Alt Shift

Chapter 4 - Memory Loss

I woke up late the next morning after a long and frankly uneventful sleep. If I had had any dreams during the night I certainly couldn’t remember them now. Slowly I sat up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes just waiting for my brain to kick into gear. Finally I started feeling a little awake and so began the morning routine: Get out of bed, power on the computer, head to the bathroom and wake myself up with some cold water to the face, sit down at the computer, check emails. Usually I’d head downstairs for breakfast before checking emails but today I felt that there could be some good challenges lingering in my inbox.

Surprisingly not one of the challenges managed to keep my attention for more than a few seconds as I kept drifting away to the thought of going out for a bike ride, which was weird because I don’t tend to exercise without having to be forced into it. So after a quick bowl of cereal I headed to the garage and set off towards the park again, deciding to have a look at that waterfall once more because it was so peaceful there.

As I approached the benches I noticed a dirt path turning off to the left which seemed to be heading towards the water and all of a sudden I made a snap decision to head down that path to see where it would take me.

I emerged on a pebbly beach next to the river with the water trickling soothingly between rocks contrasting with the relative roar of the waterfall far to my right. The river stretched onwards off to the left, slowly encompassing the pebbles, spreading from bank to bank. Each bank was covered in greenery, the grassy hills filled with trees packed together all fighting for some room among the bushes. It was like this area was cut off from the rest of the world, the only evidence of  any other existence being a house way up on the hillside and the dirt path behind me which was almost enshrouded in greenery too.

I rolled my bike out of the way of the path and set it down, sitting next to it and playing with the rocks by my side, skimming them on the water’s surface, vaguely trying to reach the other bank. After a while I just gave up and sat there and enjoyed the tranquillity of the trickling water.

I headed back up the dirt path and towards the benches, and suddenly I heard a soft pop coming from my rear tire, but fortunately there was no hissing. I was practically at the benches now so I got off my bike and inspected the rear tire and found my dust cap was missing. I went over to around about where I had heard the sound and started looking for the vital piece of plastic. After a few moments I found it and saw it had come to a stop by a seemingly abandoned USB stick. Picking the two up I headed back to my bike, reattached the cap and headed back home.

As I pedalled I wondered who the memory stick could belong to and what could be on it. I mean, what if there was some important data on there, how could I get it back to them? As I thought that, I realised I may have just found myself a decent challenge, depending on what’s on this stick. With a new lease of energy from the potential challenge I cycled home quicker than ever, parked my bike in the garage and ran up to the PC, plugged in the USB stick and scanned it for viruses.

The scan came up having detected zero malicious content, and when I opened up the documents folder I realized why – the memory stick was completely blank. 8GB of empty space stared back at me from the other side of my screen just waiting to be filled. Just to be sure I ran a check for any rare encoding that may have been placed on the files to hide them, but again this came up blank. Apart from a bit of scuffing on the smooth black plastic I could well have just gone to the store and bought this.

I was disappointed that there wasn’t any challenge for me to beat, but on the plus side I just got a new memory stick, and I had a good idea of what to use it for first so I grabbed my laptop, switched it on and searched through my files for where I stored it...

Perfect, I found it. My mini havoc wreaking file which I had called Tempest back when I created it, about a year ago. I never really had a chance to use it, other things always got in the way, it’s kind of like the Christmas toy you forgot about, and then find half a year later wondering how you could forget about something that entertaining.

The first stage was a flurry of pop-ups as soon as you plug in the memory stick. If any of those stayed open for more than thirty seconds it would automatically start rearranging the folders and documents of the user. Once that is finished an internet window opens to a custom html page I made which contains a random computer skill game, either typing speed, mouse control or a devilish platformer, which upon completion initiates the program which reverts all changes previously made by Tempest. I included that last feature because well, I may enjoy a good prank, but I’m not that cruel!

I plugged in the new stick and opened its folder to transfer Tempest onto it, but as I started the transfer I could’ve sworn I saw something flicker on the screen, though it could’ve been my imagination. Now distracted by the flicker I automatically removed the stick once I heard the ping of a successful transfer, but my mind was on proving what I thought I had seen, so I plugged it into my new PC to run a slow motion screen capture of the flicker.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I had just put Tempest on the memory stick, so I was quite startled when my 30 second countdown started to close all the pop-ups. Moving swiftly across the screen with my mouse I pressed X after X until only the last window remained open. I hesitated upon seeing this popup as it was not one that I had programmed into Tempest, and the countdown had stopped when I closed the previous window.

Hoping I wasn’t being caught out by my own programming I stopped and read the message which clearly wasn’t written by me: “Haha! That’s a nice program you made there, I could certainly have some fun with this. BTW, I’m so flattered you decided to name this after me Mike xxx”

This left me with three main questions: Who just managed to get access to my system, how did they do it, and why are they flirting with me???!!?!

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Hey thanks for reading

Apologies for the filler-type chapter, I bet you're wondering why this is categorized as Action XD

I have some good things planned for future chapters, so just keep reading :)

I literally started and finished this chapter today, because I noticed I hadn't posted another chapter for a whole month, and since it's summer holidays, I have nothing better to do.

I was listening to a podcast recently, and it featured Neil Gaiman, an esteemed writer, and he gave some wonderful tips for aspiring writers, and because of him I do now realise I can't wait for inspiration to strike, otherwise I'll never finish. So thank you Neil. For the advice, and for writing such a good Doctor Who episode. :D

Dedication to Abi because the amount of things she writes, and how frequently she uploads them is inspiring :)

Anyway, See ya next chapter