Electra opened her mouth to say something, but became silent as the cursor suddenly moved, spelling out a query:
Name?
“It’s asking for a name,” Electra noted, pointing to a keyboard that was connected to the monitor.
“Really?” I uttered sarcastically. “I had no idea.”
I received a playful punch on the arm in response to my commentary. Ignoring Electra’s antics, I continued staring at the screen, thinking.
“What are you waiting for?” Electra finally asked.
“I’m trying to figure out how to respond,” I answered.
“Just type Mouse’s name,” she stated in an impatient tone.
“There’s no way it’s that easy. Mouse doesn’t operate like that, and no computer in here is going to offer unfettered access to its systems solely because you typed in his name.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed, rubbing my chin. “But there’s an old saying about honesty being the best policy, so…”
Pulling the keyboard in front of me, I hastily typed out my name:
Jim Carrow
I hit the Enter button and waited. The cursor blinked for a few times and then vanished. A moment later, the screen went blank.
“Idiot,” Electra muttered, only slightly tongue-in-cheek. “I told you to enter Mouse’s name.”
I was about to make a smart-aleck response when the screen came back to life, saying:
Please answer the security question.
A confused look came across Electra’s face. “What security question?”
“Give it a minute,” I advised.
As if in response to my comment, additional verbiage suddenly appeared on the screen:
If you have me, you want to share me. But if you share me, you won’t have me.
Electra frowned. “What kind of security question is that?”
“The Mouse kind,” I replied. “It’s a riddle.”
She gave me an incredulous look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?” I asked, gesturing towards the screen.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Answer it, of course.”
“So wait – you know the answer?”
“Naturally,” I stated in a playfully smug tone.
“So what is it?”
“It’s a ‘secret.’”
“A secret?” Electra repeated. “So what does that mean – you can’t tell anyone?”
“It’s ‘secret,’” I stated again.
“I heard you the first time. What I haven’t heard yet is the answer.”
Frustrated, I wiped my face with my hand. “The answer is ‘secret.’”
Electra crossed her arms in anger. “So you really aren’t going to tell me?”
Shaking my head in exasperation, I turned back to the monitor and began typing the answer:
Secret
“Ooooh,” Electra droned as I finished and hit the Enter button. “Now I get it. If you have a secret, you want to share it. But if you share it, it’s not a secret anymore.”
Ignoring her, I kept my eyes on the screen. It went blank for a moment, then briefly flashed the phrase, Access Granted. A second later, the word Files appeared in the top left corner of the screen. Below that heading, a long list of what I presumed to be file names began to appear.
“Nice!” Electra exclaimed. “You got access to Mouse’s system.”
“Yeah,” I remarked with a smile. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Cool? It’s freakin’ awesome!” she announced with a grin that I eagerly returned.
Our euphoria, however, was short-lived. Looking at the screen, I began to notice a phrase appearing in parenthesis behind a number of file names:
(File corrupted. Unable to retrieve.)
“That’s not good,” Electra noted.
“You think?” I muttered caustically as the corrupted tag began attaching to more and more of the file names. Within seconds, almost all of the files had received that label.
“So everything on here is corrupt?” Electra uttered in surprise. “How weird is that?”
“Not weird at all if you know Mouse,” I stated.
“You think he did this – corrupted all the data.”
“It would definitely make it harder to find him or figure out what he’s up to,” I declared. “But, if it was him, it looks like he didn’t manage to corrupt every file.”
I pointed at the screen as I spoke, singling out what appeared to be the lone uncorrupted item on the screen.
“What is that?” Electra asked.
“Based on the file extension, it looks like some kind of video,” I noted as I double-clicked on the file name.
Almost immediately, a window opened on the screen. Right away, I recognized what I was seeing as the same footage I’d viewed the day before of the scene in Mouse’s lab. I let it play for a few seconds and then paused it.
Electra looked at me curiously. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because I’ve seen it before,” I answered, then explained how I’d already watched the video. “I should have realized that’s what it was, since it was the only thing they recovered from the cameras in here. But long story short, there’s nothing new here.”
“So what now?”
I shrugged. “I guess now I accept your invitation to go on a date.”
“Again,” she reminded me laughingly, “not a date.”
I waved a hand at her dismissively. “So you say.”
Still smiling, she said, “Actually, I–”
The sound of my phone ringing cut her off. I pulled it out and saw that it was Alpha Prime calling.
Taking a few steps away, I answered with a quick, “Hello.”
“Hey,” my father said. “I think we’re standing down for the night.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I acknowledged. “It’s not like we have a bunch of clues to follow up on.”
“True,” Alpha Prime agreed. “Anyway, I was wondering if we were still on for dinner.”
“Oh,” I muttered softly, caught flatfooted. I had completely forgotten about our dinner plans. I looked at Electra, who was busy staring at something on the computer monitor. “Well, uh, actually, Electra just asked me out.”
“Did not,” she shouted over her shoulder.
“But hey,” I continued, “you have any objection to joining us?”
“That’s okay, son,” he insisted. “I know you two have things to discuss. We’ll do it another time.”
“No, no, no,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to keep putting this off. Plus, Electra and I need a chaperone anyway – to make sure she keeps her hands to herself.”
Electra gave me an evil look for a second, then turned back to
