Gautama Buddha uploads data from his smart phone to an external hard drive

Gautama Buddha has his Apple iPhone 12 pointed at himself while meditating under a Bodhi Tree.  It’s his selfie broadcast for the day.

While meditating, his phone suddenly glitches and dies.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Gautama Buddha says.  “Did I just lose all my precious memories?”

Gautama Buddha - or G. Bud as his posse calls him - rushes to the nearest Fry’s Electronics store; which is in Manhattan Beach, California.

Unbeknownst to the Enlightened One, all of Fry’s locations had closed down the previous year due to the pandemic.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?” Cries G. Bud.  “Oral traditions, my ass!”

G. Bud buys a thick map book of Los Angeles called Thomas Guide: 56th Edition and desperately flips through the pages looking for a Circuit City, Best Buy, Radio Shack - any electronics store, really - within walking distance.

He finally settles on an Apple Store in Manhattan Village (a shopping center also in Manhattan Beach).

“Genius!  I need a Genius here!” Cries G. Bud upon entering through the glass gates.

An Apple genius hipster approaches.  “Yes, Enlightened One.” She says.

“My iPhone just died!” Cries G. Bud.

“Okay, calm down,” she says.  “You’re scaring our valued customers.  Let’s take a deep breath.  Relax.”

“It has all my photos and videos!” G. Bud says in a panic.  “It contains my life!”

“No worries.  All of your data automatically uploads to the iCloud.”

“I never signed up for the iCloud,” G. Bud says.  “You got the wrong religion, Genius!  That’s not how the universe works!”

“Hey, you don’t have to believe me,” says the Genius.  “Why don’t you purchase one of our external hard drives like the LaCie 1 TB Rugged SSD here.  I can then upload all the data from your phone on to the hard drive.”

G. Bud has to ponder the significance of choosing the material (the LaCie hard drive) over the transcendental (iCloud).  The quandary totally goes against his teachings.

“Fuck it,” says the Gautama Buddha finally.  “Make it happen.”

The Genius hipster takes the iPhone and hard drive to the backroom.  She reappears 20 minutes later with both in hand.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “it doesn’t look like there was any data stored on your phone’s memory card.  Would you like to purchase another iPhone along with the LaCie hard drive that we just opened?”

It’s right at this moment that G. Bud realized he’s screwed because the right-to-repair bill introduced to California State’s Senate was killed.