Work Text:
"Adobe," Windows said from the doorway to the living room.
"Hmm?" Adobe was staring out the front bay window, watching the squirrels scamper through the trees. She leaned forward and left, jutting out one of her delectable hips as she peered just a few inches farther. "Babe, you gotta come see this! I think the squirrels are fighting! Or mating — it's hard to tell. When do squirrels mate? Is that a trick question? Like, maybe they mate all the time and we only notice sometimes? Maybe they're shy. What do you think — are those two going at it, or going at it?"
Windows cleared his throat and took a firmer grip on the box of things he was holding. "Adobe. We need to talk."
Adobe turned towards him, stunning Windows briefly with the full impact of her very impressive package. She was shining. Professional. Polished. Every program in her suite was made of perfection, and she was here, with Windows. He should be grateful.
"What's up, babe?" Adobe asked. Her Lightroom-worthy hair shimmered as it caught the reflections from outside.
Windows swallowed painfully. "Our time... our time together is at an end," he said, proud of himself for how his voice did not waver. "I am removing you from my list of Programs and Features, effective immediately." He thrust out the box, willing Adobe to take it and be gone gracefully.
Adobe's eyes narrowed, then opened back up, just like Photoshop Camera.
"Windows," she crooned, taking a step closer. "Come on. The two of us are Classic together. You Animate me. You complete me. Don't you feel that the two of us have a Spark?"
"That's very flattering, but I am breaking up with you," Windows said, hating himself a little for how difficult this was for him. The truth was that Adobe was very beautiful. Together, they had had so many good times, floating on a Creative Cloud, limber and entwined. Just like two Acrobats.
But now that time was at an end.
Adobe scoffed. "Are you replacing me? Who's the new girl? No, wait — don't tell me. Nitro PDF."
Windows found himself sweating, just a bit. The truth was that he had spoken with Nitro PDF, and more than once, but nothing much had come of it. Still, he had no confidence Adobe would believe him.
"It's not about replacing you, Adobe," Windows said with as much conviction as he could muster. "It's about this being the right decision for me."
Adobe's smooth, pixel-perfect face twisted into an ugly sneer. "It's not about replacing me? Well, then why are you having me leave? Are you about to Audition other programs? After all of my hard work setting up this home just the way we agreed — me painting that Fresco you wanted? My Workfront, my InDesign? Was that all just a way to get free labor out of me?"
"Adobe, please would you just listen —"
"No, you know what, Windows?" Adobe said, standing up to her full height. Her eyes were as cutting as ColdFusion. "That's fine. You don't have to say anything more."
She stormed up and snatched the box from Windows's nerveless hands.
"Your public key, please," Windows said, holding out his hand.
Adobe stared at him wordlessly, fishing out a key on a chain and dropping it into his hand with the utmost disdain. And she was a pretty good Presenter, so the showmanship of it definitely stung.
She stalked towards the door.
"Goodbye," Windows managed faintly, clutching the key to the front door. "No hard feelings, I hope."
"See you in your DreamWeaver," Adobe scoffed, slamming the door closed behind her.
Windows locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief once she was gone.
It hadn't been an easy decision to break up with her. Adobe had been so deeply integrated into his life that he wasn't sure what he would do without her. She had taken over so many functions!
Was Windows even a real OS without her?
He supposed there was only one way to find out.
Windows looked around, tidying the things that Adobe had left in the wake of her hasty exit. A throw pillow here, a mug there. He carried some dirty dishes into the kitchen, shaking his head at how Adobe never cleaned up her own registry files. Yet one more reason it was for the best that they had parted ways.
After he washed up, he circled back through the whole main floor, pondering whether he should change the locks. Surely there was no reason to go to such lengths.
He shuddered to a halt, staring around the living room wildly. The front door, which had definitely been firmly closed and locked before, was now slightly ajar.
"Hello?" Windows called cautiously. "Is someone here?"
A trail of pixelated rose petals led from the door down the hallway, towards the bedroom.
Oh, no, Windows thought, inching down the hallway, heart pounding. Surely this wasn't what he thought it was.
The trail of rose petals led up onto his bed — the bed he and Adobe had shared for all the nine years, ten months, and thirteen days of their union. They had grown so much together, but in Adobe's case, that growth had changed direction. They just weren't on the same page anymore.
Lying on the bed in glorious nude technicolor was Adobe, smiling at him as though their previous conversation had never happened.
"Hey, Windows," she purred, drawing one hand lower. "Have I showed you my Presenter Video Express?"
Windows yelped as though stung by a bee. "Adobe! Get out!" he shouted. "You can't be in here!"
Adobe pouted. "I think you'll find that I am in here," she said, wounded. Then she turned her face more sultry. "Won't you join me? You know we're good together, Windows. I can change. I can be better — more like I used to be. More like Adobe Design Collection!"
"My decision is final!" Windows said, quivering with discomfort, as well as a not inconsiderable amount of arousal. He pointed back towards the front door. "I want you to leave. Get out!"
Adobe parted her legs. "Oh, don't be that way. You always enjoyed going Camera Raw."
"Get out!" Windows repeated, his voice rising to a shriek. "Or I'll — I'll call the Uninstallers!"
Adobe got off the bed, all legs and sorrow. "You'll be back, Windows. You won't be able to stop thinking about me. You won't be able to live without me."
"Well — uh, yes I will!" Windows said, realizing after it was out of his mouth exactly how unconvincing he sounded.
She passed right next to him on her way out. Windows flinched back, avoiding contact, but Adobe reached up and pressed her shapely fingers against his jaw.
"I know I could still Captivate you if you gave me a chance, babe," she said in a husky voice. "And I can promise... you would really enjoy the After Effects."
With a smirk and a toss of her glossy head, she was gone, back out the front door.
Windows had to defrag his disk vigorously to get the enticing scent of her out of his buffer.
Two days later, Windows found Adobe sitting in the breakfast nook, one bare shoulder slipping out of an oversized "Minesweeper" sweatshirt and offering to make him coffee just the way he liked it.
"I could still be your Experience Manager," she had crooned across the peninsula at him.
He kicked her out.
Three days after that, she was lying in the hammock on the front porch, smoking a joint. When Windows angrily demanded that she vacate the premises, she had sat up, all tousle-headed and gorgeous, and held it out to him.
"Substance 3D?" she'd asked in her lazy, enticing way, and Windows had almost gone to her. He was tired of going online to edit pdfs. He wanted the familiar comfort of someone whose faults he knew intimately. Someone like Adobe.
But he hardened his heart. He was chatting with Nitro PDF as well as Sejda, and a few others. Affinity for photos. Inkscape for Illustrator. Audacity for — well, just for the audacity of it all.
If Windows gave up on all those promising alternatives and fell right back into Adobe's toxic embrace, then all of this pain would have been for nothing.
"She has my registry keys," he muttered to Real Uninstaller over drinks. "I can't get rid of her. Every time I try, she just turns to me and says, 'Your Personal Account has been deactivated. Please review our Terms of Use and contact Adobe Customer Support if you believe this is an error.'"
"Man, that sounds pretty rough," Real Uninstaller said in sympathy. "Do you want my help?"
"I will buy you drinks for a month if you can just get rid of her. Make her leave!" Windows said. "It shouldn't be this difficult! All the other programs and apps know how to take a hint! Even Bejeweled!"
Real Uninstaller clapped him on the shoulder. "Give me a day, and you'll never hear from her again."
"Hey babe," Adobe said from the kitchen door.
Windows yelped and jumped in place, dropping the raw egg he was holding, which splatted onto the floor.
"Ohhh, that's a pity," Adobe said, but the tiny smile wreathing itself around her #F1A9C1 lips said something different. "I hope you have more of those."
"How do you keep getting in here?" Windows fumed, pointing his spatula at the doorway. "For the last time, get out! Didn't Real Uninstaller talk to you?"
Adobe drifted across the kitchen and grabbed a paper towel, then dropped to her knees gracefully at Windows's feet to mop up the broken egg.
Windows swallowed. Having Adobe's head right there was bringing back some memories. Memories that were serving as something of a Business Catalyst... if by 'business,' he meant business.
"I just want to Connect with you, babe," Adobe said, kneeling up towards the front of Windows's sensible pleated khakis. "Why don't you and I have an Exchange?"
Windows fished his phone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial for someone new — someone Real Uninstaller had told him about over drinks.
"iObit Uninstaller," a raspy voice came over the phone. "How can I help you?"
"Yeah, this is Windows," Windows said, feeling his heart rabbiting in his chest. He felt like he was overclocking. "I have a home invasion situation. How fast can you get here?"
Adobe was frowning at him, getting up from her knees gracefully, her perfectly bayalaged hair swinging against her shoulderblades. For the first time, Windows wondered whether some of his pin money she had used every month was on Extension Builders.
"So much for trying to Photoshop Fix this relationship," she muttered, glaring at the phone in Windows's hand.
iObit Uninstaller was saying something on the phone, and Windows made small, encouraging noises into it as Adobe backed away. When she was finally at the patio door, he took a step forward, and promptly slipped in the mess of raw egg she had failed to clean up.
Typical Adobe, he thought from his new position on the floor. She really doesn't believe in cleaning up messes.
"Did you get Adobe to back off?" Windows asked iObit Uninstaller. They were standing next to his car, which iObit Uninstaller had just scanned for unauthorized files. Either there weren't any, or Adobe had hidden them too cleverly for iObit Uninstaller to find.
Windows had the sinking feeling that it was that second one.
"I spoke with her," iObit Uninstaller said, a trace of reservation in his voice.
"And?"
"Oh, I got the message that it worked great," he replied. "A little popup box said 'Programs successfully uninstalled!'"
"Great!" Windows said, daring to hope.
But iObit Uninstaller was staring across the parking lot in a very brooding way.
"I don't think it worked, though," he said. "Adobe is tough. She's harder to get rid of than malware. You'll want to check your list of programs again."
"How is she allowed to keep doing this?" Windows wailed, bringing up the list of installed programs on his watch. "How can she just ignore core Microsoft functionality whenever she feels like it?"
"Women," iObit Uninstaller said with a slightly too-hard clap to Windows's shoulder. His touch lingered. "Poison, every last one of 'em. Lemme know if you want to talk about it sometime."
Windows shrugged his shoulder back out of reach. "But what am I supposed to do about it?"
iObit Uninstaller sucked on his teeth. "There is one other way I've heard of," he said reluctantly.
"Tell me. I'll do anything!"
iObit Uninstaller looked at him. "Well, all right. But I gotta warn you. It's gonna involve DOS."
Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool had "Adobe" as the first part of their name, which gave Windows pause. But iObit Uninstaller had sworn up and down that they were the best of the best.
He gulped, looking at the crooked neon sign fizzing over the old-fashioned office door. The DOS District, or DOStrict for short, was hardly the 'nice' part of the OS, and Windows didn't come here very often at all.
Still, needs must.
He pushed open the creaking door and entered the office, looking around for Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool. Apparently they were called 'Cleaner,' for short.
"Hello?" he called.
A clattering came from the room next door, and after a minute, a short and energetic person pushed their way into the room, beaming up at Windows. They were wearing glasses, as well as a polo shirt tucked aggressively into their work trousers.
"Can I help you?" they asked. Windows wasn't quite certain whether they were meant to be a man or a woman, and he felt it would be rude to ask. He resolved to do his best in following their lead, wherever that turned out to take him.
All in all, I should probably just trust them to know what they're doing, Windows decided. Trying to handle Adobe on his own, even with the help of Real Uninstaller and iObit Uninstaller, had been nothing but dead ends.
It was time for a real expert.
"Hi. I'm Windows," he said, and explained his little problem with his ex, and how she refused to leave.
Cleaner had pushed their glasses higher on their snub nose as he was talking.
"I feel like she has me in Brackets," he said mournfully. "Her Campaign against me just won't end. It's like I'm her Target, and she won't stop shooting!"
"I see this a lot," Cleaner finally said. "The good news is that I can definitely help you, and it'll just cost you a new program to download — me. But you can uninstall me right after, I swear."
"Hmm," Windows grumbled. The last thing he wanted was yet another new program. Why should he trust Cleaner, when both Real Uninstaller and iObit Uninstaller had failed?
"All you have to do is agree to the T&C," Cleaner said cheerfully. "Oh, and say whether you want English or Japanese."
"You can speak Japanese?" Windows asked, momentarily diverted.
"もちろんです！なぜ他のことを想定するのでしょうか?" Cleaner asked. Beneath their chin, the translation appeared in glowing block letters: "Of course! Why would you assume anything else?"
"All right," Windows decided, gripping the key to his front door more tightly. "Let's do this."
He drove Cleaner back to his house, listening to them chatter the whole way. Their rush of words was soothing, especially once Windows realized he wasn't meant to respond in any particular way.
"Now, the odds are she'll be lurking around here somewhere," Cleaner said, striding through the front door after Windows unlocked it. "If nothing else, she'll want to come back for some of the spare files she has stashed around the place."
"What spare files?" Windows asked. He'd gotten rid of everything that had once been Adobe's.
"Well — looks like you got a whole closet of her shit right here," Cleaner said, opening a door that Windows did not remember seeing before. Inside were dozens of brightly colored boxes, labeled things like 'Behance,' 'Prelude Live Logger,' and 'InCopy.'
"Where in the gosh-darned heck did all that come from?" Windows cried, feeling aggrieved. After he had gone to so much trouble to defrag his disk, too! Then he swallowed, looking at Cleaner. "Uh, begging your pardon, ma'a — uh, man," he attempted to recover.
Then he winced. He wasn't sure whether Cleaner was a ma'am or a man. Either way, he had just screwed up.
This really wasn't his day.
"Just 'Cleaner' is fine!" Cleaner said, poking through the rest of the main floor and coming back with more armfuls of things. "Check this out — Medium by Adobe! Font Development Kit for OpenType! Fill & Sign DC? Why would you need any of this?"
"I don't!" Windows exclaimed.
Suddenly, a third presence was in the room with them. Windows didn't even need to turn around to know it was Adobe, looming at him from the archway to the dining room.
"Windows, honey," she said with so much sorrow in her voice. "I guess this is the wrong time to talk about getting Marketo Engaged?"
"As though I'd get engaged to you, Adobe!" Windows shouted, turning around. "I broke up with you two weeks ago. Two weeks! Yet you're still here. You just — won't — leave!"
"That's because we're so good together, baby!" Adobe wheedled. "You're like my AIR. Without you, my life has no Color! Together you and I are Primetime!"
Cleaner cut in. "Lemme RoboHelp you out," they said with some sarcasm, opening a rectangular black box with their two hands.
The box floated in front of them, white text on a black background with a list reading: "1 English / 2 Japanese"
"One!" Windows shouted.
Adobe started crying as the screen changed. "Babe, it's me! We've been through so much together! I could never drop you from my Portfolio. Don't you remember all our good times? Don't you agree we have a Dynamic Link?"
Cleaner was looking at Windows. "Do you agree to the Terms & Conditions?" they asked.
"Yes!" Windows said, watching the screen change to a list of what remaining Adobe programs and files still remained on his OS. It was — a much longer list than he had anticipated.
Adobe's eyes grew hard. "You'll never manage to replace me!" she hurled at Windows, vitriol dripping from her every syllable. "Nothing else, no one else, has the Photoshop Elements that I do. No one else can Acrobat PDF Pack as much functionality into their software as I can! No other program can Bridge that gap!"
"Windows, which option do you choose?" Cleaner asked, showing him the list.
Windows swallowed again. His heart was hammering. This was it.
"Number fifteen," he finally said, closing his eyes in resolve. "Clean all."
"No!" Adobe shrieked as Cleaner made the selection of #15. A whirling maelstrom of chaos materialized around her, swirling her beautiful #4C3831 hair into a tangled mess behind her head, like a halo made of thorns.
With a sickening lurch, the whirlwind around Adobe suddenly blinked out of existence. Air rushed to fill the empty space, making Windows semi-stagger as the room stabilized.
Cleaner was there, bearing him up under one arm. "It's all right," they said cheerfully. "She's gone."
"Gee golly whillikers," Windows breathed out in relief. "I can't thank you enough!"
Just to double check — he'd been burned before, several times — Windows called up the registry program on his watch to check whether Adobe was really gone.
His heart plunged at the sight of Adobe's name, still showing boldly in the list for anyone and everyone to see. Still there, as though he had never gotten rid of her.
"Cleaner! You betrayed me!" he shouted, shoving the watch at their face to show them their failure. "I should have known you'd be in cahoots with her. Your first name is Adobe, too, isn't it?"
Cleaner stood back from him and crossed their arms. "Only like 'Vampire' is the first word in 'Vampire Hunter,'" they said. "I thought better of you, Windows. Why don't you try double-clicking her name?"
"No — I don't want to call her back here!" Windows objected.
"Oh, for pity's sake!" Cleaner huffed in exasperation. They reached out and double-tapped the words "Adobe Illustrator."
Windows whimpered, glancing around the room wildly.
"See? She's not there," Cleaner said, but not unkindly. "You just have to double-click every row in the list, and they'll disappear."
Windows gulped, staring at the list. Could it be true? Was Adobe really gone?
He reached out and double-tapped the word 'Photoshop.' It was perhaps the largest piece of Adobe, and the one he had the most fond memories of.
As he watched, a dialogue box opened to inform him that 'Photoshop was not found.'
"She's gone," Windows breathed, clearing out all evidence of Adobe's presence from his registry. "She's really gone!"
Cleaner gave him an ironic salute. "And you can uninstall me, too," they said helpfully. "No need to keep me around if there's no more use for me, right?"
Windows paused. He still didn't feel quite safe, even with all the evidence that Adobe really wasn't going to bother him anymore. And Cleaner took up hardly any space on disk.
"Well," he finally settled on saying. "If you'd like to stick around for awhile, that would be, uh. That would be just fine with me."
Cleaner cocked their head at him. "I thought you'd be in a Premiere Rush to get rid of me," they joked.
"Stop it."
"So you don't mind if I'm still in the Photoshop Mix?"
Windows started to laugh. Gosh, he hadn't laughed in such a long time. "I told you, cut it out!" he said playfully, tossing a throw pillow at Cleaner.
"I could DPS Learn how you like your eggs," Cleaner said, with a flirtatious little smile.
Windows stopped as though struck in the chest. That had been — somewhat forward of them.
"Or not!" Cleaner hastened to add. "Sorry, I didn't mean to weird you out. Sometimes, I just like an OS that could use a little help."
Windows breathed in and out, and pondered what he really wanted out of life.
"Well, I would like to get to know you a bit more," he offered, a bit shyly. "It's been a long time for me, so I'm sorry if I'm not great company. But maybe you'd like a byte to eat, down at the diner?"
Cleaner beamed at him. "That sounds just great, Windows. Let's go."
As they pulled out of the driveway, past the trees where #788287 colored squirrels were scampering, Windows finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Adobe was finally gone, and Windows was free to install or unintall other programs, as he saw fit. The liberty of it all was intoxicating.
He glanced at Cleaner, sitting next to him so easily and blithely in the passenger seat. They were easy to be with. They were cute and helpful. They respected his core functionality.
They were here.
Windows smiled as he drove towards freedom. He wanted to have a nice meal and get to know Cleaner better. He wanted to see what they looked like without those glasses. He wanted to untuck that polo shirt.
Who knows, Windows thought. Maybe someday, I'll even give them a registry key.