My Manhood is a Research Question

I get some interesting questions, working as a library research assistant. Not all of them involve research.

During my shift the other day, a woman approached the front desk somewhat warily, peering at me first from one side and then the other. She hesitated several feet away, perhaps debating any further approach, and still sizing me up. I smiled a greeting. 
"Hi, can I help you with anything?"
Finally coming to a decision, she fully approached the desk.
"Yes . . . are you Rachael?"

I have a beard.

And that woman turned out be my supervisor for the day.

20,000 words . . . lost.

WARNING: the following recounting is not for the faint of heart.  It's not a happy little tale, not a bedtime story for your children.  I'm still shaking.

Isn't technology great?  The first computer I ever used for storytelling was my parents' clunky Toshiba, running Windows 95.  It crashed, of course, stealing the pitiful beginnings of a manuscript I'd stored there, along with my motivation to continue writing the story.  Eventually, however, I did continue, and it endured into my first full-length novel: Destiny's Mistake.  A few other crashes frightened me along the way to this completion, but I think a month's worth of progress was the most I'd ever lost.

Until now.

I thought I'd learned my lesson, and over the years, backups grew more and more frequent.  Losing a few hours work every now and again -- mostly due to the haphazard electricity in Nigeria, where I grew up -- put the fear of technology in me.  Yes, I know better than most about the importance of regular system backups.  But I've never been very good at learning lessons.

Today was typical: I opened my computer and waited for Windows to resume.  This semester I'm trying to spend an hour a day working on personal writing, unrelated to school.  Microsoft's OneDrive cloud backup is my preferred method of storage: it's a supposed fail-safe against crashes, and is also convenient for accessing writing on devices other than my laptop and tablet.  The technology gods, however, are not always benevolent.

As I'd done a hundred times before, I accessed OneDrive and clicked on my God's and Chaos manuscript (early stages of the rough draft are posted on this blog).  But I instantly saw that something was wrong.  A small "x" was posted in the corner of the document.  When I tried opening it, an error message appeared: "the file cannot be accessed because parts are corrupted."  A chill trickled into my skull, but I tried again . . . and again, the same message greeted me.  The details link expounded on my file's corruption and the loss on my hope.

This document is 20,000 words long: far from completion, but still extremely significant.  It represents days and days of writing time -- basically my entire summer, plus some -- and I'm rather proud of various portions.

But there was no denying the situation: the document was gone.  Vanished.  Removed from this mortal plain.  With little hope of recovery.

Scenarios and possibilities scurried through my thoughts: the last time I'd opened this document was on the machine at the library's front desk.  Could that be a factor?  Should I contact I.T. at the library?  Surrender my computer to a techie friend?  Contact Microsoft?

It felt like static electricity was prickling my brain.

Alright, stay calm, Luke.  A brittle hope: try accessing OneDrive through the website rather than through the app on my computer.  I tried, praying fervently . . . I accessed the website, clicked on the folder . . . the list of documents stood before me, and like an angel of judgement, I picked the document in question.  As I did this, I noticed that all the other documents displayed script in their pictures, but this one just appeared blank.  (I'm sure there are technical terms for all these things, but I haven't the faintest idea what they are.)  For a moment, my hope teetered as the blue loading screen flashed before my eyes, just as it had in the failed attempts . . . and then the document opened, complete with text.  I scrolled to the end.  Everything was there.

But you can swear your life on the knowledge that there's now a second backup on my computer, and I'll probably make another on my external hard-drive.

For the cloud is mysterious.  Who can fathom its ways?