Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, but the bad luck was all mine.
Warnings: Language
Computer Problems
It seemed to happen in slow motion.
Face, who'd been lounging on the sofa reading fiction on his laptop, felt the inconvenient urge to use the bathroom. Sighing with regret, because he was just about to find out how the Vietnam soldiers broke out of the POW camp, the conman moved his computer to the handy table beside him.
Just as he was levering himself out of the soft cushions, it happened. His elbow knocked into the table, sending his most prized possession crashing to the floor.
Footsteps thundered from all over the house, converging on the living room as the three other men burst in with their guns, ready to start blasting bad guys. Finding nothing but a pale Templeton, they put away their weapons and relaxed.
"What happened, kid? We heard a little girl screaming," Hannibal asked, only to be met by a glare.
"I do not scream like a little girl!" Oddly enough the urge to take a bathroom break was gone, scared away by his entire reason for existing hitting the hard wooden surface. Taking a deep breath, Temp snatched his baby from the floor and tried to turn it on.
Nothing.
Starting to hyperventilate, the blonde didn't notice his friends' grumbling as they left him to face his crisis alone. "Okay… don't panic. We can fix this," he muttered to himself, trying not to think about all the stories he wanted to read. Not to mention the stories he'd written that he hadn't yet posted to his favorite fiction site. (Hey, even soldiers of fortune get to have hobbies!)
He took out the battery from the computer, unplugged the main power supply, and waited a little while before reconnecting both and pressing the on button.
Hannibal came into the living room an hour later, only to be met with the strangest sight he'd ever experienced. And that's saying something when one of the men under your command was clinically insane. The conman was sitting on the floor, clutching his laptop desperately, and was rocking back and forth with tears streaming down his face. The man hadn't even cried when Murdock accidently shot him in the foot that time in Borneo.
"What's going on, Lieutenant?"
Babbling met the commanding officer's ears. All he could discern were the words "broke", "bathroom", and "thecathedral22". He might have been imagining the last word. Resisting the temptation to run and hide in his room, Hannibal sighed and gently coaxed the requisitions officer into giving him the entire story. When it was out, all John could do was stare uncomprehendingly.
"That's it? That's what's got you sobbing on the floor like a baby?!" If glares could kill, Hannibal would have gone up in flames just then. "Pull yourself together, soldier! This is the age of technology! Nowadays you can get on the internet with everything but your toaster, and that's probably going to be feasible soon!"
Hannibal noticed a look of determination cross the blonde's face. Taking that to be a sign that the lieutenant was on the path of healing, the CO made good on his escape. He briefly thought about warning Bosco and Murdock, but decided they were on their own as he bolted his door.
Hannibal's words had sparked something within Templeton. Just then he remembered an author's note written by one of his favorite writers and reviewers, "The-Time-Travelling-Hippie". The author had complained about their laptop being "on the fritz" and having to upload a story from a Kindle. "Well, I don't have a Kindle Fire, but I have a Nook tablet!" The thought had barely formed before the con artist was up and running for his room.
Diving on his bed, he grabbed the Nook from its resting place on the bedside table and said a small prayer before turning it on. He basked in the soft glow of the screen for a moment, then cursed when he remembered that Nooks didn't come with USB ports. Sure, there was a mini SD card slot, but really?!
Forcing the bad thoughts away, Templeton reasoned with himself. "Okay… it's not the end of the world. I can at least log into my fiction account and check the traffic stats. Seeing how many people are reading my stories will make me feel better, and if there are any new reviews I can answer them at least."
Face easily found his favorite website and tried to log in only to get a "Request has Timed Out" message… five times in a row.
A flock of birds from five states away burst out of the treetops from the shrill scream they suddenly heard from the west.
Face dejectedly drug himself, and his Nook, back into the living room and lay on the couch. He tried to console himself with the fact that he could at least read some stories on the fiction site as a guest until he came up with a new plan. He pulled up "Sandilynn Petersen" and clicked on her story "Morale". It was a long one with tons of delicious hurt/comfort that he could drown himself in for countless hours.
Unfortunately, every paragraph he read was followed by a forlorn glance at the black Dell laptop that was the cause of his current sour mood. When he'd read three chapters, the blonde finally gave up hope of escaping the troubling thoughts and powered down the Nook.
Rifling through Bosco's tools was rewarded when he found the black man's set of tiny screwdrivers. Prizes in hand, Templeton drug his computer to the dining room table, pretending not to notice B.A. and Murdock as they dove for the front door in a desperate attempt to remove themselves from his presence.
He unscrewed every tiny screw, careful to place them upside down and in the exact order from where he removed them. Sure, they all look the same size but he wasn't taking any chances at this point! Once the screws were removed, he couldn't quite figure out how to remove the plastic housing. The tiny flathead worked to pry the casing apart in front of the keyboard, but was too flimsy to use on the sides.
Retrieving a sturdier flathead helped greatly, but Face still couldn't pull the plastic away from the USB ports without feeling like he was about to crack the casing.
He finally pulled the plastic away enough to get a proverbial foot in the door, so Templeton quickly placed his thumb there as he continued prying. Unfortunately for him, the plastic was more resilient than he'd thought and soon snapped back into place… around his thumb.
Cursing heavily, Face finally removed his appendage from the plastic tomb and tried once again to open the housing. He pulled the plastic up enough to see the green circuit boards, along with some kind of red goop. "What the hell is that… some kind of grease?"
A quick glance down at his still-stinging thumb told him no… it wasn't grease. It was blood. Apparently he'd sliced open his thumb during his attempts to free it from the blasted computer.
Giving up on opening the case, Temp went to find a bandage for the digit. At this point he didn't care if he had been missing his thumb… he refused to add an ER trip to this long string of disasters. With his current luck he'd just contract some kind of deadly disease while there anyway.
After making his way to the computer, Face plugged the battery back in after snapping the housing back together. He meticulously replaced every screw, apart from one which wouldn't catch no matter how many times he tried and placed the panel back on the place that held the memory. Something inside him told him to try again to power up the device despite knowing the attempt would once again end in failure.
At this point, however, he figured "What have I got to lose?"
Pressing the power button, Face nearly cried as the screen showed the booting up process. Once Windows was fully up, and nothing seemed to be damaged, the conman did shed tears of ecstasy!
He never did understand what he could have possibly done to breathe life into a dead computer, but didn't dwell on it much. Instead, he vowed with every ounce of his soul to be much more careful in the future.
End