Page 38 of One Last Chance

The library had that dusty, yet somehow clean, smell that every library I’d ever been in shared. Even in prison, the library smelled that way. I assumed it was the books themselves, but I’d never held a book which smelled that particular way all on its own. I scanned the main room for Daisy and found her helping a patron with a computer.

“There, now all you need to do is create a password.”

“What’s the password?” The old man asked irritably.

“It’s whatever you want it to be, as long as it’s eight characters long, with at least one uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number.”

“That’s only three characters,” he complained.

“Yes. You have to haveat leastone of each, but notjustone of each. I mean, it has to be eight characters long, and three of those characters have to meet those other requirements.”

“This is too confusing. 12345678. There. That’s my password.”

I watched her face, amused. She was surprisingly patient—probably came from all those years she spent dealing with her asshole dad.

“Okay, good start. Now it needs an uppercase letter.”

He pushed a button. “There.”

“That was lower case, but that’s fine, you needed that too. Now choose an uppercase letter.”

“Uppercase, lower case! Just say capital and regular!”

“Sure! You have a regular letter, now you need a capital letter.”

“A capital at the end of the password? That’s a grammatical error! You’re a librarian, you should know this. Don’t you read?”

She smiled at him, somehow managing to keep her frustration at bay. “Which letter would you like?”

“M.”

“Okay, go ahead and type it. Good, now type the whole thing again right here.”

“Again?! Why do I have to do that?”

Creases formed at the corners of her eyes as she pressed her lips together, still trying to reel in her impatience, but not doing such a fine job at it now. “It’s so the computer knows that you typed the password you intended to type.”

“Of course I did, I wouldn’t type something I didn’t mean to! I’m not an idiot!”

“Of course you aren’t, Mr. Johnson. But since idiots do have computer access, they have to make allowances.”

I snorted. She said that with a straight face. I was impressed. Apparently her lying skills had grown significantly over the last few years.

The cranky Mr. Johnson smiled up at her, proving that he didn’t catch the innuendo and hadn’t a hint it was him she was calling an idiot.

Nodding, he looked a tad more satisfied. “There. Now what?”

“Now click submit.” He did as told, jamming his finger hard on the mouse. “Okay, good!” Daisy exclaimed. “You’re ready to log in.”

“But I just did that!” And there she was, being thrown right back into the pit of ‘when the hell will this ever end?’

“You created your login information,” she said slowly like she was talking to someone who was hard of hearing, making sure her lips could be read loud and clear. “Now you have to type it in on this screen.”

“Three times! You didn’t tell me I’d have to type that in three times! You think I remembered what I put down? Nobody told me I’d have to remember that password!”

She ran her fingers over her brow. “That’s what passwords are for, Mr. Johnson. You’re supposed to remember them or write them down somewhere only you will find them so you can always access your accounts. It’s okay, I remembered for you. Type in your email address there. The whole thing, please.”

“It should know the rest! It’s standard!”

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