Dreaming in Digital

 20230528 Rummaging through a filled garage, stacked with rows upon rows of metal shelves, I came across a partially opened cardboard box. I pulled out a picture book with a familiar-looking girl on the cover. It was a book about Jyn Erso's adventures before the events of Star Wars: Rogue One.

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Cookie's four-year-old nephew was having another birthday party for his friends only. Despite not having children, cookie and I were invited, so we awkwardly watched children run around the party hall.

Stacks of colouring sheet packages and a cup of crayons sat on a foldable table. I took one stack and began colouring the dinosaur-themed package. Not soon after, the nephew's mother's friend, and her two sons, were leaving. She searched the colouring packages for her sons' names but only found one. Dread set into my system as I flipped through the sheets I found a name written on the top right of the package.

I rushed to Cookie's nephew's mother telling her what I'd accidentally done - I didn't know they were only for the children. Overhearing my panic, my mother-in-law handed me a black USB stick and pointed me to a door.

"You can print out more colouring pages in there," she said, patting my shoulder.

Cookie and I entered the room. Everything was white. The only things in the room were a single computer and a black printer in the centre of the room. I booted up the stick in Windows Explorer to see thousands of files, and to my horror, none of them were in folders. I used the search function without luck, and after a few minutes, I decided to try searching on the internet for the exact same colouring book pages to print.