Surely Ryan had to understand what this meant. But Jim provided more detail. “It was the tap on her telephone pole in the backyard.”
“The tap on the telephone pole in her backyard… Who's backyard, Jim?”
“Mrs. Linden's…”
“And where is Mrs. Linden's backyard? I don't know where Mrs. Linden's backyard is. Do you?”
Jim nodded, “I know where Mrs. Linden's backyard is.”
“Where's that, Jim?”
Unfortunately, Jim only knew from memory. He didn't have an exact address, but gave the best answer he could. “It's on the paperwork.”
“On the paperwork… You see what I'm getting at? You don't know where that pole is. Is that how we refer to telephone poles around here? The pole behind Mrs. Linden's house… The pole at 123 Mapleview Road… The Pole at 456 Lint Road…”
Jim affirmed, “It's how we've been doing it for years.”
“See, Jim; that's what's wrong with you. You've been accepting things for the way they are and just continue to do business that way. I'm not satisfied with calling a telephone pole the pole at 123 Mapleview Road. The other morning I was getting off the exit ramp for Creek Highway and noticed some lettering on the light poles. It said something like N41. I would bet that the highway department has an elaborate system for labeling their light poles and uses latitude and longitude coordinates. I would bet that N41 represents North, followed by some coordinate. Even further, some surveyor or land engineer used some GPS device to pinpoint the exact location of the light pole so that its full name on an infrastructure map is light pole N41.689060 E74.044636. We should do the same with our telephone poles.”
Jim agreed, “We could do that. Do you want to hire some surveying company to do this?”
Ryan laughed. “Jim! Let me ask you something. Was there ever a time in your life that you took some initiative to make a difference? Probably not; but that's okay. Don't worry; I'm here to be your savior, your guide to help you grow in life and better yourself. I'm just disappointed that you never came in my office and suggested purchasing a GPS device and offered to hit every telephone pole in Mapleview and Sillmac for a better addressing system. Be a change driver! Do something big for the company! Go online and find a reasonable GPS device and I'll approve its purchase. Then get out there and start giving those telephone poles some real names! What do you say about that? Have your eyes finally been opened?”
Jim was silent in disbelief. Did Ryan really think that he had the time to play with a GPS device at several thousand telephone poles? All he could do was answer, “Sure…”
Chapter 50
Although leaving the plant manager's office, Jim had not seen the end of Ryan for that day. And Friday was only about to get worse.
Before heading into the field to do his Friday tasks, Jim sat down in his cubicle and opened the Google Earth desktop application on the PC. If Jim knew of a more efficient way to handle a detailed project, he would certainly do it.
Once Google Earth had been fully loaded, Jim typed in the town Mapleview. If the reader is going to try this, be sure to enter “Fictional Mapleview” for it doesn't exist, except in the fictional town of Mapleview!
What's nice about Google Earth is that maps are presented in detailed satellite imagery. It's possible to zoom in on streets and houses with crystal clear resolution. Being the case, Jim zoomed in on Mapleview Road, downtown, and located a telephone pole. There's another nice feature with the desktop application of Google Earth. While hovering the cursor directly over the telephone pole, Jim looked at the bottom of the screen and took note of the detailed latitude and longitude coordinates. Spending eight hours on a Saturday and Sunday, Jim could very easily follow each telephone pole on Google Earth and reference these coordinates throughout Mapleview and Sillmac. If done as Ryan directed, the project could take weeks.
* * *
A cruise through downtown Mapleview, Jim continued traveling to the southern tip of Mapleview to the very desolate road he had visited on Thanksgiving morning. But don't think he was there to simply connect anonymously to the Internet for purposes of stalking. He had no need for this anymore. Instead, Jim had some legitimate diagnostic tests to perform on that particular utility box.
A load-emulation test involves connecting an Ethernet cable to a debug port in the utility box. On that morning an Ethernet cable from the debug port fed a modem which ran to Jim's laptop in the Mapleview Cable truck. The actual test duplicated heavy customer traffic on the utility box and detected any possible errors or faults with a particular card. Performing this test could predict possible outages months in advance, giving Jim a chance to correct a problem before it appeared. Less than 3 minutes were required to initiate this automated test. Waiting 15 minutes for the test to complete gave Jim a chance to casually browse the Internet. Why not?
Suddenly, there was a loud rap on the driver window of the cable truck! It was Ryan the Plant Manager! What was he doing there?
Using Alt-F4, Jim quickly closed his web browsing page and then opened the truck window.
Ryan asked, “What are you doing?”
“Load-emulation test; I've got this utility box scheduled for today. What's up?”
Ryan wasn't there to answer any of Jim's questions. Instead he asked, “Load-emulation test? Why are you doing that?”
“Well all the utility boxes get it done at least twice a year. Friday mornings present the least amount of customer traffic so it's easier to perform.”
Ryan walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side and opened the door. It was necessary for Jim to quickly lift his tool belt off the passenger seat for Ryan nearly sat on it!
Ryan next asked, “So show me this so-called load-emulation test of yours.”
Jim turned the laptop towards Ryan and showed him the diagnostic screen. “The test takes about 15 minutes to complete. As you can see, there are no errors to report which is a good thing.”
Ryan seemed uninterested and quickly changed the subject. “Do you have that specification sheet I sent you earlier?”
“No, it's in email back at the office.”
Ryan sighed, “Let me see your laptop!” Once given, he opened a web browser screen and typed in the product and model number of the utility box outside. It provided a specification sheet which Ryan opened. A few minutes later, he turned the laptop over to Jim. “See here: It says you can gauge the general performance of a utility box by pressing the reset button. This will momentarily interrupt power, forcing the chassis to reboot.”
A look of horror came across Jim's face. “I wouldn't recommend that!”
“Jim! Come-on! It says in the specification sheet that you should do this!”
Jim argued, “Yeah, but you're going to cause a severe outage and make customers mad. That utility box takes several minutes to fully boot. Even then, it needs to synchronize with all the feeds throughout the area and could take a good half-hour for service to be restored.”
Ryan only smiled. “See Jim; this is what I'm talking about. You have to be so negative about everything. I'm going to hit that reset button and you're going to find out that it won't be as bad as you predict. I mean I can't justify wasting fifteen minutes of company time for your little load-emulation test.” With that, Ryan opened the passenger door and stepped out to the exposed utility box.
Jim momentarily buried his face in his hands. “My God! What is wrong with that kid? Who gave him this job? I don't want to deal with an outage!”
Jim looked over to the utility box.
Ryan motioned, “come here” to Jim with his finger.
Jim had an urge to answer Ryan's order with a slightly different gesture that used the middle finger. Instead, he opened the driver door and stepped outside to join Ryan.
Once at the utility box, Ryan pointed out the reset button to Jim. “See that button?”
“Yeah…”
“Press it!”
Jim looked at Ryan in hesitation. Apparently the pl
an had changed. Jim was to be the person responsible for an outage that day!
“Come-on, press it!” Ryan ordered.
Jim did as Ryan ordered and watched in horror as all the lights on the cards blacked out, followed by an audible alarm at the side of the box.
Ryan asked, “What's that noise?”
“That's an alarm, Ryan. It's letting us know that the chassis lost power and all the cards are offline. They have to reboot now.”
“Well can we turn it off?”
“Nope! I have to cut the wires to do that. The alarm won't stop until it senses the master control card is fully booted.”
A few minutes later, the master control card fully booted which stopped the alarm from squealing.
But then Jim's phone began to sound alerts. “And those are automated text messages that let me know of an outage.”
Clearly understanding of the mess he created, the only defense Ryan had at that moment was to act out the role of a business leader. “Automated text messages that let you know of an outage? How much money is the company wasting on that service?”
Jim began to raise his voice. “Well how do you think we handle outages late at night? Those alerts are our first line of defense!”
Ryan wasn't impressed. “I mean how do we know that there is really an outage? You actually trust those text messages?”
Losing patience, Jim finally shouted, “We interrupted power at the chassis! This utility box feeds several subdivisions along with businesses…!”
Ryan calmly interrupted, “Jim… Jim… Watch your voice around me. Don't shout at me, okay?”
Jim's cell phone rang. Before answering, he suggested to Ryan, “It's probably the customer service desk, letting me know of an outage.” Then he answered, “Yeah…! Yeah I'm over here with Ryan. We had a little problem at the utility box… Give it about a half hour; everything should be back up… okay, bye.”
Ryan stepped back and shook his head in disbelief. “So why are we doing this little load-emulation test of yours?”
“It's not supposed to be done like this, Ryan. The automated test isn't nearly as destructive.”
Ryan quickly cut Jim off. “Not nearly as destructive? The point is we shouldn't be doing this. I see no reason to come out here and cause a serious outage and possibly lose money just because you're looking for something to do. Did you look into that GPS device?”
“Not yet.”
“That's what I want you to do, Jim. You're number one project is to get all the telephone poles properly named and you're to use detailed latitude and longitude coordinates, understand?”
“Yes.”
“And I don't want you to perform any more of your load-emulation tests. Are we clear?”
“Yes.”
And with that, Ryan turned and walked back to his own vehicle, soon to pull away and look for another employee's day to ruin.
The rest of the day was spent handling a rash of customer service calls that, ironically, were in the area affected by what Jim secretly called, Ryan's outage. And at the peak of these service calls it was necessary for Jim to escape to the woods and join Ekaterina for another session of bizarre sex magick in which he had to play aggressive rape and then watch Ekaterina transform into an animal to recite poetry for all her desires to finally come true. Jim was so close to not fulfilling his daily obligation that Friday afternoon. He was growing increasingly fearful of these bizarre encounters and beginning to suspect that they were spiritually harming him. But then he realized there would be some serious consequence for skipping a day.
Of course after zipping his pants back up and throwing on the winter coat, he discovered a rash of text messages from the office dispatcher. “Could you go over to 1198 Circle Drive…? Jim…? Hello…? Where are you…?”
Friday was a very, bad day!
Chapter 51
Make no mistake about it; Kimberly is a strong woman, both physically and in spirit. Although Dr. Krause showed legitimate concern for Kimberly's chunkiness, the bulk of it was comprised of natural muscle. A fine, German woman's muscular build; God probably made Kimberly for a life on the farm. Strength, endurance and stamina; she wasn't some skinny, wimpy, little lady who falls apart over some trial or tribulation. Aside from an affliction of a super bug, the woman was quite healthy and strong.
But this doesn't mean that the super bug didn't beat her down each day and night. This was more than a virus! This was an illness which brought on some serious life change and stress for Kimberly. Every night her body was under attack by serious fevers. They could reach 104 degrees if not treated by large doses of ibuprofen and laying cold rags on her forehead and various extremities. The spells would begin sometime after six o'clock pm when Kimberly suddenly felt drowsy or as-if sleep walking.
Battling nightly fevers; drugged up throughout the day on a mixture of cold medicines; nearly drowning in her own mucus; wishing for the day when she could enjoy a simple glass of water without the agony of painful swallowing; Kimberly suffered so terribly from the relentless super bug. The muscular aches brought on by nightly fevers had surely taken a toll on Kimberly's strength.
And she was so tired of carrying baskets of laundry up the stairs, pausing half-way to gasp and wheeze, only to push her way up the remaining stairs and collapse. Shortly after lunch one afternoon, Kimberly lay collapsed on the floor with a clean basket of laundry scattered before her. Her heart raced as she desperately attempted to gain control of breathing. Panic-stricken, her difficulty with breathing created terrible thoughts of possibly dying at that moment. What did she do to deserve this illness? She cursed some imagined terrorist who may have bio-engineered the terrible bug that would remain with victims for weeks and weeks. She even cursed some imagined illegal immigrant who would have selfishly carried the super bug into the United States. These were the only things for Kimberly to do in that moment as she gained control of her breathing, converted anxiety to anger and then wiped the tears from her face.
That's when a savior entered Kimberly's life. As she lay there gaining control, Kimberly glanced up at the TV from across the room and immediately noticed that a cable TV talk show featured Samuel Crummings; quite possibly the wealthiest and most successful TV evangelist in American history. He owns three massive churches on the west coast—one in San Jose, one in Los Angeles, and a third in San Diego. Complete with interior, marble walls; dramatic three story cathedral ceilings; impressive stained glass art windows; numerous statues and astronomical fountains; each church takes up enough real estate to accommodate a jumbo shopping mall. And each church rakes in an average of 4.7 million dollars per week from combined donations from around the country. In addition, Samuel Crummings owns an equally impressive Positive Life Transformation commune in the wilderness of Colorado where those in need of spiritual healing can stay until they are all better. This, of course, is provided they have enough financing. But some people have turned to devoting their entire lives and careers to Samuel Crummings and his wonderful religion of Positive Life Transformation.
Along with spreading the word on television, Samuel Crummings' numerous books and seminar tours are another quick and inexpensive way of converting people to become dedicated followers of the Positive Life Transformation. The hope is one day it will be necessary to open several more communes throughout the United States as countless followers will choose to stay and live in spiritual, blissful, happiness and harmony, forevermore.
It was a tetractys on the TV screen that immediately caught Kimberly's attention. A tetractys, in case you are unaware, is a geometric symbol comprised of ten dots arranged in such a way to resemble the alignment of pins in a bowling alley. The number ten is a triangular number for you can stack ten objects in such a way to create a triangle. In addition, there is a believed ancient power with the tetractys for the simple reason that 4 dots, plus 3 dots, plus two dots, plus one dot equals ten. Ten is the only triangular number of this phenomenon.
Samuel Crummings was discussing his Pos
itive Life Transformation model. “It's nothing new, and it's not my invention.” he informed the world. “This tetractys has been used by the Pythagorean Society for ages. When done with devotion, following each point guides you through your personal journey of physical, mental and spiritual transformation. Every day you should pray to the forces of the tetractys with this ancient Pythagorean prayer: Bless us, divine number, you who have generated gods and men! Oh holy, holy Tetractys, you that contains the root and source of the eternally flowing creation! For the divine number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it brings forth the mother of all, the all-comprising, all-bounding, the first-born, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the key holder of all.”
Suddenly, it all made sense to Kimberly. It was her mind and perception that turned the virus into a long-termed illness. By following the points on the tetractys she could develop her perception into ultimate transformation, and finally rid her body of the illness.
And this is why she had purchased one of Samuel Crummings' recent books, Transformation by Holy Ten. It was no easy task, mind you! She really wasn't supposed to leave the house and venture through the brutal Mapleview cold. What if Kimberly had another attack of difficult breathing? But she was in need of milk to mix in the powdered seasoning of Hamburger Helper. (Yes, Kimberly was now feeding her family this easy-to-make dinner at least twice a week.) And as long as Kimberly was out for milk, it wouldn't hurt to stop at the bookstore and head over to the special Samuel Crummings section for one of his books.
* * *
Jim returned home that Friday evening after battling what he called Ryan's Outage. There, sitting on the family room table, was a book with the name of Samuel Crummings in bold print at the top. The picture cover was nothing more than a tetractys, followed by the name of the book, Transformation by Holy Ten.
Jim picked up the book, “What's this?” he asked.
“It's a book I've been reading!” Immediately Kimberly snatched it out of her husband's hands and walked away, apparently with the intention of putting it away.
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