Chapter 41 #2
Frankly, it would be a miracle if this random selection of components turned on, but who am I to predict the outcome?
He presses the power switch on the side of the machine. There’s a taut moment of silence, and then the damn thing whirrs, springing to life. The fans light up and start spinning in multicolour.
‘Holy shit!’ Jamie shouts, and I laugh. Now’s not the time for a swearing lecture.
‘Look at it!’ I say instead. ‘It’s incredible!’ It really is. He’s opted to have almost everything in white, and it looks positively futuristic, the soft RGB lighting of some of the components glowing prettily within the glass case.
‘I’ll be able to change the colours of the lights and everything,’ he says. ‘I might change it all to pale blue. That’d look nice and relaxing.’
I shake my head. ‘Consider me gobsmacked. I can’t believe you built that thing.’
‘We built it,’ he corrects. ‘I would’ve been too scared to do it on my own.’
I’ve done fuck all, but I’ll take it. We grin at each other. I feel giddy for him.
‘What’s next?’
‘We need to take it up to my room and connect it to my monitor, but it should be fine. Oh, and I’m going to change these, too. They look ugly.’
He points to some flat black wires attached to one of the components. They are indeed ugly, at odds with the sleek white of everything else.
‘Those ones came with the GPU, but I got spares in white just in case,’ he explains. ‘Look.’
He unwraps the replacements, which I agree will match the rest of the components far better. With the same efficiency, he disconnects the black cables from the part they’re attached to.
Immediately, the entire computer powers down.
I freeze.
‘What—did you just trip the fuse?’
‘Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod,’ he chants. ‘No no no no no.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘I just tried to hot-swap them.’ The pitch of his voice rises to panic mode, and he begins to jump around on the spot, shaking out his hands.
‘What does that mean?’ I can feel, hear, the panic in my own voice.
‘I took them out while the power was on. I think I just fried the GPU.’
Now, I don’t know much about hardware. But I know that fried is not good.
‘What’s the GPU?’
‘That box. The graphics card.’ He starts to cry. ‘Ohmigod, I’m so stupid. So fucking stupid.’
‘Is it fixable?’ I ask, staring in horror at the now inert PC. The PC that cost over a grand and has just taken Jamie months to plan and almost three hours to assemble. I’m pretty sure the graphics card was the single most expensive component of this entire piece of kit.
‘I don’t know!’ he wails. He presses the power button, but nothing happens. He shakes his head, tears rolling freely down his cheeks. ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s fried.’
‘You mean it’s ruined?’
He presses his lips together and nods his head.
‘Are you serious right now?’
My tone has him looking up at me, his eyes huge. ‘I think so,’ he says in a small voice. He presses the power button. Again. Again. Nothing. ‘It would have caused a power surge.’ His voice grows even smaller. ‘I might have damaged the motherboard, too.’
I stare at him in horror. My devastation on his behalf flares bright and hot inside me. I want to pull him into a hug, to shield him from this brutal kick in the nuts. But within a fraction of a second it’s ignited into something far uglier, something that makes me want to shake him in frustration.
‘You told me you had this in hand. I’ve just watched you assemble the damn thing like a professional! How the fuck could you have been so stupid?’
He’s shaking his head, shaking his hands, jiggling on the spot. ‘I dunno, I dunno. It was an accident. I didn’t think.’
‘We’ve just spent over a grand on a piece of kit that you said you were ready for, and you’ve gone and blown the entire thing up with one stupid, childish mistake! Well, I’m not replacing the parts. Let that be a lesson to you. You can save up or wait till your birthday. Fuck’s sake.’
I slam my hand down on the island and it makes an effective thwack against the marble.
I’m not sure why I’m so furious. Maybe because I’ve seen how capable he is, how much he cares and how fiercely he can focus when he’s really passionate about something.
This gift was a massive gamble, and he’s just ruined the entire fucking thing over a stupid fucking error, before we even got it upstairs! It’s madness, that’s what it is.
Jamie stares at me, tears cascading down his cheeks. His nose is running, and he wipes it with the back of his hand. ‘I hate you! I hate you! Why do you always have to be so mean? You’re a fucking psycho, just like Mum said!’
Before I can react, he turns on his heels and sprints out the door. I hear the panicked thud of his footsteps up the stairs, and then the slamming of his bedroom door.
I stand, shell-shocked, next to the inert ruins of his labour of love. What the actual fuck just happened? I feel sick to my stomach, but I nonetheless down the rest of my glass of red.
Slowly the anger abates in great, toxic waves, leaving me even more sickened.
His face. Those things he said. That name he called me.
He messed up. He made a stupid mistake in his excitement, and I tore him limb from limb. I chose to punish him rather than comforting him like any normal, emotionally healthy parent would. What the utter fuck is wrong with me?
Even when my heart was bleeding for the poor kid, my knee-jerk reaction was to eviscerate him. To humiliate him. To pile on. I was angry for him, but I unleashed my fury at him.
An image flashes into my mind.
My dad, excoriating me for my poor investment club performance in front of his mates. The loneliness I felt. The shame. The anger. The sheer, unnecessary cruelty of it all.
Jamie was already devastated. The little lad knew he’d done badly as soon as the bloody PC powered down. He had that sickening realisation that, with one tiny lapse in concentration, he’d undone all his painstaking work and probably ruined his new prized possession.
But I’m the one who’s just ruined my son’s Christmas.