“I had the disc,” Arthur said, and for the first time that week, he smiled. “Never throw away the disc.”
He’d tried everything. Restarting the router. Kicking the tower gently. Sacrificing a can of compressed air into the fan vents. Nothing.
He walked back to the living room. Leo was still on his laptop.
He held his breath and looked at the network icon. The red X was gone. In its place, a yellow sunburst, searching. Then, the familiar bars of a connected network—white, solid, beautiful.
It was a perfect, cruel paradox. He needed the network adapter to work to get the driver that would make the network adapter work.
Leo glanced up, surprised. “How?”
The Ethernet port on the back of the computer blinked to life. Green. Orange. Alive.
His finger hovered over the mouse. This was it. One click.
