Tekserve marched on without a beat after Claire left. Ever growing, waiting room full at all times. A woman named Maria took Claire’s bench within the week.

Then the world got less mysterious, the Internet got larger, and cell phones got smaller until they got smart. The underdog of Apple, with its four-legged locomotion, rose from the dead to the living, and up to the stratosphere, a layer that pays no taxes and commits no crime, save for planned obsolescence.

Lots of events happened at the same time, or one after another, or before—the order doesn’t matter, they all helped spell the end.

The Apple corporation asked Dick and David if they could check out Tekserve’s operations for R&D purposes. “Of course, our house is your house,” David and Dick replied. “Make sure to come on a Thursday for our killer breakfast spread.” The Apple SWAT team arrived and embedded with intake for weeks.

Something seismic changed in the Apple repairs department. Warranty repairs required more paperwork and less and less was paid while more and more repairs had to be shipped to Apple and performed by their technicians. Tekserve couldn’t even buy the parts and special tools. As a result, repairs became a loss leader.

Repair was Tekserve’s heart, and now it only beat because Dick had rigged up some kind of an air compressor hooked to a balloon pump nicknamed after a failed Apple product.

Tekserve always did its very best to prevent people from buying things they didn’t need. It was a core belief, but it became unclear what people needed. Computers and iPods flew out the door. Tekserve grew from one floor to two and was hungry for a third to hold the inventory of all the shit they were selling.

Soon Tekserve’s lease was up. The landlord wanted more money, stratosphere money.

At this same time a perfect-size space became available in Dick’s building, the first location of Tekserve.

There was a hitch. The space was on the ground floor.

Dick’s first thought was to paint the windows black and pretend the space was ensconced above as Tekserve had always been. But the windows were huge, floor to ceiling.

The shift—to a normal store that didn’t require entering an anonymous lobby and enjoyed excellent street traffic, mere steps from the subway—was mourned by all.

 

Apple opened their own stores, complete with an intake area, though it was called a “Genius Bar.” And the stores were genius, the design inspired by the minimalism of Dieter Rams and the upscale-Kmart success of Target, rather than an estate sale and free-form radio. People lined up around the block. Everyone loved the store’s touch of idealism and kindness, which Apple seemed to have lifted from Tekserve.

It was policy for Teks to clean all intakes after their repair with microfiber cloths, puffs of air, spritzes of skreenklear, and a pillowy cosmetic brush. The act took such little time but made every customer glow and intuit that their computer was reborn.

So it wasn’t a great leap for the Teks to clean the machines BEFORE the repair, like, say, a two-month-old laptop with a small coffee spill or an ice cream drip that voided its one-year warranty as well as its year extension via AppleCare+ (a bargain that Tekserve implored all customers to buy).

When in doubt, do the right thing.

It felt so right. But not so right that the Teks told anyone or wrote about it in the SRO notes. David didn’t have a clue, nor Dick.

Dick and David didn’t have any idea until Apple did. There was a warranty repair sent in with a logic board that was clearly burnt, but in the burn some scrub marks were seen. Apple asked David to investigate.

And as soon as David asked, it flowed out from the Teks that once in a while if the situation was truly unfair, they made it fair. David was horrified. He did a self-audit and came up with a number that was ridiculous, based on guilt rather than fact. He told this number to Apple, and they said Tekserve would need to pay for the cost of all the repairs cited, and added that it would be calculated on what Apple themselves charged for parts and labor, not Tekserve’s lower rates.

It should be noted: In no scenario could the small processing fees of these Apple warranty repairs cover a technician’s salary, healthcare, 401(k), and truly spectactular Christmas gift.

 

Tekserve did the only thing it could. It cut a check for 100,000 dollars. A check that broke David’s angry barefooted heart.

The rise of the Apple Store and the raging success of the Genius Bar didn’t help Tekserve’s destiny, but that check to Apple was the true end of Tekserve.

Not the amount of money—it was because, after that, David didn’t want anything to do with Apple, which is hard if you run the “old reliable Macintosh shop.”

Someone was hired to replace David.

This fake David didn’t enjoy smelling bagels with Dick, and fake David didn’t understand the value of a ten-cent Coke machine or a porch swing. Fake David did nothing wrong, but he also did nothing with pure cane sugar.

No one could believe it when Tekserve closed, but also, no one could believe how long it had survived.

The employees were crushed, hundreds of them. But they went on. Some suffered, and some were better off. They went back to school or fully pursued passions. They moved to Hawaii, to Colorado, and to Harlem.

Derek got a job as an archery coach. It started as part-time, but grew to full and proved to be a dream come true.

Deb stayed at Tekserve till the end. It was Deb, not Nick, who turned out to be the true Tek MVP. She never sugarcoated a problem, was angry, or too busy to help an intaker in need. No one was faster than Deb. She got gold stars from Monica for warranty parts returned on time even as the time required by Apple shrunk.

Monica was swept off her feet by a praying mantis. It was handmade from bamboo, bought in Chinatown, and gifted to her by the quiet screwdriver-flicking desktop Tek named Wayne. Their marriage is one of many born at Tekserve.

Nick programmed all night and bought buildings in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by day. He rents them out now at fair prices with long leases to tenants that include Yee.

Winnie quit Tekserve when she went to college. Before she left she gave Dick her pet garter snake named Pickles.

Pickles lived happily with Dick till one day he bit Dick’s finger and wouldn’t let go. Dick forgave the snake, and his finger healed.

Dick still lives on 23rd Street in a loft with a porch swing and a fish tank. The tank has been modified with a homemade fitting that uses SodaStream cartridges to feed CO₂ to his aquatic plants. The fishes’ names are: Ray, Slate, Bart, and Lisa.

David’s barefooted heart got less broken over time. He still rides a bike and listens to WBAI. On weekends he volunteers at a public boathouse where he works outtake.

Nathan updated the printer FAQ to include the 8500 cartridge sensor. He is still a teacher.

Claire went back to stealing classes at Columbia. This ended after 9/11 because Columbia got new IDs with holograms.

Hook and gear were salvaged by a store in San Francisco called Scrap. The pair were sold as art supplies and became part of a whirligig that now lives in North Carolina. If there is any kind of breeze, they spin together.