Chapter 16 - Del is enthralled by the sight of Juula silently pecking at her phone by the side of his ICU bed

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

Except she didn't budge and remained at the center of his thoughts, close and real, sometimes lingering in view of his third eye as if actually visiting him there, close to the end wall of the Intensive Care Unit, a zone that among themselves, the health operators called 'Row Hopeless.'

Naturally, no visitors were allowed, so whatever was going on with Juula was more like a 'visitation,' but either way, he eventually decided that it was all good. Of course it was! He was thrilled to have her there by his side!

They were silent visits. Most of the time, she'd just sit there by his bedside showing a strange annoyance while writing notes on her phone. Little huffs and once even a discreet sigh of disbelief. Del was too keen on looking at the water-and-soap honesty of her beauty to wonder about what she was doing.

For at least a full hour he had contemplated the 'perfection' of her tortoise shell barrette and the auburn locks it constrained. And that delightful vision had knocked him straight into happyland. And when he re-emerged, he dedicated similar attention to her shoes. He had never seen a pair like that. They looked like they had been designed by a haute couture Christmas elf.

And all the while with frowns and lovely pouts, she kept writing on her device. After a particularly loud sigh of annoyance that even had a touch of "Bronx cheer" in it, Del perked up and suddenly thought. 'Never mind the tortoise shells and elf shoes, she's telling me something!' And that's when it happened.

"Nice to see you again, Del. Sorry about the... you know."

"Juula!"

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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' - smartph...

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 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...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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