illphated
Just My MacBook, Pony, and Me…
By illphated.com
—
The sun dipped low over the violet hills of Lone Star Ridge, painting the skyline with that same sweet neon glow that used to hum from jukeboxes and diner signs across the Southwest. But out here, beneath the stars and satellites, he stood alone—coat dusty, boots worn, laptop warm.
They called him The Upload Wrangler.
No name. Just a cowboy and his code.
He rode with an old Winchester slung over one shoulder and a MacBook Pro balanced on his arm like a second six-shooter. Beside him, a strong black pony named Syntax carried his solar-charged backpack, a satellite uplink, and a coiled ethernet cable he used like a lasso when the wind turned mean.
In another life, he’d have been pushing cattle through Amarillo or fixing fence lines in Lubbock. But now? He was pushing packets and riding fiber rails—bootstrapping nodes, debugging grid failures, and bringing Wi-Fi to ghost towns the corporations abandoned when they couldn’t monetize ‘em.
The city behind him? New Austin. High towers, tall promises, and cold eyes. They laughed at the cowboy who coded in the wild. Said he couldn’t run a network with no tower, no budget, no help.
But they’d never seen a man set up an edge server in a saloon or stream live encrypted mesh data from the back of a horse mid-gallop. He wasn’t wired like them.
—
The sun blinked out behind a canyon rim. He flipped open the MacBook.
One by one, the satellites above him whispered back. A green icon lit up on the screen.
> Uplink secured. Connection stable. Outpost 17 is online.
He exhaled slowly and ran his fingers along the cracked keyboard.
“Another village back online.”
His pony pawed at the earth. The rifle stayed ready. The city was coming for him again—algorithms dressed like deputies, contracts drawn like pistols. But he wasn’t scared.
He had work to do.
“Just my MacBook, pony, and me…” he muttered, tipping his hat to the stars.
And with that, he rode into the dark.
—
Want to join the data frontier? Grab your gear, sync your code, and saddle up.
Because the West isn’t gone.
It’s just gone wireless.