Original Date: July 22nd, 2006 by HIM357
In philiosphy class, we had to write our own obituary for an assignment, where we die asleep in our beds at age 83. Here’s mine. I got an A+ for it. 
The Lachfish Flows On
Lachlan Joseph Archibald, the bass guitarist and Microsoft Vice-President recently died in his sleep at the age of 83, in his large Brisbane home.
Early in his life, he achieved quite a lot. When he finally retired at age 65, decided to live a simple life with his wife. When she became involved in a freak accident, he was shrouded with sadness. His feelings of loneliness finally drove him to insanity, where he just sat there in his chair, laughing at an orange. His orange-laughing must have come from his boyhood, when he used to say a particular quote from a television show called Black Books. “Add a dab of lavender to milk, leave town with an orange and pretend you’re laughing at it.”
The constant laughing had to stop one day… When he laughed himself to sleep. Unfortunately, after sleeping normally for 3 hours, his heartbeat and breathing stopped.
Lachlan was born on the 29th of June 1991, in the Bellingen hospital, and grew up in the quiet town of Urunga, 30 minutes south of Coffs Harbour, in NSW Australia. He was the youngest of three children in his family.
As a child, Lachlan entered various academic competitions, achieving pleasing results in English, Maths, Science and Computer Skills. He went to two different schools. From years K-5, he went to Raleigh Public School. It was a very small school, with just 81 kids.
In year 6, he left Raleigh school, to attend Bishop Druitt College, up until he finished year 12 in 2009. On leaving BDC, he said to his family and friends, “Finally, I can grow my beard.”
After finishing school, he continued working for one year to get experience and some extra money, before going off to Brisbane University, to study Information Technology.
Lachlan’s main career at Microsoft developed from an interest in technology, which grew from the age of 5 when his family invested in a Nintendo 64 video game system. Though he never played himself at that time, he gained an interest from watching his brother and sister play. When he finally started to play himself, he became an active gamer. His favourite series of game was Final Fantasy® by Squaresoft, for all the meaning hidden within the story.
In year 7, at the age of 13, Lachlan and his friend Branden Zandstra started their own Internet community forum called Shadow Thieves, which led to a great interest in meeting new people from foreign countries.
An essential part of building a forum is joining other forums in order to get helpful advice, and advertise.
He eventually joined one site called AnarchyZERO, with members from all over the world. He met people from countries such as Canada, America, England, Colombia, Bulgaria, China and Holland. One person, from Salinas, California USA made a huge impact on his life.
Michael Rodriguez (Owner of AnarchyZERO), at the age of 17, taught Lachlan many new things about computers. In 2006, Lachlan became Mike’s computer apprentice, and from his lessons, Lachlan became very skilled with computers, and led the way for his later career. One of his most acclaimed skills in his teenage years was the art of pirating games and DVDs.
Lachlan got his first part-time job in 2006, at The Disc Shop in Coffs Harbour. While working there, he learnt basic programming skills, and how to build computers.
In 2013 at age 22, Lachlan married Kirsten Bell, a trilingual graphic designer from Brisbane, after being together for 18 months. They were married in a small church in Lachlan’s hometown of Urunga. They rented a unit in Brisbane, near Kirsten’s old suburb.
At the age of 25, Lachlan finally got the chance to fly overseas, and moved to the USA with his wife. Traveling around the country for two months, he met his many American friends in person. After traveling around, he bought a house in California, and started his own small business, repairing computers and selling equipment and software.
Two years later in 2018, he teamed up with his good friend Mike Rodriguez and together they took over Microsoft, keeping a promise they made years before. Mike (age 30) assumed President position, while Lachlan (age 27) became Vice-President. Mike was truly unbelievable with computers, which allowed them to take the company at such a young age.
After working at Microsoft for two years, Lachlan had finally earned enough money to fulfill one of his many dreams; flying overseas, to meet up with his many friends around the world in locations such as Denmark, Germany, England, Colombia, Bulgaria, Finland and Sweden.
While traveling around the world, an unplanned incident occurred while entering Colombia. His mass collection of pirated DVDs were found, and got him put in jail for the exact duration of three hours, 26 minutes and 21 seconds. Luckily, Colombia’s prison system was fairly lenient at the time. Lachlan was bailed out by his good friend Vanessa Rojas the medical researcher, with a simple bribe.
Returning to USA in 2025 after a tiring year of travel, Lachlan continued working at Microsoft for three more years before deciding that he wanted to go home to Australia, and work remotely from there.
When he and his wife returned to their home country in 2028, they found that their parents were alive and well. Lachlan’s parents both at age 75, and Kirsten’s mother at 70 and her father at 73. Lachlan’s brother and sister were both doing fine with their families as well. That year, Lachlan and Kirsten had a child of their own, a baby boy named Will. They bought a fairly large home in Brisbane in a familiar suburb.
He was ready to retire from the age of 65, and settled down to live a quiet life with his wife. His son, Will, had long gone, and had a small family of his own.
Lachlan could have kept working under Mike at Microsoft, but he felt that younger minds worked differently, and could come up with new ideas that he could never have thought of.
A terrible incident occurred in 2065. Lachlan’s 75-year-old wife, Kirsten, was killed in a freak accident involving marbles, and an IKEA shop assistant. The incident greatly affected Lachlan’s inner well being, filling him with grief, and of course hatred for IKEA. For the next five years, Lachlan had to endure the loneliness by himself. He was visited occasionally by his friends and family, who he acted normally toward. By his 80th birthday, the feelings had taken over, and drove him to insanity until his orange-laughing death at age 83.
Lachlan lived a rewarding life, using his IT skills to help many people, and will be remembered by his friends and family as a loving husband, father, grandfather, uncle and a great friend.
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