Play the Game - Sherlock fanfic (Sequel to Painting Murders)

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I smiled back at the computer desktop. Mr Simon's background photo boasted a picture of him in a casual, white linen shirt hugging a woman with dark hair close to him. A small boy of about four years old was stood between them, holding his mother's long skirt tenderly and smiling a toothy grin for the camera. They looked to be on a hot beach in Spain or somewhere.

"I love my wife, Mr Holmes," Simons began, staring wistfully at the photo, "But-,"

"Not interested!" Sherlock interjected as he stood behind me, his callus remark making Simons bite his lip and redden slightly.

"Anyway," I began, "If I'm going to find the problem, I'll need to connect back with the origional Tech Three program," I explained, looking to Simons who just nodded, looking like he dare not speak again in Sherlock's presence.

I pulled the wire out from the back of the monitor and we all listened as the server behind us hummed it's last breath and died quietly, the little bulbs flickering before shutting down.

The computer in front of me realised it was missing something important and flashed a pop-up asking what I'd like to do. I connected to the buildings Tech Three server and waited for it to load.

"Okay," I mumbled when it had finished, "I need to make it glitch."

"What? After all I've told you! Are you insane?" Simons protested, trying again to take the keyboard.

"We need to see how it works!" Sherlock insisted, moving to drag a seat over before sitting.

"But the files and the data, all the losses!" Simons continued too wail.

"Oh for pities sake!" I grumbled, hating that I had an audience while working. I couldn't understand why Sherlock loved an audience when reeling his deductions - I hated being watched while I worked. It meant I couldn't do what I wanted without being questioned.

I navigated my way through the computer 's documents until I found the records Simons had spoken about. I minimised the window then opened a new one, named it: 'Harry McShappy' and wrote fake details onto the documents before saving the file. When I opened up the records again Harry McShappy's file was there as if he were a client with the company.

"Right." I sighed, "Now nothing important will be lost if and when it glitches." I looked at Simons who gave a nod of approval before I turned back to the screen.

"Now how do you make it glitch?" I asked, scrolling through all the listed private records and back to Harry McShappy, displeased that nothing excited had happened.

"Usually it is when we open a file," Simons said thoughtfully as if he wasn't sure what triggered the problem either.

"John, remember one point five kilobytes," I instructed, making a mental note myself of the size of data consealed inside Mr McShappy's record before I clicked on it.

The file opened and we all watched in silence. Ever so slightly the screen fuzzed then corrected itself.

Mr Simons jabbed the screen in such a swift motion that both me and John jumped backwards slightly, "Did you see that? That was what I was telling you about!" He retracted his finger from the screen before pointing to the bottom corner where the file statistics were and pointed to the file size which had decreased from one point five to one point two.

"Do you believe me now?" Mr Simons declared, turning to Sherlock who had obviously shown some kind of doubt towards Mr Simons.

Sherlock was motionless for a moment then pointed over my shoulder at the screen, "Go back."

I exited the file as commanded.

"There hasn't been a data loss," Sherlock said, gesturing to the file size. It still counted one point five kilobytes.