by Simon Archer
“You did not!” I replied, knowing full well that they most likely did. The countdown had been their way of humorously pointing out that I was a workaholic, basically. I rolled my eyes at the two of them but couldn’t help but grin. They were right, after all. I felt their eyes on me still, so I straightened up in my seat and tipped my chin up in defiance. “Shut up! You don’t know me at all!”
The giggling lasted all the rest of the way home.
11
After dropping the girls off at home, I drove straight to my office. The building was empty, aside from the cleaning staff. As I unlocked my office door and stepped inside, I felt my mind kick into programming mode. My eyes drifted over to the right side of the room, where my computer station was set up. It was my favorite part of the elaborate office I’d earned with my promotion. The room was set up in sections. There was a demo area with a coffee table, chairs, and a couch I'd added, as well as a meeting area with my desk and office chairs. The suite even had its own bathroom with a shower. It felt like an entire office building in one room to me.
I walked to the computer station, complete with a hydraulic desk and multiple CPUs set up, and turned on the machines. While they were starting up, I dropped my keys and money clip on my meeting desk and kicked my shoes off. It had always been a habit, or more like a superstition, of mine that I programmed better with no shoes on. Someone told me once that it must be an energy flow type of thing, but all I knew is that when I didn’t take my shoes off, I’d find myself thinking about my shoes more than the program I was working on. Once I was shoeless, I returned to my computers and sat down. I leaned back in my chair and stretched my arms out in front of me, feeling the muscles in my shoulders relax. I put my noise-reduction headset on and took a deep breath. Then I pulled my chair close to my keyboard and dove in.
Moments later, code was flashing before my eyes. When I saw it, however, I didn’t see lines of various characters on a screen. I saw functions that the lines performed. I saw how the functions interacted with each other. I’d considered going directly to the line of code that was malfunctioning but decided on an alternate course of action. Instead, I was going to go through the entire program, function by function, to be certain no other factor was acting as an unintended outside influence, causing the issue. Soon, I was envisioning the program in terms of multi-dimensional gears perpetually interacting.
They’d twist and turn and bend around each other as they caused other gears to do the same. As I examined the gears, they started to group together to form small machines. The machines interacted with each other seamlessly, always spurring other machines into action. As I passed each machine off as functional, it would group together with other cleared systems and slowly create a larger machine.
In my mind, the machine took on the form of a molten, mercury box with electronic pulses flowing through and around it. When smaller machines combined with the box, they would melt into the smooth, silver surface, and the box would expand. Once the box had absorbed as many similar machines as it could, another box, connected to the first by only a single point at the corner, would begin to form. As the number of boxes increased, the group as a whole became smaller, so they were all in my line of sight at all times as I checked and rechecked new gear systems forming above them.
Soon, the number of boxes became so vast that they started to look like a single sheet of flexible steel with squares pressed into it. When the boxes turned into that image, I paused my examination. I liked to be able to see the boxes individually. I had to check the image off as sound and operational, so I could clear it and create more room in my peripheral vision.
After clearing the metal sheet, I blinked and looked around me. To my surprise, I saw people passing the skinny window located next to my office door. I pushed my chair back and stood up. Both my knees made popping sounds as my legs straightened, telling me I had been sitting for longer than I’d realized. I ran my hands over my face and stretched. I visited the bathroom and was returning to my desk when more people walked by my window. I couldn’t imagine what they would be doing there. The building was never occupied on a Sunday, and it had been empty when I came in. I was beginning to think that I had perhaps forgotten about an event when I walked to my door and opened it. I stood and stared. The entire office was full of staffers. One of the new interns paused as she walked by.
“Good afternoon. Can I get you anything, Mr. Anders?” she offered sweetly. I tipped my head and looked at her for a long, awkward moment. She didn’t budge, and neither did my confusion.
“Carol! Leave him alone!” a stern voice echoed down the hallway. Carol jumped and turned. Jack was walking swiftly toward my office. He completely ignored me, took Carol by the shoulders, and gently guided her away. “Mr. Anders is not to be disturbed by anyone. In fact, I’m going to task you with making certain nobody goes near his office today. I mean, absolutely nobody,” Jack told her in a calm and soothing tone as they walked off. My confusion about the office being full disappeared. It was no longer Sunday. Furthermore, according to Carol’s greeting, not only was it no longer Sunday, it was afternoon on some other day. Jack started walking back to his office. He completely avoided even looking at me.
“Jack,” I said as he passed my door. He stopped and very slowly turned around. He looked at me but didn’t say a word. “Where am I?”
“Four o’clock, Monday,” he stated quietly. “You won’t be bothered again.”
“She wasn’t a bother, she was polite,” I stuck up for Carol.
“Regardless, you have my word,” Jack reiterated and quickly walked away. I let him go, and I retreated back into my office. I closed the door behind me. I had been reviewing code for approximately twenty-three hours.
“No wonder my knees are complaining,” I said aloud to myself. Cranky knees or not, I went directly back to my computer desk and sat down. I placed my headset back over my ears. I had the fleeting thought that I should give the headset company an endorsement of some kind. Their product worked so well that they kept out the noise of an entire company working for nearly an entire day.
I brought up the first line of code, beginning where I had left off, and started inspecting again. In no time, I was back to creating gears and machines and molten silver boxes in my mind. I had cleared another metal sheet and was almost finished creating a second when I came to the rogue line of code that was causing the function issues. I paused, cleared the metal sheet anyway, and sat staring at the singular line that was keeping me from reaching a new level of artificial intelligence operation. Each pixel of each character jumped off the screen at me while I explored, poured over, and scrutinized it. The code was sound in and of itself, yet somehow, it managed to rewrite itself when the program was tested.
My frustration began to grow when the pixels started to fade back into whole letters. I knew my brain was forcing me to take a break. I didn’t want to stop, but I’d been in the profession of programming long enough to know that there was no getting away from brain-fry. The only solution was to surrender to taking a break.
I slowly stood up, ignoring the creaking that had spread from my knees to my lower back. Nothing hurt, my body just didn’t want to move after being stationary for so long. I walked at turtle-speed across my office to the bathroom. My legs were shaky and felt unstable. It was as if the muscles in them had atrophied. All of my body’s temporary ailments were familiar. Several jobs I’d had when I first started out in programming left me feeling just like that, but it had been a while since I’d pulled an all-nighter.
After using the bathroom, I walked to the window by the door and peered out. The office was buzzing around just as it had been the last time I’d been out. I opened the door and stuck my head out. A nearby secretary looked up at me and then averted her eyes. She picked up her phone, dialed an extension, and spoke softly to whoever answered while occasionally looking at me from the corner of her eye. I was still staring at her, wondering why she wouldn’t look directly at me when I h
eard Jack’s voice from down the hall.
“Hey there,” he said just loud enough for me to hear him. After sitting in silence so long, all the office sounds around me were magnified, and his voice nearly faded into them. Before I had the mind to answer, he was standing in front of my office door. I took a step back and opened it just wide enough for him to enter.
“Hey, Jack,” I finally replied. I heard my own voice, and it sounded foreign to me. I suppose my vocal cords weren’t used to being still for so long, either.
“I understand fully that you can’t be disturbed while in the zone, but I was about to come down here and interrupt you anyway,” he said, walking over to the couch and plopping down. “You look like shit.”
“You look dolled up enough for the two of us,” I replied. Jack chuckled and pointed to the chair across from him.
“Why don’t you have a seat for a minute,” he suggested in a directive manner.
“I’ve been sitting all night, and I think I’ll stand for a minute,” I told him.
“All night?” His face tilted, and he raised an eyebrow at me. He stood and walked over to stand directly in front of me. “Bennett, nobody’s seen you since Monday afternoon when we last spoke. It’s Wednesday morning.” He looked at me as though I was a patient in a hospital who needed walk assistance.
“Wednesday?” I echoed, confusion clouding my mind. “That can’t be. That would mean I was down for a day and a half after we talked last.” I’d tried to calculate the number of hours in my head but couldn’t.
“Hence the reason I was about to come in here after you,” he said. He gestured once more to the couch. “Sit. You can stand up and walk after you’ve had something to eat. I assume you haven’t eaten since Sunday night?” I tried to remember, but my brain didn’t want to focus on food either. In fact, it seemed my mind refused to focus at all. So, I decided to trust Jack and made my way to the couch.
“I found the rogue line,” I told him when I sat down. He sat across from me, a concerned look crossing his face.
“We knew where it was, remember?” he asked. I could tell he was starting to worry that I wasn’t sane, or something along those lines at least.
“I know we had it mapped, but I wanted to see it,” I tried to clarify.
“Feel free to answer me later if you’d like, but what were you doing with it for the past two and a half days?” he replied.
“Oh, I wasn’t working with it. I did an inspection of the code preceding it. I ran into the line in question just before my brain shut down,” I told him. I attempted to chuckle at what I thought was a mildly humorous quip, but it came out more like a snort.
“Okay, okay. We’ll talk about it later. I didn’t realize what you were doing. No wonder you look like you just ran across the Serengeti without water for a week!” Jack said. He stood up and went to my meeting desk. He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Who are you calling?” I wanted to know. I didn’t feel up for other people being around me just then.
“Andi,” he whispered while the phone rang. “She gave me extremely clear instructions that I was to contact her and Vila when you came up for air. I’m positive they’ll have food here in a flash, is my guess.”
“You don’t know how right you are,” I whispered back, more to myself than to Jack. He turned away suddenly.
“Andi, it’s Jack. Bennett is ready for lunch,” he said into the phone with a light laugh. “Oh, you are? Great. See you in a minute.” He hung up and returned to sit with me. “They are already here. Just came in the lobby. She said she was going to make you eat whether you’d popped out or not.”
I managed a smile for him. Andi was a convincing liar, apparently. No way was she and Vila already on their way. They were magically zipping themselves over, no doubt. Before the thought had completely made it through my mind, there was a slight tap on the door, and it opened. Andi and Vila came in a flurry of activity.
Without even acknowledging Jack’s presence, Vila went straight to the coffee table in front of me and pulled it closer to where I was sitting. She cleared off the decorative centerpiece and opened a bag she’d set down nearby. Soon she had the table covered with plates of bite-sized food. Andi, meanwhile, walked straight into the bathroom with a garment bag and proceeded to knock around in there for a while, although I couldn’t see what she was doing. As though they’d timed it, Andi came out of the bathroom, Vila finished setting up the table, and the two of them sat beside me on the couch, staring at me.
“Hello, ladies,” I said in a sarcastically formal tone. Jack smirked.
“Hello, ladies,” he echoed.
“We’ve brought enough for both of you,” Andi stated flatly.
“Eat, and then we’ll be on with the niceties,” Vila instructed. The two of them sat back on their cushions and continued to eye Jack and me.
Jack shrugged and leaned forward. He grabbed an empty paper plate and began filling it with the tiny-sized food. Andi had made olive pinwheels, cut up green onion lunch wraps, mini-meatball sandwiches, and toothpick vegetable skewers.
I was mildly surprised when he handed the plate to me when it was full. I took it from him, and he started dishing up his own plate. It took a few slow bites to get my stomach to recognize that it no longer needed to be in starvation mode, but when it finally did, the coffee table emptied quickly. I ended up eating so fast that I barely tasted what I was putting in my mouth. When I finally set my empty plate down and looked up, three sets of eyes were on me.
“Feel better?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed. The girls stood up, and both offered their hands to help me up. “Am I going somewhere?”
“Straight to the shower,” Vila informed me. I looked down at myself and shrugged. I hadn’t seen any of my clothes that wrinkled since I was in college and would leave baskets of laundry for weeks without folding or putting anything away. I took the girls’ hands and stood. They led me to the bathroom. I turned before closing the door behind me and looked back at Jack.
“I’ll catch you up to speed when I get out,” I told him.
“Let’s chat tomorrow, actually. I have a thing with the family this afternoon. My mother is in town,” he replied. He stood and headed to the door, stopping short. “I don’t condone you wasting away at your computer, but I swear, if you fix the issue before Sven and Asher leave this week, I’ll send you to Barbados, all expenses paid!” He laughed at the part of his own joke that was contradictory, but I had no doubt he was serious about the trip.
“No wasting away, got it?” I chuckled and retreated to the shower.
12
Once I was showered, I dressed in fresh clothes Andi had hung in the bathroom for me. My body seemed ten pounds lighter after washing the past two days off. Standing for a period of time was good for my overly-stiff muscles as well. When I returned to the office, I felt somewhat like myself again. Andi and Vila were sitting in the chairs opposite the couch. The couch now had a light comforter and pillows arranged on it. Both girls looked up at me with concerned eyes when I entered the room.
“I’m better, don’t worry,” I told them before they could ask.
“You still need sleep, though,” Vila nearly whined. My glance immediately went to my computer desk. Andi stood up and stepped between me and it.
“No,” she said flatly.
“I really do feel better. I owe it to both of you for making me take a second and refresh my senses. I’ll just be a little while,” I tried to reassure them. Andi walked around the couch and stood directly in front of me.
“No.” Her face was completely void of any expression, so much so that it was creepy. She stood without moving a muscle and stared up at me with her bright grey eyes.
“Really I--”
“NO!” she had barely moved her mouth, but the word came out three times louder than it had the first two times. I suddenly envisioned her standing in front of an army, in full royal dress, commanding them to stop. In my imagination,
there was no way her army would dare defy her orders. In real life, there was no way I was going to either.
“Fine, I’ll wait for a few minutes,” I conceded. “But then I really do have to finish up.” Andi stepped aside and smiled as though she hadn’t just thrown the hard ‘no’ in my face three times. I rolled my eyes at her whip-like demeanor change and went to sit on the couch. Before I was all the way down, Vila was at my side. She pulled back the comforter and fluffed the pillow.
“I’m not going to sleep, Vila,” I notified her. “Just break time is all.”
“Shall I start reciting the effects of insomnia on the human body? We figured you’d respond just as you are, so I made sure to have them handy,” she replied sweetly.
“You do not need to do that. I’m not an insomniac. I sleep just fine. It just so happens that I can’t sleep right now,” I responded sternly.
“Memory issues, mood changes, risk for diabetes, high blood pressure--”
“What are you doing?” I interjected.
“Weight gain, poor balance, low sex drive, increased chance for accidents--”
“Vila! Stop it!” I told her loudly.
“When you lay down, I’ll stop! Hallucinations, mania, bipolar mood disorder—”
“Fine!” I conceded for the second time in a matter of minutes. “I’ll lay down, but I’m not going to sleep! You don’t understand. I have to finish what I was working on!” Vila smiled at me the same way Andi had as she pulled the blanket over me once I was horizontal on the couch.
“That’s better,” Vila cooed as she tucked me in. She kneeled down next to me and started gently squeezing my legs from thigh to foot in a rhythmic pattern. Andi knelt with her and began the same type of pressure treatment on my arms.