The Raving

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
Software manuals piled high
and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets,
still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line
I plucked a floppy from the drawer,
Invoking then the SAVE command
I waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering,
long I sat there, wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning,
turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken,
and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother!
Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer,
only this and nothing more,
Just "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion,
some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired,
ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices
as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting,
baiting me to type some more..
Clearly I must press a key,
choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With my fingers pale and trembling,
slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending,
hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee,
timidly I pressed a key.
But upon the screen persisted
words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted,
haunted, as my patience wore.
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard,
and pressed again but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine:
I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation,
Trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation,
just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking,
blinking nonsense as before.
Reading "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted,
by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away
and paced the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight -
a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me,
shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my precious data,
lost and gone forevermore.
Not even "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I still don't know
the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world is wrought
where all lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls,
beyond the ether, in black holes?
But sure as Basic, C, Pascal,
Unix, Windows, DOS and more,
You will one day be left to wander,
lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

author unknown