#The saga of Devin and Myra

[themarydragon]

The Story So Far

A few days ago, I was tagged in a WIP game, which prompted me to go, you know, LOOK at my WIP folders. I found (an original!) world I’d written a story in, and it was way better than I remembered. I remembered it being straight cringe, but as I read through it I realized (a) it wasn’t bad at all, and (b) I knew how to fix it. I vaguely remembered how it ended.... but the file I had was only the first half! What the hell? Thus begins my descent into madness.

The file was noted as v1 which implies a second version, at the very least. Given what I remembered about the story, my assumption was that I’d merely chosen to import the wrong file when I’d changed computers. Before my current laptop, I’d been using a Surface Pro, so I went digging for it.

Found it AND the charger. Plugged it in. Let it get some juice. Turned it on.

The file was the same - v1 - so I must have imported it from the first-gen Surface (NT) I’d been using in nursing school. I hadn’t wanted anything I could game on and distract myself from school, so the tablet I had was bare bones AF. Also I hadn’t touched it since I’d upgraded in 2014.

I FOUND IT. I did not find the charger. My mom had used a slightly newer version NT with the same charger, so I asked if she still had hers.

We moved in August, so our random tech boxes are not in fantastic shape, but she pulled out all the random-ass cords and chargers she had. The old-version Surface charger was not amongst them.

SO, to the internet. I found a compatible charger and ordered it. I moved to the middle of nowhere, in the woods on the side of a damn mountain, so there is no such thing as next-day shipping out here. The best anybody could do was 5 days, so I waited.

In the meantime, I searched. Old google drives, google docs, flash drives, email archives. The document did not exist. Why would it? I thought it was bad. (Keep all your stuff, kiddos, that’s the lesson here; you never know when you’ll get the flash of inspiration to redeem your old bullshit).

TODAY, the charger was delivered!

IT WORKED. My old tablet took a charge! It was booting into “Automatic Repair” and not successfully repairing, so it took a LOT of convincing, but eventually I got a login screen AND remembered my 10-year-old login AND got in! IT WORKED.

In addition to TWO other worlds I had forgotten about, one with all the outlines I need to actually flesh out another original setting (and the other the most brutal DA:I concept I’ve ever attempted to write, holy shit its evil) I found three copies of the file I was actually looking for!

They were all the same! They were all v1 and they were all imported rather than created! Which means I moved them to that Surface from my ANCIENT laptop.

So where is my 15-year-old HP crapbox? My husband, over a year ago, had taken it upon himself (in preparation of our move) to remove all the hard drives from all our old PCs and laptops and clone them to a SSD he had. I watched him do it. I talked to him about which of my files to keep. 

Where is that SSD now? Who the hell knows. But it’s SOMEWHERE and I will find it.