SCRAP PAPER.

[NejinOniwa]

Give me tones to that, if you don't mind...this sounds like something.

[Paul]

I'm not satisfied with the melody yet, also I don't have any recording equipment -_-

[NejinOniwa]

Reading doesn't always inspire, but it sets the mind's thinking right.
Here is not an answer, but a question: Who is it that wanders the night?

The nightwanderer treads tranquil
Upon the roads he walk
He walk them them all indifferent
A wander, never a stalk.

His road carries no signs to read
Not last, nor next, no reason
And if they did, he would not heed
His eyes are blind from treason.

For so it is and will be ever
That never can he be lost
For he who knows of no direction
Shall bathe the heavens in frost.

And some may say that not knowing left
Is equal to not knowing right
But by knowing no wrong, the world is cleft
And in dark, we walk past the light.

By leafen and hand, and upon all the sky
With all its stars so bright
The words are said, all asking why
The nightwanderer wanders the night.

But words are merely tools of thought
And without tones, too light
To guide their ways to where they ought
To the forest of silver's height.

For there it is, that from the swords
The hammer shall be wrought
And only unlost may one walk the wards
To find what has been sought.

Under signs old and new of stars so bright
For years untrampled by cities' light
The blade of ending, burning sight
As the nightwalker grasps the night.


And none shall ever tell when or where right
Why the nightwanderer wanders the night.

[Krizonar]

A Clockwork Mac
Chapter 1

   10.44 gigabytes were complete, not many more to go. Just a regular backup, nothing more. Mac transferred her experiences from the day onto the Time Machine, which would keep them frozen in time forever, like a picture does for us. She was relaxing, letting memory flow freely to and from her body and elsewhere, a type of meditative state. She held the device in her left hand as she sat, indian style; it was roughly the size of a pocket watch, made of stainless steel and had a backwards turning clock on top of the "stream of time" that adorned its face. It was not an uncomfortable feeling, it was rather relaxing. Her master mostly subjugated himself to very simple lines of work while she was backing up, if any at all, leaving her free to relax and enjoy the experience.

   Today, her master was preoccupied with cleaning her as she worked, giving not only a feeling of relaxation, but bliss and happiness. She had needed a cleaning lately, her keys had felt a bit grimy and her screen had collected some dust. She sighed as she propped her feet up and enjoyed the nonalcoholic cleaning wipe against her screen.

   It had been an easy day, she had done some average graphical work that hadn't pushed her too hard, gone about 3 hours without her charger at one point and had played a game for a few hours, easy stuff. She was happy her master never pushed her too hard, she had known other OS-Tans that had rough lives each day as they struggled to keep up with demands. Some got yelled at for working to slow, some didn't have enough memory to do everything they were asked and some worked in the boiling heat. She was very glad she had it easy. She was fast and had no problems working on things others considered ludicrously intensive, her multiple cores working in unison. Looking down, she laughed a bit, proud she had as much memory as she could ask for, master had done well. She closed her eyes again as she basked in the cool breeze her top notch fans brought in. She was happy.

   A noise slightly startled her, a mid range ping noise; someone was pinging her over the local network. She opened one eye and opened the channel, "Yes?" she asked. She sounded sleepy.

   "Oh, hey Mac, I was just like, you know, wondering when, if ever, that is, you were going to boot camp me. I'd like some of that supple hardware myself! Oh and how are you? I see you're backing up, how is that going? How much memory is it today? I like games, did you play any games today?" It was the Windows Vista PC in the living room.

   Mac groaned and closed her eye again, "you're overclocked again aren't you?" She shifted a bit to a side position, her arm supporting her weight as she sat sideways on her legs.

   "Overclocked?  How can you tell? Overclocking is nice, it makes you, like, really really fast, you know? I'm at 100% CPU now and I can totally, like, feel it man!" Background noises of Vista scrambling around and moving files while opening and closing cabinets on her hardrive could clearly be heard.

   Mac covered her ears, "and why are you at 100%? What are you doing that's so intensive?" Her eye twitched. "And loud?"

   The loud sounds stopped. "Well, I was trying to calculate when I'm getting my next upgrade, I'm, like, super-upgradeable, you know? Maybe if I act like I'm sick, they'll, like, maybe, get me some new parts or something!"

   "I don't see an upgrade coming for you anytime soon, the people who use you aren't concerned much with your performance it seems." Mac sighed. "If you don't perform well on purpose, your masters are likely to just throw you away." She brushed her long blond hair to the side with her Time Machine watch in hand.
   "My masters? My masters, like, never use me anyway. They use their phones, like, all the time, now. I just wish I had been upgraded to, more than, say, 2.4 GHz and I do wish my memory, was, a bit, more plump. These one gigs just don't cut it, I want, like, more! How come you get a nifty solid state drive and stuff and I get a measly 250 GB 5,400 RPM? I'm, like, a Desktop, I should be way more powerful than, say, a puny 1 inch thick laptop.

   Mac looked down and blushed in guilt. One gig? I have eight, I'm huge, She thought to herself. "Well, I know my Master bought me 8 gigabytes of memory because he wanted me to be comfortable under hard stresses. The solid state drive was because he wanted me to be the best he has ever had and I hope I live up to his expectations. I'm sorry yours seemed to have not cared for you much upon your purchase, but that's not my fault, or my Master's." She made an abstract gradient heart in Pixelmator and sent it to Vista. "Maybe someday you'll get decked out all cool!" Her backup was almost complete, she could eject her drive soon.

   "I guess..." Vista had obviously come out of overclock by this time, her voice being less super hyper and more emotional. "But I still don't see why it was necessary to get the 512 SSD, that just makes me feel bad." She doodled an excuse for a heart in paint and sent it to Mac. "And you get your own 500 GB external too, the most I get is a 2 GB flash drive."

   "Master deemed it important I have safe guards and that I have a lot of space, plus, his drive isn't compatible with Windows, Vista." She shifted back to indian style, her bangs now in her face as she looked down at her watch, the backup nearly finished. "I bet if you run out of HD space, your masters will buy you an external too!"
   The words hit her like a kernel panic, "Not compatible with Windows? Surely, that's nonsense. Everything is compatible with Windows Vista!" She loudly exclaimed, a bit angry.

   "It's a Mac drive, it wouldn't work for you," she said, looking upwards and moving her bangs out of the way again, a bit taken back by Vista's sudden anger. "You'd have to completely reformat it to get it to work and that would erase everything on it."

   "Maybe that's what I'll do then," she raged back. Vista began fumbling through network protocols, she wanted that drive.

   Mac's eyes went a bit wide and she stood up, "you can't take it while I'm backing up with Time Machine anyway, you might hurt one of us." It was obvious Vista wasn't listening though, as the drive ejected itself and mounted to Vista. Mac gasped at the sensation of the drive being ejected incorrectly.

   Vista laughed, but then she froze, a blue screen popping up from the strange hardware. "Welllllllll, fuuuuuu-" she managed to say while gritting her teeth.

   Almost on perfect time to censor Vista's last word, the Time Machine made a high pitched noise and began making a portal on itself. Mac looked at it in surprise as it engulfed her rather quickly. The portal then went on to engulf the things nearest her as well, including her case, travel bag and her Master who had been cleaning her.

   Mac opened an eye, still staying in a fetal position as best she could, despite her excessive memory. Everything was... green with wavy white lightning looking streaks. She looked down at the Time machine as best she could, noticing its hands were going backwards at ridiculous speeds. "Well that can't be good," she whispered. Turning on her iSight, she took a look around. It was green and wavy out here as well, though she spotted her Master, who looked rather confused, along with her item bag.

   It was only a few seconds before the green light disappeared, leaving them in what looked like a completely different area. There was no table for Mac to sit on in this area. Mac fell to the floor, clutching her arms to the sides of her head, she landed on her side, her palm rest hitting the concrete. Luckily, her internal enclosure guard shocks and tough aluminum body left her undamaged as she fell onto her enclosure. Her camera still on, she could tell her master had caught himself on all fours before he hit the floor. He was rushing over to inspect her after her fall, lifting her up and turning her around. She flashed her statistics up on screen, signaling she was perfectly fine. He closed her lid and tucked her beneath his arm protectively.

   Her master looked around suspiciously, "Mac-Tan, what is the current time?" he said, patting her lid.

   She perked up, that was the key word to activate her speakable items. She checked her internal clock and gasped. "Unknown," she answered back in a shaky voice, her palms up at her chin in a defensive posture.

   "Then where are we? Use GPS assistance and calibrate your time on the nearest network" he told her, still mostly un-phased..
   
   She searched, she scanned, she looked. "No hot spots in range," she answered back, shaking a bit by this point, her knees knocking together at times. If she remembered right, Master's house didn't have any concrete floors, where were they?

   Her master apparently wondered the same thing, he brushed back his dirty blond hair with the back of his hand and looked around more carefully. The room was pretty dull, but had random spiffy posters on the wall with colors. The desks were all metal or wood, a small, old CRT Television was on one of the metal desks, it was showing some advertisement for what he identified as an Old School Power Macintosh. Speaking of old school, he spotted one old Mac in the corner of the room on one of the wooden desks. Why would someone still have a Mac this old as their main computer? He walked over to it, Mac in his hand and her bag on his back over his shoulder. Jiggling the mouse, he checked the time in the upper right corner. His mouth opened a bit in surprise but he managed to be mostly composed. "Mac, calibrate your clock and date. Today is February the 25th... 1994."


/vanish

[Aurora Borealis]

I like it, Krizo!

Nice to see Mac/OSX-tan and Vistan being fairly civil with each other, though I do feel sorry for Vistan. You're really good with describing actions too.

[Krizonar]

A Clockwork Mac
Chapter 2


   She did as she was told, biting her upper lip in the process. Partially in disbelief, she went through her file system. Created: Tuesday, October 12, 2010, she read to herself, the info from her Solid State Drive's creation date. This was not possible, maybe master had read it wrong? She chimed her system noise, wanting attention. (http://www.mac512.com/Macsupportfiles/TAMStartupChime.aiff)

   Zach heard her chime and set her on the table beside the old Mac's monitor, opening her lid back up. That startup chime was perfectly suited to her, unique in the way that, rumor has it, it could only be heard to its full extent on a certain model of Macintosh. Or, one that happens to have had Apple tweak its speakers, he thought to himself. Twice. He turned his attention back to her and wondered what was so important.

   Her screen gaining brightness a split second after her lid opened. Turning on her camera, she took a look at the Mac beside her. She identified it in her MacTracker as a Power Macintosh 8100 with a Macintosh 21-inch color screen. It was an extremely powerful computer for the time. Maybe he was right, this model and screen are ancient, she pondered, the parts don't show hardly any wear or tear either, they're almost brand new...

   Her master was doing some investigating of his own by this point after making sure she was alright, pulling up info on the Macintosh from the Finder. It was running System Software 7.5 and was apparently up to date, the newest file on it being a type of list. The file was locked, however, so he could not view it, but the title was "current tech usage".
   
   "Interesting," her microphone heard him say, "it looks legitimate, no aging signs..." He looked around for a moment, taking in his surroundings. "Perhaps we should try to find the person who owns this? I want to meet whoever can keep a computer in such great condition." Closing her lid smoothly and picking her up, along with her bag, he moved towards the door and turned the handle with his pointer and middle fingers on each side.

   A hallway greeted him, there was green carpet with red Xs and white walls. Walking through the hallway, he reasoned he was in a business building of some sort, as there were many glass cutaways with older computers on desks. Oddly enough, there were no people. Where could they be? He thought to himself. Continuing his search, he turned a sharp corner in the hallway. What was beyond the corner was a little bit relieving, the apparent employees gathered at some tables for lunch. He approached the closest one slowly and calmly.

   The man was probably in his lower to mid thirties and was dressed in typical business fashion. He was eating a salad as her master approached him.

   "Excuse me, sir," he started. The man looked up from his meal slowly, then looked to Zach's bag, his computer and bag, then nodded before swallowing his food.
   "Yes?" The man said, obviously finding this a bit odd through his tone of voice. He shifted in his seat.

   Zach began, "I was wondering if you could tell me where I am, address? Street? I appear to be lost."

   "I'll say," he commented, "How did you get this far into our complex? Apple Computer Inc is a big place, ya'know."

   She rubbed her ear for a second at that. This place was Cupertino? This looked nothing like she remembered.

   "Well," Zach responded, "I'm not quite sure, actually. There was a flash of green light and I was... Here."

   The man looked at him oddly, but responded in a slow, controlled voice, "That seems odd... Hm, what were you doing at the time, son?" He still seemed interested in the computer.

   "Well, for that, I was just cleaning my computer, in my room and then it happened." Zach lifted Mac up to where her outer lid with the glowing Apple logo showed. "Which would be her."

   "Her?" The man tilted his head and got up from his seat. "Odd to call a computer a her."

   Mac made an angry face and revved her fan.

   "This isn't our logo, but it's very similar, I'll need to take this up with our legal department, someone is copying our logo!"

   "Do you not recognize an Apple computer when you see one?" Zach flatly said. "The ones you have back there are pretty old, by the way."

   The man rubbed his glasses on his tie, "are you telling me that this computer, right here, is an Apple computer?" He bent down to look at it in Zach's arm. "We've never made anything that looks like that and the logo is a cheap knockoff, doesn't look half as good, Amelio would fire us all!"

   "Amelio? Didn't Steve Jobs take over from him over a decade ago?"

   The man raised an eyebrow, "you mean that man that resigned a decade ago?"

   "Resigned?" Zach said, surprised. "he resigned in 1985, this is 2011, Steve took the company back in 1997."

   Yet again, the man raised an eyebrow, "you're a very strange boy, you sure nothing happened to you... Say, getting hit on the head?"

   "Um, pretty sure," he said, nonchalantly. "I bought this Mac last year, in 2010, it is now 2011. Here, look." Opening up Mac's lid, he went to About this Mac. "See?"

   The man leaned closer, squinting at disbelief of everything on the screen and having no idea what any of it was by his expression, his eyes eventually resting on one thing. "Copyright 1983 through 2011 Apple Inc. hm...." He leaned back and scratched his head. "Well, that computer's awfully thin and has a pretty big screen, probably doesn't have a very good build, I'd say you need to reset your PRAM. If I read correct, it also only has about 2.66 megahertz of cpu, we don't build anything that slow, son."

   Mac crossed her arms and fumed at "poor build".

   "2.66 gigahertz." Zach said, "and it's PRAM is fine."

   "Gigahertz?" he stated as if Zach had just said the computer was a cray. "I think somebody has a pride issue, gigahert processors are theoretical only. Next you'll be saying it has a gigabyte of memory and has a 5 hour battery life."

   Mac made a pouty face, that kind of underestimation was insulting.

   "Actually, she has about 500 gigabytes of memory and has about 9 hours of battery life remaining. I know she's not a standard model, but dang man."

   "I do believe you need to stop making a fool of yourself and run along now, though that is an interesting computer you have there, all that you said is impossible." The man sat back down and sipped what was either tea or coffee.

   "Would you like to prove me wrong?" Zach said, "this is an Apple computer, weather you believe it or not and its specs are very real."

   The man rolled his eyes, tired of the game. "Fine, son, go ahead and do whatever you want."

   "Well," he asked, "do the computers in this room have network capability?" Zach smiled at the challenge as he motioned at the computers lining the back wall, knowing it'd be easy to prove his computer had the specs he said it did because it... Did.

   "Of course they do, we use our top of the line equipment here, all of them support advanced networking."

   Mac giggled at advanced, noting the old grey cases the computers had for towers.

   "Ok, cool," he stated, waving back his hair and setting Mac on the table.

   Mac stood up and formed her hands into a camera, taking the man's picture with Photobooth. She thought for a moment on how she could make it interesting and then came to a conclusion. Reaching out with her wifi-waves, she forced them down the other computers I/O ports in a way she was pretty sure computers of this time would understand. Sure enough, AU/X sent her a ping.

   AU/X was wearing a business suit and smoking a cigar. "Well well, we don't get many newcomers around here... An' what are you supposed to be? Some sort of malware?" She stared at Mac very seriously.

   "No, no," Mac put her arm behind her head, "I just want you to display this picture for a minute, all of you on this network. You can go back to whatever you were doing when you're done, it'll only take a second!" Mac sent her the picture as a very, very small bitmap.

   "Um, ok then," AU/X said, a little confused. Sure enough though, the picture began to display on each computer terminal, one by one.

   Zach leaned against the table, noticing the pictures popping up and waited, a big grin adorning his face. Mac was doing the same.

   The man put his coffee down, realizing that there's no way that computer could've done that. First off, no camera is small enough to fit in a 1 inch computer. Second, the blasted computer's not hooked to anything! Getting up out of his chair, he looked at Mac. "What are you?"

[NejinOniwa]

Well, well... -w-

First off: The writing style is nice. Not complex overly, not overly simplified - plain and clean, through and thorough.

Second: Nice take on storyline. Quite hooking, what with the time-travel and all -w-;

Third: NEXT CHAPTER WHEN?

That is all -w-

[Krizonar]

Way better response than what I expected.

Not sure about next parts, my writing is really eratic. (hence why that was posted at 3 am)

[Paul]

This is nice

MORE!

[Bella]

Please do write moar, this is quite interesting so far and has a lot of potential. : )

[Aurora Borealis]

That was awesome! And A/UX-tan showed up too!

Macs have changed so much over the years, I bet nearly no one in the 90's expected the Mac and Apple to become what they are now!

I'd love to see more of this!
-------

The discussions in the Theories thread inspired me to get started on writing this:


"Is it safe to go in there?" A/UX-tan thought to herself as she reached her hand towards the door, but then pulled it back, and shuddered.

"Need help opening the door?" Apple II-tan chuckled, as she approached. She was dressed in her work clothes, modeled after Edo-era farmer's attire in red and white, wearing a white kerchief on her head and was carrying farm tools with her.

"I'm still nervous about this." A/UX answered.  "Have the rest of the family visited yet?"

"Not yet. They're waiting for her to make some improvements first. After some of the things that happened..." Apple II answered, nervously. "Have you met them yet?"

"No, I just got here. You're the only one I met." A/UX-tan got more nervous. "Ugh. And look at me- I'm starting to fidget- how unprofessional and undignified of me!"

"Calm down. Calm down. I'm sorry I can't help you right now, but I know you can do this." Apple II-tan reassured. "Best of luck!" She cheered as she walked off to work.

"Okay. I should be able to do this. I have super strength, and can restrain her if I have to." A/UX-tan quietly muttered to herself, while reaching for the door again. She opened it this time, slowly. Eyeing the inside of the room, one of the first things she saw was a small desk to the side of the bed; on the desk she saw an alarm clock, some photos; some framed, others in a scrapbook; and a small stack of papers. Approaching the desk, she looked at a framed family photo first, taken earlier in the year.

"My stepfamily... My real family." She thought and smiled. "I'll be happy to meet them." But then a bit of fear struck her when she looked closer at the family photo. The youngest of the Mac-tans was by far the tallest; wearing a straitjacket, and she looked like she wanted to kill the photographer. Her neatly-styled hair seemed out of place compared to the rest of her appearance.

"On second thought..." A/UX-tan quietly chuckled under her breath.

[stewartsage]

A/UX, I've always thought, would have a hell of an extended family.

It's hard to guess which part is more dangerous.

[Aurora Borealis]

Isn't it for the best that she lives as a wanderer now? 

_{(obviously false)} Spoiler for the next part: System 6-tan barges into the room wielding a chainsaw... _{and there's an epic chainsaw duel... with lasers!}

[Krizonar]

...chainsaw duel with laz0rs?

heck yeah

[Aurora Borealis]

Does this seem good so far? It's been a long while since I've actually typed up a story.