Chapter Text
Jacob scrolled through the code he had retrieved off the supposedly haunted memory stick. It was a common trojan, but updated to work against the MillDon smart house. Well, MillDonn smart houses that didn’t have Jacob’s patches.
He had done the patches on a whim- just because he could. After he had developed his own hack against the smart house software, it was easy to make a patch to prevent it. He couldn’t not apply it to some houses. He was glad he did or it would have been both Billy and Mikey being tortured.
The thing that really made him angry was that the hack was clearly based on Jacob’s work- or Hax0rK1ng’s work that he had uploaded to the board. He had only meant to show he was the best, but now what he had done had caused a little boy immeasurable trauma and Jacob was responsible. At least what he feared the worst hadn’t happened. The code he uploaded was, indeed the crippled version which meant that the hacker did know what they were doing. He hadn’t accidentally uploaded the full version in his haste, opening up all of the neighborhood to virtual home invasion. It was small comfort.
In the mean time he had found some metadata that the hacker had carelessly left in the files on the stick. He had proof that the person was using a smart house in the neighborhood to relay a connection. The perpetrator was was either living there, or had access. It made sense- the houses were already half-way in the MillDonn network. Sure, it didn’t narrow it down much, but it was a start.
He had just set up some traps around the addresses, in case the hacker used them again to deliver their new attempt. Hopefully, Jacob would have some logs to capture more information to bring him another step closer to finding out who they were. He had just finished closing his terminal when he heard the garage door open. At last, his parents were back!
He ran down to greet them and felt a little surprised at himself for missing them so much. It seemed like when they were around, all he could think about was he wanted them to go away so he wouldn’t be bossed around but now they were gone too much and he missed them.
“Hi Mom, hi Dad! How was the super-secret business meeting that lasted all weekend?”
Oh, great. He hadn’t meant to start off with a confrontation, but he was really getting fed up with their absence.
“Oh, Jacob. Let’s not start. Your father and I are exhausted and we don’t have time for your nonsense.”
That made Jacob angry.
“You never have time for anything, anymore! It’s like we’ve barely seen you for the last month!”
“I agree. You’re never home anymore and we miss you.”
Jacob looked around to see his sister behind him. She must have gotten back from Jane’s while he was working.
His mom sighed and she did look tired.
“Look, your dad and I need to relax for a while so this will have to wait.”
“But-”
“Jacob! Listen to your mother.”
His dad’s voice had that warning quality. He didn’t want to back down, but with everything going on he couldn’t risk getting on restriction.
“Welcome back. I hope you had a good time.”
He said it dead-pan- with no feeling. He left them in the kitchen and headed back to his room and closed the door. Maybe a little too loud, but too bad!
It was an hour later while he was double checking his homework for the next day when his sister Jane knocked on the door to tell him he had a guest. It was Hunter, the kid from his computer science class. He had forgotten they had agreed to meet up to work on the special assignment. Great- just what he needed on top of everything else.
It started off awkwardly. Jacob just wanted to get on with it, but Hunter kept getting off topic- talking about new technologies and comics and High School and Mr. Nagatami and computer science class. Jacob kept having to bring his attention back to the assignment. And then Hunter actually made a clumsy pass at him. Jacob acted like he didn’t understand as the teen stumbled around, trying to ask without actually asking. The shy boy dropped it pretty fast and finally began to concentrate on the work.
After that, it wasn’t so bad. Hunter was smart and had a different style of development than Jacob’s. The teen had clearly thought about it and brought up good points to ask and how different answers would effect the design. Jacob actually learned some things from the older teen while they worked.
They had almost completed the list of questions they had for Mr. Nagatami when Jacob’s locator clicked and he heard his mom’s voice telling them to come down to eat. Hunter was invited to join them.
The Donner siblings didn’t say much during dinner. Jacob was still upset with his parents, but he didn’t want to confront them in front of Hunter. The boy had nothing to do with it and it wouldn’t be fair to make him uncomfortable. It didn’t matter- Hunter talked enough for all three of them.
The teenager talked excitedly about the special project and how thrilled he was to get the chance for an internship at Boogle over the summer. He really talked up Jacob and how Mr. Nagatami said he was one of the brightest students he had taught in a long time. Jacob realized Hunter was trying to do him a favor but he didn’t want to get dragged into a conversation with his parents. Thankfully, the boy started preaching the virtues of their computer science teacher and he couldn’t help but cringe at Hunter’s open admiration.
“So tell us about yourself, Hunter. Where do you live? What does your dad do?”
“Sorry Mr. Donner, but I don’t know my dad. I live with my mom in the old neighborhood.”
That meant he was in the oldest part of town where the first Probity housing project was built by Keith and Jacob’s grandfathers. That was even before MillDonn construction was founded. To hear the stories, they used their teeth to chew down trees and then ripped them into planks with their bare hands. Jacob remembered feeling embarrassed when the town history was taught to his fourth grade class in Middle School.
Then came the part Jacob didn’t want to know. It was obvious to the rest of them that Hunter had been all but abandoned by his mom as a child. He talked about how he was proud of her and how much he looked forward to the times she would be there when he woke up. It was the times she wasn’t enjoying the attentions of a nice man.
Jacob didn’t want to know his tragic backstory- especially when it took the wind out of his anger at his own parent’s relatively short absence. Now that he understood why the little attention he had gotten from Mr. Nagatami made him fall in love with the old man, he thought it was sad. He didn’t want to like Hunter. No, that wasn’t fair- he did like the boy. What he didn’t want was to get involved in a situation that he had no hope of solving. It felt like he had enough of those on his plate.