2nd attempt at fanfiction. I had the idea of how Chuck and Ellie got along after their father left, and decided to have him tell his story while asking a question to someone.
I don't own Chuck or anything about it. I hope you like it.
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I guess it's time I explained a few things about myself.
I've read your file.
Really, so does this file tell you that I have held a California drivers license under the name of Charles Carmichael since I was 16. Does this file tell you that I was a hacker at age 15? Does this file tell you where my scholarship from Stanford came from and why I never had to pay it back after being expelled? Does this file tell you how Ellie and I survived after our father left?
No, no it doesn't.
I guess I'll start when my father left. Our mother had been gone for a while, and our father was growing more and more involved in his work. He was an engineer of some sort and we always had several computers around the house. He felt guilty I think, because of our mom leaving, so he let me use the spare parts he had to make my own computers. I was 12 at the time my mother left and I blamed my dad. So I tried to make his life hell. I would constantly take parts from his newest computers to build my own. He never complained and seemed proud of what I was creating. He told me I had the ability to become a better engineer than he ever was.
Finally when he left, I got very mad at the world. I had just turned 15, Ellie was 17 and in her senior year of high school, and we were on our own. Ellie already was running the house, but now she had to deal with the bills, school, and me. It was hugely unfair and I tried to help. I had been doing a small amount of hacking, nothing serious, just checking out a few systems. The worst I did was change the late night programming of a local tv station to what I wanted to watch. Most everything else was just getting into a system and looking around, I didn't even have a handle. After my father left, I would go into local government databases and added Ellie and me to various lists; food stamps, SSI, and a few others. Things that we would normally be entitled to, but that would take 6 months to a year to receive, I made it take 2 days. I also took us off a few lists, anything that I thought was a threat to tearing Ellie and I apart. I'm not even sure Ellie knew, she was so overwhelmed with all her other responsibilities, I think she thought our dad set it up.
After Ellie graduated, she received a partial scholarship to UCLA, and with the other money coming in we were able to scrape by. She worked a full time job, attended classes, and raised me. Things were actually going decently for us thanks to her. I had a part time job but still did well in school, and so did Ellie. I continued to develop my hacking skills while keeping it apart from my high school life. As it got closer to graduation, with Ellie freaking out about the money involved with her going to school, then medical school, and my own college schooling, I decided to do something about it. It took a while, and certainly tested my ability, but I managed to create a fake scholarship from Stanford that I of course won. They didn't receive any money for tuition, but weren't out any money either. All my other expenses we paid. After Ellie graduated, I did the same for her medical school at UCLA. We were both able to only work part time because of the demands, so I hacked a few grants for the government to give us. There is an amazing amount of money available, all tied up in red tape, that so many agencies oversee, that almost none of it gets used. After her graduation from medical school, I stopped just about all of our aid. All that was left was the scholarship I created, and the grant that I had hacked.
Now, the drivers license if actually easier to explain. When I turned 16 I got my own drivers license. But after a couple of weeks I found our bank was looking into the mortgage of the house we were living in. They noticed their payment was coming from the government and they were investigating if something had changed. Since my father was no longer there, they couldn't contact him about it. Then they started looking at all of our accounts, so I decided I needed a separate entity to pay for things, especially the things that there wasn't any real money to back up. I couldn't just start showing the ability to pay a mortgage at the age of 16, so I needed it to be someone else. That was when Charles Carmichael came into being. I hacked a few utility bills to show he had been paying them, created a few other false accounts at some department stores. Then after putting on my dad's old suit, I went to the license branch and was able to convince them I was Charles Carmichael, just moved from Texas, and had lost my license. I used a social security number I found from someone who had deceased a year earlier and my alter ego came into being. Charles started paying for our house, which relieved the bank immensely. It was a challenge keeping the money shuffling from the government to us and back to the government, but I managed it.
During college my part time job was actually Carmichael's first full time job. He had been hired to work as a programmer for a small computer company. It was work that could be done from home, and as long as I turned in the code needed, I never had to go to their small office except for when I was hired. I used the money he made to pay back the government and other things that I could. My senior year of college I had figured out for the most part how much I owed the government, and surprisingly after what I paid back as Carmichael, it really wasn't that much. I felt guilty over making the government pay part of our way, but I knew both Ellie and I didn't just waste it, and I was paying it back. We both worked very hard to improve not only our lives, but to help out others as we could. Ellie decided to be an ER trauma physician, and I was going to try to be Bill Gates with style, someone who is known to give huge amounts to charity. I also wrote several programs as Carmichael that I donated to various nonprofit organizations that helped streamline and protect their accounts. Since I knew how to get in to them, I was pretty good at helping keep others out.
But then my senior year came, and the Bryce & Jill fiasco happened. I now know that I went into a clinical depression that was untreated for five years. I moped, I cried, I lived my life with no sense of purpose or hope. I would wake up, do what was expected of me that day, and then go to bed. All of my life got bottled up and pushed under that bed. Besides the time I spent with Morgan or Ellie, I couldn't even tell you what day it was. It just didn't matter. I just existed, but I didn't care. Then I got an email on my birthday from someone who used to be my friend, and the rest you do have in your file.
Why are you telling me this now?
Because I want to be honest, it's because up until I received the intersect, and then Sarah Walker and John Casey coming into my life, I had no real purpose for several years. At first I didn't appreciate it, the danger, the threats, everything being forced down my throat, the lack of privacy; I really didn't appreciate what it was giving me. The chance to get to know two amazing people, the ability to serve my country, the ability to help. I felt alive, I felt important, I felt loved, I felt proud, and I have the intersect to thank for that.
I've also come to know myself better, my weakness and strengths. I know I have abandonment issues, I know I lack self worth on my own, I know I can do amazing things for others but almost nothing for myself. I know I still believe everyone is basically a good person, except for a few. I know I want to find those few and protect others from them. I know I can contribute to that goal. I now understand the saying,' All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing.'
I'm sorry for rambling, but I hope you will consider what I've asked. I know this isn't the way this is normally done, but I'm not really a normal guy leading a normal life.