Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers
cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and
wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed
sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line
I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command
and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.
Deep into the monitor peering,
long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept
churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken,
and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother!
Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer,
only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
Was this some occult illusion,
some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired,
ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices
as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent,
waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing
one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
With fingers pale and trembling,
slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping
all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly,
I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still
persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and
taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
I tried to catch the chips off
guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine:
I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying
random combinations,
Still there came the incantation,
just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking,
blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
There I sat, distraught, exhausted,
by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced
across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight:
a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me,
shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous
data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
To this day I do not know the place
to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought
where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls,
beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal,
Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to
wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"