Caleb 36 - Truth and Lies

"You think she could?" she asked hopefully.

"I think so," I said. "I tell you what: why not come back with us after you finish with your classes tonight? Jules can take a look and you could have some dinner with us. I promise not to let Josh get you drunk again."

She half smiled at that. "Poor Josh," she said. "He gets the blame for everything."

"That's because it's usually his fault," I said, grinning at her. "So, is that a yes?"

She nodded. "If you're sure it will be okay."

Just then I saw my next hypnotherapy 'patient' arrive.

"It will," I assured her. "Listen - my next consult is here, so I have to go. What time is your last class?"

"I finish at four thirty," she said.

"Perfect," I replied. "Meet me in the parking lot after?" She nodded. I smiled at her again and then went to get my next client.

Dana was waiting by my truck when I arrived there just after four thirty. Being the gentleman I am, I held the door for her as she climbed in before going around to the driver's side and getting in.

We were first to arrive home. Since it was quite a nice day, we sat out on the deck, with a soda each while we waited for the rest of the girls. Dana saw the hot tub.

"Wow," she said. "I didn't know you had a hot tub."

"Yep," I said. "It's a really nice way to de-stress. Feel free to bring a suit with you next time you're over and try it out."

She blushed, but didn't respond. Jules and the girls came out onto the deck and greeted us both.

Dana looked at Jules. "Caleb said you might be able to look at my laptop for me," she said. "It won't boot." She held out the offending device.

"Sure," said Jules, smiling at her and taking the machine. She headed into the house, taking the laptop with her.

"Dinner at six thirty," I yelled after her as she went. I knew that once she had gotten her nose into something, she would stay in her workshop all night.

Josh and Louise arrived home. Louise was delighted to see Dana, and for a while we all sat around, chatting. I then left them to it and went inside to make dinner.

Jules emerged to eat, and but immediately returned to her room once she had finished.

"How's it going?" I'd asked as she'd sat down at the table.

"There was some liquid damage," she'd replied. "Some corrosion on the board. I've cleaned it up, and there are a couple of small components I need to replace. Once that's done, I'll see if it powers up. Fortunately, none of the proprietary chips are corroded. That would be a problem, because you can't buy them. The only way to repair it then would be to buy either a donor board, or another machine that is broken. In both cases you have to hope that the problem with the donor machine isn't the same problem that you have on yours. I was close to being done with the board work. Another couple of caps to go on, and then I'll test it."

An hour and a half after dinner, Jules emerged, Dana's laptop in hand.

"It powers up," Jules said, "but I can't test it because I don't have your password. Do you want to power it up and log in? Then you can see if everything is okay. If you want, I can show you how to set up a cloud account so that all your work is backed up automatically. That way, if something happens to the machine, at least you won't lose all your work."

We were sitting in the living room, and Jules placed the machine onto the coffee table in front of Dana. Dana powered the machine up, and when it came to the login screen she typed in her password. The machine went straight to the desktop.

Dana squealed happily and threw her arms around Jules, who smiled and embraced the excited girl. Dana then realized what she had just done and pulled back guiltily.

"Sorry," she said. "I..."

Jules laughed. "It's fine," she said. "I'm glad I could fix it. Did you want me to help you set up a cloud account, to protect you work?"

Dana nodded.

Jules sat by her and helped her to set up the account, and then showed her how to make sure that all the files were kept on her local drive, but duplicated to the cloud whenever there was an internet connection.

"Put all your class work up there," said Jules, "and any other documents that you want to keep."

As she said that, Dana clicked on a documents folder. A window opened on the computer, and a number of files were shown, with their associated thumbnails. Dana squeaked in panic and went to try and delete a file, but instead of deleting it, she opened it.

It was a scan of her university ID - or at least the one that had been issued to her before she had managed to speak to the counsellor and make her preferences known. Staring at all of us from the screen was a picture of Dana. The hair was shorter, and she wasn't wearing makeup, but there could be no doubt that it was her - except, of course, that 'her' was 'him': David Reed.