Connected

The Finishing Touches

Chirping birds woke me up, but I didn't open my eyes. The room felt so terribly empty. I pulled the covers back up over my head. This was it. Everything was happening today, finally. Although, hadn't I said that before?

I pulled the covers down from my head, when I heard a small knock at the door.

"Yeah?"

Lee Know poked his head in. "Oh good, you're up."

I sat up and shoved stray hairs out of my face. "Unfortunately."

He smiled. "I know you said you wanted to test the program at least once before they got here, so I wanted to make sure you were up at a decent time."

"Yeah, I do." I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. I reached up to the ceiling stretching my spine. "What time is it?"

Lee Know opened the door a bit wider and I walked out into the hallway. "A little after 8. I'm still not sure exactly when they are coming but I get more nervous the closer to noon that we get."

I watched as he twitched and fidgeted, trying to make each jerk a part of his regular movement. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

He shrugged as we walked down the steps. "A bit, but I woke up sometime after 3 and had problems falling back to sleep."

When we reached the main room I sat down and Lee Know began pacing. "So, eventually I just got up. I ran through the coding again myself and everything seemed to be in its right place."

"Yeah, I test ran it last night through the program and everything seemed to work out ok." I opened up the coding and began compressing it.

"Now I just want to run it through a real website to test everything out. Got that Changbin? Just testing it." I made sure the last bit was louder, ensuring there would be no mixup.

Lee Know stopped. "Oh shit, they're already listening?"

I nodded. "The Captain said they went on at midnight." I watched as the file finished compressing. "Why? What did you do in here other than run my program last night?"

His face turned red. "I mean, I was just talking to myself mostly. But... I don't think I said anything crazy." He threw his hands up in the air. "Screw it at this point."

"Lee Know, take a breath. Sit down. You're going to wear yourself out before anything even happens."

He sighed and came over to sit next to me.

I turned to him. "Ready?"

He nodded and I turned back to the computer. I double clicked on the internet icon and the page opened up easily. It seems that they still haven't figured out how to restore the time on the websites, so I was able to poke around.

"Where to?"

I heard Lee Know sigh again. "US National Mint."

I typed everything in and hit the search button. The website opened and a banner flew across the top. 'Time is currently down for repairs. Please refer to your local news station for the correct time.'

I opened the inspection information and loaded the program into the bottom of the page's coding. Then I refreshed the page and watched as the site pixelated.

A pop up appeared: 'Do you wish to continue?'

I clicked yes, and held my breath as the pixels reformed themselves. Then I exhaled as another pop up asked 'What time is it?"

I quickly typed in a time and hit enter. Then I watched as the website reset itself to show the time I had entered. It worked.

I turned to Lee Know, who had a huge grin on his face. "That was so cool to watch."