Lost: flash drive (Open)

[Kingston Carmichael]

No, no, no, no. Kingston had check all his pockets and it wasn't there. He had check his school bag and it wasn't there either. Kingston had lost his USB flash drive. The USB flash drive didn't have personal embarrassing stuff or school work on it. So, it didn't matter to Kingston if someone had looked at what was on the flash drive. The flash drive had coding for the current game he was working on. If he couldn't find the USB meant that he had to start over on the game.

Kingston got on his hands and knees to check if it felt on the floor. He crawled around the desk he was sitting at. Still no luck. Did someone saw it and thought it was theirs?

[Cleo Warren]

Cleo had found it on the common room floor. She’d been putting her notebooks into her bag, and was just about to grab her coat off the chair when she saw it. The flash drive had been just lying between the coffee table and the couch, like it had fallen in someone’s rush to sweep all their things up. That’s probably what had happened. Cleo couldn’t count how many times her keys had almost been lost because they’d fallen off the table while she was trying to shove all her stuff into her bag. She knew it was Kingston’s; she’d seen it plugged into his computer all the time while he was fiddling around with some program. She had no idea what was on it. All that techno-geek stuff went right over her head.

But Kingston was in her chemistry class, so she thought she’d be a good roommate and return it to him. She wondered if he even noticed it was gone.

Cleo could immediately tell that he did, in fact, notice it was missing since he was crawling on his hands and knees on the floor. He clearly looked like he misplaced something. She couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the situation. Whatever’s on this little thing must be pretty important.

She stopped at the desk next to his, hopping up to sit on top of it, rather than in the seat. “Did you lose something?” Cleo asked, with an amused look on her face as she pulled the flash drive out of her pocket. Clearly he had, but Cleo still thought the situation was kind of funny.

[Kingston Carmichael]

Kingston looked up. It was the girl who sits at the third desk from the front two rows from the windows. Kingston also believed he had seen her at the dorm. He wasn’t sure if she lived in the same dorm as him or she was friends with one of Kingston’s roommates. He was normally in his room.

In this situation the correct respond would be to answer his peer’s questions. Kingston opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. Cleo pulled a flash drive out of her pocket. The flash drive was red with a white stripe. The one Kingston lost was the same.

Kingston stood up. He dusted off his hands and knees. “Um, I think that’s mine.” He knew he wasn’t the only person with that coloring flash drive. That flash drive could easily be her’s. Then why was Cleo showing Kingston?

[Cleo Warren]

Cleo raised an eyebrow as he opened his mouth to respond, however, he didn’t actually end up saying anything. Weird. Usually most people would either say yes or explain a different reason for crawling around on the ground. Or even say thank you, since Cleo evidently had recovered his flash drive. Instead, he just stated the obvious. Well, it was obvious to Cleo at least.

“Well, it’s not mine so…” It was definitely his, unless he’d borrowed it from one of their other roommates or someone else. Besides, why would she offer it up to him if she thought it was someone else’s or her own? “I found it on the floor in the common room. Underneath the table.” Cleo held it out for him to take back. She had no need for it.

“Looks like it’s important. You should be more careful.” Clearly. He’d just been crawling around on the ground, so she assumed it wasn’t just any old flash drive. Maybe it had important homework assignments on it. Or maybe something more embarrassing? Cleo would be searching on her hands and knees if she lost her flash drive too, but only because it contained all of her essays and digital art projects. But her flash was attached to her keys, so that would lead to a whole slew of new problems if those all went missing.

[Kingston Carmichael]

The common room? It must of been when he was there to "make" friends like his parents wanted him to. Well, instead of making an effort to befriend the other students King brought his laptop to work on the game he was making. King took his flash drive back, "Thank you."

Now King didn't have to be crawling around on the floor. The technopath pocketed the flash drive. King was quiet then he spoke. "Did look at what was on it?". He didn't mind if Cleo had. He didn't want anyone to take his work and pass it as their own.

[Cleo Warren]

He still looked a little confused as to why Cleo had his flash drive. Oh well…she just hoped he didn’t think she stole it. Though, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to steal something, only to return it. Though, with a flash drive it’d be easy to download whatever was on it onto her own computer and then return it without anyone knowing the difference.

Not that Cleo would do that. Whatever was on the flash drive, Cleo doubted she needed it or would even understand it. She’d snuck a few glances at Kingston’s computer when she walked past him in the common room and whatever he was working on looked complicated. Too complicated for Cleo to even entertain the idea of understanding. Computers just weren’t her thing, unless she was working on Photoshop or Illustrator.

“You’re welcome.” She said, dropping the flash drive into his palm.

She raised an eyebrow when he asked her if she looked at its contents. Cleo had only been in the possession of it for about twenty minutes, so even if she wanted to look at it, she wouldn’t have had time. Not that Kingston could know that. “I didn’t look at it.” She answered, though now she was curious as to why he was so protective of it.

“Why? Got something embarrassing on there?” Or maybe it was more top-secret? Cleo didn’t expect him to tell her what was on there. It wasn’t like it was her business, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious.

[Kingston Carmichael]

Kingston nodded his head while staring at the floor. Cleo didn’t peeked at the flash drive. Not that it would have been the worst thing to happen.

He looked up. Embarrassing? Kingston recalled the definition for embarrass. It was a game. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Unless the game was total crap. Kingston shook his head. “It’s a game.”

[Cleo Warren]

By the way Kingston wouldn’t look at her, Cleo almost assumed that there was something embarrassing or weird on there. Or maybe he was just embarrassed that he thought she'd snooped through his stuff. But regardless of what actually was on the flash drive, it wasn’t really Cleo’s place to judge Kingston. Plus, there were probably people who had way freakier stuff saved on their actual computer.

And then he actually told her the contents. “A game? Like a video game?” That…was not what she was expecting. Didn’t video games come on CDs or those little chip-like things? Did video games still come on CDs or had they graduated to some kind of more advanced interface? Cleo hadn’t touched a video game since she went through that Sims phase when she was eleven, so she wouldn’t know.

“Did you make it yourself?” That was the only way Cleo could think of that would make sense for it to be on the flash drive, if he coded it. But then again, she knew nothing about computers and wasn’t the best with technology so it could be something totally different for all she knew.

[Kingston Carmichael]

The technopath nodded his head again. “A computer game. Yeah, I’m in the process of making it.” A small smile formed on his lips. Kingston was starting to come out of his shell because he liked the topic at hand. “Right now it’s just an outline of coding. I need to check for glitches and bugs.”

Kingston was passionate about his game and wasn’t aware of how talkative he gotten. He hadn’t spoken this much in a long time. The last time Kingston didn’t have a problem talking with someone was before his power manifested. Even though Kingston was talking wasn’t really making eye contact with Cleo.

“I’m going to add details to it later.”

[Cleo Warren]

A computer game? That was basically the same thing as a video game right? Except one was played on like an Xbox and one was on the computer? That made sense, right? “You coded it yourself?” Cleo asked, leaning back on her hands. “That’s pretty impressive.” All those symbols and stuff looked like complete gibberish to her. She might as well be reading hieroglyphics.

“Do you do like HTML coding too?” Or was that the same thing? She thought it might be at least a little different since they had separate people who made video games and other things like websites and logos. It seemed like it would be a lot different, since she felt like coding something that actually moved and could change direction based on the player sounded a hell of a lot more complicated than just coding a webpage. Her parents kept pestering her that she should at least learn the basics of HTML. She wanted to major in graphic design when she got to college and apparently it was super useful if you could design and code.

She noticed that Kingston wasn’t making eye contact with her. Cleo knew that he was quiet; they’d barely spoken, despite the fact that they lived in the same suite. She didn’t know that he was this shy though. Then again, she wouldn’t know, since they never talked.

[Kingston Carmichael]

There were two different reactions Kingston would get from people when they found out he was coding a game. One, they would be interested and impressed at Kingston's work. Or two, they didn't care nor were they interested. The technopath viewed them as people who asked questions or not. Cleo fell in the ask questions category. He would awkwardly answer her questions.

As for HTML was coding was easy for him. "Hm, it's easy to use." Kingston went back to his quiet self. Some people would disagree with him. It just depended on how well the individual understood codings. For his game he was using C++ code. It was one of the better codes to use for games. Kingston liked the longer more compacted codes because there was more to details and such. He also liked the simple codes for just that reason, the simplicity.

[Cleo Warren]

Cleo wrinkled her nose, “I’m not so sure if that would be the general consensus.” She said, with a light laugh. Cleo certainly did not think that any type of coding looked easy to use, and she was sure that the average person would probably agree with her. It all looked super complicated and if you missed even one tiny symbol, the whole thing could look like shit. That was not something Cleo would interpret as easy. Then again, everyone was different. She supposed there were some things that she found easy, while Kingston found them difficult.

She was going to ask him if maybe he could teach her some of the basics, but he didn’t really seem like he wanted to talk to her that much. Not that Cleo was necessarily the chattiest person around, or one of those girls who literally needed to be constantly talking to someone to avoid getting bored. No, Cleo didn’t mind silence, but when she was talking to someone, she didn’t like to be the only one who was carrying the conversation.

But maybe Kingston was one of those quiet kids who didn’t like to talk. Which was fine; if he didn’t want to talk to her than all he had to do was tell her, and she’d leave him alone to his coding or whatever it was he was doing before.

[Kingston Carmichael]

This was just like anything else. Take calculus for example. Some people enjoyed it and thought of it as easy. Others hated it and found it very difficult. Other technopaths and computer nerds would find coding easy.

Kingston shifted from foot to foot. Things got awkward for him again. His eyes darted around the room. He got his flash drive back and the conversation seemed like it was ending. What to do in this situation? If he said his goodbyes would that be rude? They two would see each other again since they live in the same dorm.

[Cleo Warren]

Mmm…yep Cleo was definitely getting that vibe. If he didn’t want her to talk to him all he had to do was say so. She wasn’t really going to take offense to it; there were times when she wanted to be alone and there would be at least one person who kept talking and talking and talking. However, unlike Kingston, Cleo had no problem voicing her desires, even it was essentially telling someone to get lost.

Fortunately for Kingston, Cleo also knew how to take a hint and bow out gracefully.

“Okay…well, I’m glad I could be of service.” Cleo said, nodding to his flash drive. Clearly, it was very important to him so it was pretty lucky it ended up in her hands and not someone who wouldn’t have known who to return it to. Or someone who just wouldn’t return it at all.

She hopped off the desk she was sitting on right as the teacher was walking in. “See you around, Kingston. Have fun with your....game.” She said, with a wave before walking over to her seat to pull out her homework.

-out-