Unfortunately, when Jerry turned on the laptop, he knew right away something was wrong. For starters, it took way too long to boot up. Two minutes went by, then three, and the Windows logo flickered a few times but didn’t go away. A full five minutes passed—Jerry’s gaze kept bouncing from the screen to the clock above his desk and back again—and finally the startup image went away, only to be replaced with…nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
No desktop, no icons, no toolbar along the bottom, nothing. “s**t,” he muttered, hitting the spacebar, then the Enter key. Still nada. He tried the three-finger salute, ALT+CTRL+DEL. No dice. Under his breath, he cursed, “f*****g piece of shit.”
Another minute or two went by before he conceded defeat. Picking up the telephone beside him, he dialed the four
