“So far, so good … it was locked up, butseems to be rebooting fine.” Mark commented as I set the box ofcandles down on the table and sat down in front of my computer.“There did appear to be some scorch marks on the power outletthough. You use that outlet often enough that you really should puta UPS or at least a surge protector there. It's cheapinsurance.”
“Fingers crossed,” I said as I watched itfinish booting. “It seems like I got lucky,” I said with a smile asmy desktop appeared.
“Luck is all well and good,” he commented ashe stepped over to the box of candles, “but relying on luck is alosing proposition when a little common sense can ensuresafety.”
“Common sense,” I laughed. “This is from theguy who stepped into the house soaking wet because he couldn'tfigure out the complicated maneuver of covering both himself andhis knapsack with only one umbrella.”
“Hey, at least I protected my livelihood,unlike you who risked losing all your hard work due tocarelessness.” he retorted, looking up from shoving the candlesinto my silver candelabra.
“Ok, ok. Get those things lit so we can getour work for the night out of the way. Why you take down so manyhandwritten notes is beyond me when your laptop never leaves yoursight.”
“Well, what can I say? There's something Ifind satisfying about writing out notes and ideas by hand. Plus, Ifind it easier to integrate them into the story when I canrearrange the notes to suit the best order. Remember, I don'talways write them out sequentially.”
“Perhaps it is easier for you, but not forme. Your handwriting is atrocious, your grammar horrific,punctuation random, and it appears that proper spelling isoptional.”
“All of that is to give me an excuse to standover your shoulder and wrap my arms around you,” he replied puttingaction to his words.
“Nice, but also distracting,” I giggled,slapping a roaming hand away from my right breast. “Later,Casanova, you promised we would get our work in sync first so wehave most of the weekend free.”
“Spoilsport,” he replied as he flopped downinto his chair beside me. “Besides, how can I concentrate with thisstorm over our heads?”
“Fine,” I acquiesced. “Grab us a couple beersand we can snuggle on the couch until the storm passes.”
Grabbing my laptop, I made my way to theliving room and set it on the coffee table so we could have somebackground music. Working my way through my playlists, the computerfelt a little sluggish and I wondered if it had suffered somedamage after all.
“Honey, I think I better get you to take alook at this thing for me. It seems ... sluggish and weird,”I said to him as he sat down next to me and handed me my drink.
“Sure, no problemo,” he nodded. “I'll runthrough the works after dinner or tomorrow morning."
“Speaking of which, I have a couple of nicejuicy T-bone steaks thawed for dinner. The storm seems to beslacking a bit, so it should pass over by the time we'll need togrill 'em.”
“Sounds perfect,” he agreed.
We made small talk for a while, gettingcaught up on the last ten days in which he was away on a consultingtrip, and then had a nice dinner of grill-baked potatoes and steak.The power was still out, so we decided to put off our work and justgo to bed early. Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't still a latenight.
Chapter 2
Mark: Discovery
I woke up before Linda, and lay there contentand relaxed for several minutes before quietly slipping out of bed.I quickly grabbed a few things to wear and silently snuck out ofthe bedroom. After seeing that we once again had power, I got thecoffee maker started, then grabbed a quick shower in the otherbathroom, so as to not awaken her.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and headedover to the office so I could check my email. Remembering mypromise of last night, I moved Linda’s computer back into theoffice and set it up next to mine so I could work on it. I alsowanted to back up her recent files in case the laptop was dying. Iglanced over to the other side of my machine at my steaming cup ofcoffee, out of reach for the moment.
“Soon,” I murmured to myself. “Gotta get thishard drive scan started first.”
As I waited for her computer to finishbooting, I glanced down at my arm and noticed the hairs werestanding up, like they were last night during the peak of thestorm. Getting up, I grabbed my coffee and went over to thewindow.
Peering out at the sky, it looked like it wasshaping up to be a nice clear day, and I wondered why it felt likea storm overhead. Shrugging, I went back to Linda’s laptop andstarted a hard drive surface scan. With that running, I went andtopped off my coffee before setting down to go through my emailsand messages.
I was at the end of my last reply when Iheard Linda’s computer beep, indicating that the scan was complete.Hitting send, I shifted over to her chair to take a look at theresults. The scan came up clean, but she was right that it did feela little sluggish and weird. I started an anti-virus scan andopened up a shared folder on my computer to copy her recent filesover, just in case. Rubbing my arm, I noticed that the hairs on itwere still standing up, and it felt a little sore from wrist toshoulder. Shrugging again, I went to get a refill before sittingdown to start entering my hardcopy notes.
Glancing over at Linda’s display, I saw thatthe virus scan was still running, but the file copy was complete.Opening the shared folder, I ran my own virus scan on the files Ihad copied over. They checked out clean, so I opened up the one Ineeded for our shared work.
As I started
