STORIES
Siv Cedering Fox
THE COMPUTER TERMINAL
I did all my typing 'and editing through the time–
sharing computer terminal installed in my study.
It
saved me
hours of time and freed my mind from worrying about xerox
copies and originals, for everything I had written, during the
two years I used it, was stored in a greater brain, an enormous
computer data center in Manhattan. My friends teased and said,
"So, you are having a computer do your writing?"
I teased back and said, "Yes. Of course. This is the twentieth
century, isn't it?" Then I casually mentioned that I could write a
three-hundred-page novel about Tom, decide at the end of the
novel that I can't stand the name Tom, and, with a single
command, change all the Toms in the manuscript to Dick or
Harry. That impressed them. I then hurried to add that I could
move whole paragraphs around without retyping. I could make
line 306 follow line 7. Whatever I had entered into the system
and corrected was always there, ready to be retrieved, never to be
typed or retyped again. I could delete lines or words, change
word order and justify margins.
It
was a glorious system. To my
friends I said, " I only wish it would correct my spelling."
February has always been a strange month for me.
It
is the
shortest month.
It
is my birthday month. I always write a lot in
February, and have more strange dreams than usual. This
February, I had promised myself to make a real dent in my new
novel. On the day before my birthday, I sat down to work on a
chapter called "The Green Dress." As usual, I pushed a button,
dialed the phone number of the system, waited for the signal,
and saw the golf-ball head on my terminal nod. I pushed the
return button.
It
typed:
PLEASE SIGN ON:
