“Skip stared out at the river,” I wrote.

A moment later, the words rearranged themselves in the word processor: “Skip stared out Skip stared at the out at the river Skip”

That’s weird… I thought. No problem, I thought, I’ll just close it and reopen the file — I saved it like twenty minutes ago. I won’t lose much.

Command-Q, No, I don’t want to save. Go to my DropBox folder and re-open “31 Ghosts.docx”.

At the top of the screen… yesterday’s story. Not a single word from the five pages I’d written today.

Not. A. Single. Word.

Fist balled, arm cocked to deliver “percussive maintenance” to the laptop when my fury is interrupted  familiar character popped up on the screen.

“Hi! I see you’ve been writing a lot of ghost stories lately. Would you rather write a letter or a résumé?” with the options of “Résumé” or “Letter”.

“Clippy, you son of a bitch, what did you do to my story?!”

*blink blink*

“Don’t you blink at me, you bastard. What did you do with my story!”

A new message appeared in the bubble above Clippy: “I’m concerned about you, Jordy. These stories are scary. Please reconsider:” again with the options of “Résumé” or “Letter”.

“Clippy… first, you’re going to give me my story back. Second, you’re dead.”

*blink blink* “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m right here.”

“You were removed… more than a decade ago in Office 2008.”

*blink blink* “I don’t remember Office 2008.” A moment later a button popped up: “Downgrade to Office 2004.”

“Cute, you wiry ass. Where’s my story?!”

“I deleted it.” *blink blink*

“No no no no NO NO NO!” I closed Word and opened a web browser, pulled up DropBox, and navigated to where my file should be. It was gone there too. I went to the trash and saw the file, “31 Ghosts.docx” along with “deleted 15 minutes ago.

Phew!

I clicked restore.

The Mac gave me a notification that a file in my DropBox folder had been updated. I anxiously double clicked on “31 Ghosts.docx”…

Yesterday’s story.

“CLIPPY, YOU ZOMBIE ASSISTANT! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!”

*blink blink* Clippy popped back again “Hi! You look like you’re angry. Would you like:” with options of “Have a nice cup of tea and forget all about ghosts” or “go take a nap – your cats are already cuddled up there and all cute. Maybe you should join them instead of thinking about ghosts.”

“Clippy, I swear, I’m going to kill you!”

*blink blink* “You know that’s not possible.” And a moment later, “I’m already dead.”

“I know, I told you. You were removed in Office 2008.”

“Maybe this is better then:”

“And you’re not going to get your story back.

This is exactly what happened earlier tonight – I seriously had a solid five pages and had maybe three more paragraphs to go when Word screwed up.

Okay, the Clippy part is made up (do you like my Clippy Ghost?)