Hello everyone!
So, after that last cliffhanger, we finally get to see what comes of Alex and Jessica's father returning. Enjoy!677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkcjk5axTp8
677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6JNuqwzCtF
Alex stood open mouthed, staring at his father. His missing father. His legally dead father in less than twenty four hours. After fourteen months of no word, he had returned.
And was at the breakfast bar, drinking a cup of coffee and eating a bagel as if nothing had happened. As if he had never left.
With a roar of anger that would’ve impressed even Miles, Alex launched himself at his father, swinging a vicious right hook towards his face. Alex Sr. ducked under the blow and dropped his bagel to grab the left hook that was following.
“Really Alex. I leave for fourteen months and you’ve already forgotten my fighting training. What did I say about beginning a fight with hooks?”
“Screw you and your fighting training!” Alex yelled at his father. “We thought you were dead for real this time! Where the hell have you been?”
Before Alex Sr. could reply, Dunham rushed into the room having heard Alex yell. He skidded to a stop when he too saw his employer in the flesh.
Alex Sr. waved at Dunham. “Hello Edward. I trust you’ve kept my kids safe?”
Dunham nodded and stood up straight. “I have followed the orders left in your instructions should you go missing to the best of my abilities sir.”
Alex Sr. nodded before turning back to Alex. “To answer your question Alex, I’ve been just about everywhere. I started out on the AT then moved on to-”
Alex hauled off once more and hit his father. It landed square in the cheek, snapping his head to the side. Dunham and Jessica reacted in shock, but it was nothing compared to the surprise Alex was feeling. Even preoccupied with the discussion, Alex knew that his father had could’ve caught his hand once more. And yet he had let it happen.
“Alex!” Dunham said, shocked. He made a move to restrain him, but Alex Sr. held up a hand. “It’s okay Dunham,” he said, gingerly touching the reddening area. “I’m impressed Alex. Attempting to distract me long enough for an attack was a very smart move. I see my training hasn’t been forgotten.”
“No more smart than leaving on another journey and leaving your kids to be beaten down and slammed to the side by corporate assholes who care more about their bottom line than keeping a family together!” Alex argued. “Which is to say, none.”
“I never had any intention of letting them take the company and all the money behind it.” Alex Sr. assured him. “I knew well enough that they’d try it, so I planned accordingly to be back before that happened.”
“Then what were you doing?” Alex asked hotly. “What the hell were you doing that was so important that you just left us! I don’t care about the company! I don’t care about your funds! What I care about was our family and your negligence nearly tore us apart!”
Alex Sr. sighed and put down his coffee. For the first time since Alex and Jessica’s mother was admitted into the hospital after the accident where she would spend her final hours, their father showed signs of nervousness. He fidgeted and looked down at his feet for the longest time before finally looking up. “I never was the father you two secretly wanted and I knew that. I knew that you wanted an average dad who could, who would sit down with you and be a family. After your mother died, I started going on these ‘journeys’ as you call them to try and straighten my life out and leave you two with Dunham, who I knew was closer to that image of a father that you two had. This time when I left, I decided that I’d go straight to the office and straighten things out before coming home to see you two. That plan changed last night when I had an epiphany. Knowing that we’d have another argument, I looked back at the arguments that we had the previous times I returned, to see how I could smooth things over. And in looking at them, I realized something that I should’ve realized the first time I left.” He looked at both of them. “Do you know what that was?”
“That you were a heartless bastard who cared more about his personal enjoyment than his children?” Alex asked.
Alex Sr. opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded in concession. “I suppose that’s true as well. But what I realized last night was that as close to that father figure you two imagined, Dunham was no substitute to your real father. The heartless bastard who cared more for a chance to go to the ISS or hike the AT again than his own children.” He looked at Dunham. “No offence, Edward.”
“None taken sir,” Dunham replied.
Alex Sr. looked back at his children, and tears were brimming in his eyes. “I know now that I’ve messed up big time. I have lost fourteen months with you two that I will never get back. I am beating myself up over it and will probably do so until my dying day. But what have I always told you two to do if you ever mess up?”
“T-that we should always find a way to fix it, or make up for it.” Jessica answered, choking up.
“Exactly,” Alex Sr. said. “I want to make things up with you two. I know that things may never be the same and that you both may hate me for a good long while if not forever, but if you are willing to give me a chance, I am willing to change.”
Jessica sobbed and crashed into her father, throwing her arms around him. Alex Sr. stumbled in surprise, then wrapped his arms around her as well.
“I’ve missed you daddy!” She sobbed. Alex Sr. smiled at that.
“I missed you too sweetie.” He looked over Jessica’s shoulder and held an arm out at Alex. “I know you aren’t a hugging type, but you don’t get a choice this time.”
Alex hesitated for a second, then walked over and entered his father’s embrace. His father shifted his other arm so that he had both of his children in a massive bear hug. Feeling the familiar hug, Alex realized that tears were threatening to spill out of his eyes. He turned his head, blinking them away so that no one saw.
His father gave a final hard squeeze and let them go. With the squeeze, blood rushed to Alex’s head and he stumbled back as a massive headache throbbed through his head. Seeing this his father gave him a concerned expression. “You okay Alex? You don’t look good.”
“I’m fine,” Alex said, bracing himself against the countertop. “About as good as you can be after getting a concussion.”
Alex Sr. raised an eyebrow and looked at Dunham. “I thought you said that you took care of my kids, Edward.”
“I’m sorry sir. Your son was playing a video game when a hacker caused him to fall out of his chair and hit his head on his bed,” Dunham replied.
Alex Sr. looked at all three of them, amusement and concern in his eyes. “Really? I think you three have some explaining to do.”
“Mic check, Mic check. You guys hear me?” Alex called into his headset.
“I can hear you GN,” Sharpslefae replied.
“Same here,” Croe said.
“A little loud on my end, give me one second,” Miles answered, clicking his mouse to lower his headset's volume.
After a brief pause, Garrett’s voice crackled through to them. “I’m on a Windows 95 that my brother somehow managed to get working, but otherwise I-I-I’m fine.”
“Sounds to me like you’re a little less than fine;” Croe commented. Alex cracked a smile at that. He could just imagine whoever was behind Croe saying that with a raised eyebrow.
Lastly, a very humble voice called out to them.
“I can hear you Ginganinja,” Qilin said.
“Thanks for hopping online on such a short notice,” Alex said. “I know that some of you have school and others have jobs they need to be doing, but I’m glad you were able to take time to answer.”
“I’m having some job difficulty as it is, so I have a bit of time on my hands.” Qilin assured him. “Listen, GN, Sharps told me how you and your friends fought to help us yesterday. I just wanted to say, thank you; and that I’m sorry for thinking you were a Hacker.”
Alex felt a tap on his shoulder. He pressed a button to turn off his mic temporarily and turned to see his father sitting on his bed, holding a tablet that Alex had pulled up several pages on Hacker activities. “I appreciate his sentiment, but if what you’ve told me is true, time is of the essence here.”
“That and you need to get to SAI to sort things out.” Alex said with a smirk.
Alex Sr. chuckled. “Well, that to.”
Alex turned his microphone back on and turned to the screen once more. “I appreciate the apology Qilin, but we don’t exactly have all the time in the world here.”
“I agree with GN,” Sharpslefae said. “Janus, how much longer does your brother think he can hold the Hackers off?”
“Ummm, one sec,” Janus muttered. He yelled off to his brother who yelled something back. “He says a-about two, maybe three more hours. They've m-managed to find his backdoor, and are trying to keep it open.”
“Can he still close it and keep them out?” Alex asked.
Garrett asked his brother once more. “He says against one Hacker, maybe two, he could still close it. Not against a dozen Hackers though.”
“So we've got three hours at most to stop the Hackers,” Alex commented. “That's not a lot of time.”
“Well, not having a lot of time is relative to what you want to do,” Qilin mused, flipping through pieces of paper on his end. “For instance, I could get many of the Coders together and launch a raid within an hour and a half. Anything larger, and we’d be pushing it.”
“And what is it that we want to do?” Sharpslefae asked. “I hear numbers being thrown around, but no one has suggested an actual plan.”
“Well, we do have the two most veteran Coders here,” Croe commented. “Don’t you guys have some sort of plan in place for this scenario?”
“That’s just it Croe, we never thought that the Developers would be so unwilling to admit there’s a problem with the game.” Qilin said sadly. “We always figured that we’d somehow get through to them before this.”
“So, what are we waiting for? Let’s make a plan!” Miles said.
“Miles, we have less than two hours before the Hackers break through. If the plan is any more complicated than a large raid, we simply don’t have the time,” Sharps said.
Time. The word sparked to life an idea in Alex’s mind. The idea spread like wildfire until it burst out of his mouth.
“What if we buy ourselves some more time?” Alex asked triumphantly.
“Pardon?” Croe asked.
“Janus, you said that after two to three hours the Hackers have the Core, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Janus replied.
“And Qilin, we only have time for one attack, right?”
“I guess, but what-”
“And after that, the Hackers will likely have the Core. But what good is the Core without the game to run it?”
“Are you suggesting that we crash the game?” Qilin asked, surprised.
“What, you don’t think it’s a good idea?” Alex asked.
“No, I’m just surprised we didn't think about it sooner. It might actually work. Hell, we did it in the past, albeit by accident.”
“I remember that!” Miles said triumphantly. “It right was before the Hackers got their powers. “We had gotten about a thousand extra players and attacked the Hacker’s latest stronghold. We destroyed the base, and overloaded the servers, completely frying part of it! It was down for a whole week as they tried to fix it.”
“If we can do that, then that buys us time to do something. Alex said. “If anything, it might draw some of the Hackers off of Janus, giving him the window he needs to close his backdoor. And even if we do lose the Core, we might be able to use that week to get the developers attention or warn other games of the danger.”
“I heard that after the last time, they’ve bolstered the entire server.” Miles mentioned. “Which means we’re going to need a lot of firepower, and a lot of players to overload the server again. Qilin, Sharps, how many Coders do you have left?”
“We’ve kept the numbers about equal.” Qilin replied. “Ever since the Hackers got their virus, we've lost thirty percent of our strength. After the Battle of the Hacker's castle, we increased our numbers by twenty-eight percent. The problem is that many of those that left were the veteran players with maxed out characters. The newer players; they’re good, but they haven’t maxed out yet. As far as we can tell, the Hackers have remained relatively consistent with their players, and all of them are leveled up to the max.”
“If we were to rally and attack in less than two hours, I imagine that we’d be able to gather around two hundred to two fifty Coders.” Sharpslefae estimated. “Unfortunately, with the west coast still in night time, the Hackers would be able to rouse and rally almost five hundred Hackers within ten minutes of us attacking.”
“That would pu-u-ut us at a d-d-d-disadvantage.” Garrett mused. “We’d have less than h-alf of their number and with inferior quality.”
They let that sink in. Very few armies had ever won battles with odds tipped against them so. Certainly not with inferior forces.
“Would'nt it be possible to recruit some of the other guilds?” Croe asked. “Most of the guilds have well over a hundred players, and most of them have characters that have hit level fifty.”
“It would be nice to have them, but the other guilds have historically been unwilling to join us against the Hackers since they created the virus.” Qilin answered. “They will fight them if attacked, but otherwise stick to themselves. I have tried on numerous occasions to convince them, but they are unwilling to risk injury while fighting them.”
“They’ve got to be willing to fight now!” Alex protested. “If we can show them what’s at stake-”
“Then they will move to another game and be done with it.” Qilin finished. “The Guildmaster of one of the largest guilds in the game made it very clear last time I talked with him that if the Hackers got the Core, that the entire guild was prepared to delete their accounts and move to another game that they have already picked out for this purpose exactly.”
Alex was about to reply with a comment as to where they could put that game when a hand reached around him and activated the built in microphone for the computer. “Then you need to make these guildmasters understand that Rune is no longer the only game at stake. I know for a fact that Xbox Live is very difficult to hack after they upgraded their security a few years ago. If one of their leading multiplayer games can be infiltrated, then the same goes for virtually any other game on the market.
“H-holy crap,” Garret breathed. “Mr. Samson? Is that you?”
“Alive and kicking Janus. I assume you’re the younger of my son’s two friends?”
“Mr. Samson, you’re, you’re alive! This is great!” Garrett shouted to his brother telling him that their best friend’s father was not in fact fish food.”
“Wait, GN, I thought you said just yesterday that your father was missing.” Miles said, suspicion creeping into his voice.
Alex rubbed his eyes. “It’s a, long story. Basically, I got back from the hospital after hitting my head on my bed, and he was sitting at our breakfast bar, drinking coffee. He’s agreed to help me figure this Hacker situation out before taking care of the board.”
“Hold up,” Qilin ordered. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re Homer Alexander Samson, the CEO of Samson Aviation Industries?”
Alex’s father sighed. “Yes I am. I would appreciate my position nor my son’s position be mentioned to anyone outside of this chatroom. It’s not something I like to bandy around unless necessary.”
“But, that means that you’ve been gone for over fourteen months! Where have you been?”
“This is not the time for me to discuss where I’ve been during that time. What we need to focus on is how we are going to stop the Hackers.”
“Indeed.” Sharpslefae spoke up. “You mentioned that we should inform the other guilds that the stakes are higher. I still don’t believe that this will work. They are simply too afraid of the risk of injury involved.”
Alex Sr. rubbed the stubble on his chin. “And what if the risk was removed?”
“A good idea sir, but with all due respect, we’ve been trying to develop a way to combat the virus since it came about. We’ve had some pretty good programers try everything to stop it, but nothing has come up.”
“Have you tried applying the virus itself to your characters and using the protective powers it grants to your advantage?” He asked.
“What protective powers are you talking about?” Qilin asked incredulously.
Alex Sr. consulted the tablet in his hand. “I’m looking at your post from the fifth of August last year when a group of your Coders ran into several Hackers. You fought, and one of the Hackers was hit in the back by an arrow from another Hacker. If their arrows do cause the noise until they’re removed, that Hacker should’ve been in agony, but instead, he pulls it out and throws it away. Either they’re all trained to ignore pain, or they have protection against their own attacks. If I know my computer geeks, I’d say the latter is what we’re seeing here.”
The chatroom got very quiet as they let what Alex Sr. had just said sink in. Miles was the first to speak up. “Are you telling me, that this entire time, our solution was staring us right in the fucking eyes?!”
Qilin’s keyboard was an indecipherable sound of keys furiously clicking as fast as they could. He finally stopped and sat back. “It’s there.” He announced breathlessly. “Sixteen months of staring at this godforsaken virus, and it was right there the whole time. I don’t know how, but they disguised it perfectly. You’d never know it was there unless you were looking at it.”
“The art of misdirection.” Alex Sr. said simply. “Hiding the solution to a problem deep within the problem itself.”
“I can see that being a genius runs in the family.” Sharpslefae said impressed.
Qilin was typing furiously once more. “I’ll write it into a patch and send it in through official channels. They’ll never expect it.”
“I’m going to send messages to all the guildmasters informing them that the tides have changed.” Sharpslefae said. “If they are convinced, this might be feasible.”
“And I’m going to take all my gear and go to GN’s house.” Garrett said determinedly. “I can’t stop an elite Hacker organization on a Windows 95!”
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And thus Alexander Sr. walks in and figures out a problem that had been an issue for more than a year. Never tell an engineer he can or can't do something. We have a tendency to take it as a personal challenge.
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