"Darkness Absolute"
By: Von Stupor
Chapter E
After work, Dennis came home and after a brief visit with his grandmother, sank back into the bowels of the house, Stuporia. He found there Dolimus and Packrat engaging in a game of Risk. Von Stupor merely spectated.
"I was the whipping boy!" he said to Dennis, proud.
"I've got some sort of bad news, everybody," Dennis mentioned, ignoring Von Stupor.
The two opponents paused their game to pay attention.
"Sean told me he thinks his laptop is going on him. He's having some issues with the motherboard and may have to call the company back out here to fix it. He did mention that after some fighting with it, he charged it up to last one more time, so we've gotta make this count. He said he's free this Wednesday, so what a coincidence. So am I! This thing will end on Wednesday."
Packrat gave a determined smile while Dolimus merely nodded his head.
OIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO
As Tuesday rolled around, Dennis came home rather excited.
"Hey guys, guess what!" he asked them all downstairs. "I ran into my old youth group leader and a guy I know from the group today! The guy told me about a device called an exterior containment unit that can use a laptop hard drive like my regular old jump drive!"
"You're kidding me, and we waited all this time for that? Let's go get one!" Packrat insisted.
"I'm going to, tonight! Who's coming with?"
"Isn't it obvious? We'll all come along," said Dolimus, smiling.
"Right, then! Let's go!"
"How're we all going to fit on your scooter?" Packrat asked.
"...Local bus service it is! Everybody grab a dollar from my change jar!"
OIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO
As they all arrived at the local electronics store, Von Stupor pointed out the computer section.
"Well, I'm going straight for that exterior containment unit," commented Dennis, heading towards the computers. Everyone followed behind.
After browsing a bit, he managed to find one that rang up at forty dollars, half the advertised price.
"Today is a good day..." he said towards Dolimus and the cashier. "'Tis a good day indeed. Let's head home!"
OIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO
As Dennis frantically ripped open the box for the drive, Dolimus carefully unfastened the laptop hard drive from its plastic container. Dennis stuck it inside the box and screwed it shut, followed by plugging it into his computer.
It was automatically detected by the computer, and did not need any software installed. As he pulled it up, there his files appeared!
"Yes!" Packrat shrilled in excitement.
"All right!" rooted Dennis. "Let's open them up to make sure they're not corrupted!"
Dennis attempted to access his username from the laptop and access was denied. he stared at the screen, confused. After a moment, something clicked.
He turned to everyone and said, "Mine own paranoia and distrust of the members of my family caused me to put lots of security on my computer. I ensured that only one who logs onto Windows XP under my username can access my files, and that is done by inputting a password at the startup screen. By browsing through Windows, I can't get to the startup screen and thusly cannot enter a password. Also, since this is a laptop hard drive, I can't replace my desktop's hard drive with this one so as to boot from it."
"Can you boot from the jump drive?" Dolimus asked.
"...That I do not know."
Dennis restarted his computer and routed the boot sequence to his USB port, but in vain.
Sighing, he said, "There's nothing we can do tonight. We'll just have to hope for the best tomorrow."