Chapter 21 - Words and paragraphs have their own incorporated quick deletion links.

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

Del came to his 'coma-present' senses again with a blissful smile. And she was right there by his side with her smartphone in her hand.

"Hi Del... How are we doing?"

"Great, Juula! And so happy to see you again!"

"While you were sleeping, I programmed our little paragraph killer."

"Ah yes, the pilcrow connector."

"Want to see?"

Juula held her smartphone up to the slits of Del's bandaged head - a look definitely reminiscent of the Invisible Man - and zapped a whole bunch of paragraphs in rapid succession, at single 'semi-automatic' taps.

"Wow! That's faster than a computer."

"Faster and with less anatomy involved. On a phone, no less! But that's nothing. Ready for another short geography expedition?"

"Lead the way!"

"Okay, first we click that toggle again: 'show non-printing characters.' Okay, last time you saw the pilcrows and then... what else? Do you remember?"

"The little spacebar space dots between the words."

With an irresistible smile, that not only curled Del's toes, but also his shins (normally not possible, but after the accident, many of his lower extremities had become quadruple-jointed), Juula started zapping single words on her phone in rapid succession.

"Holy cow! That's fantastic!"

"Yes. The same command that zaps paragraphs at a single touch, also zaps words, because almost every word in the universe has a spacebar space in front of it and a spacebar space after."

Del was thrilled. "I used to do something like that with CTRL. CTRL-DEL used to zap words."

"Of course, but that required two hands. This is even faster. One button one touch!"

"It's as if every paragraph and every word had its own incorporated quick-deletion link."

"Del, my sweetheart..."

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Chapter 15 - It gets real. Juula, an Estonian girl visits Del at the ICU - Text Editing will soon take a quantum leap forward

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Del came back to his senses chastising himself. Lucidity, lucidity at all costs! Machines don't beg doctors to kill patients! Lucidity, damn it!!! How is lucidity obtained when in a coma? he wondered. And as always, because of his experience, the answer came instantaneously: prayer. He mumbled a Rosary. And in the middle of a Glory Be, out of the blue but with poignant clarity, he remembered a moment well after he had been banished from the keyboards, but shortly before the 'additives' - the damned drugs - had lost their magic. He had met a marvelous Estonian girl, marvelous because she was so pure and clean and straight and unsullied by drugs or cynicism or attitudes. Juula was fresh and had honest twinkles in her eyes. Del had been entranced. But after all the bad living he'd been through (with the worst yet to come) for all he was bedazzled, he had refrained from courting her because for the first time in his l...

Chapter 18 - Juula promises to get a "new and improved" DEL back on phones and tablets

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete "Good morning, Del! Ready for the big day?" "Sure, what do you have in mind?" "A tour... to a place you've often seen but never noticed." "I like it already. Where?" "A page in MS Word." "Eh? Microsoft Word? I must've done two-thirds of all my work there - even starting before Windows. If there's one place that holds no mysteries for me!" "So you might think, my sweet bundle of mashed-up bones, so you might think!" "Okay, I believe you, number one because I have to and number two because I want to. But may I ask why?" "Yes, of course. You feel that you were unjustly removed from the telephones and tablets of the world, correct?" "Well, I can't say 'unjustly' - there wasn't any room for two deletion buttons, so they left the big guy - they left Backspace... but all right, yes, it hurts." "What if I told you I could...

Chapter 17 - Whoa! Del trips the life support apparatuses for the wrong reasons. Not near death, but certain life!

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete This is when life support apparatuses should ALSO be clamoring, thought Del. Not only when he was about to die, but also when he was about to live! La Vita è Bella! "How did you get in?" "After we met, you never let me out, remember? So, I'm not here," she said indicating the whole ICU, "I'm here." She touched the side of her head. "That's terrible. One wrong impulse and I could turn you into a carrot juicer!" "I know, but you won't, because I have a job for you. And it's right up your alley, and since you like me so much, I'm going to be your muse. And you and I are gonna be too busy having fun!" "Whoa!" And just as Del had ruminated, all the warning bells went off and it was a concert of ringing, singing, wailing and bling-blinging. And one of the apparatuses - Infusion Pump N° 17 regulating Medication Line N° 23 - even started playing the bagpipes. To hell wit...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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