The Space between Spaces

An external disk crash is a tragedy. You see, my computer doesn't have much memory. The little it has is claimed by the increasing size of the operating system at each update. I back my files up on a WD terabyte drive.

The drive failed this week. Although I hope to get the contents recovered, the remaining chapters of The Space between Atoms reside on that drive. In fact, the thousands of pieces of my writing yet unpublished do.

I don't trust the cloud. How can you trust something where your files, like a Heisenbergian electron can't be precisely traced? I like to know where my files are. Right now they're nowhere. The silly drive whirs and ticks like an electronic idiot, but it doesn't show where the files are.

Data recovery, I've discovered, costs eight times the cost of a disk drive. The lesson? Buying half a dozen backup drives is cheaper. If one disk fails your files are still somewhere.

Months of my life went into writing The Space between Atoms. Experts with dollar signs for irises tell me that the data are recoverable. Ah yes, for a price. Because of the pandemic you have to mail it in. I won't know where my files are. Ironic, isn't it?

You might suggest tracking. This past holiday season I had a package "delivered" according to the Post Office. Only it never was. I called my local branch. "Joe's usually pretty good about that sort of thing," they said.

Ideas are perhaps inherently unstable. I awake very early in the morning to write before work. I've been doing so for years. I've accumulated stories—many ready for publication—now gone. My laptop can run the latest system, but it has no room for all my work.

Does all of this make me trust the cloud? Not at all. There are spaces between atoms, and hopefully I'll be able to continue posting them soon. If they can recover my data. If not, we'll all have to live with the space between spaces. Tech is, after all, our friend.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa kept his manuscripts in a trunk and became posthumously famous. Will the same ever happen for those who keep their thoughts in the cloud?

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K. Marvin Bruce

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