The Day of Reckoning

In the later hours of the afternoon on the 10th of March, 2006, a spark ignited in the darkened recesses of N.E.W.T, a 60 gig hard drive housing all the music, images and documents in Drew's Computer. The spark led to a small electrical fire which slowly began devouring the inner parts of the hard-drive, unbeknownst to everyone.

During a routine virus scan at around 1900 hrs, a disk-read fault was detected. Further investigation into the matter brought to light the full extent of the damage caused by the electrical fire. Irreversible damage was done to the drive-core, and it was only a matter of time before the core would reach critical failure, resulting in the complete destruction of N.E.W.T.

A state of emergency was declared and evacuation procedures had begun all in every sector of the Hard Drive. Some of the older files had their data cloned during the Great Back-Up of 2004, but many of the younger and newer files were not cloned and had to be rescued or risk being lost forever.

As part of the standard evacuation procedures, an external Seagate Unit was made active and docked with the main structure to take on the evacuees. Thousands of files crowded the USB cable in panic, desperately trying to claw their way out of the dying Hard Drive. Priority was given to mission-imperative files such as Drew's own screenplays and video-related images, as well as important files such as photos of Jo and favored MP3s. Other stubborn files simply refused to believe that their beloved Hard Drive could fail, and remained behind in their folders and switched themselves to Read-Only status.

But N.E.W.T's structural integrity was degrading fast and entire sectors were failing, resulting in the loss of many files. The smaller files were able to escape through the cracks, but the more obese and less mobile files were unable to escape from the bad sectors and fit through the confines of the thin and narrow USB cable, despite numerous attempts to rescue them. Their wails and screams still plague the dreams of many a survivor. Notable amongst the casualties was a Conan the Barbarian MP3 and a Rodney Mullen video file.

When all mission-imperative and favored files were safely evacuated to the Seagate Unit, a quick appraisal was conducted for the remaining files. Unfortunately, most of them (including the 3,500 Star Wars Galaxies program files) were decreed to be unworthy and ineligible for evacuation, sentenced to be left behind on the dying Hard Drive.

At 230 hrs on the 11th of March 2006, the Seagate Unit disengaged the USB rescue cable from the main structure and sped away to a safe distance, leaving behind 50 gigs worth of files. Approximately 20 minutes later, N.E.W.T's drive-core reached critical failure and super-heated itself, resulting in a low-level thermal explosion that melted the computer desk and singed the wooden floor. The blast-wave also ripped the computer chair into 3 pieces, and generated a Electromagnetic Pulse that deactivated the nearby X-Box for 2 hours.

Miraculously, the Computer housing N.E.W.T survived the explosion, along with all its main components (an older PCI 56K modem was not so lucky). The surivors attribute this to the strange unearthly nature of the Computer, long reputed to be contain a demonic presence.

18,000 files lost their lives when N.E.W.T reached critical failure. The files that survived the disaster started referring to the 11th of March as The Day of Reckoning .

Over the next few days, a new Hard Drive was installed in the Computer, and the Seagate Unit started off-loading the refugees into their new home. Although scarred by the trauma and the loss of many old friends, the refugee files were eager to start over and leave the past behind.

Eventually they gave the new Hard Drive a name: Unzervalt. It means, simply, "Our World."