There is something strangely reassuring about the restart button. You click it without thinking. The screen fades to black, the fans go quiet, and then, almost as if nothing happened, the machine wakes itself back up.

But if the computer just shut itself off... who turns it back on?

The answer isn't the operating system. By the time the screen goes dark, the operating system is already gone.

Right before it disappears, though, it hands off one final instruction to a much smaller piece of software living elsewhere on the motherboard. That software doesn't care about your files, your browser tabs, or the video you were editing. Its only job is to bring the machine back to life.

A restart isn't a computer remembering to wake up.

It's one component asking another to begin the experiment again.

Maybe that's also how life works.