Homecoming

     The server that hosted the website was pinging from inside my own house, back in Riverside. It didn't make any damn sense, but mike and i agreed, we were going to my old house, and we would find out what was going on. The gps told us it'd be about a day and a half of constant driving, so we paced ourselves and made it there in about four days. Nothing exciting about the trip, really, so let's skip ahead to my house.
     The newspapers were piling up on the front porch, and the lawn had died while I was gone. The leaves from my tree in the front had all fallen off, but I think it was still alive. We approached the house nervously, it was surreal, honestly, to be in my own home, and have it be abandoned. Like visiting your old school, familiar, and completely foreign all at once. The house was empty, the power had been shut off months ago. so how was there internet? It didn't make any sense. Nothing seemed out of place,. which considering the rush I had left in seemed like an impossibility. Somebody had clearly tidied the house up a little bit while I was gone.
     I looked through the whole house, but I couldn't seem to find the computer. I wandered into the back yard, and nothing seemed out of place at first. Then I noticed a light mounted over my back door. One of those solar-charged motion-detector types. It didn't belong to me, and even more strangely, it didn't light when I moved in front of it. I hopped up on a chair and lifted it off of its screws, bringing it into the house. Mike popped it open and found inside that it was a small computer. They apparently make them about the size of a vhs now. I didn't know, but Mike recognized it immediately., and shoved the whole thing into his bag.
     he said he couldn't do anything with it here, without power, so we'd have to take it with us. I grabbed some more things from my house, and we left for the day.