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Alex worked on his computers while Jessica went to town. The backups were all restored, now it was time to see what was in them. How'd I do this? Used to code. Think. He resumed his snooze position. Feet up on the desk, eyes closed. Relax. No good. Google. For what? He'd somehow gotten the computers reloaded with no help. Was that as much muscle memory as driving? That was easy enough. No. Where's my notes? Not many. Couple of binders. What's in here? Lines of what looked like... Used the mouse for everything. All I typed was passwords. Open a terminal window. That's what that thing is. Click the little black box in the toolbar. There were only three. One was the web browser. Another the folder for the home directory. Clicking the black one opened up a big black box. Cursor blinking in the corner. OK, that I remember. From somewhere. Memories comin' in. Typing. A lot of typing. Didn't have mice and cartoons to click, way back. Typed in commands on a screen like that. Black with green letters usually. Look at the notes again. By the time Jessica returned he was logged in to a shell. Listing files. The backups were in a directory with his name. He recognized some of them. Or seemed to. Jessica coming in. "How's it going?" Lean over and kiss him. "Never mind. You look happy enough I can see. That looks like your screen from your old job." "Yeah. It's coming back." "You wrote code a lot." she said. "Even though Doug was the lead developer, you were as good a coder as he is. You two were still writing a lot when I came there." "Maybe it'll come back. I hope so. How was your day?" "Productive. I talked to Kasey and she recommended a realtor that may be able to find what you want. And we have a date with Dr. McFarland. He's very interested in meeting you." "Who's Dr. McFarland? The rebel?" "The same. I set up a meeting for Friday morning. I've got copies of your records, we'll see what he comes up with." "Sounds good. "Great. I'll get us some lunch."
"You want to work some more, or look at properties?" Jessica asked after lunch. "Nah, I need a break. I'll probably get frustrated if things aren't going fast enough." Jessica picked up a realtor's catalog. Fancy, high-dollar print job. Wonder how much it costs to do that. Everybody just uses the Internet. Advertising I guess. They put racks of them in the lobbies of banks and stores. "Probably faster to use the web." she said, laying it down beside the computer. "Probably. Who is it? Check the website." "Dallas Morgan. There's the website on the cover." It was a typical realtor website. They usually have a map showing the locations of their listings. There. Little markers, showing the prices. Zoom in and see a picture. Standard stuff. Zoom out a little. Little more. So Jonesboro just a small spot in the center. There's a few out in the country. "There we are. Trumann. What's Bay?" "It's a small town, used to be just a wide spot in the road as they say. It's grown quite a bit in recent year, and it's almost touching Jonesboro now. They'll probably try to annex it at some point. I don't know how that will go. People live in Trumann or Bay because they want to be close to Jonesboro, but not in it." "Somewhere a little further out for sure." Alex said. "What's out here?" Move the pointer over a little, swish it around. "Farmland mostly. Sparsely populated, we used to go on long drives out there, just driving and looking at the fields. You want to go look it over? Maybe tomorrow?" "What's tomorrow... Thursday. Yeah, that'll do. I need to get out more, get started driving. Do I still have a driver's license?" "Beats me." Jessica said. "It's with your bank cards and other things. Hang on." She brought the small card case he had used. Pulled it out, looked at it. "You're in luck. Still a couple of years. They started issuing them for six years a while back." "Lucky for sure. I'd hate to have to take a driving test in this condition." |
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