Service Call

Back behind the Safeway

a short unpaved road
cuts through a line of scraggy trees
blocking the view of trash dumpsters
and a large mound of fill dirt.
Beyond that the road wends

to a dusty gravel parking lot.

And beyond that a lovely park:

an unexpected wonderland

with picnic tables
charcoal grills
a horseshoe pitch
sand volleyball court
even a butterfly garden.
The pond in the distance is swimmable.
There are people here.
The parking lot is nearly full.
Laughter and friendly conversation

compete with the eager summer cicadas.
The people here wear uniforms
of one sort or another
except for the swimmers
who have left theirs

on the Adirondack chairs
or back in their vehicles —
vans mostly with colorful logos
for the cable company
plumbing firms
exterminators
heating and air conditioning.
This is the morning shift.
One of them will be at your house
between the hours of 8 and 12.
But it’s only 9:30.
No one here is in a hurry.

Dear Valued Customer

This morning at 06:52:27 PDT a small earthquake registering 3.2 on the Richter scale hit just outside Palo Alto, California – really nice city, Palo Alto, albeit a bit pricey. The epicenter of the temblor was a mile or so below where one of our TX-24b fiber optic cables is buried. This is a very big cable, the TX-24b, with respect to its data-carrying capacity, which is why it carries the TX prefix, as in Texas-sized. Simultaneous with the strike-slip release of energy from the earthquake – that's geologist talk; you get to know their lingo out here in the shake zone – there was this electronic zap heard inside our server room, followed by the faintest whiff of something burning. A zap followed by a whiff in the computer world is never a good thing. Well, things just went from bad to worse. The power flickered on and off a few times and we lost communication with our geostationary satellite, which, for all we know, is no longer geostationary, but tumbling its way through the stratosphere. Heads up Space Station guys and gals! After that, our computers locked up like Fort Knox. So, this is why we are writing to you, dear valued customer. Sadly, we've been forced to shut down service to nearly all 3 million of you worldwide. We've been working hard on this problem since, like, 06:52:28 PDT but so far no luck. We've tried unplugging the main server, counting to 30 and plugging it back in. Also, we've tried hitting the side of the case with the flat part of our palm, which works sometimes, like once when it developed an annoying rattle. We checked the fuse box, of course. No problems there. What we are seeing at the moment is an error message flashing on our monitors with a lengthy ID number, which we can't find in any of our manuals. It's like they're written in Greek! OK, this would probably be a good time to admit that we don't really understand what we do here and haven't for quite some time now. The technology that underlies this business has just gotten too complicated. The one guy who really knew all of this stuff retired last year. He lives in Palm Springs and won't return our calls. (Come on, Bob!) Basically, all we can do at this point is keep trying different things – maybe it will fix itself, who knows with computers? Most importantly, we would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you, dear valued customer, for the inconvenience. Whatever that might be.