Over the next couple of weeks, Travis slowly but steadily added new chapters to his story. He would get about two to three hours on weekdays to work on his story. Only on weekends would he have the entire days to devote to NaNoWriMo and these he utilised to the fullest extent possible. By the Friday, which was the eighteenth, he had built up most of the plot, and was now about to start the final part of the story. He was well on schedule to complete the novel around the twenty fifth.
On his way home on Friday, he mentally reviewed the story he had written so far again. He had added the details of the attempted sabotage, leaving behind evidence to implicate Mr. Thorn, one of the founders of Energised. And then he had chronicled how the detectives had followed the evidence, which had led them to the conclusion that Mr. Thorn had some less altruistic motives behind releasing nLight1. He had decided that the sub-plot involving the unknown government official and Power Monger was to culminate in the assassination attempt on Mr. Thorn, and had gradually inched it towards that outcome. Now only two main things remained, the final act where the plot would be revealed and the epilogue.
As far as word count went, he had already decided that it would be an added bonus, and not the whole aim of writing the novel. So, he had not bothered to check. But still, he had managed to bring the word count to around twenty five thousand. Considering the amount of writing left and the number of days remaining, he had decided that a count that is somewhere between twenty five and thirty thousand would be reasonable.
On Friday the eighteenth, Travis had a sudden flash of inspiration about the ending for the story. Not wanting to forget it later, he quickly wrote down the details in the note taking app on his phone. He also noted down a few other points that he felt would add a certain punch to the ending and link together all the different plots nicely. Now over the weekend, he thought, he would be able to finish the story. the next week then would be spent on proof reading and adding finishing touches wherever required.
But that was not to be.
For Travis was in for a rude shock on Saturday. For some reason, his phone was not working properly. Any app he opened would randomly close after some time. Like any good Android phone user, he did the first (and most common) thing anybody does to remedy a misbehaving smartphone.
But restarting did not solve the issue. So Travis booted the phone into recovery and cleaned the cache partitions. But that also was unsuccessful in remedying the problem. The odd behaviour still persisted. So Travis mentally did a brief review of what had been added or removed from his phone recently. After some thought, he realised that it might be due to the latest over the air software update which had been sent by his phone manufacturer earlier this week. Initially, the update had failed. When he had retried it, it had successfully run, but some warnings had been issued. Travis reasoned that this was probably because he had rooted his phone. He did a quick search on the Internet and found that others like him, who were using the same model, were reporting similar issues after update of a rooted phone.
The solution was then simple. All he had to do was install (or flash, as it is commonly referred to) the stock operating system (also known as ROM) provided by the manufacturer, and then run the update. The note taking app he used saved its data on the external SD card and thus his notes would not be affected by this process. But still, preferring to err on the side of caution, he removed the SD card from the phone and inserted a spare one in its place. Thus began his search for the latest version of the stock ROM for his phone.
He did not have to search for long, for he found it in a forum related to Android customisation and development soon enough. He already had the link for the tool which would be required to flash the ROM onto the phone saved in his bookmark, from where he downloaded the latest version of the tool. He then connected his phone in debug mode, ran the tool as root user. In the dialog which showed up, he specified the location of the downloaded stock ROM, and started the flashing process. In a few minutes time the ROM had been installed on the phone. After seeing the success message on his computer screen, he closed the tool, disconnected his phone and rebooted it. After the system booted and went through the welcome and initial configuration screens, he was presented with the home screen. Half an hour later he had installed all the updates and applications on his phone. When Travis finally disconnected the phone from his home wi-fi connection after everything had been done, he noticed another troubling thing.
There was no network on his phone. Must be due to a dislodged SIM card, he thought. So, he shut down the phone, ensured that the SIM card was firmly in place and powered the phone on again. Still no change. He then checked all his phone settings and found, to his horror, that the IMEI number had vanished. No wonder he was not getting any signal, for the IMEI number was required in order to register the SIM on the carrier's network.
"This must have been due to the ROM update." was the thought running through his mind as he searched the Internet for a possible cause. A few minutes later his doubts were verified.
The tool he had used to flash the ROM onto the phone had three options, namely 'Download Only', 'Firmware Upgrade' and 'Format and Download'. Travis had used the last option, in order to ensure that all the problem causing files were deleted. This was, as he found, the cause of the loss of the IMEI number of his phone, as the Format operation sometimes deleted the file which stored the IMEI number (He later found out that the same thing was mentioned on the site where the flashing tool was hosted, and blamed himself for not taking the time to fully read the documentation). Travis bookmarked the link where he had found this valuable piece of information for future reference and turned his attention towards the task of restoring the IMEI number of his phone.
He found quite a few articles which described the process for restoring the IMEI number. Out of the available methods, he chose the one which could be the quickest and simplest to do. He decided to try the other methods in case the one he had chosen failed.
The first thing to do now was to obtain the IMEI number of his phone. This was easy, for Travis knew that the number was always available on the inner surface of the phone, along with other details like place of manufacture and serial number. So he shut down his phone, took out the battery and noted down the IMEI number.
Next, he had to write the IMEI number in a text file, run the program to generate a binary file from that text file, package this newly created file inside a zip file and flash the zip to the phone from the recovery mode.
This was relatively easy, as the article where the method was detailed had links to all the required tools. Working quickly, Travis built the zip file inside of five minutes. Then he flashed it onto his phone using the recovery mode and rebooted the phone.
But still his phone refused to display the IMEI number. Thinking that he might have missed out a step, Travis reread the article, and then started going through the comments section for that article.Therein, he found a link to a discussion thread related to the problem he was facing. He navigated to the link and started reading. The problem of the person who had created the thread was the same as his, and the question had been marked as resolved. This gave him hope, and so kept scrolling down in search of a solution. Towards the end of the page, however, he came across a reply that almost made him smash the monitor of his computer out of anger.
The comment which had incited such a violent reaction in Travis was an innocuous looking one liner, and ran along the lines of "I was finally able to find the solution to make it work. Marking the question as solved. Thanks everyone for your help."
This was not the first time Travis had encountered such a comment. During the course of his work assignments, he often was faced with a hitherto unseen problem and had to search community forums of the particular product or technology for a solution. There, he had his first encounter with this type of useless comments. They enraged him (and a lot of other developers as well) primarily because they led to unnecessary wastage of time, and did not provide you with any insight on solving your problem.
Travis decided to abandon that method and selected the next one. This one seemed more promising, as it required the phone to be rooted. It differed from the previous method in that the file was to be manually copied to a certain system folder on the phone, instead of being flashed from a zip file. He rooted his phone (he had done it before and so was familiar with the process) and then started with the steps mentioned in this new method. A few minutes later, he updated the file and had restarted his phone.
This method worked, for Travis could see the carrier name and the signal strength on the lock screen. Travis checked the settings to verify that the IMEI number was being displayed. Then he browsed a few pages on the Internet using mobile data to ensure that network connectivity had been actually established. Once satisfied, he turned his attention to NaNoWriMo.
This unexpected detour had kept him busy till the late afternoon, and so Travis thought it would be better to resume writing his story in the evening. He was feeling a little tired after all his efforts, so he decided to take a short nap. 1500Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLwq400UteH
When Travis awoke at twenty minutes past seven, he realised three things. One, he had forgot to set an alarm before taking his nap. Two, the emergency search and rescue operation on his phone had exhausted him more than he thought. And three, he was feeling hungry. When he was awake, Travis prepared himself a cup of tea and began to debate what should be done next.
He could start writing the story, he thought, but realised that he was not feeling enthusiastic enough. So he decided to devote some time for planning out how the ending would actually play out, using the notes he had written throughout the week as a reference.
The ending, he had decided, would be the arrest of Jacques Thorn a few days before the product launch. Detectives Riley and Joe would find out Mr. Thorn's real motives, and arrest him a few days (he had not yet decided how much exactly) before the launch.
This was the plot twist he had been planning, make the reader think that Mr. Thorn appears to be innocent just because people are after his life and then reveal him to be the real villain. Now to make it work, he had to come up with a means by which the technology behind nLight1 was going to be put to bad use.
For this, he was toying with the idea of having Mr. Thorn adding nano sized microphones and cameras embedded in the glass casing surrounding the nanogenerator mesh. These would make the whole appliance one big spy camera. He wanted to check whether there were any known applications of nanotechnology for this purpose.
Shortly after he began his search, he came across the topic of NanoSensors. They were primarily being researched for medical and manufacturing purposes, but in his story world, he could very well extrapolate as to the area of research having expanded into using them for repairing damaged eyes and ears. This would lead them to them being used by Mr. Thorn for surveillance.
So it was decided, Travis thought. He could finish a major portion of the ending tomorrow. The other thing left to think about was how would the detectives come to know that Mr. Thorn had carried out some changes to the production lines unknown to everyone else. This, he decided could be easily handled by Oscar discovering some of the modifications during a routine check of the production lines. The detectives would trace his involvement via exposing his network of fake corporations through which he financed these (and other) illegal activities.1500Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG2xkUuisHB
Realising that he was feeling hungry (and a bit sleepy). Travis decided, as he jotted down his ideas in his notebook, that it would be best to have dinner and go to sleep, and devote Sunday to NaNoWriMo.
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