Inai Ni Yami ((Within Darkness)) {{FINISHED}}

Inai Ni Yami ((An Original Story)) Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Daisuke sat at his desk, an "antique" - to the world of Shin-En anyway - electronic device sitting before him. The screen would've been described as "glossy" had it been new and un-battered, but now the one that sat on the desk looked almost ancient, it's screen filled with dust particles both on the outside and inside. The keyboard was still just barely intact, though it was obvious some of the keys had been switched around so that Q was now H and D was P. It probably didn't mean anything but a meager attempt someone before Daisuke had made at piecing together the computer. Either way, he felt fascinated.

Shin-En was not the place to have computers from the surface world because they always, always got destroyed on the way. Not just computers, really, but anything coming down from the surface world. The fact that he'd been able to find it intact in the first place was a miracle and it made Daisuke grateful to whomever had thrown it out to begin with because just as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure and the computer was definitely a treasure.

It only frustrated him that he couldn't hack into it with his mind as Eve had so effortlessly hacked into the radio stations of the surface world. He'd never told her before, but to actually hack into a surface world system was harder than she'd imagined. For one thing, their technology was more... archaic compared to that of Shin-En. That, and some of the security system's protecting the surface world technology was like cuneiform to Daisuke and other geniuses of Shin-En. That she'd so easily hacked into it one day while he'd been laboring through alien codes had left him feeling embarrassed and down graded. Especially when, after having her tracked by Takeyama - who so conveniently managed to share a room with her - he found that she knew absolutely nothing about the usual hacking he did on a day-to-day basis.

He could tell that Takeyama had wanted to laugh despite the straight face he kept, and when he'd appointed Eve as his apprentice, Daisuke wanted to laugh. He'd kept silent just like Takeyama and had gone on with the apprenticeship anyways, and it evidently had paid off the day of their "Exodus" from ShiroTech.

But that was all in the past, he told himself, looking back to the computer and searching for a power button. He'd remember reading an article on how most surface world technologies had a power button that looked like a circle with a line going through a cut off section of the top of the circle. Of course, words weren't always as helpful with descriptions, and in the end he found nothing.

After a while, Daisuke switched to just pressing any button until the machine turned on. Through that, he learned that there was a button hidden among buttons, it's key saying Alt but in the position it was, something told him it was something else. Something told him it was the power button, especially when, upon pressing it, a whirring began from within the computer. Daisuke couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. Finally! he wanted to shout. After all this time, he found what he'd been looking for, and the fact that the button was mixed up with the rest made him wonder whether or not the button mixing was intentional.

The black screen flashed once, and a moment later the logo of the computer showed up, along with a sign that said Windows XP. From what Daisuke knew, Windows XP was a sort of major computer company that most computers ran on. The logo for it was a simple box shape that was split into four flag shaped boxes, the center of each appearing to be lighter than the rest. Daisuke watched the load up screen for several more seconds.

Then he wanted to scream. How slow can this thing be?! Daisuke was so used to having the local interface loading up for him instantly so that when it took about a full minute for the computer to open, it felt like a century had passed for Daisuke. Then the Windows XP logo disappeared and a new screen popped up. A blue wallpaper with a little box in the center.