Artificial Error

#1 System Rebooting

Still, I was more than ready to call it a day and head back home. The college was situated in the busy district center, close to the Mega Tower. On the other hand, my house was on the outskirts of the district, closer to the boundary.

After a long fifteen-minute walk and a short subway ride, I was finally home. I stood in front of the door, tapping my foot as I waited for the retinal and facial cameras to complete their scan. Hearing the clicking sound from the door, I slowly opened it.

The house wasn't exactly huge, but it was just big enough to look and feel eerie, almost haunting when there was no else there but me to fill the void, which was pretty often these days.

Sighing, I headed straight to my room. Slapping my ID card on the study table, I plopped onto the bed.

Half an hour later, my smartphone started beeping. Not bothering to sit up, I took it out and mumbled a quick, "Connect to the holographic projector." into it.

The 3D projector on the study table whirred to life and transferred the video feed from the smartphone. Immediately, a 3D holographic image of a man flickered into existence, standing right beside my bed.

"Had a bad day?" my father asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Not exactly." I shrugged, keeping my tone calm and light. The last thing I wanted was for my parents to have to worry about trivial college stuff. They had more important things to deal with.

"What about you, dad?" I asked, shifting in the bed to lie on my side. "How's everything in the office?"

Dad's holographic face immediately brightened up with visible excitement, eyes crinkling.

"Everything's great here." He plunked down on what must've been an office chair, though, on my side, it just looked like his holographic body was sitting on air. "Your mother and I are working on a case involving the cyber-attack last month."

With a jolt, I sat bolt upright in the bed.

"Wow, wait," I started, eyes wide, "you mean the one that temporarily crashed the CCTV surveillance system?"

"That's the one!" dad snapped his fingers, grinning from ear to ear, "We may have a lead, based on the logs we managed to recover during the attack."

The enthusiasm was palpable in dad's voice and animated gestures. Like an infection, it spread over to me, and I found myself matching his big smile.

"I'm sure you guys can solve it in no time." I looked down then, picking at a loose thread in the sleeve of my shirt. "Wish I could help you two..."

Great. I had to go and make it all sad and weird. What was wrong with me?

"You don't have to, son. We can easily handle it," dad assured me after a second of awkward silence, tone jovial and confident. "Though that does remind me of something."

Now that definitely piqued my curiosity. When I looked up, dad was already typing away on an invisible keyboard; eyes squinted in concentration.

"I sent you some encrypted codes. Let's see if you can crack it faster than your mother," he said, flashing me a wink.

The tight feeling in my chest quickly turned into a burning spark at the promise of a challenge. It was almost embarrassing how easy it was to entice me. But I honestly couldn't help it.

When I was young, mom and dad, like most parents nowadays, had filtered my WiFi access to search anything other than topics related to schoolwork and such. But I'd somehow managed to disable the restriction by hacking into the router. Dad had been so amazed by the stunt I pulled that he secretly started to train me. He gave me small daily challenges at first, like coding a firewall, which over time turned into more complicated ones, like decrypting a complex code.

As a kid, I used to love these challenges. It felt nice hearing dad tell me that I had potential. Even now, I was more aware and frustrated at the limitations imposed on me because dad didn't want me to get too deeply involved in hacking. I still enjoyed them.

"Can't wait to break mon's record someday," I replied with a cheeky grin of my own.

Dad snorted, leaning back on his chair. "Someday, maybe you will. She would-"

The smile on dad's face dropped like a rock, something on the other side of the call clearly commanding his attention.

"Shoot! I have to go." He turned to me and leaned forward, his sad eyes searching for mine. "Sorry, son, work calls."

Before I could even open my mouth to say goodbye, dad had already disconnected the call, the 3D holographic image of him flickering out of existence.

The sudden empty silence felt suffocating, air heavy on my lungs.

The code. That's right. Dad had sent a code for me to crack. What was I waiting for?

Fishing out my laptop, I booted it up and started analyzing the file. In a few minutes, I'd managed to figure out the reverse flow of the encryption algorithm. It felt suspiciously easy, but then I applied it to the file and read the message on the encrypted code.

'We love you very much, Zack. – from Mom & Dad.'

I choked out a laugh and found myself having to fight the sudden sting behind my eyes. Thankfully, I managed to hold it together and keep what was left of my dignity intact.

I was about to close my laptop when I heard a faint beeping sound.

It was coming from under the bed. Curious, I shuffled over to the edge and pulled up the covers to take a peek. There was a black metal box with a blinking green light. Slowly, I pulled it out and carefully examined the box. It looked old, and it had a switch just below the green light.

I tapped on it gently, and the box opened with a soft click.

There was a small flash drive inside it, carefully packed in molded foam. I took it out, turning it over in my hand.

What was something like this doing under my bed? And who would have put it there?

My parents were the obvious suspects. I thought about calling them, but they were probably too busy. Besides, curiosity was eating at me. I really wanted to know what was inside this fancy flash drive.

After all, whoever it was from, they definitely wanted me to use it, or they wouldn't have left it under my bed. It was obviously some sort of gift.

It'd be rude not to unwrap it, right?

So, I went ahead and inserted the flash drive into my laptop's USB port.

The screen went black as soon as I inserted the drive.

Crap.

I pressed some buttons on the keyboard, but nothing was responding. Just as some serious 'Oh-My-God-my-parents-are-going-to-kill-me' type of panic started to settle in, my laptop decided to boot up all of a sudden, a white text appearing on the black screen.

SYSTEM REBOOTING...

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Author's note: Thanks for reading this far. I am very excited about this story, and I hope whoever reads it likes it too. Would you mind commenting so that I get your most precious thoughts on this story? Push that start button if you liked the story! :) - Priyam Harsh