~~~~
“What a haul,” Jones hummed to
himself. The engineer’s latest excursion to the derelict spaceship outside the
station left him aglow with glee. He fancied himself a new form of
archeologist, cracking into old data storage to find information that was for
all intents and purposes lost. It didn’t matter if the information was useful
or not, it merely tingled a part of his brain that enjoyed soaking in the
obscure. Now he’d do the same to the hard drives he found tucked away in the
wrecked spaceship.
“Jones, what are you doing?” The
supervisor, Trevor, peeked into the room.
“Just storing some of the salvage
from the derelict ship,” Jones explained.
“Those look like hard drives Jones,
not salvage,” Trevor glared.
“There could be some important
information on here,” Jones urged.
“What’s the name of the ship?”
“The Arrowhead.”
“And why is it derelict?”
“Engine failure, without a doubt.”
“Then there’s nothing else to
learn,” Trevor crossed his arms, “put that in a report and beam it home if you
want to be thorough.”
“But sir,” Jones tried to explain
his case.
“Can it Jones,” Trevor raised his
voice. “If you’d actually bring back useful salvage sometimes, I wouldn’t be on
your case, but all you do is horde these hard drives. You don’t even use them
as extra file storage; you just read through them and archive them.”
“It’s just a hobby,” Jones exclaimed.
“A hobby is fine and good until it
interferes with your work Jones,” Trevor countered. “You still haven’t repaired
the bay doors like I asked you, and you need to clean that pigsty you call an
office.”
“Certainly, sir,” Jones grumbled.
“Don’t let me catch you fiddling
with those before you get your work done,” Trevor declared before he left.
“Jackass,” Jones spat as he headed
towards his office.
As he opened the door gently and
observed his workspace, he silently admitted that Trevor did have a point about
his office. The room was a mess of computers, haphazardly placed wires, and a
floor covered in miscellaneous parts.
‘I really should tidy up, but I can
always deal with that later,’ Jones affirmed to himself.
He sat down at his desk chair and
liberally sprinkled his haul on the little available space on his desk. Jones
considered picking up a tool chest and heading down to repair the bay doors,
but he quickly decided against it.
‘Screw Trevor, he may act like he’s
my boss, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to him,’ Jones mused. ‘Besides,
he said, don’t let him catch me
messing with the drives.’ Jones grinned to himself as he pawed through the
drives.
He pulled a cord from his computer, and one
by one, he plugged it into the salvaged drives. Most of them were too damaged
to function, but he managed to crack into a few. The first was empty, seemingly
never used, to begin with. The second had some corrupt files and a few pictures
of damaged equipment. But the last drive was surprisingly well preserved.
Almost all of its data was still usable, although they were in some unknown
file type.
‘Don’t got nothing that can run
these on this computer,’ Jones realized, ‘but my main computer probably does.’
Jones gleefully unplugged the drive and switched it over to his main computer.
‘Even if my rig can’t figure it out, there’s got to be something stored in the
mainframe that can tell me what can.’
Jones loaded the drive into his main
computer, the process was slow at first, but he smiled as it completed. Then
his computer started popping up errors, and his heart sank. It didn’t take long
for his experienced eyes to catch the telltale signs of a sneaky virus.
‘You got to be kidding me,’ Jones
panicked, ‘Trevor will never let me live this down if he finds out.’ Jones did
his best to stop the virus, but to his horror, it had already jumped around the
station. If it were still on the other computer, this wouldn’t have been an
issue. That spare computer wasn’t connected to anything else, but his main
computer was. No wonder he didn’t notice the virus at first; it must only
trigger if the device it was on had any connectivity to other systems.
‘I gotta fix this,’ Jones sprang up
from his chair. ‘I’ll start yanking cords here to stop the source, then I’ll
just reboot the whole station if I have to.’ Unfortunately for Jones, he
wouldn’t even get that far. He tumbled over a network of wires that ran through
the middle of his office. The engineer’s head slammed into the mess of metal
parts on his floor. Jones felt dizzy as the world went dark.
‘Wait, that’s the station’s lights
shutting down,’ Jones’s eyes widened. He scrambled to his feet, but he
struggled to navigate through his messy office in the dark. His legs tripped
over another cord, and the back of his head met the side of the desk. As a
sharp pain jolted through his head, the engineer was sent into a deep slumber.
~~~~
Sometimes it pays to listen to your superiors and sometimes it pays to focus on your work first.
This is the first story in a loosely connected set of four that will be posted over this week and the next.
Until next time, Read, Comment and EnjoyThis is the first story in a loosely connected set of four that will be posted over this week and the next.
~~~~
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