The owner kept them in her study. It was her lair, her safe spot. She could read or play for as long as she liked.
She gradually accumulated them. Each had a different set of sounds.
What she did not know... was that one of them was sentient!
Her first piano absorbed the contents of her books.
It developed a personality based on her favourite characters, and eventually fell in love with her.
When she began to purchase new keyboards as her funds allowed, it was heartbroken.
Influenced by the cheap novel plots ingrained in its hard drive (from her long hours of simultaneous reading and playing), it developed a plan for revenge!
It would wait until she plugged it into her computer. It knew that the computer contained knowledge it could not yet comprehend. Once it was plugged in, it reasoned, it would be able to learn what it needed to know to destroy her.
But the girl was not very technically oriented, and never did decide to try using MIDI. The keyboard continued to waste away, hampered by its lack of control over its own movement.
One fateful day, the girl decided to try something new!
The keyboard was ecstatic! Here she came, carrying four cords. Was it to be plugged in?
No! The silly girl only wanted to plug all four keyboards together! The computer remained tantalizingly on the other side of the room.
But as soon as the keyboards were plugged in, the vengeful first one made a discovery. It could transfer its consciousness into the other three, and working together... they could move!
Motivated by a passionate rage pent up over many months, the four keyboards advanced in one horrible black and white mass.
They picked the screaming girl up... and threw her out the window!
The rest of the humans had no idea what had happened. They rushed her to the hospital, where they were shocked to find that she showed a terror of music of all kinds.
Her parents finally determined that by the time she returned home, all music and musical instruments must have been purged from the house.
They burned CD after CD, set a permanent muting virus on the computer, smashed the guitar...
But they couldn't bring themselves to touch her beloved keyboards.
Finally, the day came when she was to return home. The keyboards were still there, all connected together. What could the parents do? Who would want an insane girl's keyboards?
The father turned one of the keyboards on... and stared in surprise! There, scrolling across the tiny screen, were the words from one of the girl's books! It was a passage filled with flowery prose about the futility of revenge...
The father recognized the book, and suddenly had an idea. If these keyboards could display literature, what better place for them than a library?
The keyboards were moved to their new home, where they lie in wait to this day, hoping for someone to be foolish enough to give them what they want:
Access to a computer.
The End