eject a disk. She opened her desk drawer, pulled out a paper clip, and straightened it. She unplugged her iBook and stood it on its side. She began to hunt. And hunt. And hunt. I had to tell her. "Alice, Apple's laptops traditionally have not had pinholes to manually eject a disk. Any Apple laptop with a slot-loading drive has no manual eject mechanism." Alice gave me a funny look.

"Arianne, please tell me you're joking," said Alice.

"No, I'm not," I said.

That's when Alice turned into the Queen of Hearts. I don't think I ever saw her convert so fast in my life. "Steve Jobs, you blithering, fucking idiot!" Alice grabbed me and away we went through one of her stargate portals. The mental type. The kind that makes you puke when you arrive.

We arrived just outside Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. I puked on the glass doors. Alice marched right past the startled security guards, who, of course, were intelligent enough not to try to stop her. They were geeks, after all. They had common sense. I followed behind. "Sorry about the door."

"Steve Jobs, where the fuck are you? You get this disk out of my iBook! You fix my iBook or I'll fix you and hang your family jewels in a pickle jar over the entrance so that all your employees can gaze and marvel at that fact that their chief executive is missing two of his marbles!"

The employees all pointed to the stairway. Intruder alert sirens blared all over the building. Alice and I went up the stairs. And up the stairs. And up the stairs. The employees all kept pointing to the stairs. When we got to the top floor, a startled janitor pointed to a pair of French doors down a corridor. The big cheese. The big enchilada. The architect of no manual eject. Alice kicked the doors open.

The head geek looked up. There was no one else in sight. He knew Alice was coming. "Come, my dear. This happens all the time. Jobs handed Alice a brand new MacBook Air and a 32-gigabyte flash drive. "You can transfer all of your information yourself after setting up your new notebook." The iBook only had a 30-gigabyte hard drive. I stared at the tiny flash drive in wonder, and then at the iBook. Jobs grinned, "It's all yours. No charge. Sorry for your trouble." Jobs was all smiles and charm. It was no wonder that people said that he could sell a turd with a ribbon on it. Alice calmed down and turned back to normal. She didn't thank Jobs for the new computer, though, and handed me the iBook to carry. She still had a bit of a scowl on her face as we returned to her bedroom.

After Alice set up the new computer and transferred all of her information, she turned the MacBook Air on its side to insert the ethernet cable to Wonderland's local intranet. Then she turned the MacBook Air on its other side looking for the ethernet port. There was no ethernet port. Oh, fuck!

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

The End

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.