Light and Shadows II: Dark
by J. Darksong
I.)
“I really don’t think this is a good idea, Paul,” I said wearily, already tired of the same old argument yet again. “Can’t you send someone else?”
“Sorry, Jimmy,” his boss said with a sigh. “I’m short-handed right now. I had two people call in sick on me, and I’m up to my neck in coding issues, else I’d go myself! There’s no one else. This lady’s a friend of mine, as well as an important client. I know you’re not a big fan of doing ‘house calls’...”
“Yeah, and for obvious reasons!” I exclaimed, incredulously. “Did you forget the last three house calls you sent me on?”
“Alright,” Paul replied tensely. “I know you’re a bit... um... ‘accident prone’. I know its why you prefer to work from home, and just do tech support over the phone. But this is an emergency case, okay? There is no one else I can send!” He sighed. “Look, Jimmy... all I’m asking is for you to go and take a look at her hard drive and see if its got a virus, and if so, clean it off. If its something else, well, just bring her computer back here, and I’ll look at it when I get the time. That’s all. It’ll probably only take ten minutes, fifteen tops. I mean... how much damage could you possibly do in that amount of time?”
Resigned, I grabbed my notebook computer and gathered up my diagnostic tools. “You’d be surprised, Paul. You really would. But... I’ll do it. Go ahead and give me her phone number...”
So, I found myself heading up into Fenwood Estates, the newly developed area on the outskirts of the city on a computer call. I’d planned to spend the day in the garage, working on restoring Jenny after my unfortunate accident last month, but when your boss, a good guy that you like and respect, and had done all sorts of favors for you in the past, even rehires you after all the destruction and mayhem you’ve caused over the years, calls asking you for a favor... well, I just couldn’t say no. Even though I was pretty sure that Reggie and Scott, the two guys that had called in ‘sick’ were, in fact, skipping work to attend Comic-con: they’d been going on and on for weeks about the costumes they’d created for the event. They’d even asked me if I wanted to go with them.
Heh. As if.
Yanno, there was something really really WRONG about going to a convention of people dressed up as their favorite cartoon, comic book character, or super hero in a world where real life Supers walked the streets and flew the skies. I mean, it’s weird enough to hear older guys talk about heroes like Ultra Girl, Blue Fox, or Psyche... but what do you say when you hear the guys you work with talking about how hot they think Silver Girl is, how cool Armor Man is, or how much they’d love to go one-on-one with Omega Girl? When Jack made the comment that he’d give his left nut to fuck Luminaire, I barely restrained myself from decking him; I settled for the satisfaction of watching his computer terminal literally meltdown in front of him, thanks to my little bad luck gremlins.
Speaking of which... I had no idea what was up with them lately. Immediately following the events on the train, they seemed to be on vacation. Maybe the strain of actively trying to use them to burn out the magnetic lock had depleted their power for a while. At any rate, I actually have a week and a half of peace with no unexplained mishaps before the bad luck cloud returned. And while I still couldn’t control them, per sae, they DID at least seem content to limit their somewhat destructive tendencies to people and things I was exceptionally annoyed with.
I only hoped they’d behave themselves long enough for me to finish this house call.
“Hello? This is Jimmy Frasier with Speedy Computer Solutions,” I spoke into my cell. “Is this Brenda Sanchez?”
“Yes, it is. I called for service just a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah. I heard from Paul that you were having an issue, and... I’m in the area, so I can swing by to take a look at it if you like. Can you tell me a bit more about the problem you’re having with it?”
“Sure... I guess. I’m not really that computer savvy, but I describe the problem. I let my daughter, Alicia, use it the other day to download a project for school, and now the screen keeps... well, flickering. And now it won’t connect to the Internet. All the programs still seem to work, it just won’t connect, and the display just kind of... pulses. Oh, and Control Panel won’t open, so I can’t access the Network Connections or Display Settings to check what’s wrong. It’s very annoying.”
“Uh huh,” I said, locking all this away for later. “And it was fine before your daughter used it?”
“Yes, perfectly fine. I don’t usually let her use it, mind you. She has her own laptop computer, I use mine strictly for business purposes. That’s the problem. I have an important business proposal to give Monday morning, and all my data is on my desktop... but that damned flicker effect is so distracting I can’t concentrate to finish it. And I need to check my email account to see if Daniels emailed me the specs I need.”
“Okay. It sounds very likely that its a virus of some kind, it probably altered your settings and locked out your Control Panel access. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult to get rid of, but I’ll know more once I take a look at it. I’m almost there... I should be there in, say, five minutes?”
“Thank you. I’ll be here.” Slight pause. “I wonder if my daughter’s computer will still connect to the Internet. I think I’ll check on her laptop...”
I nodded, hanging up. Maybe Paul was right. It was probably just a simple virus, something easily cleaned off. I could get her computer up and running again in a few minutes, and be back home in the garage by lunch time. I could still put in six good hours of work on Jenny before it got dark. Hmm... maybe I could even give Techna a call to see if she was doing anything tonight... assuming Aunt Roni hadn’t worked her to death in training.
I’d just reached the bottom of the hill leading up into Fenwood Estates when a loud POP shook me from my reverie. The steering wheel jerked hard to the left, and I hit the brakes, groaning inwardly. Flat tire. Damn. I should have known things were going too smoothly. Pulling off to the shoulder, I got out and surveyed the damage. With Jenny still being rebuilt, Paul had lent me the use of one of the company vans for this little excursion. And, knowing my perchant for ‘accidents’, he’d thoughtfully packed a couple of spare tires, a full spare gas tank, oil, transmission fluid, water, tool set, and even a pair of silk pantyhose, just in case a belt broke.
Needless to say, if my dad hadn’t been a first class engineer and mechanic, and passed on that knowledge to me, I would still have become an expert mechanic just from experience fixing whatever vehicle I rode in.
The flat was a simple fix, and I was mobile again in about ten minutes. I tried calling Miss Sanchez back to tell her I’d be a few minutes later arriving than expected, but she didn’t pick up, so I just left a voice mail. Not that it really mattered anyway; by the time I’d finish leaving the message I was pulling up to the front gate of her house. It was a nice one, too... larger than my parents’ house, and more ostentatious... like a replica of an early-era Georgian plantation.
My dad is one of the richest men in the country, and from the stories, completely self-made. He’d moved to the United States as a teenager with little more than the clothes on his back and his scientific knowledge, and slowly but surely worked his way up the ladder to becoming CEO and owner of his own industrial complex. His parents had instilled in him a practical outlook on life, and while we enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle, he felt no need to go ‘over the top’ like other wealthy men, flaunting his wealth with expensive cars and huge mansions. Our multi-story Brownstone seemed plenty big enough to me. And even though neither my sister or myself needed to work to support ourselves, we both inherited our parents’ desire to be self-sufficient.
The house where I parked the van and gathered up my tools seemed pretty ‘over the top’. Still, I suppose I could understand a little bit about the desire to impress. Knocking on the front door, I certainly felt impressed. A young woman dressed as a maid answered the door, and I held up the ID from around my neck. “Jimmy Frasier. I’m the computer tech. I think Miss Sanchez is expecting me.” Silently, the woman nodded, gesturing for me to enter and follow her.
The owner of the house sat on a tastefully expensive couch, typing away on an ultra-thin notebook computer. “Hi, I’m here to look at your desktop,” I said, clearing my voice loudly. The woman, a dusky skinned, dark haired beauty, merely nodded, gesturing down the hallway, completely absorbed in whatever she was working on. Shrugging, I turned to follow the maid, who let me into the study where an HP Omni sat atop a large heavy oak desk. Setting my gear down for the moment, I tapped the mouse, disabling the screen saver, and began working.
Hmm. I see what she means about the display... its really fuzzy... and that pulse is annoying. Only a few seconds of staring at it made my eyes water. I shut the monitor off, and connected my own laptop to hers, and ran my standard diagnostic program. Sure enough, it detected a foreign program running the background, interwoven in her computer’s operating system. I ran the company anti-virus disc, and sat back to wait, but curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to actually LOOK at the virus, see what it was supposed to be doing. I opened a second window, and switched to DOS.
Huh. That’s interesting. It’s set to disable all access to the display settings... but not the Internet connections. In fact... its online right now, connected to and receiving a steady flow of data from an unknown address. I scrolled down a bit further. Huh. That’s weird too... doesn’t seem to have any effect of the BIOS... no memory degradation, and transfer of data is one way, receiving, not transmitting. What kind of virus DOESN’T crash the system, eat the memory or data files, and yet disables the visual display settings?
Something about this set up tickled a memory in the back of my mind. As I scrolled through more lines of malicious code, a suspicion began to form. Acting on impulse, I slid a flash drive into her desktop’s USB port and copied the virus code onto it, to check over in detail later. That done, I switched off her desktop and rebooted, letting it startup from the boot disk I’d placed in its drive. And while my computer got hers back on its feet, I brought up an isolated parsection, cut off from the rest of the computer, and brought up the viral code to study.
Some people find it difficult to read assembly code. Me, personally, I actually prefer it. When troubleshooting, sometimes simplicity is best. Scrolling through line after line of code, I found my mouth twisting into a frown. The suspicions I’d had seemed to be confirmed as I isolated the signal that had been received from that unknown address, and cleverly embedded into the background display, virtually invisible to the human mind, yet perceived on a subconscious level. My frown turned to a grimace as the compiler finally finished, translating the streams of zeroes and ones into words that I somehow already knew were being flashed.
Shit! Shit, shit, shit! I yelled inwardly, disconnecting and shutting down my computer. I quickly repacked my gear, slipped the zip drive into my pocket, and made my way back to the foyer. “Miss Sanchez! You’ve got a serious problem. I think that you... you... oohhhh boy...”
Brenda Sanchez sat in the exact same spot on the couch that she’d sat in half an hour ago when I entered the house. Her attire had changed, however; instead of the tasteful and stylish blouse and slacks she’d sported earlier, she was now completely naked, her long slender legs spread wide to allow one hand to ram repeatedly into her glistening mons while the other groped and squeezed her large Double D tits, pinching the engorged nipples between her thumb and forefinger. Her eyes were half-shuttered and glassy, and even as she worked her body into a fever pitch, her vision never strayed from the psychedelic flickering, pulsing display on her daughter’s laptop. A loud gasp escaped her lips as she came, and she shuddered slightly before continuing her mindless ministrations.
“Shit!” I said aloud then, turning away. This was... okay, this was seriously fucked up! I paused, trying to figure out what the hell I needed to do here. Should I turn off the computer, shut it down and hope that snaps her out of it? Or should I try and wake her up myself, snap my fingers or clap, or something? Should I... use my shadow tendrils and usurp her will myself, and hope that my control overrides her computer induced trance? Or should I just pack up my things and get the hell out of Dodge, and pretend none of this ever happened?
Yeah. Well... I guess that last one wasn’t gonna happen. I didn’t come here looking to rescue some stranger, only some stranger’s computer. It was just my bad luck—and her good luck—that I happened to be the one here.
Now that I’d convinced myself to do something, I walked over to the computer, and, being careful not to stare at the display myself, shut the lid. I’d hoped she would snap out of it instantly, but alas... nothing. She gasped and moaned softly, cumming again, but otherwise had no reaction. Sighing, I went with option B, and snapped my finger in front of her face.
“Miss Sanchez! Wake up!”
She finally blinked, shaking her head slightly. “Wh... what?” she asked weakly, glancing up at me. “I... the email... I had to... had to check... my email?” she said, sounding unsure of herself. Her eyes finally focused in on me. “You... you’re that... computer technician? Um... Jamie?”
“Jimmy. It’s Jimmy. Look, Miss, I think you’re the victim of some kind of mind control plot. I think we need to call someone. Is there anyone you can trust to stay with you until the police get here?”
She frowned at me, as if I were speaking German. “I don’t... what are you... talking about?”
The doorbell rang, and her body seized, thighs clenching tightly. “The doorbell!” she said with a gasp, her eyes fluttering again. She got shakily to her feet, nearly stumbling. “I need... to answer the door,” she husked, taking another step towards the door.
“No, wait!” I said, reaching out for her. “You can’t! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but yer... not exactly dressed for company right now.” Pushing past her, I opened the door. “I’m sorry, but the lady of the house is indisposed right now. Can you wait for a moment?”
A man in a grey Italian suit and dark sunglasses smiled at me in reply. “No, actually,” he said, lunging forward with a taser. “I don’t like to wait.”
I’ve been shocked before, a few times, actually. Some were good, some were bad. This was definitely the latter. And let me tell you, there is NOTHING sexy, sparkily, or erotic about taking fifty thousand volts to the gut. My muscles locked up, and my vision whited out as I shook and shuddered, trying very hard not to void my bladder. A few seconds, or maybe a few hours, and contact was broken. I slumped down to one knee, gasping, struggling to get back to my feet. The guy walked past me into the house, whistling appreciatively.
“Nice digs. Looks like I snatched me a rich bitch this time. Sweet.” Facing Miss Sanchez, he whistled again. “And a hot piece of ass as well! Alright, baby... it’s time to go. Now, come along like a good little slut.” Nodding softly, eyes glazing over in helpless obedience, my client walked stiffly over to the man, completely oblivious to everything but his will. He gestured to the door, and she continued on, walking past me, naked, onto her front lawn to a waiting black van.
“Hey... wait...” I gasped, struggling back to my feet. I was starting to get my second wind now, and the feeling was starting to return to my limbs.
“Impressive!” the man in the sunglasses said, walking up behind me. “Not too shabby for a techno geek. Most people would have been out like a light for hours, but that last body shot didn’t even knock you down.” He smiled evilly, raising the brightly sparking device once more. “So... this time, lets go for the head...”