Glitch

She runs desperately down the rain-soaked street; hover cars zooming passed in the dimming light of evening.

The magnetic field beneath each passing car pushes the water that covers the road with its force and causes waves of splashing water to further soak her as she continues running through the chilly autumn rain.

Yet the wet cold of the rain water being dowsed upon her seems not to faze her in her loping search among the rows of identical-looking, compact apartment building units that line the narrow streets; jumbled jigsaw blocks stacked upon each other in order to maximize the ever depleting space in the downtown city core.

All she can think of is the next mind-numbing stab of pain that is undoubtedly coming to pierce her brain like an icy blade in the front of her forehead. The cause of which, she runs in desperation to get to the source of.

As if merely anticipating the coming pain could manifest it, a shooting jolt of white heat sears through her brain and she staggers, almost falling to her knees as she cradles her head in order to balance herself against the wave of dizzying pain that has overcome her.

With a guttural grunt of pain, she steadies herself as the pain subsides again and she looks slowly up at the apartment unit looming in front of her. This must be where it was emanating from, though in her state of mind, she's not quite sure.

Lurching forward, she pushes her way passed an exiting resident of the building through the security entrance and makes her way to the lifts, patting across the concrete floor in her soaking and bare feet.

Reaching the lift door, she slaps the call button as another lightning bolt of pain shocks her mind and this time she does fall to her knees, clutching her head, and moaning in agony.

They were getting more intense, which could only mean she was in the right place. All she needed to do was find the right apartment unit; as long as her brain didn't scramble itself beforehand.

The lift bell dinged its arrival and she got to her feet to stumble in and stab at the fifth floor button. A guess at this point, but it felt like the right one.

Once the lift opened onto the fifth floor, she shambled out into the hallway and used the featureless concrete walls to guide herself along the corridor of numbered doors that no doubt led into tiny, cramped apartment units. In one of which, lived the person she was after.

A high pitched ringing started to grow in her ears as she made her way along the hallway until it was deafening with a pain that filled her entire mind with red, blotching colour.

With a heave, she slammed her shoulder against a door that had a bluish glow emanating from unearth it, and surprisingly, it gave way, even under her slight weight and frame.

Inside the unit, almost hidden amongst the clutter of shelves that lined the walls, filled with knick-knacks and porcelain figurines, a little, old lady sits in front of her computer screen which shows a bright blue screen with a warning pop-up across it.

The woman's glasses magnify her eyes into googly-eyes that fill the entirety of the glass frames, yet she still squints to read the words on the alert message.

The bare-footed girl stumbles haphazardly to where the old woman sits at her tiny wall desk and pushes the surprised senior aside to hit the control-alt-delete buttons and clear the computer screen's message, replacing it with the black reboot screen.

She sighs with relief as the pain in lifted and she stumbles back to lean against on of the trinket-filled shelves.

The elderly woman blinks as she tries to focus her eyes on the young woman in the soaking wet blouse and skirt, her hair dripping and clinging to her damp cheeks.

"Oh, Judy, dear." The old woman greets her with recognition. "I was trying to send you a letter on the computer and that darn message kept coming up again and I forgot what I was supposed to push."

"It's ok, Grandma," Judy replies breathlessly. "But I've told you, you have to reboot the system when it freezes, or it will send out that signal they installed in my Occ-Unit app. I wrote it down for you."

Judy moves over to the wall above the computer and taps the piece of paper that was tacked there, which read: CTRL-ALT-DEL.

"Oh, dear, I forgot." Judy's grandmother said apologetically. "Well, would you like to have a cup of tea? You looked soaked, is it still raining out there?"