Email Problems
It was an undeniable fact of life that sooner or later, everybody was going to experience a slow day. This is true regardless of who you decide to look at.
Sonic the hedgehog, the fastest thing alive, sometimes spends days just sleeping in the shade of a tree. His archenemy, Dr. Eggman, had a genius level intellect and dreams of world domination as a means to build an amusement park.
He was currently watching cute cat videos online.
As a general rule, if the doctor wasn't busy then neither were the countless robots that did most of the grunt work. Most were merely shut off, but there were still three that decided to make use of the day.
Decoe was spending his time upgrading all the super computers in the headquarters, a task that regularly got put on the backburner because of a certain genius' lack of patience.
Bocoe was in a mad cleaning frenzy. In his opinion, the amount of grime, dust and oil spills that littered their base wasn't just unsightly, but also quite disturbing to the robot's artificial psyche.
Which just left Bokkun, who had delivered his last message of the day and had decided to spend the rest of it by gaming.
Bokkun flew into his room and closed the door behind him. To be honest, he was lucky to have his own room. Sure, it was small and chillingly cold and dull due to the lifeless steel walls, but it was his.
There was a small television next to doorframe, opposite an inside hammock that served as Bokkun's bed.
In front of the television was an Xbox One. He switched the device on and leapt across the room in a single jump onto the hammock, which forced the wireless controller into the air. Bokkun caught it on reflex.
The final step was to grab the television's remote and turn it on.
Mere seconds after looking at the screen, something popped up. Bokkun could feel his eye twitch in annoyance before letting out a long suffering sigh.
"He invited me to a party…again." It wasn't that Bokkun hated talking to his friends (read: all two of them) it was just annoying how he didn't even have a second to think before an invite popped up on his screen.
Despite this, he did join the party and quickly found his headphones.
"Hey mailboy, have you seen it yet?" A high pitched voice spoke quickly and with a dose of pure excited energy.
"I hate it when you call me that," Bokkun's tone was depressed.
"Something wrong, Bokkun? You sound dead."
"Charmy how do you even know I'm online? I set it to appear offline…"
"Yeah, cause that's totally tricked people before."
"Is that sarcasm? Cause it sounds vaguely like sarcasm." Bokkun let out another over the top sigh before his eyes widened in realisation, "Have I seen what?"
"Nothing. Just that Fallout 4 finally has mods for the Xbox. Nothing serious." Charmy's tone barely hid his own excitement.
"Son of a heck, really?" as he spoke he loaded the game. He'd been waiting for this upgrade since the game had been announced. He skipped the little retro styled video message and waited patiently for the menu to load.
Charmy laughed over the mike before saying, "Have I ever lied to you?"
"Cream. Maid."
There was silence for a solid twenty seconds.
"Okay, sure, but you gotta admit that your face was funny." Charmy laughed it off as usual.
"I will get my revenge, bumblebee."
As they talked, the game finished its loading. Bokkun's eyes scanned the menu and a grin broke out on his face in utter excitement.
Just under the tab for DLC, there was a mods tab.
"Oh my gosh oh my gosh OH MY GOSH!"
"I take it you've seen it, then?"
Bokkun didn't even answer. He clicked on the mods button, wanting to explore all the options. He'd seen some crazy stuff through Youtube and he was wondering what had managed to make it onto the 'official' mods.
Bokkun's energy stopped dead when, instead of seeing a library of mods, he saw a log in screen. Bokkun blinked his eyes once, then twice, before he actually read what was in front of him.
"Charmy, the heck's a Bethesda account?"
"Oh yeah…forgot about that." Charmy's laughter became nervous for a moment, "You need an official Bethesda account before you can get any mods."
"How long will that take to set up?"
"Shouldn't take long…just head over to Bethesda-dot-net, enter a fake birthday because of your actual age and then go through the minute long creation process. Simple."
Bokkun sat there with a blank expression as he mumbled, "Yeah…simple. Charmy, I'm going to do that. I'll be right back."
With that he left the party and got out of the hammock.
Bokkun was at a loss. It sounded simple enough, sure, but there was one problem.
"How am I going to get online?" He mumbled to himself. There were many computers all over the base, but he wasn't actually allowed to use any. If he was caught he was sure that the punishment would be dire.
Yet he still found himself hovering out of his door, down the hall in the direction of the command room.
Every moment as Bokkun flew he felt a crawling fear in his stomach. Eggman was probably in the command room. When he saw Bokkun he'd demand an answer for the interruption and Bokkun would answer honestly despite himself.
The things that Eggman might do…
He eventually he hit the cold metal door of the command room. He'd been flying at some speed, and the sudden stop had been enough to leave Bokkun with mild bruises.
As Bokkun mumbled pained curses under his breath, the door opened in the middle and both parts slid to the side and disappeared into the walls.
"Bokkun, was that you?" Decoe's weird hybrid of a nasally and robotic voice met Bokkun's ears and the mail deliver gulped.
"Yeah…" He trailed off nervously as he stepped into the room. To his surprise, Eggman wasn't there.
"Where's Eggman?"
"Spending time in his personal quarters," Decoe said matter-of-factly, "Now, what are you doing here?"
Bokkun scanned the room quickly. It was a decently sized room with only one way in. There were two large windows in the wall opposite the door, which let in natural light and showed a decent view of the ocean.
In the middle of the room there was a large steel panel with a colourful array of buttons and a small flat screen attached to it. On either side of this panel were stairs that lead to a slightly lower level of the room that had yet another panel, this one larger than the last with a screen of its own.
Decoe was walking back and forth between both of the panels, probably making sure both were upgrading properly.
Bokkun sighed. These computers were the best in the base, but as previously mentioned already Bokkun couldn't use them and even if he could, Decoe wouldn't let him.
"Bokkun? Unless you're experiencing a malfunction in your audio receptors, I'd like an answer." Decoe's tone was generally monotone. It wasn't that he lacked a personality, his voice chips were simply basic in design.
Which was why the amount of annoyance in his voice was both impressive and terrifying to Bokkun's mind.
"I was wondering if I could…use one of the computers."
"What an odd request," Decoe stopped in their tireless routine of update checking, "Whatever would you need it for?"
"Well…my game just got some new features, but I need an account from a website first…" Bokkun trailed off. It was starting to sound silly, even to him.
"Not a chance." Just like that Decoe had stopped paying attention to Bokkun and was back to checking the computers.
"Oh, please!" Bokkun flew over to Decoe and looked him in the visual sensor, "I'll owe you one!"
Decoe looked back with a featureless face, most likely pondering Bokkun's words.
"Are you sure this site is safe?"
Bokkun scoffed, "Are you implying that a virus could get past one of Eggman's machines?"
"You raise a fair point. Deal."
Bokkun let out a small cheer before taking a seat at one of the oversized panels.
These computers were of Eggman's own design. They didn't quite work with human technology when they got to this planet. After Eggman experienced just how much information could be gathered through human channels, he reworked the design to interact better with the local tech.
The computers still didn't work perfectly, but it was enough to get Bokkun to Bethesda-dot-com.
As Charmy said, Bokkun was asked to give a birthday. He just left the month and day on the default settings and moved the year until he was old enough to get through.
He saw a label in the top right corner of the page that read 'join now' and he clicked it. It all seemed easy enough, he put his own name for a username and was delighted to see it wasn't taken. He used the same email as he had for Xbox Live. He even had his own choice of password.
He let out a little chuckle when he came across the 'prove you're not a robot' question. It didn't slow him down and he wondered how that was supposed to stop him or any one of Eggman's robots from accessing websites.
After everything was filled in, Bokkun hit the confirm button and waited as the page loaded. Bokkun's smile quickly disappeared from his face.
"They need me to verify my email?" This was bad. Around a month back Bokkun experienced a desire to be involved in 'social media' he made an email, made an account with just about everything that crossed his mind at the time and had never sighed back into his email after that rapid fire creation period.
He had no idea what password he had used for the email he had just entered, as he used different ones for everything.
Bokkun let out a huff of annoyance.
He'd just have to create a new account.
He opened a new tab, went to outlook-dot-com and went through another account creation process. Despite the prior setbacks, everything was going well.
Until he got to end of the email setup. The website wanted his phone number. He tried to finish the start up anyways, but the page refreshed, some of the information he entered was gone and there was red writing above the phone number section that told him, without a shadow of a doubt, that they wanted his phone number. Usually this wouldn't have been a problem, except for one tiny detail.
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ENTER A NUMBER FOR SOMETHING THAT I DON'T HAVE?!" Bokkun yelled his frustrations.
"Have you broke the computer, Bokkun?" Decoe's monotone interrupted Bokkun's thoughts.
"No!" Bokkun let out an angered grunt, "Humans just being stupid is all."
"Oh." Decoe responded, "What else is new?"
At that point Bokkun zoned out as he wondered where he was going to get a phone number. His eyes widened in shock, however, when he turned back to Decoe.
"Decoe, my golden plated friend, you wouldn't happen to have a phone, would ya?"
"You owe me two."
Bokkun grumbled as Decoe handed over his own phone. Now that he had a number, Bokkun made the email, verified that email when the prompt came up and soon after he was back on Bethesda-dot-net, making a second account.
A smile was on Bokkun's face. It had been a bit more tedious than he was expecting, but he had managed things fine. Now he just had to check his mail on the new email and verify the account.
But there was no new mail.
Bokkun remained calm. Sometimes there were minor delays, he figured it was something to do with wi-fi speed. He decided to give it a moment.
A minute passed, yet there was no mail.
Bokkun's calm was crumbling. He went back to Bethesda-dot-net and tried to create the account again.
"Surely this will speed things up, right?" The mail deliver mumbled under his breath.
Three minutes passed, yet no mail.
Whatever calm Bokkun had had disappeared by this point. He was constantly going from the account set up over on Bethesda-dot-net, back to outlook-dot-com looking for mail. Back and forth, he attempted to create the account.
Five times, eight, twelve. He stopped counting after that.
Meanwhile, time still passed. Soon he'd been waiting for ten minutes, then fifteen. Half an hour passed and yet still no mail.
Bokkun's facial features were contorted into those of pure rage. He wanted to smash the screen until it was nothing but cracks, but the last shred of sanity in the back of his mind reminded him of the punishments for such an action.
After an hour Bokkun threw up his arms in defeat.
He left the room, knowing that the mail would never arrive. As he walked the halls in a mixture of rage and self-pity, an idea crossed Bokkun's mind.
It was a brilliant idea. It was a crazy idea. Bokkun had a brilliant crazy idea.
Having no other options, Bokkun took flight. He flew till he was outside the base itself. He let out a sigh, then changed direction towards the city…
Tails was surprised, to say the least. He had plans for today, Sonic was out running as he usually did. Cream and Amy were out with Ella grocery shopping. Chris was hanging out at the park and Chuck had already gone to sleep.
This left Tails all alone to do anything, but before his afternoon of infinite possibility could start, it was interrupted by Bokkun.
The messenger had broken in and was sitting on the couch, staring at Tails with a look of mad hope.
Normally, Tails would have been on high alert at seeing Bokkun, especially after breaking into the mansion. But Bokkun didn't appear to have one of his signature televisions with him, so Tails could only assume that Bokkun had broken in for some other reason.
"What do you want?"
"You know…computers, right?"
"Quite. What of it?"
"Can you help me? I'm having email trouble."
Tails' blinked his eyes once, then twice, before bursting out into mad fits of laughter.
"HEY!" Bokkun yelled, "It's not that funny."
Tails took some slow, calming breaths, before continuing.
"Okay. What seems to be the problem?"
Bokkun relayed past couple of hours to Tails, a process that took quite a while as Tails would break out into uncontrollable fits of giggling.
After all was said and down, Tails had already gotten a laptop out.
"Okay, why didn't you just attempt to recover your first emails password?"
Bokkun gave him a blank look, "Come again, fox boy?"
"If you enter your email, click 'I forgot my password' you'll be asked to answer a security question or give another stable email that you can use to get a safe code to reset your password."
In that moment Tails witnessed Bokkun's hand make contact with his forehead at a speed that would put Sonic to shame.
Yet again, Bokkun's pain made Tails laugh.
After both had calmed down Bokkun got closer to Tails so he could look at the screen as he gave Tails his email.
Tails did what he said he would do, until he turned to Bokkun with a slight smile.
"Favourite food?"
"Pardon?"
"Your security question."
"Oh. Cake."
After a couple of key clicks they were in. Bokkun was bemused, to such a point that he stopped paying attention to Tails for a moment.
"This email right here will give us both your old password, and will allow you to create a new one if you'd like." Tails read the message and broke out into quite the grin, "Your password was bunny angel, all one word and lower case."
Bokkun's face quickly went red as he stole the laptop from Tails to change the password.
"Don't you know it's rude to read someone else's emails?"
"Don't you know that it's rude to break into someone's home?"
"Touché."
Bokkun changed the password to something new, and activated the first Bethesda account that had started his annoying day.
"Everything's fixed now." Bokkun handed Tails the lap top and got up. He flew over to the door, stopped on the ground to open it and turned his head back to look at the fox.
"Thanks." He said in a mumble.
"No problem!" Tails responded brightly, "Happy modding."
With that, Bokkun left.
After flying back to the base, it was quite late. Bokkun wasn't concerned, however, as he could now say up as long as he wanted with Fallout and the Mods.
As he went back to his room, he unexpectedly crossed Dr Eggman himself.
"Up late are we, Bokkun?"
Bokkun let out a gulp, "Yes sir, sorry sir."
Eggman grumbled something under his breath that Bokkun didn't catch before speaking up, "Anyways, its lights out now, Bokkun. Go to sleep."
"What? But I-" Bokkun's tone changed from annoyed to fearful in split second, "-got things…to do."
Eggman's face developed a smile of pure malice, "Well then, if that's the case…I order you to sleep. And the punishment for disobeying me? Well…"
Eggman trailed of, letting Bokkun's mind fill in the blank. Eggman walked away a moment later, leaving Bokkun just standing there.
All Bokkun wanted to do today was play a video game. Charmy had gotten him distracted with talk of mods. He'd waste at least half the day trying to figure out emails so that he could play with them.
Bokkun took in a long, calming, breath.
"There's nothing worse than a fetch quest without a reward."
End
If this story looks familar to you, that's because it was deleted and re-uploaded between two of my accounts.
Sorry about that.
Thanks for reading though.