Greg panicked, his brother had been disassembled by the freshman class. He rang up his dad, trying to find his brother’s pieces in the bins of the shop. Each ring, reminding him how bad he messed up. Jeff could be dead and it would be all his fault for leaving him alone. He found a box of electronics and another of spare parts but he had no way of telling which could be Jeff.
“Greg, why’re you calling?” Greg sighed in relief as his dad picked up the phone.
“Dad, it's an emergency. You need to come down to the school with the Chronivac right now.”
“Greg, calm down and explain what’s happening. I’m getting Jeff’s laptop right now and I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“I can’t be calm right now. They disassembled Jeff!” Greg yelled at his phone.
“What?” more urgency filled Bill as he rushed to the Chronivac. He pulled up Jeff’s profile on the program trying to see what was happening. On his son’s status, the program had marked him as “inactive”. This really was a bad emergency.
The program couldn’t even render what his current form looked like. The error message read “Error 2105 Too many parts to render”. He found a tab on Jeff’s profile called thought tracker. Bill felt sick reading Jeff’s thoughts as he was disassembled. The pain and panic that his son went through, the last message was “Oh no! I wonder if the controller is my brain. I hope they don't…” At least this told him that as long as they could find his main controller, Jeff would still be with them.
“Greg, do you have his parts?”
“No, they’re all mixed with everything else in the shop.” Bill tried to think about what he could do. Right now he just needed to make sure that his son was still alive. He clicked the render filter, getting the program to only render his brain.
“Try to find his brain. The black box main controller. It should be at the top of one of the bins”
Greg looked through the electronics bin trying to find a black box.
“Okay dad I found it. It’s pretty beaten up though. I know how to fix it though.” Greg carefully opened it back up. The controller looked like someone tried to rummage through the circuit boards inside, the boards just messily shoved back in. At least all of the circuit boards looked like they were in there.
“Greg, don't rush this, you need to be careful.” He watched the render of the black box as it was opened up, and the circuit boards were lifted up and carefully placed down. Greg realigned the circuit boards, making sure that everything was attached properly, the idea that if his brother was a human right now, he’d be doing brain surgery nagged at the back of his mind. As everything fit together and snapped back into place, Greg felt another bit of relief.
“Okay dad, I think everything’s back.” Greg felt the black box in his hand. Everything that made up who his brother was inside there.
“Try to find a radio and hook it up to the controller and a battery, we need to get Jeff online.” Greg looked around trying to find all the parts he needed. He placed the radio and a volt generator on top of the table, attaching the brain’s harnesses to the radio first. He adjusted the generator to the right setting to make sure he didn’t fry Jeff. He carefully plugged the controller into the generator.
"I'm about to plug it in." Bill looked back at the thought tracker tab. "...Take it out," Jeff's thought finished. Greg had done it.
"Greg what did you do?" Greg heard Jeff's voice from the radio. Greg slumped down on the floor, sighing in relief. Jeff was still alive.