# The Battery

It's a 
couple thousand 
revolutions per minute 
every time the machine boots. 
The fan spits out an opaque cloud of dust
and dirt, as if awakening with a bad case of a smoker's
lung. *cough* "I'm still, here, $USER." So am I, old boy. So am I.

  IBM presents
    liberated divinity

    PRESS ENTER TO STICK A KNIFE IN BETWEEN ITS RIBS

I don't.

Nobody is wearing a tie when kernel messages begin rolling down the screen.
The palmrest heats up and the disk spins up. The fan is already silent. 
There, there, champ. It purrs underneath my fingers in response.

Let us have it - a few more decades of the terminal experience. 
Of plain text constructivism. Of IRC friendships. Of late 
nights on trains in my lap, heading wherever. 

 $ acpiconf -i0

I wonder if the machine knows. Surely the spirit within 
its entrails feels it. It must. How could it not? 

The maximum charge is down to 80%. They don't
make the batteries anymore. Why would they? 
Who in their right mind would worship 
a single core of processing power 
that could once move mountains?

Cigarette burns on the screen,
broken '4' key, calming
monochrome.

And when the battery dies. 
We'll persist together, 
hooked up to wires 
and drip fed
electrons.