This is a short story that I wrote for Adam's birthday. Credit to FolieReilie, Rachaninoff, and SunfallE for helping me come up with the ending. Enjoy!

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Adam woke up to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He quickly jumped out of bed, still half asleep, and walked over to his dresser. He flipped the cover open and brought the phone to his ear.
“Happy birthday there Adam!” a familiar voice cheered through the phone.
“Thanks James,” Adam yawned.
“Hey, I’ve got a question,” SomeGuy stated. “Why did I get a ‘return to sender’ message when I tried to send you your birthday present?”

Adam sighed. It was his birthday, why couldn’t everything just be right for a change?
“For some reason, my address doesn’t exist 10% of the time,” Adam explained. “It has happened a few times before.”
“Ah, I see,” SomeGuy replied. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to send it again. Maybe this time your address will exist.

“So, do you have to work today?”
“Nah, I took the day off,” Adam replied, smiling. He was so excited to have a day to himself.
“Well, that’s good” James replied. “You deserve it. Anyway, I just wanted to say Happy Birthday. I’ve gotta work today, sorry I couldn’t talk longer.”
“That’s alright, thanks for calling,” Adam said. “Talk to ya later?”
“Yeah, probably. See ya around.”

And with that, the phone call ended.

Adam stretched and smiled. He finally had a day to himself. He sat down at his computer and logged onto theOtaku, thinking nothing could possibly make this day bad.

He was terribly wrong.

It took a few minutes for his computer to complete his request. While waiting, he checked his e-mail and a few other sites. Everything else seemed to be working just fine.

Finally, Adam was able to log in. He noticed that he had 20 new messages in his Inbox. He clicked the Inbox button. Again, it took longer than usual for his computer to do what he wanted it to. Once the page loaded, Adam clicked the first message.
“Come on…” Adam mumbled, beginning to get impatient.

About 15 minutes later, Adam was down to the last message. All of the other messages had wished him a happy birthday, but this one was different. He opened the message that had been sent by SunfallE. It read:

Adam, I noticed the site has been running unusually slow for the past few hours. I think this might be the slowest its ever been. Do you have any idea what’s going on?

PS: Happy Birthday :-)

Adam quickly typed a reply:

I don’t know, I’ll have to check it out. My guess would be a few people spamming the server. I’ll tell you when I know for sure.

He clicked the Compose Message button. After waiting a few minutes, the message sent.

Adam slumped back in his chair and sighed. Instead of spending the day doing something fun, he would have to be doing something stressful. Accepting his fate, Adam sat back up and got to work.

Around noon, Adam had finally resolved the problem. Or at least, fixed it so that he wouldn’t have to worry about it for a few hours.

After checking another few dozen messages, all of which wished him a happy birthday, Adam was about to log out when he noticed he had one last message left. He clicked back into his Inbox, the site loading at almost the same speed it was supposed to, and opened the remaining message. It was another message from Beth:

Bossman, the site is running pretty quickly again. Good work. Now go have some fun, it is your birthday after all :-)

-Beth

“Thanks Beth,” Adam said out loud, not bothering to type a reply. “I think I will.”