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Tucknical Difficulties -*- Copyright 2001 by Ellen Hayes.
Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes.
This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country.
All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights.
Tucknical Difficulties
*** 00:59 26 Jul
"I guess," he started, and startled me out of contemplating his face. "I guess, I mean... you're fun to be with."
"Uh huh," I prompted.
"You do crazy stuff... like with Amy, that kickboxing," I nodded, "and you like dancing, and..." He thought some more. "And you're pretty, I mean I think so-"
"Is that it? I'm just a pretty face to you?" I smiled.
"No," he said semi-seriously. "No," he said a lot softer, "you, I mean, you're just kind of... I dunno, like, different."
"So I'm pretty AND weird?"
"Valerie," he groaned. "Come on, I'm being serious!"
"Okay, alright, so... so why..."
He stroked my cheek with a finger, which made my eyes flutter closed for a few moments. "It's like," he said finally, "it's like you're not afraid to be different, and so you're like, yourself. Like that dress tonight, I mean, maybe I was wrong and I shouldn't have said anything about it, about you not fitting in, but I bet if I didn't you'd have worn it there and not cared what anyone else thought about it, just because you liked it."
"Well, I mean, I'm not that advanced," I disclaimed, and he chuckled.
"See?" he said. "That's what I mean. You didn't say 'weird' or 'freak' then, you said 'advanced', like it was something positive, not being worried about what other people think."
I had to think about that too. "Well, I mean, I do worry about-"
"Me too, but- Sorry." I nodded for him to continue. "But, uh, it's like it's okay for you to be different. In your own mind, I mean. Even like Lisa, who's one of the weirdest people I know, I mean, she tries so hard to look normal all the time, and she only lets it out when she doesn't think anyone can see her."
"You think LISA's weird?"
"How many people do you know running their own business?"
"Lots, I mean-"
"At sixteen?"
"'Kay," I admitted, "you got a point there."
"But you, I mean," he turned the topic back to me, "you're like, I mean you fit in, when you want, but if someone said something stupid about radio I bet you'd correct 'em, and not worry 'oh what will they think if I admit I know something about it?'"
"That sounds like my sister," I replied, nodding. "She knew a lot more than she'd admit to people, and she was always doing stupid stuff, I mean not real stupid like stealing cars or something, but just to fit in stuff."
"Yeah, that's what I meant," he nodded. "And the babysitting..."
"What?"
"I mean, you're doing it, and you could get a lot better job doing something like computers or electronics," he guessed, "but I mean it's obvious you like being with the kids and stuff."
"I do?"
"Don't you?" he asked back.
I thought about it. "Yeah, I guess I do, kinda," I admitted. "I mean they can be a pain, but they can be fun too. Like showing 'em my gear today, that was fun, and they were fun, I mean watching 'em look at it and answering their questions and showing 'em stuff and things like that."
He nodded in confirmation. "And with the little baby girl, I mean, what's her name?"
"Stella," I supplied.
"Yeah, Stella," he nodded, "I mean it's really obvious you, I mean this sounds stupid I know, but it's like you and her are really good friends or something, and-"
"Travis," I giggled, "she's just a little baby!"
"And you like her a lot, don't you?"
"Well.... yeah, I guess," I admitted.
"You just... every time I see you with her, it's almost like she's your baby or something. I mean, it's like you really care about her, and you do stuff with her like tickle her and stuff... that, I mean, a lot of people, like mothers even, don't seem to pay that much attention to their babies, not like you do."
"Really?" I asked, astonished.
"Really," he answered, nodding like he was completely sure. "Besides, if you didn't like it, you wouldn't keep doing it, right?"
I thought about it for a while myself, trying not to let just the feeling of being with him distract me, and eventually decided he was right. "Yeah, I guess. Do you like your job?"
He shrugged. "Dunno... It's okay, I guess. Not great, but I like the money."
"Why don't you get a better one, then?"
"'Cause I can only work so much during the school year, and they expect that, it's seasonal employment, so..."
"Yeah, but, I mean-"
"I mean I could," he added, "I guess, but it's easier to just work during the summer and then concentrate on school." That was true; a lot of the girls had problems fitting in work and homework and a social life sometimes.
"Yeah..."
"Are you going to keep working, babysitting, when you go back to school?"
"I hadn't thought about it yet," I answered honestly. "I dunno... Like you said, and then I dunno about how sitting would work if I had to go there after school every day. And Stella's too young to go to school too, so someone would have to be with her during the day. I don't even know what Miz Parker thinks, either," I realized. "Guess I better ask Monday."
He nodded.
Pause.
I kissed his chest, eventually, and he started stroking my hair.
*** 02:32 26 Jul
The muttered, "Oh crap!" simultaneously woke me up and alerted me that something was wrong.
"Huh?" I said brilliantly as Travis shook me off his arm.
"Val, it's like two-thirty, you gotta go," Travis informed me.
"Why?"
He stopped, and I almost went back to sleep before he said, "Val! Don't you have a curfew or something?"
Pause.
"Oh, crap," I sighed with feeling.
*** 02:56 26 Jul
It wasn't pretty, but a set of scrubs from the car kit plus my Keds ought to do to get past Dad, if he was still up, especially at three in the morning. Luckily, my favorite parking lot was even more deserted than usual at this time, and I still had things like makeup-off-wipes with me. The clothes I'd taken off were stuffed into a garbage bag in the trunk temporarily. I hoped. I needed to get a bigger pack...
*** 02:59 26 Jul
Amazingly, Dad wasn't up, or at least he wasn't in his office, so I logged in at a console and sent him a rude email about stamina and age and logged out, just to verify when I was home. There was, I was sure, some way to hack into the timestamping for the house mailserver, but I hadn't found it yet, and I didn't really have the week or so to figure out what the old goat had done, so it was a relatively secure measure for now.
Someday, though...
*** 03:02 26 Jul
Amy had apparently not been in bed long, because she sat up as I came in. "Tuck?" she asked sleepily.
"S'me, go back to sleep," I told her, and she flopped down again. I got some clothes to sleep in and headed for the bathroom to brush my teeth and clean up.
*** 03:11 26 Jul
Ah, sleep. With Amy.
Not as good as sleeping with Travis, but better than being alone, that was for certain.
And then I had a realization that made me chuckle hard enough that I had to stuff my face in a pillow... Travis and I had gotten so involved in talking, we'd forgotten to DO anything!
I guess it was turning into a relationship.
*** 06:00 26 Jul
I beat my alarm until it shut up, furious that the stupid thing didn't know it was Saturday and that I didn't have to get up-
Until nine, I remembered. Damnit.
I spent some time desperately trying to reset the alarm with my eyes closing involuntarily, and finally managed, and flopped back into Amy's embrace, realizing, I have to come up with something better than this. This is stupid.
*** 06:02 26 Jul
An infinity of instants later, I had decided that the MacinClock was going to have to be reprogrammed, and I had a basic idea in mind but using the MacinClock meant that I'd have to write something for it and THAT meant that I was going to have to brush up on the stupidity that was MacOS. Assembly was so much cleaner... But what's the point of having enslaved a MacinClock if you just went and put Linux on it?
*** 09:00 26 Jul
The alarm pulled me away from a bunch of wires and chips and a small grayish demon that kept chiming at me, back into the real world.
Such as it was.
*** 09:22 26 Jul
I stared at Kathy and tried to figure out what she was doing in my living room at this ungodly time of day, along with a number of plastic boxes that suggested she was moving in.
"Morning, sunshine," she smiled at me.
I was imagining things, I decided, and went to go get another Coke in the hopes that the caffeine and sugar would wake me up and erase my hallucinations. It had to be a low voltage problem, I realized.
*** 09:23 26 Jul
I must still be asleep, I decided when I saw Mike and Susan in the kitchen at the same time, smiling at each other.
"Where are you going?" asked the dream-Mike as he turned to me.
"Duh, therapy," I said, annoyed that I should have to explain things to my own subconscious. "You should've remembered-"
Mike took a swipe at me, which I blocked lazily. I definitely knew my own tricks, so it wasn't like it was a surprise or anything. "Coke," I reminded everyone, and the phantoms got out of the way, which was stupid on their part since the extra sugar fuel would dispel them once it hit my brain.
*** 10:02 26 Jul
"Good morning," Sheila said, smiling at me. I smiled back, trying to make it look real, and got up.
*** 10:12 26 Jul
"So it sounds like you're looking forward to this trip," Sheila summarized.
"Yeah, kinda... I'm sort of worried that it's gonna hurt, but with the pads and ev-"
"Why would it hurt?"
I stared at her. "Have you ever gone camping? I mean, like, backpacking hiking camping?"
She thought about it, then shook her head.
"Try carrying sixty pounds of stuff on your back and walking ten miles, more than three days in a row. Sometimes your muscles don't really start hurting until the third day. And sleep on the ground with no climate control. That's not even counting the scrapes and stuff, though like I said I'm hoping the pads will prevent most of that this year..." I shrugged.
"Oh, okay, I see what you mean, then," she agreed, and I felt better. Sheila was immensely untutored in the ways of the world, and it always made me feel a bit better when I could give her something that would help her get along either in real life or in some of the weirder circumstances that popped up sometimes.
Like my entire life.
*** 11:04 26 Jul
I was more than annoyed at having to pay Sheila cash since I hadn't remembered to demand a check from my parents before I left, but I did at least get a receipt which not only proved I'd been but also proved I'd paid cash, which neither of them would ever give me for something like this, which meant by inference that I'd paid for it myself. Or something like that. I was going to get my money back though.
One would think that the phone calls Sheila was undoubtedly making to my parents before I got home would be enough proof, but Dad usually had some sort of lesson in mind, like 'Don't rely on the assumed competence of others to ensure your good treatment' or something like that.
I should go home-
Oh, wait, I realized. Travis isn't doing anything today, is he? Not any more! I decided. I actually didn't know, but it would only take a phone call to find out.
*** 11:09 26 Jul
"Hello?"
"Travis, it's me Val!" I smiled.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked, sounding more awake than I thought he would. Of course, all he'd had to do last night was lock the door and stumble back to his own bed. He also probably hadn't been up for two hours already.
"Wanna do something today? I've got the whole day free..."
*** 12:29 26 Jul
"Why do you carry all that stuff, I mean for hiking?" Travis asked after we'd ordered food.
"All what stuff?"
"You know, all that stuff on the harnesses and in the packs and everything..."
That was an immense number of things, so I asked, "You want the detailed piece-by-piece listing or the general overview?"
"General," he smiled.
There was a definite answer; I just didn't want to tell him yet. There was stuff Dan and George didn't know yet.
"Well," I did say, "we could go really light, like ultralight packing, but this way we have a reserve capacity in case something goes wrong, or we can stay out longer. Like batteries. Did you see the solar cells we had on top of the big pack?" He nodded. "That'll charge two sets of four double-A's per day of sun, and that's enough to keep the radios operating basically continuously. So-"
"Radi-OHS?" he questioned.
"Two receivers give you DF capability if you do it right, and a backup in case one breaks, and the space that would be taken up by a transmitter on one is taken up by a crank charger on the other one. Which is a backup to the solar charger. See?"
He didn't see, I could tell. "I dunno, though," he disagreed. "I mean, one of the benefits of camping is that you get away from things like radios."
"What?"
"I mean, you go hiking to get away from everything, right?" I nodded, puzzled. "So, I mean, how can you get away from it all when you take it all with you?"
I wished that was true; if it had been, I'd have packed eight hot showers and a TARDIS-style dimension portal back to our bathroom. "Well, I mean, it's the easiest way to communicate back and forth if we get separated, and then if there's some kind of problem we can either hear about it before it zaps us, like weather, or call for help. And it's not like we listen to it all the time, I mean not for like normal music radio or anything like that. Mostly it's either National Weather Service or our local net."
"Still, I mean, you wouldn't have to carry all that radio stuff with you, or the batteries either. Doesn't that weigh a lot?"
"Yeah, but what do YOU do when, say, someone breaks their arm? Twenty miles out?"
"Then we send a group to get help, and do the first aid thing-"
"You guys don't carry drugs, though, do you?"
"What?"
"Morphine, Demerol, stuff like that."
"No, that's-"
"Yeah, see? Can you imagine sitting there with a broken arm HOPING that nothing happens to the group that went for help, and not being able to do anything but just hurt?"
"When did you ever break an arm when hiking?" Travis challenged.
"I didn't, but my little brother did, when he was eight. And we were damned glad we had all that stuff then, man- tents and water and stoves and radios and drugs and splints and sutures and my oxy bottle and all the rest of it. I mean, of course we didn't use everything we carry all at once, but you just don't know what kind of problem you're going to run into."
Lightweights. They just didn't get it, until they GOT IT, and then they screamed and prayed for people like us to find them before they bought the whole farm.
There was a pause, I think as we both decided silently that the other was a nut on this topic and to back away slowly. At least I was mature enough to let him be completely wrong without ragging his ass.
Travis considered for a while, then asked, "How long have you been doing this?"
"Backpacking?" He nodded. "Since we were old enough to walk a distance, which Dad defined at about seven years old. Before that, one of them, Mom or Dad, would keep the younger ones at a car campsite, and the older ones 'got' to go hiking." I grinned ruefully at how I'd been tricked over the years. "Which, of course, made us young'uns want to go hiking SO bad, to show how grown-up we were..."
Travis caught the joke and chuckled too.
"Anyway," I went on, Mom and Dad were packing back in the bad old days, before Gore-Tex was even invented. Before any of us were born, too; back in the seventies."
"Jeez."
"Yeah. And Dad thinks he's like a modern Thomas Edison or something, so he keeps coming up with ideas and testing them out, on us, and the ones, I mean... the ideas go through like evolution; one person will try something to test it, and the ideas that work out 'breed' and we all use 'em, and the ones that don't 'die' and we don't. The solar panels work; having two receivers work; hiking staffs work better than trying to find one at the trail... Mike had the idea of using skating pads this year, and I think they're going to work great, but Dad's not buying any yet. But he's been using knee braces for a few years, and I just this year finally figured out BEFORE I went that I could use an ankle brace. As opposed to last year, when I remembered it while I was hiking..." I was definitely getting smarter in my old age. 'Bout time too.
"So how long can you stay out?" he asked. "On the trail, I mean. You said that was a consideration."
"Longest so far is two weeks, but we had to cache some food and resupply after about eight days. That was, ah," I thought about it. "Three years ago. I think."
"Good lord," Travis prayed.
"With about two pounds of food a day, plus a bit of things like soap and toothpaste..." I shrugged. "Forever, in that sense."
Which was, of course, the point.
*** 12:40 26 Jul
"So what do you guys do, camping?" I asked.
"'You guys?'" he said back.
"Scouting?"
"Oh." He thought about it as I ate some more of my spinach chef salad. Just thinking about camping made me want to have fresh veggies, and it was hard not to think about it since I had to go and get all the food I was going to eat and repackage it, and that was going to take-
"Mostly short stuff," Travis said, which confused me momentarily until I remembered what I'd asked. "Weekend, three-day stuff. I've done a couple of week-long hikes, but those were hard..." Travis paid some attention to his lunch.
"Hard?" That was like the minimum lately; Mom and Dad would have had us hiking the Appalachian Trail over the summer except that first, they had to work, and second, all us Tuckerspawn had threatened to revolt by stealing their credit cards, duct-taping them to trees, and hitching a ride back home and eventually collecting their life insurance. It would have worked if we'd used enough tape...
Travis finished with that mouthful and nodded. "I mean, not that hard for me, but when you're hiking with a group of people, you can't go faster than the slowest one." I nodded in agreement. "And it... I mean, some of the guys in my patrol or other patrols I've hiked with are, well, wimps." We both chuckled at that. "So, I mean, since I was usually leading, I-"
"You were?" I interrupted.
"Ranking Scout," he said and shrugged. "That sort of put me in charge, unless there was someone else above me." That was another reason to avoid the Scouts, I realized. Formal hierarchies usually sucked, especially when not directly connected with ability. "And since I made Eagle at fifteen, I was-"
"Fifteen? Years old?" I interrupted again, then apologized, "Sorry, I don't mean to keep interrupting."
He patted me on the head, which took a conscious decision not to try and bite his hand, and he smiled at me, which gave me quite a different reaction.
"Yeah, I mean, it was pretty hard to do, but I'm not the youngest either." He shrugged. "So, like anyway, you know most trails and stuff, you have to camp at prepared campsites, right?" I nodded; that was the regulation, anyway, most places. "So we had to get from A to B before it got dark, because I knew if it got dark I'd lose a couple of stragglers in the woods." He grinned, and I grinned back as Travis inadvertently confirmed that night vision gear wasn't Scout issue. Too bad. "So they'd whine about having to walk 'so far' and 'so fast'," he whined in imitation, "and I'd have to make 'em go faster so we could get there."
"Bleah," I commented.
He nodded. "So what did your Dad do to keep you kids on the march?"
"Oh, we had the packs and harness and stuff, and we wouldn't carry as much as they would until we got as big as Mom, and he and Mom would take it a LITTLE slower, and Dad told US that if we didn't keep up, no one would wait for us unless we were having an emergency, so if we didn't keep up we'd have to use the survival gear we had and do the best we could, and the latest he'd wait would be an extra day before he drove home. And left us there."
"No way," Travis argued.
"No one ever tested it," I shrugged. "He SAID he was serious, and Mom didn't argue. I suggested a few times that Susan my sister try it out, but she declined." Vehemently, sometimes violently. Susan was not the biggest fan of camping anyway. "We also tended to push each other on, I mean the kids did. Besides, the adults usually carried the good food and stuff, and..."
Years too late, I caught on.
"What?"
"I just realized! They made US carry all the stuff like oatmeal and our clothes and stuff, and THEY carried all the good stuff! Deliberately! They had the FOOD hostage! Those WORMS!"
Travis started laughing at that, and eventually I had to also. Eventually.
*** 13:19 26 Jul
"So what do we do now?" Travis asked me as we walked out to a gray sky again.
"We could go back to your place," I suggested, and ran a hand down his back to insinuate ideas of other things we could do once we got there.
"Well, actually," he said, and then he stopped.
"Actually what?"
"Are you really good with computers?"
"Does the Pope shit on bears?"
*** 13:21 26 Jul
I hadn't thought it was that funny a comment, but Travis had. Luckily, he hadn't quite fallen on me, so I could help hold him upright as he got finished laughing.
*** 13:22 26 Jul
"No, I mean," Travis tried to breathe, and it was an effort not to tickle him and make it worse. I did somehow manage to restrain myself though. "I mean, my computer's, something's wrong with it, and if you can fix it..."
Life imitates art, I guess.
And now I was laughing like a lunatic.
*** 13:50 26 Jul
I draped myself over him and watched as he 'demonstrated' the problem. Or problems; he had several that I could see.
"Do you have a screwdriver?" I asked him.
"Don't you have one?"
"Not in my purse, duh! It's in my pack which I left at home!" I complained before I noticed the grin. He had to be tickled for this.
*** 13:52 26 Jul
"You know," Travis gasped, "if you'd stop tickling me you wouldn't keep getting pinned on the floor."
I thought about it, then grinned and tried to tickle him some more, but apparently he was hypered up because he grabbed my wrists before I could catch his ever-so-sensitive tummy, and then he pulled them over my head. "What if I don't want to stop?" I asked rhetorically. Then I noticed my legs were no longer pinned.
*** 13:53 26 Jul
"But if you fixed it then I could send you email or something!" he begged.
"Oooh, I need more of that," I drawled, and squeezed the scissors tighter, making him grunt.
"I took you out to lunch!" he said when he could breathe again.
"I know!" I replied, and kissed the back of his neck. "And it was really good, too." His neck was nice, and so I decided I'd kiss it some more.
"Valeruggggghhh," he moaned as I tightened up.
"Naughty boy, pinning me on the ground and getting my nice top all dirty," I crooned in his ear. "Haven't you been a naughty boy?"
"Nooouuggghhh," he reconsidered.
"SUCH a naughty boy..."
*** 13:57 26 Jul
I had extracted a promise of his support in my quest for World Domination, and then he really did have to go to the bathroom, and so I let him go.
He scrambled up and ran for it, as if he thought I would interfere in the emptying of his bladder. Not hardly.
I got up, brushed myself off - he was going to have to vacuum again, especially the way I kept ending up under him on the floor - and idly walked over to the computer to see exactly what was screwed up.
*** 14:11 26 Jul
"Uh huh," I mumbled to whatever Travis had just said. This computer obviously hadn't been worked on since it left the factory, since it had all the screws in the case, and those were usually the first items the god of computer repair took as a sacrifice.
*** 14:38 26 Jul
"Travis, this thing is sick," I told him.
"I know! That's why I wanted you to fix it!"
"Travis," I said slowly, "some parts of this thing are dead. As in doornail. We need replacement parts."
"Like, how much?" he asked skeptically.
*** 15:09 26 Jul
"Can I help you?" the sales droid asked Travis. I'd been forced not to go to my usual hardware shop, since my usual hardware shop was Dad's. Naturally, I couldn't think of another place, so we had to go to a place we could find easily, which meant basically Comp-U-R-A-Moron. I hated these places.
"I need," I said, "a CD-ROM, two one-four-four floppies, and drive cables. And a three hundred meg or four-twenty IDE hard drive." Step zero: back it up. Step zero-A: did the backup work? Besides, he needed more drive space anyway.
The droid turned back to Travis and said, "Well, we do have a service dep-"
If I hadn't been so stunned, it wouldn't have taken me so long to say, "Do you want to sell those items to me," I asked, "or should I stop wasting my time and go someplace else that will sell me what I ask for?"
He'd lost, and he knew it, but at least he gave up when all hope was gone. "What did you need?"
*** 15:20 26 Jul
"Travis, you're buying that stuff," I pointed to the boxes he was carrying, "to fix your hardware, not new software. You need to get your system running before you worry about other things." Like the game software he was staring at. "Besides, I can probably get you those games if you really want 'em."
"You can?"
I laughed.
*** 15:23 26 Jul
"I'll buy the hard drive," I insisted. "I need another one anyway, and you can use this one for a while. Or buy it back from me."
Travis started protesting and I ignored him and handed the pimply kid ten twenties.
*** 15:25 26 Jul
"Why did you do that," Travis asked sullenly.
"Because! You, WE, need to back up everything on your hard drive, and this will be much faster and about as cheap as floppies, and I don't want to consider a tape drive or CD-recorder right now." Those recorders were wonderful but expensive; even Dad only had two. "Besides, they're even more expensive."
Now he looked confused again, and I had to smile; he looked so cute like that...
*** 15:37 26 Jul
"So what are you going to do with all this stuff?" Travis asked as he unlocked the door.
"Fix your computer?" I reminded him.
"No, I mean-"
"Watch and learn," I smiled.
*** 15:53 26 Jul
Travis asked me a question, which made me look up at him. "Huh?"
"I said," he said, "did you want something to drink?"
"Uh, yeah, okay." I got back to work.
*** 15:54 26 Jul
Travis asked me a question, again, which made me look up. "What?"
"Here's your drink," he said, handing me a glass with ice and ginger ale.
"Uh, thanks," I said, took the glass, put it someplace out of my way, and got back to work.
*** 16:23 26 Jul
The case was back together again - minus the two-screw sacrifice to the god of computer repair - and now I could work on his software. "Travis, did you want..." Oh, God, I feel like such a whore asking this. I swallowed and went on, "...do you want Windows 95 on this, or what?" It was just heavy enough a system that it could handle a downgrade from 3.11 to 95 without becoming so overloaded that it collapsed or melted.
"You have 95?" he asked incredulously. "I thought it was expensive."
Dear God, he's a completely innocent babe, I realized.
"I mean," he went on, "don't you need a password to like install it or something?"
I held up a hand, and he quieted. "Travis," I repeated, "do you want Windows 95 on this, or Windows 3.11 again, or Linux, or something else? I need to install a fresh copy of the operating system, because yours is trashed." Something occurred to me. "You don't have any disks that came with this thing when you bought it, do you?" He shook his head. Of course he didn't.
"Uh.... I dunno.... which would be better?" he asked, looking confused. "What's Linux?" I could not help putting my head in my hands, which seemed to upset him.
*** 16:25 26 Jul
I wondered why Travis had gotten me a glass of ginger ale and then let it sit, go flat, and dilute as the ice melted in it, but that's what I was sipping as I sat on the couch with him.
"Travis," I asked gently. "Do you want to mostly play games, or do you mostly want to do other things?"
"Uh.... games?" he asked, like he wasn't sure and I would be.
"Then you need Windows of some sort," I told him. "Do you have a lot of games now?"
"No."
"And you want to get more?" He nodded. "Then you need 95." Lady of Electrons, forgive me. But there was nothing I could do, except possibly try and divert him from this path of Evil. On the other hand, even I had one damned box for games. Plus another dual-boot to test networking, but that hardly counted, since I could still do real work on it.
Of course, I had more than one box, and even more than two boxen, which is why I was willing to sacrifice one to the forces of Darkness simply to play games.
On the other hand, it wasn't like Travis was going to be the next Kibo or Torvalds anyway. If he was, he'd have fixed the thing himself already.
"I do?" he asked, which confused me momentarily, then I nodded.
*** 16:38 26 Jul
"This is the worst part, waiting for it to finish loading," I explained as I sipped diluted ginger ale.
"How long does it take?"
"Long time," I half answered. Some of the timing depended on the speed of the system, including the CD-ROM and the hard drive, and some of it was apparently controlled by a random number generator I hadn't located yet.
"So," he started to say.
"I have to sit here and watch the stupid thing, in case it develops a brain tumor and dies unexpectedly." 'Unexpectedly' being all too common with Windows95, of course. "Wanna read a book or something?"
*** 17:19 26 Jul
By luck, he had a working modem. Not by luck, I knew all the comm settings to use to set my floppy-based comm program to call my house so I could Zmodem a lot of driver files down to his system, in order to allow things like video cards to work.
*** 17:41 26 Jul
Travis said something, and so I turned to him and inadvertently snapped, "What?"
"I was just saying you really type fast," he said apologetically. "Don't have a cow."
Since I was installing a cow, a big fat disease-ridden cow, just for him and at his request, I wasn't happy with the analogy. "Yeah, comes from being a geek all my life," I said flatly.
"You're not a geek," Travis said like he was serious.
I stared at him. "What are you ON?"
"Come on," he smiled, "you're like social and everything. How can you be a geek? You don't even wear glasses."
"Trust me, I'm a geek," I informed him, and went back to slicing the worst rotted bits off the carcass.
*** 17:45 26 Jul
"So there ya go, sport," I said, and flourished at the now demonically possessed computer he wanted.
"That's it?"
"Guaranteed to work for one year," I smiled. "Not counting hardware failures, of course."
"Does, I mean, everything?" he asked, like he couldn't believe it.
"Try something," I kept smiling as I got up. "Anything!"
He just looked back and forth between me and the box, looking stunned.
"Wanna play pinball?" I grinned.
*** 17:49 26 Jul
We were discussing what to do next when my pager went off. I reluctantly stopped kissing Travis, pulled away from him, and went to my backpack. I dug the pager out and looked at it, and it was giving the number for the home line. "Damnit!"
"What?"
*** 17:53 26 Jul
"Hello?" Mom said.
"Mom? S'me."
"Eugene, where are you? We haven't seen you all day, and your friends are wondering where you are."
Oh, crap. "Mom," I complained, "I'm working on someone's computer, they should know that! I told 'em again yesterday!"
"Well, when are you coming home?" she wanted to know.
"When I get done!"
"Eugene," she warned.
"Mom!" I complained.
"Don't start with me," she said back.
"Mom, I'm not doing anything! I'm working on a computer and I told them that I was working on a computer last night, and-"
"When are you coming home?" she asked again.
I desperately wanted to scream, but that would only make things worse. And, of course, the problem was not actually with my friends, but with my mother. She must have sensed me having fun or something. Damnit. "Um... a couple of hours-"
"A couple of hours? Can't you work on this tomorrow?"
Oh you idiot, I thought gleefully, and said, "Hold on, lemme check." I then carefully held my hand over the microphone and called, "Travis?"
He came into the bedroom shortly thereafter. "What?"
"Wanna do something tomorrow?" I smiled.
He thought about it. "Um... yea- do you have to leave or something?"
"My family is calling me back to my doom," I nodded, and he chuckled.
"Well, let's..." He stopped, and thought for about ten seconds, then restarted, "Uh, come over early, okay? Like nine or something?"
"Okay, what do you have in mind?"
He smiled. "It's a surprise."
"This better be a nice surprise or I'll tickle you until you piss yourself," I warned him. "In front of your friends."
"It's a nice surprise! Trust me," he insisted. "You'll like it."
I sure hoped so, or he was going to be awfully embarrassed. "Okay, now out."
"Out-"
"I gotta finish talking," I said, pointing at the phone I was muffling.
"Oh, right," he agreed, and he left.
"Mom?"
"Done yet?" Mom asked sarcastically. "So nice of you to remember you were on the phone with-"
"Mom, I'll be home in an hour or less. From when you hang up," I added.
"It'll be nice to see you again," she gloated.
"Uh huh," I sighed. "I'll see you in a while, okay?"
"Drive carefully, Eugene," she said.
"Bye Mom."
*** 17:56 26 Jul
"We'll have fun tomorrow," Travis mentioned into my neck.
"What are you planning, you devious snake?" and he laughed, which made me feel really good until I remembered again that I had to go home almost instantly.
"Just dress casual," he said.
"Whyyyyy?" I started to whine, and then remembered that tomorrow was Sunday. "Damnit!"
"What?"
I shook my head angrily. "I've got a permanent breakfast date with some friends Sunday morning, and my asshole parents are expecting me to cook for three or four hours for Sunday dinner. My friends, too," the scum. "If I skip those, I'm gonna be in trouble."
"What are you doing next weekend?" he asked.
"Camping," I groaned.
"Tuesday?"
"Which?"
"This one?"
I thought about it. "After work would be-"
"No, I mean like during the day."
"I work then, Travis, you know- You work too!" I accused him.
"I think I can get off one day," he said optimistically.
"Well, I can't, I'm already taking a week off for a mandatory walking tour of hell." He chuckled. "Travis, what are you thinking?"
Completely unexpectedly, he asked, "Can I get Miz Parker's phone number?"
"NO!"
"Please?" he smiled.
I didn't melt; this was too ominous. "NO way in HELL, unless you tell me what you're thinking of!"
"I want it to be a surprise!" Travis protested.
"Well I don't!" I shot back. "Not any more! This is too scary already!"
Pause while he looked hopeful at me and I glared back.
Travis deflated. "Are you sure you won't let me make it a surprise?"
"I am completely sure," I assured him.
*** 17:58 26 Jul
"Hello?"
"Miz Parker?" I confirmed, crossing my fingers.
"Valerie?"
"Hi, yeah, um, the reason I'm calling is, Travis had this idea..."
*** 18:28 26 Jul
"Hi!" Rachel said as I came into her room. She looked like she was getting ready for a date, which I wasn't, which was sort of depressing.
"Hi," I sighed.
"What's wrong?"
"The parentals are demanding my, uh, my... my extrica- that thing where they send prisoners off to a country to be tried for crimes?"
"Extradition?"
"Yeah, that's it. They demanded I be extradited home immediately."
"What did you do?"
"Have fun," I explained. "They can sense it, and they have to interfere. You remember, right?" Rachel smiled at that. "Anyway, since you're here, I need to pick out something to wear for Tuesday, Travis said he wants to do something and I need to dress casual but good and, you know, attractive..."
"What are you doing?"
*** 18:35 26 Jul
"You sure?" I asked, holding both hangers up at the right heights.
"Very casual," Rachel affirmed.
*** 19:03 26 Jul
"Hi Mom," I said, just to make the point that I'd come home.
"Hello Eugene," she smiled. "Nice to see you again."
I managed not to roll my eyes at her, but it was an effort. "Whatsup?"
"Oh, I just wanted to see you for a while," she lied. She was actually jealous of me being out and about and wanted to put a stop to it. I knew her.
"Well-"
"Did you go to therapy today?" she asked.
"Oho, yes I did, and someone owes me some money for it because I had to pay cash," I said, dropping my pack next to me as I knelt and started digging through it for the receipt. When I found it, I closed my pack back up and stood, handing the slip of paper to her. She scrutinized it closely for a while - I should have practiced my forgery a lot longer before I tried it on Mom or Dad, but I'd been young and foolish at that age - and she finally nodded and handed it back to me. "I just wondered, since you didn't get a check today, and I thought you might have skipped it."
"Mmmm, no." Medical appointments were another one of those non-optional things with this family, though at least they let most of them wait until we were in school. Mom had actually come up with the idea, but Dad liked it too.
Since, Mom had reasoned, kids in general would rather give up a school day than a summer day, and since it made no difference to either of them since we had to be taken anyway (long ago), then why not do it when there weren't crowds of families trying to get before-school appointments, let us kids get at least a bit of compensation by having a day off from school, and commit all doctor's appointments, dental cleanings, eye exams, and so on, during the school year?
This also gave them a chance to play hooky too; they tended to alternate who got the half-day off, depending on who felt more stressed. Once Susan had gotten her driver's license, she'd started fighting to take me and Brian too, and Dad had let her take 'his' turns since he was a professional bum by then and worked mostly when he felt like it.
I would really hate him for this, except I was going to do the exact same thing when I could arrange it.
Anyway, Susan's 'assistance' had not made me or Brian pleased, since neither Mom nor Dad hit us to keep us quiet except under very extreme circumstances, but on the other hand Susan had proven more amenable to bribery of the 'Let's go somewhere for lunch' sort, and deep down she didn't want to be in school any more than we did. So it sort of worked out.
*** 19:04 26 Jul
"Hey!" I mentioned in surprise when I saw that half my friends were hanging out in the living room. "Whatsup?"
"First aid today," Kathy said lazily. "'Member?"
"Not hardly," I admitted.
"Can we eat now that he's here?" Mike asked Mom, pointing at me.
*** 19:59 26 Jul
"Wanna go for a walk?" Mom asked casually.
I knew better. "MOM!"
*** 20:24 26 Jul
"And you hike with all this," Kathy said skeptically.
I waited to reply until I'd rolled over and gotten upright again. "Oh yeah. Want to hear some of the screams of pain I remember from past trips?" She chuckled at that and shook her head. "Wanna come walking with us?"
She stretched, which was impressive enough that I simply watched until she finished, then smiled at me. "It'd be good to get some exercise," she said, which I think was agreement.
*** 21:26 26 Jul
"Well," Mike said overly casually, "I'm 'bout ready to go home, how 'bout you?"
"Oy," I sighed.
"That is pretty impressive," Kathy admitted. "I'd've thought you guys would have died already."
"Ha!" I said weakly.
"Ha yourself, Tuck," she grinned at me. Then she changed faces. "Ready for school yet?"
"Argh!" I complained, and put my hands over my ears and ran away as fast as I could. Mike was right behind me.
Kathy trotted for several seconds and got ahead of us. "It helps to dump all that stuff before you try to run away, you know," she mentioned.
*** 22:38 26 Jul
Kathy watched as we all de-packed in the basement.
The nice thing about such a heavy load was that it felt like you could fly when you put it down.
*** 22:42 26 Jul
"I was sort of thinking of asking you guys if you wanted to go out tonight, but after that performance..." Kathy trailed off. "What're you doing Sunday night?"
"I have a bad feeling that Mom'll want to go on another walk," I sighed.
"After one of your Sunday dinners, Tuck?" she grinned at me, and Amy and Dan and Mike made appreciative noises. "I've heard about those."
"Hmmm... If I can fill her up... Hmmm. Amy? What'd make Mom too full to move?"
"Like I know? She's YOUR mom..."
"Fuck you EVER so much, darling," I told Amy, who grinned back.
*** 22:53 26 Jul
Kathy had found a couple of people to hook up with to go dancing after some phone calls, which I was sort of sad I was going to miss, but on the other hand I might actually manage to stuff in something approaching ten hours of sleep, which possibility sort of overwhelmed my desire to do anything else.
"Sleep well, Tuck," Kathy admonished as she gave me an off-the- ground hug which left me breathless.
*** 23:18 26 Jul
While we were brushing our teeth, Amy asked, "You think Kathy likes you?"
I choked on toothpaste for a while, until I could spit and cough my airway clear again, then I gasped, "WHAT?"
"It was just a question, Tuck, you don't have to die over it," Amy said, sounding half worried.
"Don't ASK me things like that when I have goo in my mouth!" I complained.
*** 23:22 26 Jul
"So?"
"So what?" I asked back before I remembered. "Oh." I thought about it. "No way. She's like you, thinks I'm like this big animated toy she can play with."
"I don't think of you that way!"
"You do!"
"Not!"
"You are such a liar, Amy," I grinned at her. "You're just shamelessly using me for your-"
*** 23:24 26 Jul
I had Amy in my world-famous scissors lock and was calmly discussing the reason it was a bad idea to wrestle with me, when my bedroom door opened and Susan came in. I have GOT to change that code-
"What the hell are-" she started, then saw us entangled on the floor. "What the fuck?!"
"Over," I added, smiling.
"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped at us.
Amy started to say something, so I clamped down and she lost it. "Having a discussion," I smiled. "Amy's losing." Amy hit my leg several times with a fist, but that wasn't going to work. If she thought to try a modified thumb lock or prying maneuver on my big toe, THAT might work, but for some reason I'd never mentioned this idea to anyone in my family. Heh.
*** 23:25 26 Jul
"She started it!" I complained.
"I did not!"
*** 23:26 26 Jul
"I am never having children," Susan decided suddenly.
"But he said-"
"Shut UP," Susan insisted. "And stop wrestling because I want to go to SLEEP. Or go do it outside or something."
Amy and I looked at each other and thought about it, and Susan huffed and went out of my room. Amy kicked the door shut behind her.
"Wanna?" I asked.
She thought about it. "Nah," she finally decided. "I mean, we already showered and everything, right? Let's go to bed."
"Shamelessly using me for a footwarmer-"
She kissed me into silence.
When she stopped and let go, she asked, "Does it bother you?"
"Being used as a footwarmer or being kissed like that?"
She giggled. "Either."
"Being kissed is nice," I decided. "Though maybe it would be a bad idea to do it in front of Mom." Mom still hadn't talked to me or Amy about us sleeping in the same bed, and I wanted to keep it that way, preferably forever. "As for the footwarmer thing..." I shook my head.
"Good!" she smiled. "Now go to sleep!"
"Yes dear," I said back. All I got was a giggle as she got into bed. I followed her, and we ended up with her nose on my neck and her arm around my side and belly.
"I like this," I said after a while.
"Me too, go sleep," she mumbled. So I did.
*** 08:26 27 Jul
The pounding on my door was horrendous, and I yelped as I shot up. "What the-"
"AUNT SARAH!" Amy screamed from the pillows, "WE'RE UP!"
It was quiet again.
I collapsed back on the bed.
"Damnit," Amy commented, and started to struggle out of bed.
"What are you doing?"
"Second half of first aid," she said, and then she snorted in amusement. At what, I had no idea.
*** 08:31 27 Jul
"Gee, and I'm all alone," I said to myself after Amy went out.
Then I went back out. Zzz.
*** 09:04 27 Jul
The pounding on my door, for the SECOND time that morning, drove me into a fury. I levitated out of my bed, smashing my head on the frame of the top bunk which improved my mood not at all, and flew over to the door to see who I was going to hit.
When I opened the door, though, I was grabbed around my body and swung about as Kathy yelled, "GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE!" right into my ear from behind.
I screamed a lot, but I wasn't sure if that was from the shock or the pain of my ankles slamming into the walls.
I HATE waking up like this, I decided.
Boxen: Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable. - The Jargon File
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- ==[-------- Ellen Hayes @>--,--'--- ellen@barkingduck.net + PGP DH/DSS keyfing: 33D4 156A AE39 53E2 0313 6714 2878 56A8 61B0 9CDC + http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes -=[1990]=- vicki .sig virus 11.4 +
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