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Chapter 1 - Happy Birthday!

Hi there. My name is Michael Barrett, my offline friends call me Mike, but to the online world, I am a mystery. I have, as of yet, never found a system I couldn’t crack, or a virus I couldn’t disassemble by writing one of my ‘seek and destroy’ programs. I have a good knowledge of over 10 coding languages. All this, and I have only just turned 17. Oh, that reminds me, I should go back downstairs, after all, my family are waiting to wish me happy birthday.

I shut down my laptop, closed the lid and walked out of my room, locking the door behind me, pocketing the key. Yes, I had a lock on my door. I had insisted on it after my little sister had burst in to my room, fizzy drink in hand, telling me to come outside and enjoy the sun, when she tripped on a wire, spilt drink on my old PC, frying the motherboard. Luckily I managed to save the hard drive in time, but it was still a setback. I swear, I didn’t talk to her for a least a week after ‘the incident’.

Semi-jogging down the stairs I started wondering what I’d be getting from them; after all I was hard to shop for. Sighing, I realised they’d probably try and coax me out of my room more often by buying me some sort of outdoorsy thing, maybe a bike, or some roller-skates. Of the two, I’d rather the bike, but I’d much prefer a nice new external hard drive, or that ergonomic keyboard I had my eyes on for a while, the one with the wrist pads. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t spend all my time indoors, and I’m certainly not afraid of exercise, I just enjoy coding new programs, playing a new video game, or sneaking into a mate’s computer spooking them out with talking pop-ups. A little evil, I know, but what use is talent if you can’t have any fun with it?

As I walked into our living room my sister let off a party popper in my face, snapping me out of my plans to terrorise my next victim, ahem... friend.

“Happy Birthday!” My mum, dad and sister said in unison, making me feel a little awkward, as I don’t like to be the focus of all the attention, so I swiftly located my presents and indicated to them,

“Shall I get opening then?” I queried, trying to move things along as swiftly as possible.

“Hang on a sec, let me fetch my camera” Dad interrupted, running out of the room to grab his precious camera. I never seem to come out right in photos, my medium length brown hair is always parted in some strange way or with a flick of hair disobeying the trend. My hazel eyes always get turned red by flash, or my glasses grab the light causing a large white gleam on my face. Not to mention my smile. I have never, in my life, mastered that fake smile you put on for a photo, so I always have an awkward smile, or I look to enthusiastic and my dreaded dimple shows up. One time, I actually put some effort into it, and I just ended up looking maniacal. Oh well.

“ Okay, found it, everyone huddle up for a photo!” My Dad cheered triumphantly as he re-entered the room, camera in hand. Darn, I was half hoping he wouldn’t find it. Putting an arm around my mum, and my hand on my little sister’s shoulder, I tried my best to prepare that winning smile that would finally make a good photo, but alas it evaded my grasp, a fact I noticed as Dad promptly showed me the photo. I reckon I was an average height for my age, I was still smaller than most my friends but I was still at least a head taller than my mum, and maybe one and a half times my sister’s height.

Another thing about me and photos was they always made my skin look paler than it was, more ‘proof’ I didn’t get out enough my Mum always said, but really my skin was a healthy looking light colour, always slightly tanned.

I turned away from the mean photo and sat down by my presents, ready to open them. Once Dad was finally ready with the camera, I opened the first few, smaller ones so as not to disrupt the potential surprise of the bigger ones. Okay, what do we have here then? CD’s of a band I actually liked, good start, some Dairy Milk Crunchie chocolate, fair enough as it was my favourite, a new FPS game, nice time-killer, and a new satchel bag containing 3 notebooks and a pack of pens, which was handy, my old bag broke about a fortnight ago because I had stuffed it with a laptop and a load of books on top of that, then tried to zip it up, unsurprisingly, bursting the zip apart and ripping one side down the seam.

Now to start on the bigger ones, I thought, ripping the wrapping paper off the first one; a pile of books for me to read/ leave on a shelf, depending on how gripping the story was. Next up; a nice, thick book on coding that I had already read, and corrected. Oh well, I never expected them to get all the presents right, at least they got the right subject matter this time. The penultimate present was quite big, and squishy. Opening it up, I found a pile of jeans, t-shirts and a jacket. To be honest, I expected this, Mum always complains that my wardrobe is limited. Always jeans and a t-shirt. Today’s happened to be one of my favourites, the one that said, “Reality. n. something that happens when you are not playing computer games.”. Okay, one last present to go.

Ripping the paper at a random spot I notice 1TB, could this be what I was hoping for? Hastily I tore off the rest of the paper, and to my surprise I find in my hands, a desktop PC I had been looking at for months, a brand spanking new one terabyte hard drive gaming PC, with a kickass graphics card and enough RAM to make any goat jealous. Staring at the box in disbelief I looked at my parents for confirmation of the unreal, and for some reason Mum was making a turning motion with her finger. Curious, I turned the box around and saw a little note stuck to the side:

“On condition that you spend more time outside.”

My shoulders slumped a little but if that was the cost of this PC, I would do it.

I’m guessing Mum saw the slight slump in my shoulders as she chirped in with “To help you out, we got you a little something extra. Come to the back door with us” she said, leaving the room and walking through the kitchen. Following her, I got to the back door and stepped outside. Right in front of me was a brand new bike, fully assembled, and just my size.

“So, do you want that PC, Mike?” My mum teased. She knew very well that I want it, and that I would do almost anything for something that nice.

“Yes. Yes I very much want it. And to prove I’m not lying, I’m gonna go for a cycle right now” I said, putting on my shoes.

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Hope you enjoyed reading this first chapter, if so comment, vote, like, whatever. Or not, I don't mind, because I'll keep writing regardless of the popularity of this story, because it's fun to be imaginative. But it's always nice to know you are appreciated and whatnot.

I think the first few chapters won't be terribly action-packed, but I have plenty planned for the rest of the book, so keep your eyes peeled :D

Note from the future: especially chapter 6, coming out soon!