by Paul Dueweke
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Feelings
Guinda checked her front door display and opened the door.
Her eyes met his in silence. Elliott was the first to speak. “I’m so sorry about your professor. It must have been a terrible shock to you. I knew of her through my daughter, and I read about her death in the paper.”
“She and I seemed to understand each other,” Guinda said. “We liked each other. Maybe it was more respect than anything else. But I’m afraid that what happened to Terra may be just the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
“I’ll help you any way I can, Guin.”
“You know, that’s what’s so funny. I hardly know you, and we come from two worlds that could hardly be more different.”
“And I’m old enough to be your grandfather.”
“Yes, that too. And yet, here I am talking to you about this. Do you understand how that can be?”
“You know, there’s so little I understand anymore. Maybe you’re coming to the wrong person for help.”
“I hope not.” A long, uneasy silence followed.
“Let’s sit down, and you can fill me in,” Elliott suggested.
Over the next few minutes, Guinda told Elliott all about her discussions with Sherwood, about the death of Halvorsen, and about her experience with the computer files. She expressed her frustration about the present situation and her uncertainty about a course of action.
“It’s kind of coincidental that our paths came close to each other. I’ve met Sherwood, at least the guy I met sounds like him, and I too tried to retrieve Terra’s files, but on her computer in her office. There was nothing there. It sounds like you might have come closer to pay dirt though.”
“But the files I found were all deleted. They’re no good at all to us.”
“Maybe I can at least help you with that problem,” Elliott said. “Those files that were deleted may not be gone after all. When a file is deleted from a computer, it doesn’t necessarily erase what is there. It merely makes that part of the computer’s memory available for another file to be written over it. There are utility programs that can access those memory locations where the deleted files were stored and, if they haven’t been written over yet, you may be able to retrieve them.”
“You mean if we can get there before somebody else puts something else in its place, we may be able to get it back?”
“That’s the idea, so let’s get started. There’s a chance we can do it since the files were deleted only yesterday, and this is a weekend.”
Guinda got them back into the Leasnet system, and then Elliott took over. He investigated several menus to find the proper application to do the job, but he was unsuccessful.
“It was a good idea,” Guinda said despondently, “but I guess they just don’t have the right software.”
“Not so fast. I know we have the software at the lab. I’ll just upload a copy to Leasnet.”
Elliott worked the menus and the keyboard for a while, and the next thing they knew, they had the message: PLEASE SELECT THE FILES YOU WISH TO RETRIEVE.
They selected all 11 files, and the computer responded: 7 OF THE 11 FILES ARE 100% INTACT, 4 ARE PARTIALLY INTACT. WHICH ONES DO YOU WISH TO SAVE?
They responded: ALL.
The computer replied: ALL 11 FILES AND