Digital Sam
A story by Hazel
Digital Sam
Prologue, Me
Hi, My name is Alex, I’m 16, I’m not that tall but also not that short, I always wear baggy clothes I’m not really social, honestly understanding peoples is kinda hard, but I have some nice friends that I can count on. i live in Winder, in Georgia in a small house in your typical American neighborhood with my family. My 6 year old bother always destroys things and I get accused because “he’s too young”, my older sister loves to picture her entire life in social media, I don’t know how she has so many followers, she’s really annoying. My dad is really cool, he is your typical dad, loves barbecues, spending time on the tv, he tells the best dad jokes and he works at an office in Atlanta he’s pretty lazy at home, especially on weekends. My mom brings order in the house, my dad’s the cool parent and my mom’s the strict one. A pretty normal life, well everything changed when I broke my precious laptop.
Chapter 1, so long old friend.
I’m sitting here, in front of the corpse of what used to be my laptop 5 minutes ago, i tried everything in my power to get it working with no luck. i look at my reflection on the screen of what used to be my entire online life. i walk on the living room with the laptop remains and find my dad laying on the couch watching football on the family tv.
My mom, that heard the conversation, replies from the kitchen:
Dad it’s not the time for a joke. I cannot live without my computer. You have some money now, if you want a new computer buy one!
I got in my room and opened my box with my money savings. I was supposed to save to go see my British online friend. I take the box and prepare to leave
I then leave the house and head off to the garage sale. After a walk in the neighborhood I finally arrive, there’s a ton of stuff there! Old toys, books, even an old fat tv like the ones we had when I was a kid.
I head over a table filled with old computers and consoles.
I thank her and start searching in the table, most of the stuff on here are around 20 years old. i see a pc tower only to be deceived by the shiny windows XP sticker, too old… Among some fat laptops from the early 2000’s and some obscure tv boxes I find a laptop that looks somewhat new, it’s slim and doesn’t look like it’s from 20 years ago, exactly what i’m looking for! I open and I see a message written in all caps on a post-it note next to the touch pad that says: Never open VirtualFriendSam.exe. I don’t quite pay attention to it and yell to my neighbor:
She hands the letter and I put it in my pocket. I leave the garage sale happy with my new laptop.
Chapter 2, hello new friend!
I get home and i go directly into my room. i open the letter that was in my pocket. Inside there is two notes. One is labeled read me now and the other one is labeled read me if you screwed up. Confused, I open the first one, It reads:
I didn’t paid much attention to it and opened my new laptop as I was so excited, I plug it in and press the power button. see the screen light up, then go to a login screen with the said two sessions. I open the right one. I am greeted with the regular windows desktop, but strangely the icon of that program referred In the note is present on the desktop. the icon is one of a boy waving at me. i drag it in the trash but I get an error saying: “you can’t throw away your friend.” Confused, I pass it on and start installing my things. I got to the point where I had much of my old stuff onto my new pc. i played some Minecraft and called my friends, everything was back to normal. happy. I went to sleep after that long day.
But I could not sleep. somehow that program was messing with my emotions, i think about the letter once again, why would the previous owner wants so much to not open that program? if it’s a friend, it cannot go wrong right? Seeing that I could not sleep I woke up and turned on the laptop. strangely it logged me into the other session, The one of the previous owner. I got greeted by a desktop filled with icons, I also see a couch and some old fast food drinks in the desktop. Also the wallpaper had litter spilled on the taskbar, interesting wallpaper choice. I could recognize some programs like discord on here, and also that famous program that was preventing me to sleep. It was at the corner of the desktop on a mess of icons. I look at it, the boy is still waving at me. It has brown hair and seems joyful. I think for a second, I need to sleep, I know I will not be able to sleep if I ignore it, so I take my courage and double click on the icon.
Chapter 3, I meet Sam.
I see the boy appear sitting on the couch, but He’s not like the icon at all, he has green hair, a hoodie of the brand monster, gray sweatpants and pink worn out slippers. He’s looking at me.
Confused as well, I say:
I then turned off the display and went back to sleep.
Chapter 4, A chaotic day.
I am woken up by my phone alarm, i get out of my bed, and I remember what happened during the night, was It a dream? I go on the laptop and see everything, except Sam, the couch is still there, but sam is nowhere to be seen. I was probably dreaming. I dress up, get out of my room and head up to the kitchen, my sister is there eating some cereals while scrolling and typing on her phone, I have no idea how she can do both things as the same time. I grab milk, make myself a bowl of cereals.
I think for a second, was sam real? It can’t be…
Annoyed, I eat the rest of my cereals and leave the kitchen.
I get back to my room, take my bag and my phone, then go back down and leave the house slamming the door behind me.
The bus then comes to my street, I get in and sit next to my best friend James, we know each other since kindergarten.
We then started to discuss about random things like we are used to…
When the bus arrived we enter the school, I left my phone in my locker and got in my class. my class has Chromebooks, they’re basically school laptops, each student has one, I grabbed mine and got on my desk, The teacher then enters the class and said:
I open chrome, and I think my brain shut down for a second, he was there, sitting on the Google search bar, Sam.
Sam appeared again, I grabbed my headphones pretending to listen to music and typed on the searched bar:
I opened my math exercise and typed:
Sam then jumped into the wifi icon and disappeared, and ended up on the school router.
He traveled again and ended up on the desktop of the teacher’s computer.
What is he doing? He’s gonna get me in trouble! Sam then traveled back on the router and this time ended up on the computer on the teacher’s room, he opened the notes folder, he found Alex’s name and started to increase the notes a bit, when the worst happened.
Sam quickly saved the document and jumped on the wifi icon and left, when he got back to Alex’s Chromebook and said:
Then the principal entered the class and said angrily
I followed the principal into his office
Sam was listening on the principal’s computer and said:
I left the office and got back at my desk, Sam was there on my Chromebook, I typed on the search bar: “sorry”. we looked at each other for a second then he sat on the menu bar and said:
Sam paused for a second then said:
Chapter 5, the truth.
I was stopped by the bell ringing, it was time to eat lunch.
Chapter 6, lunch and funsies
I got in the canteen, got a meal, sat with James and started talking:
I pulled my phone and unlocked it, sam was hiding behind the dock,
Sam unhid from behind the dock
I then told James how everything happened, from the computer to the origin of sam and the little misadventure this morning.
Mady is a new guy in our school, and I really like him, but you know I’m too shy to talk to him.
Sam got onto James phone, he then airdropped him to Mady’s phone… and strangely he accepted, sam then appeared on many’s phone and said:
He waved at me and smiled, I waved back and got up to say hi,
Mady is a boy that seems to be around 16, he is not that tall, has ginger hair that goes to his neck. He also have two eyes of the different color, the left one blue and the right one green. He has a green hoodie, old jeans and converses that have definitely seen the last decade. He walks to our table and sits next to me.
Alex then airdrops Sam onto my phone. So sam, where exactly are you from? Asks James.
Sam then tells everything, from the game developers, to Dan, to how I found him…
The bell then rings, lunch break is over,
I put my phone in my locker and I see sam disappear through the wifi icon.
Chapter 8, the photos.
When I get back in class, I find that no Chromebooks are there, then I remembered this afternoon is about English and our English teacher doesn’t like using them. She enters the class and goes at her desk, the lesson is about to start and I have no idea where sam is.
I directly walk towards James as we are in the same class, but i got a tap on my elbow, it’s Mady.
I agree and we start studying.
I smile and continue studying… The end of the lesson then came, we all grabbed our things. Mady tapped on my elbow and said:
We got to our lockers and I grabbed my phone, sam was sleeping on the Lock Screen
We go on the school bus and I sit with Mady.
We get out of the bus at Mady’s house, it’s not that close from where I live actually… We open the door, take off our shoes we go to his room.
we enter Mady’s room and it looks really modern, there’s a lot of modern tech in here, like a giant tv, a PS5, and it’s super clean especially compared to the disaster I have as a room. Mady goes in front of his laptop, it looks thin and modern, like the rest of his things. He opens it and immediately Sam says on my phone:
Sam then jumps into the settings app on the phone and disappears, a pairing message appears on Mady’s laptop, along with Sam. Mady looks confused and interested at the same time. Sam then opens the mail application by tapping on the taskbar icon with his foot, the window opens, and he jumps on the compose button.
Mady enters the address, and Sam then jumps onto the mail field, becoming an attachment.
Mady presses the send button, the computer plays a whoosh sound… Sam has been sent.
Chapter 9, Sam’s Adventure
Sam feels like if he’s stretched, then put back to normal, he then appears to be in a giant envelope traveling in some digital tube with other files and data, it’s blue and made out of ones and zeroes, his hair floats in the wind.
Sam then bursts out of a giant tunnel from a enormous globe covered in holes with numbers labeled on top of them seemingly being ip addresses, and it’s all made of the similar ones of zeroes, and a ton of files and envelopes are flying everywhere, some are going in holes, some comes out of them, some holes are bigger, with more things flowing in and out.
The envelope appears to know its destination, it flies around the giant globe and then enters one of the bigger holes, it has the label “Google Mail Services”, he ends up in a giant tube filled with dozens of envelopes, sam takes one and opens it, there’s a document saying “company confidential” on red, with payment sheets.
Sam then comes out of the big hole to a spherical room, covered in small holes, letters are going in and out of those holes, mostly to go go on other holes, sam enters one of the holes and is greeted by a tunnel of a similar size to the one he first took, then the same stretching feeling appears again. He has arrived to his destination.
A notification appears on the top left of a desktop: New Mail. Sam peeks his head out of it.
Sam jumps out of the notification to on a unfamiliar desktop interface, the bottom rows of icons are on a transparent bar on the bottom of the screen, the folders scattered on the desktop are blue instead of the usual yellow, the wifi and time are the top left bar stretching along the top of the screen and among them the name Gabriel appears. The other side of the screen appears to be the bed of pretty messy room, with dirty laundry and schoolwork everywhere, the only light is the one of the screen and no one’s there.
Sam starts to look at some folders, until he finds one labeled “photos”. He hits it twice and a window opens, sam then starts searching through the lots of different folders and photos for the ones of Mady, he quickly finds a folder with his name. He opens it to find lots of pictures, but they are not the ones she’s searching for, instead they appear to be kissing and being happy on them.
Suddenly the door opens. Sam hides behind the window.
A tired looking teenager enters the room, sits on his bed and takes the computer on his lap.
He starts looking at the pictures, sam still being hidden behind the window, sees him press Keys on the keyboard, and a folder suddenly appears on the desktop labeled “mady hidden”. He takes the folder. The teenager then closes the open window. Revealing sam and making him fall onto the icon dock, he hides the folder on his back.
Chapter 10, Sam meets Gabriel
The teenager sits there watching Sam, Confused.
The door opens.
Sam is frozen in place, it’s him. Dan.
Chapter 11, we meet again.
Dan looks at the computer, confused.
Dan sits on the bed in front of the computer.
Sam then jumps on the mail icon on the dock without, and sends himself as a reply to the mail he was sent in, taking the folder with him. Dan sits there, the desktop being empty.
A notification appears on Mady’s computer, then Sam appeared, he jumped onto the dock and showed the folder to Mady
We say goodbye to mady then head home.
After saying goodbye to James, I finally arrive in front of my house, my dad is mowing the grass.
I enter inside the house preparing myself for the worst.
Chapter 12, Disconnected
When I enter, I see my mom in the living room, she doesn’t look very happy.
My mom shows her hand, she wants the phone and she won’t change her mind. as this day haven’t been worse enough, I now go in my room without any way to speak to sam, as she also removed my tablet and my console.
I lay in my bed thinking of a way to speak to him. I could turn on the tv, but my mom took the power cable. I see the room light flicker,
I continue watching the light flicker, it’s turning on and off randomly, there seems to be some kind of pattern. Then it strikes me, it’s morse code! I studied that at school a while ago and I still have a paper with the translations, I dig through my homework binder and find the paper in question, I sit on my bed and look at the lamp.
It’s sam. He wants me to turn the radio on. i go to old hi-fi system that belonged to my dad, it plays almost everything, and it’s too heavy for my mom to take. I turn it on, take some headphones and turn the system on.
Chapter 13, the evening.
I then hear my mom shout that the dinner is ready.
I go to eat, a while after I come back to my room, and put the headphones back
I then brushed my teeth, took a shower and got myself a well deserved sleep after this long day.
To be continued… |
Keep Quarking...