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Sometime in 2021 (Parts I & II)   Fanfiction   Jessica | 11/4/2013  log in to like post  3

updated11/4/2013
A story about Pete, who discovers an old floppy disc with digital DNA and resurrects Creatures in a modern world. By Eprillios.

Written by Eprillios for the Creatures Community Spirit Festival 2013

PART 1

This was originally posted at Creatures Caves on 20 December, 2010.

Sometime on a weekend of 2021, a boy called Pete found an odd looking square disk along with a vintage computer in the attic of his Grandfather’s house. He couldn't see the label, because it was marked with “Damaged”.

After thinking about what it was, he took it to his father, which was a computer scientist. When Pete was back at home, he immediately asked his father. His father told him that it was a floppy disk and that the data on it may be unreadable these days, but that he could check if some data was recoverable the next day. Pete was disappointed, but at the same time he couldn't wait. At the end of the day he went to bed.

On Sunday, he was surprisingly enough already awake in the early morning. His mother made breakfast, but that didn't bother him. His father found a floppy disk drive that could be used to read the floppy disk. Father inserted the floppy in the drive. It began spinning, and at the same time a message appeared on the screen. “Reading disk, please wait a moment...”, said the message. After a few seconds the drive was making some weird sounds, and then this appeared on the screen:

Reading complete, nonfatal errors occurred. Disk name: Creatures Digital DNA.

“Well, that sounds good”, said Pete’s father.

PART 2

After that Pete’s father began to investigate the files. “I assume it’s some very primitive form of artificial life. I don’t know the exact origins of the files, but maybe Grandfather knows more about it.’’, said Father. “Can’t you just open the files or something?”, asked Pete. Father then looked a bit uncertain. “I’m not sure if these files are malicious or not, but I could try to open them in a safe sandboxed environment.’’ Pete immediately smiled, but one thing was still bugging him. “But are these errors harmless?” “I’m sure that they are harmless. That artificial life isn't advanced anyway. What could possibly be wrong with it?’’, Father responded.

Father hesitatingly clicked on “Open”, despite compatibility and security warnings. At that moment the computer’s fans were spinning like crazy. Various windows and bars were flashing on the screen. Father gulped, and Pete didn't know what to expect. And then the moment has come. “Eem foo” were the sounds made by the creature that was now on the screen. “You see, nothing that special. Shall I close and delete everything?”, said Father. “No!, don’t do that!”, Pete shouted panicked. “Are you sure? I need to do something else, but if you can assure me that you won’t do anything wrong I can leave you alone. Agreed?” “I promise, I promise!”, Pete said. “All right then.”, Father said as he went downstairs.

Pete played a bit with the creature, and discovered that the creature was bored. “Maybe he needs a friend?”, Pete thought. He browsed through the other files on the disk, and clicked on one of them. However, the computer warned:

Warning: This file is corrupted. To open this file, the sandboxed environment must be disabled. Do you want to continue?

Pete didn’t know what to do. He felt sorry for the creature he was playing with, but at the same time he was afraid Father would become upset. He closed his eyes and pressed on one of the buttons, so he wasn't seeing what he was doing. The disk began to spin again, and at the same moment Father came to look how everything was going. Pete was shocked. “Is everything going well?”, Father asked. “I guess so…”, Pete said, while pretending he wasn't hiding something.

In the meantime, various processes in the computer were doing its job. Another creature appeared, but Pete and Father didn't notice it. He looked differently than the other creature. A lot meaner, to be more exact. But, the new creature warped quickly to somewhere else and was nowhere to be seen after that.

To be continued…

Feel free to send comments and feedback to eprillios (at) outlook.com.

 
 
eprillios | 11/9/2013  log in to like post

Man, the beginning of the story is surprisingly similar to the one of Lis Morris's A Switch in Time, which is set in 2020. This wasn't my intention, because I haven't seen her story before. [nquestion]


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