10 Minute Tales

May 24 - Corrupted Data

He stared at the monitor, fingers dancing their signature dance. Before him, reams of text spiralled up and out of the monitor's range. He barely read what he was typing; the last three versions had a codebreaking bug, according to the other users, but his own versions of these programs hadn't shown an error of any variety. He frowned, the clattering thunder of his keystrokes coming to an abrupt halt.

"This should work." he muttered. He clicked the "Compile" button and it whirred away, the computer working through the code. He waited for a while, but soon sighed and got up. He was thirsty. He walked out of the room, glancing back briefly at the monitor, but sighed and walked away again. The computer whirred to itself for a while in near-silence. This peace reigned for a moment, but after that moment, a curious face appeared in the corner of the monitor. It was a girl's face, slender and pointed, and it looked around the room in fascination.

"Hello?" she spoke. The speakers echoed the greeting into a room where silence awaited her. "Anybody out there?" she asked again, still to no response. She sighed quietly, turning around to look at the programs. "Sheesh, so dirty code..." she sighed, moving over to it and jumping into the text box like it was a swimming pool. She waded through it for a while, looking at the many lines, and found one she wasn't happy with. "Okay, let's see..." she started manipulating the characters, taking wrong letters out, replacing them with what she thought was right. The program beeped an objection, making her jump in surprise and quickly get out of the code. "Oh, right, I forgot you were compiling... sorry!" she apologised to the program, hopping up and clicking on the error pop-up. It vanished, dropping her - she managed to land on her feet. She was about to look elsewhere, but thundering footsteps interrupted her. The computer's owner was coming! She eeped in surprise and jumped for cover, hiding behind the program's window. She hadn't saved!

The programmer came back, sighing as he returned to his seat. The compiling was taking forever again, and until it was done he couldn't do much. He sighed, sipping the drink again as he waited... but frowned as he realised something. The code seemed a little different. He frowned as he read through it, muttering to himself as he tried to figure the difference out.

She held her breath as she listened to his muttering. He was going to find out! She couldn't be rejected already, not from the computer she had first come from. She didn't mean to make the code buggy, she just wanted to improve his work... she shuddered a little, not wanting to go back to the emptiness of nonexistence. She couldn't, but she couldn't risk revealing herself. She looked around, at the other windows on the screen. If she could hide behind any of them... she had to take the risk. Even if she was seen, it would beat not existing.