Chapter Text
My shoulders already quaking, I began to take the quietest deep breaths. The sound of Noelle’s steps in the distance elongated itself into nothingness as seconds slowed into minutes. My mind was occupied, manufacturing a stream of techy-adjacent terms that would set the mind of a true technologist ablaze - my hands rehearsing snappy movements and pretending to grab and remove parts out of thin air. After all, I had spent years working as a (albeit failed) salesman with my kin, and then became a professional emailer. Persuasion was in my blood. Deft sales were my middle name (they weren’t, but I digress). If I couldn’t fool a teen, then what was I really worth?
Nothing.
The old machinery being slammed on the coffee table produced a noise that shook me awake. There it was. A frighteningly ancient laptop, that which was confusing me to no end. I was desperate to say anything about it, but could not quite form the words.
“I…love the stylishness of it.”
That was the best I could say, afraid to meet Noelle’s eyes. My irises were fixated on the hunk of junk, which looked like it had gone through a factory explosion. It was beaten up, scratched, clearly bumped in multiple places - but also had unbelievable style. The damage only added to its aura, I thought, as I slid a finger over its overly stickered casing. There was lots of rock bands’ logos plastered on it, stickers of crudely drawn crosses and so forth - they had assimilated together so well on the laptop that I was struggling to identify the model, even.
Having a closer look at it, I thought it looked like the coolest custom job ever.
Pointing to the extremely punk design, I said - “Wow, Noelle, did you do t–?”
But upon averting my gaze at her, I only saw a grave stare, laser-focused on the device. She did not attempt to hide her worry, nor depressive demeanour.
“Spamton…” - she whispered, suddenly putting her arms on my shoulders with desperation, giving them a little unhinged shake - “please…please fix it! I can’t do my schoolwork until it’s fixed. And I…I also can’t play Cat Petterz 2…”
Cat Petterz 2?! What in the Dark World is that?, I wondered while nodding at her with a similarly grave expression, freeing myself from her gently-shackling grasp to look at the laptop again.
While she intently watched my every move, I carefully flipped the laptop to inspect its bottom shell. Biting down her nails as she observed me, she suddenly let out a squeal.
“W-Will it survive?!”
“Noelle – please give me a moment, I have not yet had a look at it.”
“N-No, I know” – she muttered, looking away in embarrassment – “i-it’s just that my baby pictures are on there—”
“YOUR WHAT?”
“Yes, and also all my passwords, my music library I started putting together when I was six, and my school graduation certificates” – she said nonchalantly, focused on counting all of the victims of this loss on her fingers – “—so in short, no pressure.”
She smiled at me sincerely.
I began to sweat, rapidly. Wiping my hands down my trousers several times did not help either. I now had two massive wet stains on my thighs, and yet still no ideas on how to bring this metal to life again!
If only Tenna were here…he’d probably know how to fix it.
I looked at the laptop again, and thought just a little more about it.
Wait, of course he wouldn’t.
Old man’s a hunk of junk too. An ancient one at that!
Although, upon further consideration, for a man with a TV for a head, you’d think he’d be able to restore one of his brethren without further ado!!!
But I refrained from walking back to my flat and begging, strongly, on my knees, with my hands together, pitiably, for his help. It would have made me look terrifyingly pathetic. I was not yet ready to submit to him - as long as this young woman needed help, my task was not yet complete!
After another five minutes of staring at the device, Noelle keenly interrupted with - “Soooooo, what’s the issue?”
I needed to say something. What if she had already begun doubting me? The fibers of my skin shaking, I collected the most plausible-sounding explanation, supplemented by vocabulary from technical manuals I had read when fixing a family printer with Blue at the age of twelve.
No clue how some of those terms stuck with me, but they did so extremely vividly.
“I’m afraid it’s…it’s the laptop’s…”
“Yes?”
I took a deep breath.
“Looks like your network adapter is bleeding into the RAM allocation. The partition table is completely corrupted from the inside out. Also, your TLS handshake has complicated things and created a memory leak in the CPU cores.”
Clearly shocked at the amount of incomprehensible damage, she gasped while staring at the laptop – “Oh no, that’s horrid! Really?!”
“Y-Yes, and you see, this would be an easy fix, if not for the…”
“The???”
Spurting out a bunch of new words I could not even try to use correctly, I said, matter-of-factly - “The UNIX partition has actually completely gotten stuck in a fetch-decode-execute cycle, which has eroded your GPU cache.”
With wide eyes, she sank back into the couch, hand on forehead.
“For the love of Queen, please tell me it’s fixable! Else I might just have to shell out my sparse savings for a new one.”
As happy as I would have been to pack up this entire comedy act and just recommend her to get a new one (and save myself the shame!), I took another good look at the device.
Given its…design and specificity, it was clearly a family heirloom. Perhaps passed down from her parents onto her, with the hopes that it would survive another few years, barely hanging on by a thread. The last thing I wanted to do was burden her with a large purchase after this shitshow.
I could not leave her to struggle.
“Look, Noelle” – with newfound hope, she turned to listen to me – “I’ll do my best. Cannot promise I’ll fix it, but I will try. Okay?”
She nodded, and said nothing more.
I placed the flipped-over laptop in my lap. I tapped it a few times – heard nothing back from it. It was clearly off. I flipped it back around, opened the top and pressed the on switch.
Waited for a moment, nothing. No whirring was heard, no gasping for air even.
Well, that’s my most informed attempt gone.
It was time to go back to basics. I closed the laptop down again and – ignoring Noelle’s phantom stare of desperation which I could vividly imagine had been a dagger in my side – I began to brainstorm.
Right, if this was my laptop, and it was broken, what would I do?
I’d of course remove everything that I possibly can to see if that helps.
I checked every port. Nothing. There was nothing plugged in, no USBs, no external accessories.
Shit.
I flipped it on its back again. I spotted that the back cover had come loose from possibly years of usage, and maybe my incessant flipping. I took it off carefully, to reveal a bunch of plastic-y things underneath that obscured the internals of the laptop that I could not individually identify.
Except for the laptop’s battery. I looked at it for a moment.
It wouldn’t hurt to try, would it now?
Knowing that this was my last moment to appear smart, I carefully inserted a finger into a tiny crevice by the battery – and pushed it out of its slot. It was a massive one, and quite hefty in my hands. A second later, I put it back in, returned the cover to its rightful place and flipped the device again.
For the love of all that is cyber, PLEASE work…
I opened the laptop’s front cover. I saw the keys were well-worn, and even the inside panels were full of dark and edgy stickers. The only surface that was spared from customization had been the screen, which was in oddly pristine condition – not even a scratch upon it. Its appearance was pitch-black.
Through it, stared back at me a particularly sweaty man with pallid features, teeth bared, eyebrows furrowed, clearly worried out of his mind. His black hair was a mess, and his dark eyes concerned beyond belief.
I shook my head, and laid a finger on the power button.
FUCKING WORK!
And I pressed it.
For a moment, there was silence, and the static in my ears that it had created, and my heartbeat. I could feel Noelle breathing just inches away from me.
Then, it lit up.
“OH MY TASQUE, IT WORKS!”
“No need to thank me—”
She swiped the laptop right out of my hands with unbelievable joy as the screen arrived to a desktop full of sticky notes and messy icons, obscuring a background made up entirely of pixelated images of cats.
I sank into the couch, feeling the adrenaline leave my body as quickly as it had arrived.
“You’re an expert, thank you so so much! I MUST buy you dinner. That’s the least I can do. Should we do a double date this weekend, maybe? I’ll grab Kris and you grab Tenna, and we’ll have a great evening!”
“No, don’t worry, it’s fine—”
“I was planning to go to the place near the Tasque Bar – what was it called” – she said under her breath, already looking up a selection of an address history and scrolling down the maps on her phone, which displayed the environs of our neighbourhood – “I thiiiiink it was Bells & Whistles?”
This was terrible. I could not resist. I instantly remembered that my mother loved taking us there when we were younger. It was a place of firm, biting nostalgia - and they also served my favourite salads there.
Seeing how civil myself and my partner were at that moment, I would have taken a free dinner over asking Tenna to make me something when we’re on poor terms (so basically, starving) any day! Not to mention, this dinner could help us in building up rapport once again – in a new environment, while meeting new people, and having a bit of fun in a great (and, to me) familiar locale.
“Okay, I have to admit, it’s one of my favourite restaurants. You got me. Feel free to book.”
I briefly gave her my number, and she cheerily went on – “I will send you the details later, just need to confirm with Kris when they’re back! Ughh--I’m so excited already, I cannot wait for all of us to spend some time together! And of course, for you to meet Kris, and me to meet with Tenna!”
The girl was beside herself with joy, her legs happily swinging off the couch as she sent a number of caps-locked messages to whom I assume was Kris. She typed so erratically I could barely follow, stuffing in tens of emojis and exclamation marks after each legible text message and, concurrently, unable to disguise the smile on her face, which showed off her front-row teeth. I saw she had just two that adorably poked out of her mouth whenever she grinned, which, if I were not a strong, tough individual, would have brought tears to my eyes.
As I rubbed my eyes a little to get rid of excessive moisture, I thought - never did making someone feel happy feel this good. It was strange. I had only met her hours ago, but…to have someone rely on you, and for you to do them a good deed – it felt extremely fulfilling.
I could get used to this.
However, soon I was brought out of my daydream when I realized we had spoken for much longer than intended – and that I did promise to return home soon. So, upon gathering my bearings (five homemade jammy biscuits, courtesy of Noelle), I proposed to her – “Sadly, I think it may be time for me to skedaddle, if you don’t mind.”
Shaken by my words from her rapid-typing daze, she dropped her phone on the couch and jumped off it joyfully – “Oh of course, sorry for keeping you! Thank you for visiting, I had lots of fun! And again, thank you for the laptop!”
I nodded, and she walked me to the entrance of her flat. She opened the door, and steps later, I was at the foot of my own.
“No problem – it had been about time that we meet given how close we live to each other! Make sure to send me the details of the booking, and see you soon!”
“Yup – bye bye!”
With a slam on her end, I was then left alone facing my flat.
With trouser pockets stuffed full of biscuits in tissues,
a hallway that carried every tiny shuffle with an echo both up and down the stairs,
and a dream.