Then, around midnight, the rainbow wheel of death began spinning on my screen. I pressed control-alt-delete before remembering it was a Mac. Oh muscle memory. A childhood weaned on PCs. I pressed and held the power button until the laptop gave a tiny sigh and the screen went dark. I counted to five. I pressed the power button again and it purred awake. No perky chime. I listened to its soft internal whirring, almost mammal-like. I waited but the screen remained black. I fingered the touch pad. There was the rainbow wheel again, against the black screen. I leaned back in my chair and listened to my neighbour’s Cantonese soap opera through the wall for a moment. Then the laptop quieted down. It was no longer booting. It grew quiet, as if announcing: Well, here it is, this is what you’re getting. Outwardly I was still presenting an air of calm. I hadn’t cursed or even sighed empathically. I only swore in front of others. Swearing for one’s own sake was a bit pathetic, I found, like showing off for a child.

I filled the electric kettle with water. I considered my reflection in the glass-fronted cupboards as I waited for it to boil. A lonely homosexual felled by a frozen computer. There must be hundreds of us standing alone in our kitchens-­turned-home-offices, quietly waiting for divine intervention and the water to boil. As I stood there I saw them: all the other stay-at-home writers, accountants, students, consultants, and graphic designers pacing and peeling their fingernails to the quick with their teeth, formulating plans of how to proceed with their nights. I took a certain comfort in all these other men and women fretting about their computers, alone in their homes, but in fact very much together, in this moment, united in misfortune, like being caught unawares by a downpour, running down the sidewalk with our shirts and blazers pulled up over our heads and catching each other’s eyes as we passed, smiling at our shared lot, at how silly we’d been to have left the house so unprepared. The kettle began to gurgle. I lifted it and poured the boiling water into my mug, the tea bag now on its third round and useless. I liked tasting its diminishing returns. As I leaned against the counter drinking hot water, I reminded myself: this is the twenty-first century. There will be a solution.