Chapter 4: Gone Home
It was weird walking back to my home and knocking on the door, not just being able to open it up and head to my PC. Alex opened the door and greeted me. “Hey, Felix. Looking for Ash?”
“Uh... yeah, kinda.”
“She's been out of it, lately. Must be a midlife crisis or something. You want me to show you the room?”
“No thanks, Alex, I got this.”
I walked up the stairs, just a door down, and pushed it open. The case to Damn Skippy had been smashed in half, strewn around the floor. Felix had curled himself up on the bed, crying. I sighed. “Felix, I--”
“No.” He muttered.
“Felix, lo--”
“No!”
Dammit, Felix.
“Let me speak.”
“...”
“Thank you. Well, I caught on that you gave me a bogus password just to write something down, so I guess we have to wait until tomorrow. But that's it. You will log in and make the change, even if I need to go beat up Francisco and Twitch to make sure it happens.”
Felix rolled over, throwing the quilt mom made me to the side of the bed. “Wh... what do you mean?”
“The password? It was a bunch of random letters.”
“No it wasn't. I just wrote it that way so nobody could break in.”
“Going really well for ya if Francisco seems to have access.”
He laughed a little bit. “I guess it was stupid. It's just... it's a personal password, y'know?”
“And Felix?”
“Hmm?”
“Tomorrow night, my mother will be bringing her boss over so she can try to get a promotion. Can you please, even if just then, act normal?”
“Haven't I?”
“Act like Ash.”
“Act like Ash, got it. Wait, we have to go to the capitol, then!”
“W... why?”
“I have to review some tapes to see just what that entails. Study the role, in a way. You get it.”
“No, I don't.”
We both walked back to the capitol, he opened the bookshelf, and pulled a tape from within a terminal. “So what was this about the password?” I asked.
“Oh, I encrypted it.”
“How?”
“I just did. Not sure of the exact name of it anymore, it's the only one I know though. I mean, other than stuff like the Cesarean and A1-Z26. The simple ones.”
“Why do you know these?”
“Ever have a secret that you have to let nobody know?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I got what I needed. I'm going home... ha, it is my home!”
He skipped off for like the 80th time this evening, and I sifted through his workshop again. There had to be more stuff about this encryption of his somewhere, right? It can't be all that old, really. I mean, he's like what, 30? At the most he could only really have used it for like 20 years, tops. And that's even if he uses it regularly. I flipped through box after box of things, and did find some stuff. An old ticket stub from an Amtrak train, a handful of color swatches, an old Polaroid camera and some photos from one, but nothing I could piece together well. The photos seemed to range between shots of a concrete structure to some images of a lush green countryside. I was intrigued, but couldn't necessarily make heads or tails of it all. I threw everything back into a box, and stuffed it back on a shelf.
The only other thing I could find of importance was this “Instantiation Reference” book. I flipped through it and saw a series of codes lined up with objects. “Pac Man Arcade 1 – 980E3F144967CA98” was at the very top of the list, with various, seemingly random entries following. I sifted through until I found “Desktop, Ash – 41534156494F5552”. With that in mind, I took a Modifier from off of a shelf (an older model, it seemed), scanned a blank page, and ran through its stats. Eventually, I came across an advanced tab, with “Hexidecimal Hash” as a field. I cleared all of its properties until it was a blank space on the floor, typed in my desktop's hexidecimal, and clicked enter. “This will replace the item listed at hash 43A4EE160945B300 with 41534156494F5552. Is this okay?”
I clicked yes, and my desktop appeared on the floor. I quickly picked it up, unhooked the monitor from Felix's terminal, plugged it into the back of my desktop, and followed suit with the mouse and keyboard. It wasn't the cleanest, but it was serviceable, I ended up having to find converter plugs in his old boxes. I plugged the tower into the wall and powered the PC on, and was greeted by my desktop. Oh how I missed this. I was likely still logged in at home but still connected to Wi-Fi and signed into Steam. All of the games I had installed at home were available, and I figured I would just take it easy. After all, I don't think I could play TF2 on a CRT with gloved hands. It then hit me that Felix wore gloves, and I had seen part of his hand only once. I quickly took off the left glove and immediately noticed just how gray and bony his hands were. It was disgusting, honestly. “And the glove goes back on,” I said to myself as I loaded up Cloudberry Kingdom. I bought it on sale a while ago and never touched it, so it only seemed natural that given how weird today has been, I would play something this far out of my element as well.
I just really hope that Felix takes my suggestions to heart tomorrow. I just barely get why he's so hesitant to fix this when it's his town, he should be jumping to revert things usually. Everything's all backwards anymore.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
