When an old computer from a forgotten museum sparks to life, Mark Janzen stumbles upon something unexpected—an enigma buried in time, waiting to be uncovered.
The Living Computer Museum was dying. Not in a dramatic, explosion-filled way, but in the quiet, depressing way that all great things eventually wither. The standard museum killers befell The Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Earth—budget cuts and dwindling attendance. With quantum buggies and personal teleporters all the rage these days, one could sense a general lack of appreciation for the glowing green terminals that had once cradled the future.
Mark Janzen had volunteered to help with the final clear-out. His first company was a computer assembly business, and he felt a bit of a kinship to the old machines. He had spent the better part of the afternoon moving forgotten relics of early computing history into labeled crates. PDP-8s, Commodore PETs, an Altair 8800 missing its front panel. And then he saw it.
At first glance, the machine looked like something from a 1960s sci-fi film—sleek, smooth, a perfect balance of brushed aluminum and polished Bakelite. It had no visible brand markings, no manufacturer, no obvious power button. Someone had clearly built it by hand, only to abandon it in a storage closet for decades.
“Hey,” Mark called to one of the remaining staff. “What’s this?”
The staff member squinted at the machine, then shrugged. “No idea. It’s been here for ages. No records on it. Probably donated. You want it?”
Mark hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Why not?”
He took the machine home, placed it in his garage with the full intention of examining it in great detail, and promptly forgot about it for several years.
The world ended. Well, not ended ended, but Mark, like everyone else, found himself stuck indoors for an unnervingly long time, wondering if socializing would ever return as a non-life-threatening activity. Even interstellar travel had halted as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic ripping through every corner of human civilization.
As he sifted through the neglected corners of his house, looking for things to do that didn’t involve doomscrolling, he stumbled upon that old machine he had picked up from The Living Computer Museum all those years ago. He felt a little remorse that such a beautiful machine had been sitting in a junk box for so long.
He wiped off a thick layer of dust and set it on his desk. It had no branding, no obvious inputs, no power switch—just a smooth metal surface and a screen that, against all reason, zapped him with static electricity when he touched it.
He turned it around to see if he could find a power cable or something, and just as he did... ZAP! The computer sparked to life. "How is this thing on?" Mark thought, "There's no power cable." Then, he jumped back in alarm.
On the screen he could clearly make out a message among the strange characters. “Oh, good. It's you!” the screen read. It continued, “Took you long enough. Now, Mark, let’s get started.”
Mark sat back, blinking at the screen. He had not expected that. He had expected a boot error, a request for a long-forgotten password, maybe a cheerful Beep!. Not this.
“What?” he asked the machine, as if it might clarify.
The machine did not clarify. Instead, it hummed, whirred, and, for lack of a better word, thought for a moment. Then, with a satisfying ping, it began compiling documents. Lines of code and encrypted text scrolled rapidly, flowing like digital waterfalls into a newly created folder.
The folder was labeled: LOST ON A PLANET.
Mark, against all better judgment, clicked it open with the attached computer mouse.
Inside were documents—hundreds of them—written in a language that, at first glance, he didn’t recognize. The symbols were oddly structured, some resembling old programming syntax, others more like hand-scrawled notes from someone with a very loose definition of spelling. And yet, as he scanned them, something about the formatting felt intentional. As if, given time, he might be able to make sense of it.
He grabbed a stray chair and pulled it over to the desk. He sat down and just stared at the machine, slowly scrolling the files. It had fallen silent, the glow of its screen illuminating the room like an eerie artifact from a past that shouldn’t exist.
Something told him that whatever this was, it wasn’t just an old computer. And it clearly wasn’t here by accident.
Mark cracked his knuckles. "Alright then," he muttered. "Let's get started."
