Voice no longer as stern as it had been when he scolded his daughter, Theodor Blythe carried the girl out of his office, explaining as he did, "You know you should not be playing in here. Especially when I have to bring work home," and setting her down, he leaned down, gave a kiss, and gentle nudge, and instructed her, "Go play before bedtime."
Go play was not what Felicity wanted to do. She wanted to use daddy's computer, as what was on the screen was important, a game her mind insisted she was playing. Looking back at the office, watching as the door swung shut, she tried to figure out how to get her way. Toying with the idea of having herself a tantrum, throwing herself on the floor and starting to carry on, she understood daddy wouldn't be happy with her behaviour, and it would also upset mommy. Stomped down the hall, pretending to be a dangerous predator, she entered her room, and forgetting the Chronivac for the moment, she picked up a plush bat she called Mr Alan and crooned, "You'd never tell me I can't do sum-thing."
Returning to his desk, Theodor sat down and peered at the computer screen. The computer programme he was sure he'd been working on before he'd been called away for a phone call still pulled up, he stared blankly at it. Thinking something was off about it, unaware reality was being rewritten and the programme he originally had been working on had been swapped out, Mr Blythe tapped out a series of instructions. The information on the screen, his daughter's profile, vanishing, he pulled up a black dialogue box and began typing in command codes.
As the white letters filled up the box, his mind filled in with new memories as he recalled receiving the Chronivac from a co-worker. Asked to see what he could do with it, he recalled how the colleague, who hated being called William, or any variation of his first name, and insisted everyone call him Lümburg, or, Mr Lümburg, had explained how he'd gotten the disk and emitter in the mail from some company he didn't recognise, but, so far as he could tell, the programme was faulty. Theodor, saying he'd see what he could do, and not making any promises, had placed the items in his attaché case, but, busy with a large project for Datafirm, the computer company he was employed with, he hadn't gotten the chance to look at them until the end of the week.
Now, Friday, the work week ended, and looking forward to plans for weekend, he figured he might take a quick peek. Watching as data scrolled and whizzed past, able to read every bit of it, no matter how rapidly it flashed by, he soon was able to intuit how the programme claimed it could alter people and the world around them. Seeing there were bugs in the software programme, such as how it couldn't handle if too many changes were inputted at once, or too many alterations to reality were made, which he discovered could lead to a cascade failure, he leaned back.
"What kind of programme is this?" he wondered
It all seemed to him rather far-fetched. So far as he knew, the only way a computer programme could affect the world around it was if it somehow altered the digital landscape, such as if new information was inputted, and a person's record changed from, say, they being a good investment to suddenly they were viewed as risky; or a person who had a criminal record suddenly having the record expunged, or any number of scenarios he saw as good, bad, mediocre, or falling somewhere in the grey. Tempted to close the back-door dialogue box and see if the Chronivac could do what it claimed, Theodor was leery of it, especially when he considered the issues he was seeing. Leaning forward to shut down the programme, he reclined back in his chair, thinking. Fixing a number of the issues he saw might be possible, but it would be time consuming. In addition, he didn't know what other problems might be generated if he went snooping around.
“I could send the programme into a loop which might permanently crash it,” he thought.
Not sure if he should bother tinkering with it, Theodor considered he might simply return the software and hardware to his co-worker, with the simple warning of being careful. "After I explain there's nothing I can really do with it without damaging the programme," he mused out loud.
Finger tapping on the office chair’s armrest, he weighed his options. On the one hand, he wanted to test the Chronivac, see what it could do. Yet, at the same time, something whispered he ought to leave it alone, return it to Lümburg with an express warning about what he had. Mulling these over, he also considered there being the possibility he might try to fix a number of the issues he saw within the software coding. Seeing these were his options, and no clear answer, Theodor ejected the disk, put it back in its jewel case, put it and the emitter, which he hadn't hooked up yet, in one of the drawers of his desk, locked the drawer, shut down his computer, stood, and decided he'd worry about it either tomorrow, after the outing planned with his wife and daughter, or in the coming week.