a Short Story By S. Vincent Anthony
Harlan sat at his desk, the glow of his computer screen illuminating his face as he sipped his third coffee of the morning. It was a Monday, and he was deep in the zone, coding a revolutionary app that would—according to him—”make to-do lists sexy.” His desk was a chaos of sticky notes, empty mugs, and a half-eaten bagel, but Harlan thrived in the mess. His trusty computer, affectionately named “Old Betsy,” hummed along, faithfully rendering his lines of code.
He took another swig of his coffee, savoring the bitter warmth, when a tickle crept up his nose. Not now, he thought, pinching his nostrils. He had a deadline, and sneezes were for amateurs. But the tickle was relentless, like a tiny feather doing the cha-cha in his sinuses. Harlan’s eyes watered, his face scrunched, and then—ACHOO!
A geyser of coffee erupted from his mouth, spraying across Old Betsy’s screen in a glorious, caffeinated arc. Droplets splattered the keyboard, the monitor, and even the sad, forgotten bagel. Harlan froze, horrified, as the screen flickered, displaying a kaleidoscope of error messages before going black.
“No, no, no!” he wailed, grabbing a tissue box and dabbing at the keyboard like a surgeon performing emergency triage. The keys made a soggy squelch with each press. Old Betsy groaned—a low, gurgling sound that Harlan swore was her saying, “Why, Harlan? Why?”
Panicked, he grabbed his phone and googled “coffee on computer fix.” The results were grim: “Unplug immediately!” screamed one site. “Pray,” suggested another. Harlan, ever the optimist, opted for a hybrid approach—unplugging the computer while muttering a prayer to the tech gods.
As he mopped up the mess, his coworker, Tina, poked her head into his cubicle. “Whoa, Harlan, did you try to give your computer a coffee bath?” she asked, barely containing her laughter.
“It was an accident!” he protested, waving a soggy tissue. “I sneezed! The coffee just… went rogue!”
Tina cackled. “You sneezed coffee? That’s a new one. You’re like a caffeinated dragon!”
Harlan groaned, but a chuckle escaped him. “Yeah, well, Old Betsy’s not impressed. I think she’s on strike.”
Tina leaned in, inspecting the damage. “You know, my cousin once spilled soda on his laptop and dried it with a hairdryer. Worked like a charm.”
Desperate, Harlan grabbed his office fan and propped it in front of Old Betsy, blasting air at the dripping machine. The fan whirred, sending coffee-scented mist swirling around the cubicle. It was less “tech repair” and more “espresso aromatherapy.”
Miraculously, after an hour of drying and fervent apologies to Old Betsy, the computer sputtered back to life. The screen flickered, and Harlan’s sexy to-do list app reappeared—albeit with a new, unexplained feature that turned every task into a coffee emoji.
Harlan leaned back, sipping a new coffee (from a safer distance). “Well,” he muttered, “at least I’ve got a story for the office party.”
From that day on, Tina dubbed him “The Latte Launcher,” and Harlan never drank coffee near Old Betsy again. But somewhere, deep in the circuits, he swore his computer now ran just a little faster—powered by the memory of its unexpected caffeine boost.