There came a knock at the door.
Pa lifted his face from his paws, the fur around his eyes soggy. Animals didn’t do much crying, their fur wasn’t meant for that stuff. The door opened and Dave waddled in, concern on his face.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” Dave asked, resting a hooflet on the fat panda’s shoulder. “That Puma’s going to be here any moment. Don’t you wanna say goodbye to our son?”
“It’s…” Pa gestured to the computer, “….the program, it’s…”
“Huh, lots of errors.” Dave peered blearily at the screen. “Just call tech support.”
“What?” Pa stared at the ram.
“I don’t know much about gadgets and gizmos, but I do know they all have numbers to call. Like our TV and satellite. Had to call a serviceman to come over.” Dave said. “They can usually fix it.”
“But it’s all messed up…” Pa sobbed.
“On your side, right? The service guy said our DVR recordings are saved on their servers too.” Dave smiled. “Just find the number and ask them to restore it from that!”
Pa wanted to slap himself. Of course! They had to clone their profiles on a separate server just in case something like this happened! That was just standard policy. He grinned at Dave.
“Thanks, babe.”
Dave kissed him. “Mmmph! You’re welcome. I’m going to see Finn off. It’s too bad Pops couldn’t be here to say goodbye to Jay.”
Dave left. As soon as he was gone, Pa took out his cell and made a frantic phone call.
“Hello, yes, I’m having a corruption error occur in my profiles.” Pa said.
“Sir, the Chronivac is currently in Beta. This kind of thing is normal.” The man on the other side said in a thick Indian accent.
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“I am Michael.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Give me a moment to review your logs good sir.”
Pa waited for Michael to review his files.
“Sir, I am going to have to put you on hold, okay?”
“No, I-” Pa was cut off by the sound of elevator music playing over the phone.
Ten minutes passed. Pa rolled his eyes. At least some things about this world hadn’t changed. The elevator music cut off abruptly.
“Sir?”
“Yes?” Pa asked eagerly.
“Thank you for testing the Chronivac. We appreciate your feedback and have logged your data. We will fix it, resetting now.”
“Wait, what are you-”