Jerry Davis - Voodoo Computer Healer.pdf - Jerry Davis - margozap

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VOODOO COMPUTER HEALER

By Jerry J. Davis

Previously Accepted for Publication by Zone 9 Magazine

I consider myself lucky that I discovered everything I knew

about life and the physical universe was wrong. Lucky not only

because of the discovery, but also because I was young when the

revelation occurred. Had I been older I would have rejected it as

nonsense.

Music, attitude, and your point of view can change things

beyond belief. An energy, a positive force, can be generated.

Magic can be done.

Listen to this!

There was a computer store in Cameron Cove, California ---

part of a major chain --- that had a golden year. It became a sort

of Camelot. Through the random processes of physics, the right

elements just happened to fall in place at the right time.

Remember, given enough time the unlikely will occur.

At the time I was hired, there were four others working

there:

Janet, the receptionist --- a bright, cheerful mother who's

kids had grown old enough for her to go back to work. That she

needed the extra money was beside the point . . . she wanted to go

back to work, she was happy about it.

There was Nick, the manager --- an optimistic ex-used car

salesman from New Jersey. He was a friendly, generous person.

Easy-going. Definitely not the management type.

There was also Bob, a slick, go-for-the-throat salesman with

the remarkable ability of not being sleazy. He was just doing it

to work his way through college. It wasn't his life, so he wasn't

bitter about it.

Now Steve, he could have been my brother. We even looked

alike. Same hair, same beard, except that he had brown hair and I

have red. He was a salesman too, but he was the nice-guy type who

relied on the customers who liked to do business with him.

Now here were the elements: Janet, Nick, Bob and Steve. And

myself. And music.

It started with the music. Nick liked music, and we always

had the stereo pumping the B-52's or the Talking Heads through the

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store's sound system. Living, jumping music, full of positive

energy.

Janet had never really heard these groups before, and she

would smile when we played them. "I like this!" she'd say. "Who is

this?" She said this all the time, with each new group we

introduced to the store.

When I first came to work there was a mountain of dead

computers to fix, a really bad back load of work left over from my

predecessor --- a negative person, from what I'd heard about him.

A real ogre. Hated customers, hated fellow employees, loved only

his computer --- and only his computer. He now makes six figures

programming for the Department of Defense. You know --- space

based weapon systems?

So all these inert, dead computers he left behind had owners

who needed them back. Needed them living, working, running their

businesses and doing their taxes. Entertaining their children. And

they would call everyday, begging for their machines back.

Screaming at me! Calling me names! Sucking away all my positive

energy and leaving me dry like a sack of old sticks.

When the music played, however, it was different. Music made

things flow. Music lubricated things, eased frictions, speeded

work. I started catching up.

Janet would walk into the tech room every once in a while

just to watch and smile. Nick would wander back to get away from

the pressures of his job, and stand there listening to the music.

His feet would start tapping, then his head would sway. At one

point he began to mimic playing the drums. When Steve saw this, he

came back and began playing the "air guitar" --- unlike myself,

these guys both had musical backgrounds --- so "air guitars," "air

drums," and jam sessions were part of their everyday lives. It was

inevitable. Inevitable! Steve and Nick jamming, and I'd start to

dance. Janet laughed, thinking this was the greatest thing she'd

ever seen, and I said, "Come on! Dance with me!"

"You guys are crazy!"

"Come on!"

Her grin straightened out. She thought a moment. Then she let

go and we were dancing, dancing, bodies gyrating to that

spring-gone-haywire beat, bouncing and jumping and laughing about

it all. Steve playing that phantom guitar, Nick slamming out that

beat on the tech bench with pencils. Bob, hearing all the

laughter, excused himself from a customer and came back to see

what was happening. His face lit up like a sunny day at the beach.

"Yes!" he said. "Yes! I like it! I like working here." He went

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back to the sales floor and sold a big, fat computer system.

It was energy we were generating, living positive energy. It

flowed out of that tech room and filled the whole store. The

building vibrated with it. It was alive, living.

Now, computers are neutral things. Not living yet not dead,

not smart but full of thought. Not its own thoughts --- our

thoughts. The thoughts of the user and the thoughts of the

programmer. So, depending on who is using it and what program it's

running, a computer can become positive or negative.

Over the hours and days of good feelings and good times, the

positive energy in that tech room became so intense I could feel

it like heat. While the music played and my friends were happy, I

worked on those poor, sick, dead computers . . . I felt the energy

flowing down my arms, through my hands, and into what I was doing.

Spare parts were becoming more and more unnecessary. Things, in

their odd electronic ways, were beginning to simply heal.

Nick noticed this first. He wanted to know why my tech room

was suddenly so much more profitable. "I'm fixing the boards," I

told him, "instead of replacing them."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah!"

He smiled and nodded. Things were looking up. Sales had

climbed to an all-time high as well. "Maybe," he said, "maybe we

should cut the repair prices down. Do ya think?"

"It wouldn't hurt us," I told him.

"I want to do that," he said. "That'll really make our

customer's happy, wouldn't it?"

"Sure."

"Okay. Do it. Start giving them a break." He was happy. He

was being nice, and it felt good --- especially since he didn't

have to be nice. It irritated him when he had to be nice, but when

it was of his own free will, of the genuine goodness of his heart,

it felt great. It pumped the positive energy up another notch in

the store, as well.

He was right, too --- the customers were happy. Mr. John P.

Galmore had been quoted $350 for his IBM repair, and we only

charged him $220. Wayne Trapper thought it was going to be $175 to

get his laptop back, but it only cost him $90. Little Jimmy Malcot

got his Macintosh repaired for only $25 instead of $110. Nick even

gave him some games for free.

Two weeks later Jimmy's father came in --- Mr. Malcot of

Malcot Industries --- and bought $350,000 worth of equipment. He

did this because of what we had done for his son. Nick was

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ecstatic! What we were doing was paying off. Everyone was winning.

Everyone felt good!

We had a little party one day after work, celebrating yet

another record breaking month. During the party an old man in a

sports jacket banged on the front door even though the store was

obviously closed. He looked through the window at us with a

desperate expression.

Nick let him in. "I'm a writer," the man said to Nick. "The

only copy of my novel is on this computer, and the computer

stopped working."

Nick swore to himself. "If there's something wrong with your

hard drive," Nick told the writer, "your novel may be gone. And

when it's gone, it's gone."

The writer looked stricken. "It's the only copy I have."

Now Nick was gritting his teeth and frowning. This sounded

like a really bad scene. "You didn't print any of it out or

anything?"

"No." The man was on the verge of tears. "I've been working

on it for four years. Nothing like this has ever happened."

"Well, we'll get our tech working on it," Nick said. "I can't

promise anything, but if anyone can save your novel, he can."

We put it on my work bench and plugged it in. Turned it on.

There was a humming sound, and garbage --- looking a lot like

Egyptian hieroglyphics --- filled the screen. "It's trying to

boot," I said, "but either the main board is damaged or there's

scrambled data on the hard drive."

"Oh," Nick said. Everyone had grim expressions. I tried

another test with a floppy disk. The computer started and ran

through its paces, but as soon as I tried to access the hard drive

it came to a halt. More garbage filled the screen. "The trouble is

in the hard drive, all right," I said.

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

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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?"

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Jerry Davis - Voodoo Computer Healer.pdf

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