"I have one nerve left, and you're dancing on it with ice-skates on!" -- Anon Guest
It was supposed to be a five minute job. A simple reconfigure for someone new to this particular level of technology. It sounded simple on the request ticket. The first warning sign was his own pondering as to why such a nice old lady would have so many warning markers on her name and address.
Surely, it couldn't be that much trouble to reconfigure one app.
Rael would eventually learn not to think those words in that order. This was his first lesson.
The second sign that should have been a decent warning was the fact that her extant, visible technology was over a century out of date. The third was that none of her personal technology was wearable. The fourth was the complaint, "I can't make it do what the old one did."
"The old one" was an outmoded app that was scrubbed from use and prevented from operation, owing to its vulnerability to virii. Rael ran a complimentary check on her ancient systems and found them virulent. He informed her that she would be better off with a total system scrub and re-install.
Fifth warning. Her stating, "Oh no, dear. You just can't get any of the good programs any more." Further investigation revealed that half of her virii were "the good programs". She did not accept that they were virii and insisted they helped her ancient rig 'run properly'.
Analysis, investigation, and some heavy detective work allowed him to divine the functions she wanted and he was ready to supply a new, updated system that would act almost exactly like her old one.
"I can't keep updating everything, dear," she insisted. "Not this often. I've barely got used to this lot."
Now he understood all the warning markers. He thought seriously about saying, Ma'am. I have one nerve left, and you're dancing on it with ice skates. Even though she was a nice old lady, she was also a nice old lady in her five hundreds with an estimated lifespan of nine hundred. "The good news," he said, "is that a museum would pay you for this system." A museum, and possibly a technological answer to the CDC, under the same theorem that lead to immunologists studying the smallpox virus. There was a large volume of people who would pay for this rig, if only to keep it air-gapped and removed from the greater population of uninfected technology. "You could easily pay for a new system, and I can teach you everything you need to know about running it."
"That's what the last fellow said. His great-grand-kiddies sometimes stop by. They're so nice..."
Rael pondered spending the rest of his lifetime teaching this nice old lady how to bring up her shows and tunes. On one hand - virus scanning hell. On the other - she made some very nice and borderline illegal[1] cakes. Which tipped the scales. Time plus cakes always tipped his scales.
"I can even help you find the model that's right for you," he offered.
[1] Because sugar is a controlled substance, according to the rights and responsibilities of the Cogniscent Rights Committee. As pure calories, it can't supply any portion of a cogniscent's complete nutritional profile.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / jordanrusev]
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