Over the next week, during my off hours and breaks, I spent all of my time buying parts and figuring out how to make a modern version of the old server. With my AI Amanda's invaluable help, and a few well-timed suggestions on the System's part, I finally managed to build a modern replica of my father's old computer.

“Now that is a thing of beauty.” I said and sat back to compare the two servers. It wasn't surprising at all that the new version was barely a one foot square block, instead of the two foot by two foot by three foot monstrosity of the old one. I'd pretty much removed the internal copper wires and replaced it all with fiber-optic cables.

Modern computer chips were only an eighth of the size of the old ones, and had nearly a hundred times the processing capacity. Hooked into circuit boards that were just as compact, the chips increased the total capability exponentially. Power converters and battery life had made leaps and bounds over the last hundred years. Since humanity as a whole was so deep underground, we had easy access to much more valuable metals that were needed for technology to become both faster and smaller.

I spent more Points on this computer server than everything I'd ever spent in my whole life up to this point. The parts that I couldn't buy right away I built from scratch; and in some cases, even harvested the components I needed from various things in my apartment. Rusty even volunteered one of his microprocessors so I wouldn't have to wait a week for the one I ordered to come in on the next delivery.

“Do you think it's time?” I asked Amanda and Rusty.

“No.” Amanda said and laughed. Rusty barked and wagged his tail. I pat his head and looked at the new server.

“Well... here goes everything.” I said and flipped the power switch. I waited for a second to hear it starting up, and nothing happened. I frowned and turned the switch off, then on again. “What the hell?” I said, and looked at the schematics. “Everything looks fine!” I flicked the switch again, and then started to panic a little. “I was so careful! I did everything right!”

“Jack.” Amanda said.

“Why isn't it working?!?” I asked, and picked up my tools.

“Jack!”

“Weeks of painstakingly duplicating every possible function on every component, and it doesn't work!” I said and started to unbolt the cover. “What a waste of-”

“JACK!” Amanda yelled.

“WHAT?!?” I yelled back.

“You should probably hook the power up to it first, before you try taking it apart for no reason.”

“Wait, what?”

Rusty walked over to the server and pointed his paw at the cord that stuck out of the back. I leaned over and looked at it, and it wasn't seated into the connector like it was supposed to be.

“Dammit! I forgot that I didn't connect it because I didn't want power surges!” I said and started to berate myself for being so stupid.

“JACK!”

“WHAAAAT?” I yelled again.

“It's still not plugged in.” Amanda said and laughed. I reached down and slipped the cord into the power converter, and right away the internal lights lit up.

“What a relief.” I said, then flipped the switch. The fans and cooling system kicked in immediately, and the server made that soft purring sound that meant everything was running perfectly. “Yes!” I said and picked Rusty up and threw him into the air. He barked and I caught him, gave him a hug, and put him down.

“Now's the tedious part.” I said and hooked up the old server to a custom-made communications port and attached it to the new server. “Amanda? Get ready. Don't open any of the files. Just copy it all directly. Don't ignore the junk files, either.”

“Jack, there's over a hundred thousand junk files!” Amanda said as she browsed through the old server's storage. “Why do you want to keep them all? They'll only slow the computer down.”

“I don't know what the programs on this thing can access.” I said. “If even one of those junk files has a reference number attached to it...”

“Can I at least compress them?” Amanda asked. “There's more junk than anything else.”

“Only 50%.” I said. “Any more than that, and we start sacrificing processing power for compression settings.”

Amanda laughed. “Jack, you've got almost as much processing power here as the System has in it's main memory banks.”

I laughed. “I doubt that.” I said and looked at the dummy terminal I had set up to monitor the transfer. “It's looking good.”

“Of course it does.” Amanda said. “I'm doing it.”

I snorted a laugh and sat back to wait. Even with fiber-optic cables connecting everything, it still took time to copy all those files from one machine to the other. I could have done the filing and sorting myself, but I'd been run ragged at work for the last week and my mind just wasn't into doing drudgery work today.

I kept an eye on the transfer, but I also thought about what it was going to be like. What kind of program had my great-great-grandfather written that had caught the attention of a good portion of humanity? I asked myself, and wondered if it could still be applicable today, especially with the way VR could be fully immersible. It took almost an hour to get everything copied, and Amanda told me when she'd placed the last file on the new server.

“That's it, Jack.” Amanda said. “I even copied the FAT tables, and made sure to reformat them to reflect the new file sizes.”

“You're the best, Amanda.” I said and flexed my fingers. I did a directory on the main drive of the server and found the executable for the program. I didn't run it right away, though. “Amanda? How many batch files did you find?”

“Eight-hundred and seventy-two.” Amanda said right away.

“How many in the main directory?”

“Twenty-six.”

“I assume you scanned them?”

“Of course I did, Jack. I had to make sure they were virus free and had valid references.”

I nodded and brought up the list of batch files.

another_day.bat

bring_it.bat

can_do.bat

down_the_hatch.bat

everything_is_fine.bat

forget_about_it.bat

give_it_to_me.bat

have_it_your_way.bat

in_too_deep.bat

just_kidding.bat

know_it_all.bat

lost_my_mind.bat

make_it_quick.bat

not_now.bat

open_sesame.bat

prepare_to_die.bat

quest_no_more.bat

resistance.bat

strange_happenings.bat

this_is_the_end.bat

undone.bat

very_fast.bat

we_come_in_pieces.bat

xenophopia.bat

you_are_done.bat

zulu_zulu_zulu.bat

“What the hell are they for?” I asked out loud and opened the first one in the default text editor.

Another Day Batch File

M000: L.I.F.E.Begins.exe command line: /reset:zero /life:3000 /feedback:no /load:day_trip.exe

M001:you_are_done.bat /undo:command line /clear:loaded files

“That didn't help me much.” I said. “It tells me what it does, but not what it is.”

“There's no info or help files anywhere on the server, Jack.” Amanda said.

“There wouldn't be.” I said and sighed. “My father hated writing down anything that wasn't essential.”

I looked through the other batch files, and they all had similar settings and loaded similar files. The values changed slightly and the referenced files were different, but they were essentially the same files.

“So, as far as we know, this thing is completely intact.” I said.

“Yes, Jack.” Amanda said. “Each and every file referenced is present and accounted for.”

“And the junk files?”

“Just junk.” Amanda said. “No references at all in anything on the server.”

“That doesn't sound like my father.” I said. “Amanda, will the program run without the batch files?”

“It'll run, but whether it does anything without the extra loaded files or set parameters is another story.”

“I'm tempted to run the batch file, just to see what happens, but I don't want it to affect the main program without looking at it first.” I said.

“It's a huge file, but...”

“...but what?”

“If I clear out a lot of my superfluous cached files, I might be able to load it into the virtual space.”

“You're kidding!” I said and stood up. “Can your buffers handle that much information?”

“There's only one way to find out.” Amanda said and the door to my virtual work room opened. I slipped off my normal clothing and quickly pulled on my work unitard, and went into the room. The chair came up out of the floor and engulfed me once again as it made all the proper connections. I sank into darkness and the virtual reality world formed before my eyes.

“Hi, Jack!” Amanda said as I materialized in front of her, and she held her arms open wide. I rolled my eyes at her as I stepped close, and she wrapped her arms around me. “It's so nice to feel you again!”

I groaned at her choice of words, and she laughed.

“Jack! Can you ravage me again?”

“Do I have to?”

“I need administrator access to purge the stored files.”

“Fine.” I said and sighed, and she giggled as I grabbed her breasts. “You don't have to enjoy that so much.” I said as I massaged her chest and turned her breasts 90 degrees, which didn't change their shape at all, and opened the access port to her virtual code. I fiddled with her code to get to the right spot, then saw exactly how many files she was storing in her virtual cache.

“You should have asked me to do this a while ago.” I said, and selected the six-thousand files she had amassed since the last time I had purged her.

“You've been a little busy.” Amanda said and laughed.

I laughed, too; then I shook my head, gave her my permission to purge, and she dumped all of the garbage files she had collected. A large recycle bin appeared and filled up with the excess data, then disappeared when it was full.

“Ohhh, Jack.” Amanda moaned as I closed her access port and groped her chest again.

“Amanda.” I said, a little sternly.

“I'm just teasing you.” Amanda said and smiled. “You don't come in here and just play with me like you used to.”

“That's because I'm not sixteen anymore.” I said, but then I looked at her. She was the caricature of the ideal woman that I thought I wanted when I was a kid, and it was my fault that she was stuck this way. I couldn't go in and change her code now, because then it would change who she was; and despite the way she acted sometimes, she'd been there for me for almost 27 years. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her to take her into a hug.

“J-Jack?”

“Thank you, Amanda.” I said to her, and let her out of the hug.

“For what? Teasing you or for complaining?”

“For being you.” I said, and kissed her cheek. Her face flushed red and she dropped her head slightly, and I smiled. She could play bashful really well, so I put a hand under her chin and she looked at me. “Can you load the main program for me?” I asked her in a soft voice.

“R-right away!” Amanda said. She couldn't afford to split herself when she ran programs in buffer mode, so her virtual body dissolved and a large vidscreen popped up. “Here we go.”

Code started to fly past the screen as she brought the entire program into the virtual space. Normally I'd be in 3D movement mode during this part, but I didn't want to do that for the first time. It was a classic program, so I wanted to see it the classic way first. I watched the bar at the bottom as it loaded and when it reached the end, nothing happened.

“Amanda?”

“Just... just a second...” Amanda said, and it sounded like she was struggling with something. “Dammit!”

SYSTEM CALIBRATION FAILURE

Reasons: Keyfile not found.

“Goddammit, DAD!” I yelled at the virtual screen. “Wasn't it hard enough to get the blasted thing unlocked in the first place?!?”