009 Broken
Character: Patrick
Patrick had always been good with technology. He'd had an understanding of them, studying them since he was just a kid. Eventually he turned that into a way to make money. He would have people bring their broken electronics to him and he would fix them for a bit less than a normal store. It made him a good bit of money. He was only ten but he knew that right now is father's restaurant wasn't doing well so he was trying to do his best to not be a burden on his family in hard times.
Patrick stared down at the device, reading over the code on it. To most people it was just a collection of letters, numbers, and symbols that were random. To Patrick it was as easy as reading a children's book. He could also learn so much about his customers from it. Take the lines he was looking at for example. He could tell this person played a lot of solitaire, probably pretending to be doing school work or something. From here he could see what kinds of book marks the guy had on his web browser. He frowned, a bit disturbed by the large number of furry porn sights.
Patrick stopped as he finally found the problem. "Here's what's wrong. You have a corrupted line in an update. You must have shut off your computer or something before it could finish loading. That meant that a portion of the code didn't get downloaded so it keeps trying to use that line of data, but you don't have it."
"I don't care about the details, kid. I just want to know if you can fix it." The teenager was impatient and Patrick didn't appreciate his tone. "I don't have the time for your nerd talk."
"Geek," Patrick corrected. He reached into his own bag and pulled out his own tablet, looking through his list of programs. "Do you have the money?"
"Yeah, I've got the money, as long as you've got the fix." The teenager pulled out some money and counted it out, making sure he had enough.
"I've got the fix. Just wanted to be sure you could pay." Patrick linked the two tablets up and he set about deleting the update form the guy's tablet and then uploading the full version. As the update was installing he also slipped in his own little bug. It was how Patrick managed to keep such a large stock of programs, enough that their total size was larger than his tablet could handle. Whenever he worked on something he put this little code in it. It allowed him to wirelessly use the programs on other people's devices to fix and install programs on whoever's device he was working on. From the registry it seemed this update was coming from the tablet of Alecia, one of his classmates.
Patrick made sure to get his money before giving the tablet back. He knew better than to give it back without getting paid first. It had only take one guy running off before paying for him to learn the lesson. He waited until the customer was gone before he pocketed the cash with the rest of his money. Most of it was at home, but he kept enough on him to be able to make change. Patrick then pulled out his tablet and checked that his little bug was working on the new device. Satisfied that it was he put his tablet away and headed home.
Patrick stopped as a female teenager moved over toward him. "Hey, are you that kid that fixes things for cheap? My phone is messed up and I can't afford to have an official store fix it."
Patrick nodded. "Yeah, that's me." He held his hand out for the device and smiled a bit. "I'll even give you a discount since you're a first time customer."
"Oh, thank you so much." The girl beamed at him happily as Patrick started to look over the device and figure out what was wrong with it.
