Thunder in the Bedroom (Suzanne Forster)

I first heard the thunderclaps around noon on August 12th of this year. Southern California was right in the middle of sweltering humidity and record-breaking heat. I had no air-conditioning and my suspense novel was due in three days. Yes, you read that correctly. Three days. Did I panic? You could say that. In fact, you would win a black belt in understatement for saying that.

I work in the master bedroom, and it sounded as if the thunder was some distance away, so I figured an electrical storm was on the horizon. Yay, the suffocating heat wave was breaking! Boo, an electrical storm meant I might have to turn the computer off.

I went out to the deck to check, but all was clear, sunny and HOT. Ever seen that commercial with the fried eggs where they tell you this is what your brain looks like on dope? That was my brain after weeks of three-digit heat and deadline pressure, except the eggs were scrambled. The thing was I just didn’t have time to figure out where the thunder was coming from, and honestly with as little sleep as I’d had, I thought I was hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I’m not sure when I realized the thunder was coming from my computer. Yes, you read that right, too. Technically, it was coming from the speakers, which were across the room from me. That was probably why it sounded like distant thunder. Okay, so one mystery solved. I knew the where—my desktop computer, but I didn’t know the why. And then it hit me. I’d signed up for the Weather Channel a couple weeks earlier—and this was the crazy Weather Channel’s way of announcing a weather alert.

I checked it out, and that’s exactly what it was. Which left me with a bigger question: What were these people thinking? Did they learn nothing from the mass panic caused by the original War of the Worlds?

I actually do most of my writing on my laptop, an ultra-small, ultra-light Sony Vaio. It’s a cute little lavender thing about the size of a makeup case with a hair-trigger keyboard and a built-in digital camera—and for months, I thought the machine was haunted. My first inkling that I might be dealing with a baby Hal came when I discovered the computer had been taking pictures of me without my knowledge.

Let me set the scene. I was traveling in the dead of winter, the wind howling outside my room as I worked late into the night. I’d just put the finishing touches on a spooky scene when I accidentally hit a button marked “Capture.” Imagine my surprise when a four-by-five window popped onto the screen and began a snapshot slide show of a ghostly creature that I eventually realized was yours truly. Yikes.

I’d never used the laptop’s camera. Still haven’t. I don’t have a knack for technology, which is probably no secret to anyone by now. But I’m certain I would have known if the camera had been taking pictures of me. All I can figure is I must have dozed off on one of the many nights when I was working late, fallen forward and hit the wrong button with my nose. And I used to laugh at people who put their faces in Xerox machines!

My haunted laptop also sends emails before I finish them, sometimes before I write them. It has not yet written an email for me, but I’m waiting. And speaking of email, why does the male voice of AOL say good-bye multiple times when he bumps me? It’s as if he’s in a canyon. He only says: “You have mail,” once, so why multiple good-byes? And for that matter, why is he bumping me? I pay $40 a month for my Adelphia high-speed connection. Those people should be kissing my behind, not bumping it.

Have any of you heard those eerie multiple good-byes? They wake me up from naps and in the small hours of the night when I’ve fallen asleep without turning the computer off. And here’s my favorite. How about the illegal operations messages? “You have performed an illegal operation.” My last computer was a Gateway, and I would get those in the middle of perfectly innocent online work. Really, I wasn’t doing anything bad, but suddenly my computer was slapping me on the wrist and shutting me down. That really got me wondering about the people at Gateway. I began to suspect they were having a lot more fun making the computers than I was using them.

Okay, yes, I write suspense, and maybe I’m a little paranoid, but that doesn’t mean Homeland Security isn’t involved in all of this in some way. At the very least, computers should come with warnings. My desktop should have had a sticker that said: IF YOU HEAR GUNSHOTS, CHECK THE COMPUTER FIRST. My laptop: WEAR CLOTHING. YOUR PICTURE MAY BE TAKEN AT ANY TIME.

Suz