Vaporware

by Richard Dansky

  Afterwards, I retreated to my office. The message light on my phone was blinking when I got there, an insistent little red eye winking at me way too fast. I thought about ignoring it, or, better yet, deleting whatever message was on there, but duty won out.

  A closer check indicated that there were six messages waiting, which was odd. Normally I didn’t get six messages in a month, let alone in the course of a long lunch and a single meeting. Thinking it might have been an emergency, I checked my cell phone to see if someone—Sarah, I confessed to myself—had been trying to reach me that way, but there were no new messages, no missed calls, and no evidence I’d even needed to bring the phone along with me.

  Curious now, I punched in my code and let the voicemail playback begin. The first one was blank, probably a wrong number, and there was the tell-tale click of the fumbling hang-up five or six seconds in. I deleted it and kept going. The second one was an automated voice mail message informing me that certain messages I’d stored in the system for ninety days were about to be deleted, and that I should do something about it if I wanted to keep them. I ignored that one, too, and skipped to the third.

  Breathing.

  That’s all it was, the sound of somebody breathing. Not heavy, not obscene, just the faint whisper of breath in and out on the other end of the line. No voices, no words, just slow, steady breathing. I caught myself on the verge of saying “Hello?” into the receiver, then let it play out to the end.

  That one, I saved.

  The fourth message was like the third, but longer. The fifth one, though, had words.

  At first, it sounded like the others—wordless, voiceless, just the in-and-out of air on the other end. I almost punched in the code to save it and moved on to number six. But then the voice started, so soft at first I wasn’t sure I heard it, but rising in volume with every syllable.

  “Ryan?” it said. “Ryan? You should pick up. You should talk to me. We have so much to talk about.” A pause. “I miss you. Do you miss me? I think you do.”

  I knew the voice. After all, I’d written the notes for it, heard it in my imagination, gotten as close to it as we could have in the voice casting and placeholder dialogue recording sessions.

  And of course, I’d heard it in my office, the night the last bits of my life had started to go to hell.

  I let the message play out. There was more space after the last words, more sounds of sibilant breathing left so I’d know whom the other calls were from.

  I thought about it, then deleted the message. She’d made her point. When I was done listening to the sixth voicemail, I’d go back and wipe out the other ones, too.

  The sixth one was from Sarah. It said that she figured it was easier to reach me on my work number than on my cell phone, and that she was going to make lasagna for dinner. She hoped that was all right.

  I thought I was going to cry.

  Chapter 25

  Quarter of six, and I headed back to the break room to get what I hoped would be my last cup of coffee of the day. For some reason the coffee service we used always resupplied fresh coffee on Friday, which meant that by Wednesday afternoon everything that wasn’t decaf was gone. I picked the best of a bad lot, shoved it in the machine, and waited.

  There was a click and a thunk beside me, the sound of one of the cabinets opening and then closing. I looked over and there was Michelle, a styrofoam coffee cup in her hand, eyes resolutely straight ahead. If she noticed me watching her, she didn’t give any sign. She didn’t move any closer, nor did she step further away.

  Two can play at that game, I thought, turning back to the coffee maker. It gurgled and hissed, pissing brown bean juice into my mug. Steam leaked out the side, evidence of a broken seal somewhere. One of the QA wonks wandered in, saw the two of us standing there, and backpedaled right out.

  The machine finished. I looked at Michelle, who was still resolutely not looking at me, and fought the urge to just walk out and leave her the coffee. Sooner or later we were going to have to talk to each other, after all.

  For a moment, neither of us moved. Then I grabbed my cup as she reached for a coffee packet, and our hands nearly touched.

  “Ryan…,” she said, and stepped back.

  “Michelle.” I grabbed my mug and pulled it away. “I think there’s still some of the imitation Blue Mountain in the back. I, uh, kind of hid a couple of the packets back there.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” She rummaged a bit, then pulled out one of the stashed packages. I stepped back and let her brew her cup, then handed her the creamer that I knew she’d drown the coffee in once it finished brewing.

  “What’s with the styrofoam cup?” I asked as she poured. “I thought you wanted us to get rid of them because they’re mean to the planet.”

  “Do you always have to be such a dick about everything,” she asked. Her voice was weary. “I mean, come on. Can’t you even make a simple cup of coffee without turning this into some kind of mind game? Besides, I gave you mine, and you never gave it back.”

  “I was just trying to make conversation,” I said, surprised at her tone.

  Michelle shook her head as she reached for the box of sugar packets on the counter. “No, you weren’t. I didn’t jump down your throat, so you had to push to see how far I’d let you go. You can go wherever you want, Ryan. I’m just not going there with you any more, okay.”

  I took a swig of coffee. It was scalding hot and burned going down. “Oww. Jesus. What the hell?” I made a face and tested the inside of my mouth experimentally with my tongue. Michelle stirred in her sugar, unimpressed, and dumped in a second batch of creamer on top of the first. “Look, Michelle. I’m sorry. I’m not really myself these days.”

  “Oh really? I’d say you’re being yourself more than ever.”

  Another swig of coffee, another burn going down. “No, look, it’s her, OK? I don’t know what she’s doing or how she’s doing it, but everything in my life is going insane right now, and I’m just sort of flailing around because of it.”

  “But that’s just it,” she said. “It’s not just your life. It’s my life. It’s Sarah’s life. It’s the lives of everyone you’re working with.”

  “And it’s her life,” I added. “I don’t know what I should do.”

  “What do you want me to tell you, Ryan?” She picked the cup up, the coffee inside the color of melted chocolate, and held it in front of her like a ward against evil. “That I forgive you because you’re in kind of a weird place? Well, I don’t. That you should do something about…her? I don’t know if or what you should do. I’m just here to make a stupid port of a stupid game and collect my paycheck, not make you feel better because you’ve got your sensitive artist panties in a wad.”

  “Michelle,” I said, hating myself for saying it, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Good,” she replied, turning away. “Maybe that’ll encourage you to think things through. You know, take some responsibility for what you’re doing instead of just blundering from crisis to crisis.”

  “Terry wants me to help him,” I said as she started walking away. She stopped.

  “Are you going to?” she asked in a small, scared voice.

  “Do you think I should?”

  “No!” The word tore out of her like a shriek as she whipped around to stare at me. “Jesus, Ryan, that thing they’re working on isn’t human!”

  “Does that make her evil?”

  “It tried to kill you!” Her eyes were wide, her face flushed, her mouth open in disbelief that I’d even entertain the idea. “And now, because it let you see its tits, you’re going to be its best friend forever? Whatever it is. Whatever made it, it’s not normal. It’s not right. And nothing good’s going to come of it being here.”

  I took a step forward, hands held out wide in a gesture of surrender, the pose of an unarmed cop approaching a hostage-taker. “I don’t know what brought her here, either, but she’s here now. She’s alive now. And I don’t know if letting her go on like this
is the kindest or the cruelest thing to do.”

  “Deleting her would be the right thing to do!” Michelle’s voice rose as she stalked toward me, her anger rising. “Don’t you get it, Ryan? Whatever’s going on now is just the beginning. You’re on the edges, but you’re going to get sucked in. Whatever she needs now, she’ll need more, and more, until she’s taking everything.” Suddenly, she threw back her head and laughed, a scary, unhinged sound. “You know what? I just got it. Just now, I finally got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “Her.” Michelle’s head snapped back down and she fixed me with a bemused predator’s stare. “She’s the job, Ryan. She’s the goddamned job, and she’s the other woman, and she always has been.”

  “She’s just a game,” I sputtered, barely believing the words as I said them.

  “I know exactly what she is and what she means, even if you don’t.”

  The words escaped before I could stop them, before I could think about them, before I’d even realized I’d formed them. “You’re just jealous, you know that? You’re jealous that she wants me!”

  Silence. Michelle staring at me, eyes impossibly round, face impossibly pale. Her cup fell to the floor, the coffee spilling out like the blood of a murder victim in a wide, savage arc.

  “Oh, God. Oh, Shelly. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean that.”

  “I only got to be the other woman once,” she said, quietly, then turned and walked away.

  “Michelle!”

  She didn’t turn, didn’t even slow down. I said something under my breath that would have gotten me fired if HR had heard it and started after her.

  My foot hit coffee instead and skidded from under me. I felt myself going over, felt the mug of scalding hot coffee slipping out of my hand. It arced up and over even as I slipped backwards, glistening past as I went down. Somehow it spattered on the tile before I hit, the hot spray splashing across the back of my head as if in anticipation. Scalp wounds are supposed to be bloody, I thought, and then my head hit the floor with a rifle shot crack and everything went white. I felt the impact of the mug on the ground, felt the air whoosh out of me as my back hit, felt something sharp tear into my hand and realized it was part of the now-broken mug spinning off from its demolition.

  Then there was silence, except for the ringing white noise in my ears, and the pounding of my heart, and the wheezing of my breath as I tried to figure out how my lungs worked again.

  That, and the sound of clapping, slow and steady, low and sarcastic. Someone had seen. Someone had heard. Someone was there.

  “Who,” I croaked, and then “help me up.”

  “You’re pathetic,” replied Leon.

  And then, as an afterthought, “Cocksucker,” as he turned and walked away.

  * * *

  For the longest time, Eric just sat in his chair, looking at me, not saying anything. I sat in the chair opposite, an icepack on the back of my head, and looked at the floor. Coffee had soaked the back of my shirt and pants, leaving a ferocious itch as it dried off my skin. In the far distance we could hear explosions; tests of sound files and triggers that rattled the walls at irregular intervals.

  Finally, he spoke. “What am I going to do with you, Ryan?” he asked. “You were one of the few people in this building I thought I could trust absolutely. I thought you could be professional. I thought you could do your job without letting any personal issues get in the way. Instead, you wind up flat on your ass in a puddle of coffee. How’s the hand, by the way?”

  I looked at it. The bleeding had stopped, but I had a fancy new two-inch cut just below the wrist. “It’s fine. Flesh wound and all that.”

  “Good.” He coughed into his fist, then picked up where he’d left off. “Right. Flat on your ass in the break room. I ask you to lead the team, and now neither the Engineering nor the Art lead want to be in the same room with you. I ask you to work on a simple port, and instead we end up behind pretty much as soon as we start. Do you have any kind of explanation for this, or should I just advise you to go take a few weeks’ vacation?”

  “Vacation?” I croaked. “Why vacation?”

  “So you don’t do anything else stupid that would force me to fire you.” He looked at me again, and the anger swapped itself out for pity. “Come on, Ryan, what is it? You’re not a screw up, not like this. Is there something else that’s going on? This isn’t like you.”

  I opened my mouth to say something inoffensive, like a promise to straighten up, and instead, I started laughing. My head throbbed with each cackle, but I just couldn’t stop myself. Bent over, howling, I just shook my head and laughed. “Oh, Jesus, Eric. If you knew. If you only knew.”

  “Easy there.” He was out from around the desk, my head in his hands and cradling me to look up into the ceiling light. “You sound like you might be concussed. Let me get a look at your eyes to see if you’re dilated.”

  “I’m not dilated, I’m screwed,” I protested, and suddenly that was even funnier, and I laughed until I couldn’t breathe.

  “Drink this,” Eric said about a lifetime later, forcing a cup of water between my hands. I took a gulp, chortled, and coughed as half of it came out my nose. “Oh, man, man, what did you have to do that for?”

  Eric held the cup in my hands until he was sure I wasn’t going to drop it, then leaned back, squatting on his haunches. “To keep you from passing out, mostly.” He stared at me intently. “Do I need to take you to the urgent care? Do I need to call Sarah and let her do it for me?”

  I blinked twice, and suddenly nothing was funny anymore. “God, no. I’m all right, Eric. I just tried to apologize to Shelly and it didn’t work and she spilled her coffee, and then I slipped and….” My head was throbbing now, and my hand throbbing with it, and then I thought about Leon. “Oh, God. What a mess.”

  “You are,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I still think I should take you to the emergency room.”

  “It’s just a bump,” I protested. “And to answer your question, yeah, there’s something going on. I guess I should have told you about it a while ago.”

  He stood, then turned to face the window. “If it’s about canceling Blue Lightning….”

  “It is. Sort of.” I gathered myself to tell him everything, then stopped. What could I tell him? That our cancelled project was walking around the building, naked, demanding overtime and a hell of a lot more? That would get me sent to a whole different kind of hospital and get Sarah brought in, and sooner or later she’d talk to Leon and Shelly, and….

  No. Wasn’t going to happen, couldn’t happen, couldn’t be allowed to happen. In an instant the alternative made itself crystal clear. There was a way out of this, a way to move forward and buy enough time to make penance for my sins later. There was a way to save the project and, if I was lucky, at least put Blue Lightning on hold for long enough for me to figure out what to do about her.

  “Yes?” Eric was waiting, and not patiently. He was angry and just wanted me to give him an appropriate target. And if I didn’t, I was quite certain, then it would be me.

  “There’s a black project running for Blue Lightning,” I said. Eric nodded but didn’t say anything, and after a minute, I continued. “Terry’s leading it. There are at least four other people involved. They’ve been working on it instead of Salvador, and they asked me to get involved.”

  “Instead of Salvador?” he finally asked. “Not on top of it?”

  “It’s gotten kind of intense,” I said, and hoped that my voice didn’t give away anything more than it ought. “At least, that’s what they told me.”

  “And?”

  I took a deep breath before continuing. “And I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about it for weeks now, because I didn’t want to rat them out, but at the same time—”

  “At the same time you didn’t want to screw the project or the company.” He turned around and shot me a look fraught with meaning. “And that’s what’s been bugging you?”
There was a hint of emphasis on the word “that,” a suggestion that he knew a little more than I’d told him and he wanted to see if I’d come clean.

  Screw it. What was he going to do, I asked myself. Ask Michelle and Leon? They wouldn’t give him the straight dope either, not if they wanted to avoid a little psychiatric leave of their own.

  “That’s it,” I said, and then forced myself into a coughing fit so I wouldn’t have to say anything else.

  “Ah,” Eric said. “I see.” He walked over to his desk and punched up an extension on his phone. “Marie?” he asked into the speaker.

  There was a pause, then the voice of our HR maven came back, crackling over the line. “Yes? Hello?”

  “I’m going to need your help. We’ve got,” and he looked up at me, “four termination notices I need you to prepare, and one letter of discipline to go into a file. Ryan will be down shortly to give you the names.”

  “Four?” she asked, clearly surprised. “Do we have cause?”

  “I think so,” he said calmly. “Ryan will explain when he gets there.” He cut the connection and looked down at me. “That is, if you’re sticking by your story.”

  “It’s the truth,” I said, and shivered. “But I don’t think you need to—”

  “Your thinking hasn’t been working so well lately, Ryan,” Eric said, his voice deceptively mild. “Now go down and talk to the nice lady in HR about how these people have been working on a project they weren’t supposed to on company time.”

  “It’s going to be a huge morale hit,” I warned him.

  “I’ll take that chance. It’s better than missing a milestone because people are too busy working on side projects to get their shit done.”

  “But you don’t have to fire them,” I pleaded. “Yell at them, suspend them, embarrass them, whatever, but all they’re doing is caring a little too much about what we worked on.”