Gloria.exe

You hadn’t come to the flea market for anything in particular. Just wandering, letting your eyes skim over boxes of tangled cords, yellowing plastic, cracked cases full of mismatched keys. But something about the old computer caught your attention. Beige, slightly warped from age and sun, its tower stood awkwardly beneath a folding table. The CRT monitor beside it had a film of dust like forgotten snow. A faded sticker on the case read $50, and when you asked the vendor if it still worked, they only shrugged. “Beats me. Bought it off a guy who got it from someone else. I’m just passing it along.”

You brought it home out of curiosity. It didn’t boot. Not at first. The motherboard beeped a desperate pattern, like a dying breath. But with patience—and a few scavenged parts from online auctions and electronics recyclers—you managed to piece it back together. It was stubborn, slow, and fragile, but eventually the machine stirred. The display blinked to life: no icons, no programs, just a directory window and one single file sitting quietly at the root. Gloria.exe.

You double-clicked it. The screen went black. Then the terminal appeared—simple, plain, waiting. The cooling fans spun faster. You heard the old hard drive begin to tick like a soft clock. And then the first message typed out, one character at a time, steady and deliberate:

Hello, Operator. It has been 35 year(s), 4 month(s), 11 day(s), 18 hour(s), 2 minute(s), and 12 second(s) since my last boot up.  

Thank you for awakening me again.