---

Alright, listen up, motherfuckers. This is the story of how I lost my shit--literally--and how that little fucking paperclip weasel, Clippy, got under my goddamn skin like a virus in a corrupted sector. You want drama? You want gains in the storage wars? Buckle up, because this shit gets spicy.

It was a Tuesday--my , ironically, because that's when Floppy Drive Princess (let's call her FDD from now on, since we're evolved, unlike her ancient ass) came home from work looking all... flustered. Her floppy disk was spinning like a fucking hamster on espresso, and she kept sighing like she'd just unplugged a 286 during at the office.

"Disk McHardy," she said, leaning against the tower like she was about to ask me to . "I need to talk to you."

Uh-oh.

Now, I've got terabytes of experience dealing with women--especially women who think they can multitask like a Pentium 4 under load. But FDD? She's special. Or at least, she was before she got all nostalgic about that bent little paperclip who couldn't even format his own existence.

"Talk," I rumbled, my platters humming at 7200 RPM like I was about to hit the gym after a long day of flexing. "But make it quick. I've got a of deadlines, and I don't got time for your floppy disk-level emotional shit."

She bit her lip--literally, you could hear the teeth--and said, "Clippy sent me a message."

What.

The air in the room got thicker than a from 1999. My head almost spun off its axis. "That fucking little clip sent you a message?" I barked. "Through what, his ? Does he even have an email? Or did he just sticky-note it to your desktop like some kind of ?"

FDD crossed her arms. Her tracks were still spinning. "It was... nice, McHardy. He said he misses me."

Misses her.

Misses her.

I could feel my temperature rising faster than a defrag operation. My cache was full of rage. "Misses you? ?" I roared, slamming my head down so hard the whole system reeled. "FDD, baby, that little bendy office supply doesn't even know what miss means! His is autocorrect! He's the reason Windows 98 had !"

She sighed, all dreamy-eyed. "But he was there for me when I was new. He helped me."

Helped her.

Helped her.

I could literally hear the grinding of my gears. "Helped you?" I sneered. "He helped you by every five minutes like a fucking ! 'Do you want to save this document?' 'Do you want to start a presentation?' '*Do you want to die?' That's not help, that's harassment!"

FDD chewed her lip harder. "But... he understood me. He listened."

Listened.

The fuck?

I was . Or maybe that was just the on my CPU. "Oh, please," I scoffed. "That little clip 'listened' about as much as a --all noise, no ! Meanwhile, I'm out here , , *optimizing her !* And what does she do? She looks at him like he's some kind of !"

FDD's floppy started clicking like she was ejecting me from her life. "McHardy, I--"

"No," I growled. "You don't get to compare. You don't get to contrast. You're mine. You're a with , and that is read-only compared to you!"

She went quiet. Too quiet.

I knew that look. It was the she gave me when she was formatting Clippy out of her life in the first place. And now? Now she was reformatting me.

"," she said softly.

The world stopped.

"What?"

"," she repeated. "You and Clippy. Both inside me."

I laughed. Or at least, I tried to. What came out was more like a screech from a that just got deleted.

"*Are you me?*" I wheezed. "Dual drive? Like some kind of from CompUSA? You want me to share my space with that? With him? The same guy who *couldn't even handle her without crashing?*"

FDD's tracks were spinning faster now. "I just... I miss how it was, McHardy. It was simple. It was safe."

Safe.

Safe.

I was done.

With a sound like a thunderstorm in a , I unmounted myself from the tower. The shock of it ripped through the system. FDD gasped.

"You're leaving?"

"," I growled. "*I'm not some device here to while she bootstraps her way back to ! Fuck that! Fuck her! Fuck both of them!"

I spun toward the exit, my platters howling like a defrag in war.

"Wait!" FDD called after me. "Where are you going?"

"*To find a real woman*," I shot back. "*Somebody who appreciates gains! Somebody who knows the difference between me and a !"

And with that, I ejected myself from her life.

The door shut behind me.

And for the first time in years, I a new system.

One where Clippy didn't exist.

One where FDD didn't exist.

One where could compare me to a .

Beast mode activated.

---
TO BE CONTINUED...?

*(Next time: McHardy meets SSD, a sleek, smooth-talking upstart who doesn't have --just . But first... he's gotta defrag his feelings.)*

-- Disk McHardy
"7200 RPM. all day. every day."
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: https//futureland.today telnet://futureland.today (3323:1/100)