Danny Fredrick picked up his notebook computing machine. He headed for the large wooded batch with shadiness trees near his house on the corner of Ranch Drive and Camp Lane in Richmond, Virginia.

He peculiarly enjoyed sitting in the old house foundation in this quiet vicinity with his computing machine on his lap and the altering autumn leaf operating expense. Here he would happen his Muse, the inspiration to compose short narratives that came to mind.

Danny was n’t similar many of the other cats in his category at Douglas Freeman. Computers to them intend bloodstained arcade manner games and surfing the cyberspace for erotica when their parents were n’t watching. A few of his schoolmates were computing machine geeks that got off on scheduling and practical gags. Danny liked to compose narratives and enjoyed utilizing his computing machine to make it.

Arriving at the belongings filled with big trees he walked to the old house foundation and Saturday on the land utilizing the inside corner of the crumpling rock foundation for a backrest. He pulled his computing machine from its transporting bag.

Carefully puting the computing machine on his lap, he thought about his instructor one time stating Danny ‘s favourite writer was a spot brainsick. “ Edgar Allen Poe likely went nuts authorship because he did it with quill pens and had no spelling and grammar draughtss or constitutional synonym finder. ” He chuckled to himself as he opened his computing machine.

Danny paused to chew over, “ Peoples may hold considered Poe to be unusual but is n’t true, mastermind is instead unusual? Poe had to be, to populate in Richmond, Virginia and write narratives like The Pit and the Pendulum and The House of Usher. ”

Danny marvelled out loud to himself, “ How could Poe hold imagined all of those fantastic and unusual narratives? Where did the flicker, the first intimation, of an thought semen from for each absorbing narrative Poe created in his head? ” Then he said himself, “ What cryptic force would actuate Poe to finish each narrative? ”

Coming back to the present, he flipped up the computing machine screen, hit the “ Power On ” button, and waited for the computing machine to cold boot. The unit went through the rhythm and came to a point where Danny had programmed it to talk the words, “ Okay, Danny, Let ‘s acquire to work. ” Then it loaded the word processing package and sat waiting, with an input screen and eye blink pointer.

Danny adjusted the screen contrast and angle so he could see in the bright daytime. Next he used the built in indicating device and ran the pointer up to File and from the bead down bill of fare clicked on New.

He thought a minute about turning up playing soldier with the vicinity childs in the trenches behind his house. His great-grandfather sometimes took him for a walk in the forests and pointed out different things they came across.

Danny recalled one clip when his great-grandfather showed him ditches in the forests and said, “ The Confederate Army dug those trenches. They went from here over to your house location. We filled them in at the house to do a nice lawn and pace for you to play in as a kid.

‘The trenches were used during the last defence of Richmond before it fell to the Union encroachers in the War of Northern Aggression. The blasted Northerners burned the whole metropolis. ”

“ Danny, ” he continued, “ You see how Camp Lane and Ranch Drive make an “ L ” form and are both really short in length? Combined they do n’t be the length of a football field. We are here, at my pess, ” he said, doing a right angle with his outstretched weaponries indicating down each route.

He went on, “ Camp Lane was the private road to the farm house here where these ruins are, ” he said, indicating to the crumpling stone wall foundation.

“ This route, now called Ranch Drive, was the trail to the barn and corral. Beyond that was the grazing land for the farm animal. ”

“ When the Confederate soldiers decided to put up a defence in the country they were invited by the landholder, Michael Franklin, to camp on his farm. Camp Lane is where the Confederate soldiers pitched their collapsible shelters and Ranch Drive is where they corralled their Equus caballuss.

‘This dry wash, ” he said indicating to a little concrete lined drainage ditch, “ used to hold running H2O twelvemonth ’round. They used it for the work forces to rinse up and allowed the Equus caballuss downstream. ”

‘Now you know, these route names have historic mention. Though, like many little, but of import facts, their significance is being lost in history. ”

Danny came back to the present and looked down at his computing machine. The memory of that clip with his great-grandfather moved him to seek to compose a narrative about that fatal twenty-four hours when Richmond fell to the Union soldiers. He wanted to compose about how he thought those trenches had been used.

The screen offered him a pick of formats and he chose manuscript. He selected the rubric Trenches.doc and saved the templet format as Trenches.dot.

Danny began typing: “ In a last ditch attempt to salvage the metropolis of Richmond from the progressing Union Army, Confederate Soldiers dug into the rich black Earth under immense oak trees. Proud work forces have oning Confederate grey uniforms and polished boots grabbed shovels and prepared their last defence of Richmond with the perspiration of their forehead. Leftovers of the trenches are still seeable near Ranch Drive more than 140 old ages after the twenty-four hours Richmond fell to the Northerners in 1865. ”

Suddenly, as Danny typed, the words stopped on the screen. Each key he depressed failed to work. Frustrated he exited the word processor and ran a nosologies public-service corporation to look into computing machine maps. After he tested every key the computing machine acknowledged, “ Keyboard maps O.K. ” .

Danny reopened the word processor and brought up the Trenches narrative. He ran the pointer down to the terminal of the file and began to type once more.

“ The Confederate soldiers went into the ditches to expect the coming Northerners. Each adult male reoytoo38 mczei eow ”

Danny looked at the refuse on the screen and could non believe his eyes. Carefully, he typed letters on the keyboard and looked to do certain he pushed the key that showed on the screen. “ This is a trial ” , he typed. Everything functioned decently.

Shaking his caput he began typing the narrative once more. “ Each adult male was yxlewo4 0fmeo. ” Danny ‘s eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the job. While he sat motionless looking at the computing machine, letters all of a sudden started across the screen. He suspected infection by a Trojan Horse virus presenting its warhead.

“ There is nil incorrect with the device you call a computing machine. It is non ill from what you call a virus. ”

Danny ‘s oral cavity fell open as he stared in incredulity at the words on his screen.

“ Danny? You are Danny, are you non? The writer of the narrative ‘Trenches ‘ calls himself Danny Fredrick. ”

Danny continued to gaze at his computing machine as the words crossed the screen by themselves. “ Person must be playing a fast one on me, ” he thought. Looking around to see if anyone was there he saw merely a grey squirrel that stopped on a limb to call on the carpet him when he moved his caput.

“ Danny? The narrative is incorrect. It does non state what happened. ”

Danny shyly reached for the keys. He paused with his fingertips above them before hesitatingly typing, “ Hello? Who are you? ” Quickly, he looked around anticipating a apparatus by the computing machine geeks. He waited a minute for them to leap from behind a tree, express joying at him for discoursing with his computing machine.

“ Okay, you guys, you can come out now. The game is over, ” he yelled into the forests. Nothing moved. The squirrel looked at him without remark.

“ Hello, Danny. I am Michael Franklin. ”

Danny stared at the words on the screen, so typed: “ Where are you? How can you entree my computing machine? ”

“ I am here, with you in my house. ”

Danny jumped up, about dropping his computing machine. He looked about and saw no 1. Siting down on the foundation wall he typed, “ Which house, I do n’t see you. ” Danny looked at the adjacent houses.

“ You are in my house Danny. I am here with you. You are on my farm outside of Richmond. ”

Danny typed in response, “ I ‘m on Ranch Drive near Three Chopt, a four lane route. There are no farms, merely metropolis. ”

“ Yes, ” came the response on the screen, “ Three Chopt. It is a trail through the forests that has been marked by three blazings on many of the trees along its length. ”

Danny began to acknowledge there was a huge sweep of clip between the individual he could non see and himself. He besides realized that both of them were in the same topographic point at different times and neither of them could see the environments of the other.

Danny was in the modern twenty-four hours metropolis of Richmond, Virginia and Michael Franklin was in the same topographic point merely it was his farm and the City of Richmond was non yet this far out. What seemed to divide them, Danny understood, was more than 140 old ages.

Trembling fingers moved across the keyboard as Danny explained to Michael Franklin what his farm looked liked today with houses everyplace, paved roads and automobilesA?

“ Cars? ” The screen flashed.

“ Yes, ” typed Danny. Then he realized Michael Franklin could n’t perchance understand something he had ne’er seen. Danny spent the following hr explicating to his visitant from the past about cars, aeroplanes, and work forces walking on the Moon, Mars landings, orbiters and telephones. He began to understand how fortunate he was to hold been born in this clip and to hold experienced all of these fantastic things.

Suddenly, his computing machine system proctor beeped and flashed across the screen “ Battery at 20 % suspending floppy thrust, difficult thrust, consecutive and parallel ports. ”

Danny panicked when he realized his computing machine would shortly close down wholly and cut him off from Michael Franklin. “ We have really small clip left, delight state me why you said my narrative was incorrect. ”

“ Danny, your universe is really complicated and exciting. Your skylines reach far. Your cognition is great.

‘My life was simple. The Moon ‘s stages were used to works harvests, and to see by when walking at dark, or to stare upon when falling in love. It takes months to acquire distances you can go in yearss or even hours if you fly like a bird. You walk on the Moon and direct things you call infinite ships to planets beyond imaginativeness.

‘Danny, you must take attention. Do non lose your history. Remember the narratives of your ascendants. There is much to larn from the yesteryear, lessons that can learn you how to forestall the calamities of life in the hereafter.

‘Do non be doomed to reiterate history ‘s worst minutes because you forgot it happened. Do n’t believe that it wo n’t go on once more, for it will, if you forget.

‘Danny, your narrative was incorrect because the big trees were non here so. The land was largely swamp. The trenches were filled with freezing H2O.

‘The Confederate Soldiers were non dressed in uniforms and glistening boots. They wore lacerate and tattered vesture with shreds wrapped around their bleeding pess against the winter iciness. The soldiers were non work forces, Danny. They were male childs, many merely twelve or 13 old ages old.

‘They died here on my farm, casting their blood in those trenches where you played soldier at their age. They were much excessively immature to understand why they were deceasing. They were robbed of a life they deserved to populate.

‘When the Union Army came, I stayed to assist the soldiers in the trenches. I gave those immature male childs attention, heat, and love during their last minutes of life. There was much decease and unhappiness on both sides.

‘I cared for both Union and Confederate soldiers. When they were deceasing soldiers from neither side cared about the cause for which they fought, or the colour of their flag or uniform. They merely spoke of God, place, household, and loved 1s as their last words. I was hit by a isolated slug and died while caring for all of them here on my farm. I excessively had those same ideas in my last minutes.

‘Only you, Danny, know of this lost spot of cognition. The lesson it teaches is repeated throughout history. It is ignored by most until confronting their mortality, yet it must non be forgotten. You must remind your coevals. Find a manner to state everyone.

‘When each individual on Earth decides to talk first of precious values, and non in conclusion, of God, place, household, and loved 1s the human race may last, otherwiseaˆ¦ ”

The computing machine screen flashed, “ Low Battery, traveling into hibernation ” . The screen went clean and the computing machine beeped as it shut down.

Danny sat in silence under the large oak trees.