Today the tower was alone. It is actually quite large for its ilk - a beige colossus quite worthy of its name - the Citadel. In college I used to claim that Matt had bought it as other men buy hot cars, so that I might claim my boyfriend’s computer was larger than any other girl’s boyfriend’s. Of course, the truth was that he couldn’t pass up the sheer number of drive bays for the price.

Now, however, the tower has fallen in importance, and sits on the ground swathed in cable like the curiously draped Reichstag. Two lesser towers of dark gunmetal purr across the interdesk chasm at each other, and the once-proud ‘mithrandir.cwru.edu’ is rechristened the military, utilitarian ‘citadel.’ Within its vasty innards it processes our mail and dutifully spits forth our web pages on demand. The most attention and diversion it can expect is the occasional ssh’d game of nethack.

How much more neglected it must feel, then, when the stream of mundanity from the outside world, the page requests and mail-checkings, cease, and it is alone in the quiet house? Or, indeed, does it manufacture these hard times to punish us for our neglect?