Chapter 6: The Password War

Chapter 6: The Password War

For three days, Jedidiah Stone stewed. The words of the customer service lady—Brenda, he thought her name was—played on a loop in his head, a tormenting soundtrack to his daily chores. Six-hundred-and-sixty-six-pound… gorilla. Pregnant. Morning sickness. He’d slam a fence post into the ground, and the word gorilla would echo with the thud. He’d be measuring out Buster’s food, and the phrase salmon-flavored treats would mock him from the corners of his mind.

He was a man of tangible problems. A broken tractor axle, a fence downed by a storm, a drought threatening the back pasture—these were things he could understand. Things he could fix with his hands, with wire, with sweat. But this? This was a sickness of the ether. It was like trying to patch a hole in a shadow. His points were gone, his account was possessed by a circus of phantom freaks, and he felt a profound, humiliating helplessness.

On the fourth day, his sister dropped off her son, Cody, to “help his uncle out for the afternoon,” which was a polite way of saying Cody needed to be kept off his video games for a few hours. Cody was seventeen, with hair that flopped over one eye and a permanent slouch from staring at his phone. To Jedidiah, he might as well have been from another planet. But he was the only ambassador from that planet that Jedidiah knew.

He sat the boy down at the worn oak kitchen table, placing a glass of iced tea in front of him. “Alright,” Jedidiah began, pacing in front of the stove. “I got a computer problem.”

Cody didn’t look up from his phone. “Did you try turning it off and on again?”

“It ain’t my computer!” Jedidiah snapped, his frustration boiling over. “It’s the one at the Tractor Supply. It thinks I own a zoo.”

That got Cody’s attention. He slowly lowered his phone, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “A what now?”

Jedidiah proceeded to explain, in a rambling, agitated monologue, the saga of the disappearing points, the cat treat vouchers, the dog named Buster, and the unholy trinity of Nigel, Bartholomew, and Esmeralda. He recounted his phone call with Brenda, his voice dropping as he spoke of the fire-breathing newt and the narcoleptic alpaca as if confessing to a series of hallucinatory crimes.

Cody listened, his initial smirk of disbelief slowly transforming into a wide-eyed grin of pure, unadulterated awe. By the time Jedidiah finished, the teenager was biting his lip to keep from howling with laughter.

“Whoa,” Cody breathed, shaking his head. “Uncle Jed, you don’t have a computer problem. You’ve got a troll. A legendary one, by the sound of it.”

“A what? Like the kind under a bridge?”

“No, like… someone online who’s messing with you. For fun,” Cody explained, pulling his own sleek, silver laptop from his backpack. He flipped it open on the kitchen table, its bright, clean screen a stark contrast to the rustic room. “It’s no big deal. They’re getting in because they know your password. Or maybe you don’t even have one. We just have to lock them out. What’s the email on the account?”

“Art-Pee. At G-Mail,” Jedidiah grunted, the hated address tasting like ash in his mouth.

Cody’s fingers flew across the keyboard. He navigated to the Tractor Supply website with an effortless speed that made Jedidiah dizzy. “Okay, see? Simple. We just click ‘Forgot Password.’” He tapped the trackpad. “It says it’s sent a reset link to the email. So… check your email.”

Jedidiah just stared at him blankly. “I ain’t got the email. That’s the whole problem.”

Cody’s face fell. “Wait. You mean… the email address on the account isn’t your email address?”

“That’s what I been tellin’ you!”

“Oh,” Cody said, a slow smile spreading across his face again. “Oh, man. This is even better than I thought. The troll has the keys to the whole kingdom.” He leaned back, a newfound respect for the anonymous trickster in his eyes. “Okay. Okay, new plan. Some sites have other recovery options.”

---

In his quiet flat in Manchester, Art was methodically dismantling an opponent’s defenses in an online game of Go. His strategy was subtle, a slow and suffocating encirclement that his adversary likely hadn’t even noticed yet. He was contemplating his next move when the alert chimed.

He glanced at his mail monitor. His eyebrow shot up.

From: Tractor Supply Co. Subject: Reset Your Password

Art leaned back, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. He folded his hands behind his head. “A counter-offensive,” he murmured to the empty room. “How delightful.”

The email was a declaration of war. Jedidiah, the simple, analog farmer, had clearly enlisted help. A grandchild, perhaps. Some tech-savvy teenager who thought they could solve the problem with a simple click. They had marched up to the front gate of his fortress of absurdity and knocked politely, asking for the keys. It was adorable. It was also an insult to his craft.

He ignored the reset link. That was the amateur’s move. He wasn’t going to let them in just to have them change the password to Buster123. No, this attempted intrusion required a disproportionate and overwhelming response. This rebellion had to be crushed so completely that they would never dare try again.

He opened a new browser tab and logged into Jedidiah’s account. His current password, TractorTroll123, felt quaint now, a relic of a more innocent time. He navigated to the account security settings, a section he hadn’t yet bothered to explore.

First, the password. It needed to be more than just complex. It needed to be a statement. His fingers flew, composing a small masterpiece of security and mockery.

N1g3l's_Bab1es_R_Hungry!

It was a beautiful, unguessable string of characters that also served to advance the central narrative. He saved it. The castle walls were now ten feet thicker.

But that wasn’t enough. Any determined amateur could just hit the ‘Forgot Password’ link again. He needed to salt the earth. He needed to burn the bridges. He scrolled down the page.

Security Questions.

The page was populated with the usual, boring options. What was your mother’s maiden name? What was the name of your first pet? They were gates left unguarded. Art deleted them without ceremony. He was going to forge new keys, keys that only the zookeeper could possibly possess.

He clicked ‘Set Custom Questions’.

Question 1: He typed, savoring every word: What is your pregnant gorilla's primary food craving? Answer: Salmon treats

Question 2: What is your fire-breathing newt's preferred bedding material? Answer: Gravel

Question 3: What debilitating medical condition afflicts your alpaca? Answer: Narcolepsy

He clicked ‘Save Changes’. It was done. The account was no longer a ghost-ship he was haunting. It was his. It was a hermetically sealed biodome of madness, and he had just programmed the airlocks to respond only to his voice. Let the little tech-savvy nephew try to get past that.

---

Back in the Tennessee farmhouse, Cody was getting frustrated. “Okay, this is weird. The reset link should have sent by now. Let’s just try logging in.” He typed in the email and tried a few common default passwords. password. 123456. Jedidiah.

Login Failed. Incorrect username or password.

“Okay, fine,” he sighed, clicking the reset link again. “Let’s try the security questions.”

The page loaded. Cody leaned in, read the first question on the screen, and then recoiled from his own laptop as if it were red-hot.

“What the…” he whispered. He looked up at his uncle, his expression a perfect blend of horror and delirious amusement.

“What’s it say?” Jedidiah demanded, leaning over his shoulder.

Cody read the question aloud, his voice cracking. “‘Question one: What is your pregnant gorilla’s primary food craving?’”

Jedidiah Stone stared at the screen, at the impossible words glowing on the kitchen table where his wife used to leave recipes. He looked at his nephew’s baffled face. He felt the last of his rational, well-ordered world crumble into dust. He wasn’t just being messed with. He was being held hostage by riddles from a lunatic. The ghost hadn't just changed the locks; it had rebuilt the entire house out of nightmares and smoke.