The Cost of Connection (A Shortstory)
The sweet smell of old cathode ray tubes triggered long-forgotten memories as Finn pressed the heavy switch of the pre-weave coms terminal. The smell normally had a calming effect on him, but now he grew worried because the screen stayed dark. Again.
He had replaced all parts short of simply connecting the terminal to the weave and letting corporate autodiagnostics take care of it. If he didn’t get this old junker working, his chances of ever speaking to his girlfriend, even if it was just a digital copy stored on this old memory drive, were close to zero. Not since she died in the bio-pharma plants, where corporate insurance was just enough for a rusty offline backup of her on the oldest media there was.
Small clouds of dust got thrown up as he started to pace around his workshop, thinking about his last good option. Replacing the Photonic Lattice Bridge was a delicate task on the best of days, and most of the instructions in the old owner’s manual to replace the darn thing were faded or smudged due to age, but there was no way around it. His hands were sweaty as his trusty soldering iron heated up, and he connected the tiny contacts of the bridge with all the care he could muster. He knew it wasn’t enough when suddenly a loud pop was followed by sparks flying everywhere and a puff of smoke where the Bridge was before. “Fuck.”
The hot iron left burn marks on the plastic table as his hand slammed down in frustration. Fine, he’d use the autodiagnostics. What other options did he have? None! ZERO!!
He placed the device on the old XY-Autotech, connected the glowing diagnostic leads to his weave modem, and pressed start with shaking hands. It took the whizzing replicator arm mere moments of work until the weave logo showed up on the green CRT screen, followed by the crackling of old electronics and then, finally, his most precious memory cartridge clicked into place.
A loading bar titled “Uploading To Weave Corp Hardware Simulator” flashed on the screen. Three blinking dots appeared, soon to be replaced with a single line of text: “
As Finn went to answer, a mechanical voice emanated from his weave modem. “ALL RIGHTS SUCCESSFULLY TRANSFERRED TO WEAVE CORP. YOU HAVE 1 CREDIT REMAINING.”