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Chapter 1 - From Keyboard Reject to Action Hero


THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

Once upon a half-life ago, there was a guy called Del. That was his nickname, short for Delete. And he was a reliable, hard-working key on most of the world's computers.

A straight-forward and regular sort of guy, he was never more prominent than any of the letters he had been charged to kill, no fatter than an 'i', no skinnier than a capital 'W' - unlike Backspace who was super-sized and flaunted a Nike-style arrow pointing hard-left ←.


Some hardware companies, like Lord Macintosh, had refused Del right from the get-go, preferring to farm out his tasks to a combination of other workers like 'Function-Delete,' with 'Delete' on Sir Mac actually being Backspace ←.

But then one day, for Del - the original Del - things took a bad turn, real bad! And it happened at the speed of a toilet flush vortex! Millions upon BILLIONS of small handheld flatscreen devices suddenly began to spill from the heavens - the 'STPs' - smartphones, tablets and phablets. And in short order - 'sorry, but screen real estate is at a premium!' - 'sorry, no space' - Del was fired without severance - banished! And nobody, not a single one of his keyboard comrades, could find it in his heart to spare him a Zhengzhou hug or a Silicon Valley ciao.

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