Chapter Text
“I don’t understand what happened, I did exactly what he told me. I took it home, washed it, let it dry for an hour and then I came back to this.”
“No, I, I believe you. I just don’t believe it.”
He examined the keyboard, or rather what was left of it, with mute bewilderment. More closely resembling a Salvador Dali painting than an electronic accessory, it sported a sizeable hole in its centre where keys once belonged, fringed by what could only be described as molten remains.
“So, you say you were in here yesterday with this keyboard. You met with my colleague who told you to take it home and clean it, and now it’s like this? What did you use?”
“Just some soapy water! Nothing corrosive!” The woman defensively replied.
He shook his head, “Well, no, that’s fine. Plastic can’t corrode anyway, but it can deteriorate. This almost looks like someone pointed a death ray at it. Did you leave it on a windowsill?”
“No, I just used a hairdryer. And I saw it was working so I let it do its thing while I folded my laundry.”
He blinked.
“You ‘let it do its thing’?” He quirked an eyebrow. “You left it sitting on the keyboard while it was running?”
She tapped her long nails on the counter. “Are you patronizing me?”
Before he could answer, a round of footsteps from the back room of the store approached. A hand extended from behind his shoulder to the woman, a slightly used but intact keyboard in its grasp.
The intruding presence cleared his throat, “I apologize for any inconvenience that we may have caused for you today. This should work for you, free of charge.”
She smiled, no teeth. “It better. I work from home, and I don’t have the time to spare coming back here.”
Both men smiled at her as she turned to leave, the bell on the door tinkling as her heels clopped out of the store. Once she was out of eyeshot, the pair of them dropped the façade.
“Kai.” The man began.
“I didn’t even say anything! She came in with a problem, I was about to help her.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have let her carry on like that. Making the customers out to be these harebrained morons that can’t keep pace with you. It’s bad for business.”
“It was just getting good! And what are you talking about, ‘keeping pace’? It’s a damn keyboard, not brain surgery.”
And at 16 dollars an hour, it sure isn’t brain surgery.
The older man chuckled at his chide remark, willing to let the matter drop for now. “It’s nearly five, don’t you have somewhere to be after this?”
Kai nodded, “Yeah, it’s Thursday already, huh? Man, I’m losing the plot.”
“Not the only thing you lost,” The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a lighter, offering it to him. “How come you keep leaving this thing laying around? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you smoke.”
His gaze lingered on the object, before taking it from him and sliding it into his pants pocket. “I don’t, it’s uh, it’s just something I like to carry around. Thanks, Gib.”
Good enough answer. At least, enough to bring that conversation to an end.
The store owner drew a long breath as he peered over the counter and out into the street.
“At least the rain’s cleared up, you’ll have a good time on the road tonight.” He chuckled dryly, trying to make small talk. He was rewarded with a half-nod.
“Oregon weather for you.”
The older man opened his mouth to ask another question; But decided against it.
As Kai collected his car keys and backpack from the small locker in the employee’s breakroom, he could hear the voice of his boss calling him into his office.
It was a cramped space, full of papers and disorganized files. He’d be hard-pressed to figure out what they were all for, as it seemed the real administrative work was handled much more tidily on their computer system.
“I know you’re in a hurry, but I wanted to show you something. You can have it if you want, in fact.” He began, reclining back in his chair.
“Mister Gibson, I think you should just move the clearance bin to the front of the store if people aren’t biting on last year’s stock.” A hand raised to hush him.
“Chill out, Kay,” Kai’s brow furrowed minutely at the pointless nickname and casual demeanor his boss would often put on to try and sound more youthful. “I have some old hardware that I know would be right up your alley.”
He spun his chair around to reach down and grab something from the corner of the room, reaching past the filing cabinets that were crammed too close together to provide easy access. With a soft ‘hup!’, he lifted what appeared to be an extremely outdated cathode-style monitor onto the desk.
“Apple?” Kai queried, despite knowing that would earn him a shake of the head. He wanted to move things along.
“Pinecone!” The boss exclaimed with an awkward amount of glee to his tone. Clearing his throat once more to reset himself, he reached back over to retrieve the computer itself. “These things are rarer than rare. I remember they had ads for these things in magazines back in the day, but I could never swing for one on my salary. Just as well, the company went bust in the blink of an eye.”
Kai nodded along with mild interest. “That’s all well and good, but look at the state of it. There’s residue all over the case so I shudder to think what it looks like on the inside, the plastic’s yellowed, the screen looks like it’s literally had a .45 caliber bullet shot through it, and who’s to say it would even boot if I fixed all the above? The motherboards on these things are a nightmare to service once they start corroding. How old is it? 50 years?”
A scoff, “40 years, give or take. 1983 model I believe. And good eye, it is in a bit of a rough state. But I’ve ‘popped the hood on this thing, and would you believe it, the motherboard has been kept pretty well preserved by whatever it got caked in!”
The young adult leaned on the closed door of the office behind him, thinking idly. It’s not unheard of, old computers once used on factory floors and other dirty environments had seen great quantities of oil and grease, which in some instances proved beneficial to the longevity of certain parts.
Kai piped up, “So what do you want me to do about it? Drop a few hundred bucks on fixing it up so you can flip it on the internet?”
“No, no, it’s a gift!” Gibson chortled, “You’ve been a good employee for me the past five years and I know your birthday recently came around and I didn’t get you anything. 26, right?”
“Okay, but you never get me anything, my 25th birthday was a month ago, and what’s all this about calling me a ‘good employee’? Is this a performance review?” He playfully shot back.
“I’m serious, this thing has been here for months, I bought it from a yard sale, never found the time or desire to fix ‘er up, so now it either belongs to you, or the great trash heap in the sky.”
“Trash heaps are on the ground, Gibs.”
“Sold! Want a hand getting it to your car?”
A one-hour stop-off elsewhere was all that stood between Kai and the warm sanctity of his one bed studio apartment. One hazy, lapse of an hour.
He didn’t really think about where he was going on Thursdays anymore. It was all but routine now.
So, when he finally awoke from his trance-like state to find himself standing at his own front door, it was exactly the breath of relief after a long day that he’d been looking for.
Repeating his nightly routine, he put dinner on the stove, flipped the television onto something brain-atrophic and sat down on the couch to scroll through his socials for a while.
After about 20 minutes, he remembered the hunk of junk that remained in the backseat of his car.
It could probably wait another night.
…
But on the other hand, it’d been a while since he’d truly gotten his hands dirty with some deep cleaning and repair. After such a dry spell of menial diagnostic work and chump change transactions, it could be a genuine reprieve for him.
With a decisive nod, he turned the TV down, put a pot of coffee on, and jogged downstairs to retrieve the damaged goods from his car.
There’s something to be said about the flow-state that one goes into when doing something that comes so naturally to them. The way the mind works at a quickened pace as the droning noise of unfocused thoughts all but dissipates. Like achieving a heightened state of consciousness.
That’s how it felt to Kai every time he picked apart a computer without knowing what to expect. The excitement that came from cracking open a chassis that hadn’t seen the light of day in god knows how long, all in the name of restoring it to its former glory, it was a core memory that went as far back as he could remember.
Like an artist with his palette and easel, or a surgeon with his sharp instruments, the man knew computers. But not in the scholarly, three-to-eight years of college way. Rather, in the intuitive, rote learning way. He had been around the things all his life, so it only made sense that he’d spend as much time as he did learning about how they worked.
The TV buzzed quietly with the dulcet tones of a graveyard timeslot soap, serving to keep his cranium stimulated enough to narrow its focus on the task at hand.
In the span of just a few short hours and a pot and a half of black coffee, he’d managed to give the computer a decent enough clean, although the yellowing of its plastic casing would need to wait for another day. The motherboard was, as promised, in remarkable condition despite its predictable life in someone’s dusty attic or garage.
Was that grape juice? Soda of some kind? It was unlike any typical residue he’d normally be greeted with when scrubbing down a board. But it cleared off all the same, and with some gentle but concentrated work with a toothbrush, he was able to rid it of most stains.
Ordinarily, he’d go straight for seeing if the thing would boot first before giving it a clean, but it was truly in a sorry state that he was wary of causing any fires. Not to mention, it’d still look good framed on a wall if things didn’t pan out.
“Now this,” He muttered to himself, turning the monitor to face him directly, “Is kaputt. But maybe I can work with it.”
He scratched his stubble as he looked at the exposed internals of the screen, considering the option of replacing the smashed screen and still using the monitor itself. That could be costly, and time-consuming.
But it could also be fun. He put a pin in that.
Thankfully, he had a handful of old yet functional monitors under his bed where extra shoes would usually reside for most people.
One pair for work, one for social, one for funerals.
His ex always hated it, but it was practical and cost-effective.
Anyway, he lugged a period-appropriate monitor (albeit with much less yellowing on it) out from his room and onto the coffee table of the main living space.
Luck was on his side, the ports were more standard than he’d usually seen with older units (When they even had them), allowing him to use the mismatched screen with minimal trouble.
Rubbing his hands together in anticipation, he tread over to the nearest electrical socket, and plugged the machine in.
To his surprise, the computer flickered to life with no further input, as if to greedily absorb the life force of the electrical grid.
Kai hummed with curiosity, sitting back down on the couch and watching with interest as the usual readouts began to list themselves off.
RAM OK.
ROM OK.
CPU OK.
ERROR: DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED. SOME WORK MAY BE LOST.
He shrugged. That was to be expected, the shelf life of the parts was anybody’s guess, and if some things weren’t in order it wouldn’t be a surprise.
What was a surprise, however, was the unmistakable sound of a voice coming from the tinny speakers of the computer tower itself once it completed its diagnostic sequence.
“H- lo?”