Each entry was written by a different person.

It was 3 a.m. when Leo finally got the old motherboard to POST. The MS-7613 ver 1.1 sat naked on his desk, surrounded by cables like a patient on an operating table. He’d salvaged it from a discarded Medion desktop found behind a recycling center — yellowed plastic, dust welded to the capacitors, and a faint smell of burnt coffee.

The system shut down. No POST. No beep. Dead.

— Hanna, age 14: “Dad said I shouldn’t touch the BIOS. So I’m writing here instead. Today I saw a bird fly into the window. It didn’t die. Just sat there breathing fast. I think that’s how I feel.”