A Computer Repair Adventure

A Computer Repair Adventure

WC: 768

The elderly computer engineer growled. If he didn’t need what this stupid laptop contained, he’d hurl it at his basement wall. In the password field, a cursor blinked. Under the field, glowing in brilliant red text, were the words “Invalid password.” He had two attempts left.

How could he forget the password to his old work computer? He’d used it for years.

Because, you demented old man, that was decades ago. He'd been sure it was his wife’s name, Kim. But it couldn’t be. It had to be over eight characters. He leaned forward to type Kimberly and froze.

What if it had been one of his children’s names? Which one? How many children did he have? He didn’t know. Hirata popped into his mind. That wasn’t one of his kid’s names. Then he remembered! It was Hirata1995. The most brilliant person to ever lived plus the last year of his project. Ten strokes later and he was in. In seconds, he’d opened his project’s research folder.

He couldn’t remember ever publishing his results! If he had, wouldn’t he be famous? Wouldn't people still invite him to celebrations for his invention? Surely a Nobel Prize would set on the shelf in his living room.

The focus of his life’s work targeted the creation of a brain implant. An implant which would boost intelligence beyond Christopher Hirata’s IQ which neared 300. Why had he never published it? Had someone stopped him? If only he could remember!

There it was - the executable to his project. Clicking on it resulted in a sky-blue background with hexadecimal numbers rolling down it like a rain of gibberish. No! He didn’t have time to fix a hard crash. Actually, he didn’t remember how to. Rebooting was his only hope.

Maybe it had crashed because of a bad spot on the disk. When he had it up and he could see the executable file again, he copied it to a new location on the disk and clicked on the file again. Yes! The main screen opened. From the menu, he chose “Connect to nearest implant.”

It was like turning on a light bulb in a dark room. His mind jumped two hundred IQ points up. Man, how he loved this invention. In a flash, he remembered everything. No. There were gaps. Like a Michelangelo painting, with various areas smeared into swirls.

He remembered he had three children, but only portions of their lives. His oldest, David, had no childhood. He was only the sixty-year-old man who came to visit him occasionally.

Why couldn’t he remember marrying Kim? They had a wedding photo hung in the dining room. So, he had, but the memory was gone. And now he remembered why.

The implant connection had a cruel side effect. The chip needed workspace, and it used adjacent areas of the brain. Overlaying these areas for its functions wiped out those memories originally stored there.

That explained why he didn’t have honors and acclaim. His profession's conferences and magazines vilified him as a monster. Such exposure dried up any chance he had of test subjects. But he knew he could fix the implant and the computer interface application. His only path was to be his own test subject.

He couldn’t feel his memories winking out. How can you? When gone, they are thoughts and experiences you never had. You don’t miss events that never were.

Oh, my God! What had he lost in the minute he pondered his life’s work? His failure. It would cost him, but he had to make sure he remembered what he needed to do next to fix this dangerous device.

He took precious seconds to write a single command on his smart phone’s notepad. Then he jabbed the power button on the computer.

The brilliant light of his mind went out. His thoughts were a muddle. Why was he sitting in front of his old project laptop? Had he been about to turn it on? On the desk, his cellphone screen was lit up. Holding it up, he read the message displayed on it. “Destroy laptop.”

What a crazy thing to write. This laptop had his life’s work on it. No way was he going to destroy or even put a scratch on it.

Kim called from the top of the stairs, “Dinner’s ready.”

“Be right there.”

Looking at the dark computer screen, he wondered what his life’s work had been. He knew he was an engineer. But what type? Electrical? Mechanical? Biometric? Stupid dementia. He’d have to ask Kim when he got to the dining table.