FEATURE | MATIHIKO | TECH
Written by Heron CS (they/them) | Contributing Writer
Edited by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Feature Editor
/
in my grandmother's once-home-but-no-longer
(now essentially a storage unit, but with a window we could use to break in without a key)
my mother and i are sorting
or not sorting,
sifting through—
well, not things, exactly.
“things” as a word lacks intentionality
or in her case, premeditation
don’t be fooled:
every object here was hand-curated over decades
by an increasingly dementiated agoraphobe
who wanted to feel like a part of her would still be there,
making her daughter’s life just that much harder
long after she was gone.
so now we are filling dozens of extra large extra strength hefty bags with grandma’s clandestine intentions
and gathering them in pyre formation in the middle of the floor
so the whole neighborhood can see the place’s enormous, black, rotted heart
beating through the bay windows.
//
in what was once my grandparents' home office
(first his, then hers, but mostly nobody’s)
atop a dusty corner shelf
there is a black floppy disk sporting my grandfather’s name,
pinned beneath a brass paperweight shaped like a horseshoe.
when pressed about the mystery disk,
mom says that her father’s gambling problem was so bad that at one point in the 1980s, he developed a computer program solely to help him bet on horse races.
given the context, this also explains the paperweight situation.
"help him how?" i ask.
"don't ask me," she says.
“i’m like her, i don’t know about any of that stuff.”
"but she doesn't even own a computer."
"oh yes she does. it's buried somewhere under that desk in there."
///
at the excavation site beneath the office desk, i spot
an orange piece of printer paper.
at one point folded in half, it’s fallen behind the desk onto the floor, where it's splayed out like a limp tent.
i recognize my grandma’s cursive, the blue ink from her fountain pen:
𝓁𝒾𝑒 𝒷𝑒𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒿𝓊𝒹𝑔𝑒
𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓃 𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶
$𝟧𝟢𝟢
my late cousin's name is written in the upper right corner, in all caps and circled many many times.
it must’ve been from when he got arrested.
she would have called her lawyer, taken notes over the phone.
𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔:
𝟣) 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈𝑒𝒹
𝟤) 𝟥𝓎𝑒𝒶𝓇%𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀𝓊𝓅(𝟥)𝟢 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒸𝑒𝓃𝓉
no, not notes.
formulas.
𝟥)𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓃 𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶: 𝟣-𝟥 𝓎𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓈(?)
𝟨-𝟣𝟢% / 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓉𝒽𝓈 𝓈𝑒𝓇𝓋𝑒𝒹
𝟤 𝓎𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝓂𝒾𝓃 𝟦 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓉𝒽𝓈 / 𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓅𝓈
useless to the casual viewer, written in a system of shorthand never meant to be read by more than one person.
the order of operations alone is unfathomable.
still, her intent was clear enough—
minimize the time her grandson would spend in prison, by any means necessary.
𝑅𝒶𝓉 𝑜𝓊𝓉 : 𝟧 𝓎𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝒷𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃
𝟣𝟫 𝓎𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝑜𝓁𝒹
𝐿𝐸𝒜𝒱𝐸 𝑀𝐼𝒮𝒮𝒪𝒰𝑅𝐼!!!!!!!
just for a second, the last one makes me laugh.
///\
“Maillardet's automatons” were mechanised dolls built in the early 19th century by a Swiss watchmaker.
now considered an early form of computer, the machines (which looked like tiny human children) used wind-up motors connected to an arm which allowed them to write words and draw pictures.
their movements were programmed using a stack of brass discs (or “cams”) turning on a mechanical spit roast which allowed the arm to move precisely along invisible axes.
this mechanic is now recognized as a primitive form of “read-only” or “hard-wired” memory (ROM) in a similar vein to the player piano.
///\/
there is a pattern of diamonds drawn across the top of the paper, each bisected by various lines of symmetry, like so:
////\/\|||+\—+///\\\|||++++
upon first glance, they’re stress doodles
automatic movements to keep her hysteric hand busy while talking to the lawyer
to make her feel a little less helpless.
there’s something similar in the bottom left corner, a shape I initially mistake for a ferris wheel
it's a series of rough "spokes" circumscribed by concentric dodecagons that upon first glance looks like a really shittily drawn wheel.
the figure’s lines are dark and thick, like she went over them several times
and two adjacent triangles jut out at the base like fangs.
until i see the arrow pointing out towards one of her equations and begin to count the spokes,
i don’t even realize it’s supposed to be a calendar,
each connective thread in her web tying together months he would be gone.
///\/\
One of the writing automata built by Maillardet was damaged severely in a fire.
By the 20th century, it was brought to a museum as a box of charred brass and a porcelain head.
The family who brought it in had been keeping it in their attic for years. They had no idea what they were looking at.
///\/
“was grandpa a programmer? was he some kind of tech wiz?”
“no, he was just that addicted to gambling. the computer thing was just kind of a means to an end.”
///\/\
(there’s an irony i don’t quite have words for,
to think of my grandfather as some kind of proto-coder
a watchmaker who accidentally invents a computer,
with my grandmother as a child scribbling mindless patterns at her desk.
if anything, it’s the other way around:
him subjugated to the predetermined actions hardwired into his body,
her crafting logic into meticulous patterns
which out of context look like nothing.)
////\/\|
as a child, i failed to register what my grandmother was slowly becoming:
a textbook hoarder living a textbook hoarder lifestyle in her textbook hoarder house.
and her house-you should’ve seen it—
every square inch housing its own weird and tactile occupant
knick-knacks and bichon frisé puppies and size 5 pumps for her little doll feet
rows of figurines that made every surface an invisible chessboard
a bookshelf shaped like a giant cello, with broken plastic strings i would reach for to pluck discreetly at the dinner table.
to be fair, i never once thought of this as a work of madness.
undeniably, everything had an exact, if unfathomable place.
to me she just seemed like a person who had chosen to indulge her eccentricities, rather than internalizing them like everyone else.
////\/\|||+\—+///\\\|||++++
we toss the disk, which i regret later
because we had nothing to play it on
(before you judge, ask yourself if you’ve ever cleaned out a hoarder’s stuff before)
i leave the paper behind, a historical artifact which in my opinion really belongs to the house.
funnily enough, the only thing i bring with me is the horseshoe
the one object i feel certain has nothing to hide.
there are small capital letters engraved on one side,
each separated by a dash-shaped nail hole—
the spacing makes it look like a message transcribed from a telegraph.
"G-O-O-D-L-U-C-K", it says.
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