Fatal Exception

by Derek M. Dukes

  A few days later, Phin showed up for work to find the kiosk gone. He looked around to make sure it hadn't been moved to a different location — the kiosks always fought for positions nearer to the big department stores and the food court — but it had simply vanished.

  Phin went immediately to the bank within the mall to cash the last paycheck he had been given, but the bank refused to honor the check due to insufficient funds. Internet in the Mall was out of business, and Phinnaeus Webb was out of a job. As luck would have it, it was also at this time when Phin had a falling out with his girlfriend.

  * * *

  424F4F4F4F4F4F4F52494E47

  * * *

  PHIN HAD MET HOLLY BROOKS shortly after he had started working at the Internet in the Mall kiosk. Holly managed the music store across the food court, and they hit it off immediately due to a shared admiration for Radiohead.

  Phin's relationship with Holly was a fast-moving affair, as most things are at that age. Within a couple of months, he'd moved out of his parents' house and into Holly's apartment. A couple of months later they signed a lease together.

  Holly was a sweet girl — smart, to be sure, otherwise Phin wouldn't have given her the time of day. She wasn't terribly exciting, though. Predictability, stability, security — that was her primary makeup.

  As the months rolled past, Phin and Holly fell into more of a routine. Eventually, the relationship simply fizzled out and died without so much as a whimper.

  There was no big dramatic moment that marked the end. Phin didn't come home one day to find Holly getting double-stuffed by a minor league baseball team; nor did Holly suddenly walk in to find Phin balls-deep in a syphilitic stripper; no, it was pretty much the opposite. Phin and Holly just sat down one evening. One of them said “it's over, huh?” and the other said “uh huh.”

  Boxes and bags were packed, CDs were divided, cars were loaded, and that was that.

  Phin soon discovered that his barely-above-minimum-wage job wasn't enough to keep him afloat on his own. With only a couple of semesters of community college under his belt, he was hardly prepared to embark on a career, but he needed something that would pay the bills, lest he end up doing the unthinkable and moving back home with his parents.

  When all seemed lost, a glance at a newspaper opened a new door:

  Calling all computer nerds!

  Immediate openings for tech support.

  No experience needed! Paid training!

  Flexible shifts — up to $12/hour starting!

  Storm Computer Corp.

  http://stormcomputers.web

  Phin felt something stir deep in his gut. The information age was calling, and he was going to answer.

  Chapter 4

  The Blind Leading the Blind

  “TODAY,” THE TRAINER JIM LYONS began, “I'm going to teach you how to use our custom incident management system.”

  Phin pulled out his notebook. He had a feeling this was going to be another long day.

  “Many of you are already skilled with computers, but your job here isn't just to fix the customers' problems — it's to keep track of their problems in the proper way. For that, we have an automated system that you'll use to create an incident report for each and every phone call you receive.”

  Jim turned on a projector, which threw the contents of his laptop's screen up onto a blank wall.

  “This first screen is the Incident Reporting screen. You'll enter the customer's name, address, contact number, as well as all the information you can gather about the computer and the problem. The easiest way to do this is to simply ask for the model name and serial number on the front of the tower. Of course, many customers may not know what the tower is, so you can also search the sales system by phone number, name, or address to find out what they ordered from us. But the sales search may not work if they purchased their system through a regular retail outlet, a mall kiosk, or another authorized third-party dealer.”

  Phin raised his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “What if all the customer needs to do is reboot?”

  “Good question. You won't actually begin the troubleshooting process until after you have gathered the customer information. That way, we can keep track of who is calling, what the reason is, and how often that customer is calling. It also serves to help keep track of potential problems with particular computer models. Does that answer your question?”

  “So, the customer is essentially providing the beta testing for our product?”

  “No — our products undergo rigorous testing before they ever leave the door. Occasionally, there may be problems that are not identified in-house, in which case we need to know about them so we can issue software patches- or “hot fixes” - or so we can correct the problem in the manufacturing.”

  So yes, Phin thought.

  “As you perform your troubleshooting, you will need to fill in these fields here.”

  Jim moved the mouse around to designate another area of the extremely complicated looking form.

  “First, you'll need to set the incident status — in this case ‘Open,’ since you just received the phone call — and categorize it as Hardware, Software, or User Education. This is vital — too many User Education calls in a month and the customer will be billed for any subsequent calls to support.”

  Someone in the back of the room raised his hand.

  “Yes?” Jim pointed at him.

  “What if it seems like it's a software problem, but it turns out to be user education?”

  “You can change the Incident Category as many times as you need to as long as the Incident Status is still Open. Once you change the incident to Closed, Resolved, Escalated, Canceled, or Complete, however, the Incident Category will be locked, and you will need to fill out the Incident Recharacterization Request Form and get your supervisor to sign it.”

  All this garbage made Phin feel a little tense. He just wanted to solve some computer problems, make some money, and get back into school. He didn't sign up to keep track of the company's manufacturing defects. He had no doubt that he would be able to use the ludicrously complicated system — it just struck him as an extraordinary waste of time that could be spent taking other phone calls.

  “Now, all of you will start out at a Tier 1 level. We'll be testing you later on — after you've been on the phones for a little bit — to see if you would be better suited to taking Tier 2 or Tier 3 calls. All the calls we receive follow a strict escalation path. They start out at Tier 1. If the Tier 1 tech can't resolve the issue, it gets sent to Tier 2, and then from there to Tier 3.

  “Everything you need to know about our products is kept on the StormCloud online knowledge repository. It also contains a decision tree you can follow for resolving your calls. The decision tree is still optional at this point — we are still in the process of testing it and filling in all the gaps — but it's there if you run into trouble.”

  “Now, let's take a look at the process for escalating a call to Tier 2. First, you'll give the customer the Incident Tracking number, which is a 14-digit number used by our system to track the call. Then, just press Transfer on your phone's control panel . . . ”

  * * *

  425544445953595354454D00

  * * *

  “HELLO, AND WELCOME TO YOUR final day of training.”

  Phin looked at the balding trainer and hoped he didn't notice Brian's tardiness.

  Both of them had struggled to stay awake through the first two days. If this went on much longer, Phin would be tempted to commit suicide — not so much to escape, rather to stage a protest of the entire proceedings.

  Luckily, that would not be necessary.

  “We'll be in the classroom for this morning, and then you'll each be assigned to a buddy on the floor to listen in with this afternoon and for the rest of the week. Then next Monday, you'll be on your own.”

  With the stealth of a ninja master, Brian slipped into the room and slid into the empty chair next to Phin.

&
nbsp; “What did I miss?”

  “Oh, I think he's still somewhere between ‘this is the power button’ and ‘this is the keyboard.’”

  “Oh shit! Are you taking notes?”

  “Excuse me gentlemen.” Jim Lyons interrupted their good time for the first time that day.

  “Sorry,” Brian said. “Go on.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” The way he said “gentlemen” oozed with venom, the sort of contempt only felt for younger men by those who had squandered their youth in service of a corporate overlord.

  With a knowing smile exchanged, Phin and Brian settled in for another long morning.

  “Now, does someone remember what three short beeps means?”

  * * *

  4241444D454D4F525900

  * * *

  SHORTLY AFTER LUNCH, PHINNAEUS WAS introduced to his tech buddy — Reuben DeLeon.

  Reuben was someone who took his job far too seriously, but only because of the power he felt over the caller. Every call began exactly the same way:

  Thanks for calling Storm Support. This is Reuben — what can I do for ya?

  The various managers and supervisors in the call center had been trying for ages to get Reuben to stick to the script, but none had succeeded.

  “What can I do for ya?” To Reuben, he was doing the world a favor by showing up to work. He would hit the button on the phone, then lean back in his chair, prop up his feet, and disseminate his knowledge like the tech support god on Olympus, tossing down lightning bolts of wisdom on the lucky few who ended up in his path.

  One of the fatal flaws that strikes phone workers in all industries is the tendency to devolve into using esoteric jargon. Reuben had this in spades — but he made up for it by also taking the time (far too much, if you asked the management) to explain everything to the often bewildered customer.

  And God help the poor bastard who actually had some scrap of computer knowledge and ended up talking to Reuben. At a moment's notice, once Reuben smelled another computer enthusiast, he'd launch into a tirade that sounded something like this:

  You have a Quasar II? I thought about getting that, but the Level 2 cache is only 128K. I need at least double that because I do a lot of gaming, and the frame buffer for my Hades Pro video card needs 128K all by itself . . .

  Or this:

  You got a firewall? Oh, you better get one. You won't believe the nasty viruses, worms, hackers, and everything else out there in cyberspace. Just last night, I was at home and I heard the alarm go off on my firewall. I looked at the logs and, sure enough, somebody was probing all my ports, one by one, looking for an opening. Now, I run Bulletproof Defender — great program, by the way — so there was no way he was going to get in, so I decided to mess with him. So you know what I did? I opened up Port 82, waited until he established a connection, then I hit him with a malformed ARP packet storm. He dropped offline just like that — probably corrupted some registry keys or burned out a RAM module or two . . .

  Now, Phin could smell the bullshit a mile away. But he also heard some nuggets of truth and insight in Reuben's calls. In order to secure a captive audience for his rants, Reuben had become very skilled at recognizing the customer's own level of computer knowledge, as well as diagnosing the computer problem with as few questions as possible.

  As Phin listened to Reuben's calls, the rhythm of the fix began to drum in his head. Everyone had a reason for calling. Every problem had a cause. There was a finite set of causes that could exist — some more common than others. Recognize the problems and solve them.

  Simple logic, the kind that set Phin's brain abuzz. Maybe this job would work out after all.

  Phinnaeus spent the next few days shadowing various techs in the call center. Aside from the days in the classroom, there was no real “training program” - just kind of a review of the computer skills one was expected to have upon walking in the door.

  With Phin's natural aptitude for problem solving, the tech support side of things came with relative ease. After a week, Phin was already taking phone calls from customers with all sorts of computer problems, and handling them better than techs who had been working there for years.

  Chapter 5

  The View from the Top

  EXCERPTS FROM “PATH TO GLORY: An Autobiography of Elliot Storm,” third draft manuscript, with publisher's notes.

  pp. 6-7

  I did not set out to become the most powerful man in the business world. It just happened that way.

  [A little pompous?]

  As a child, I always wanted to make money as simply as possible. When I was six, while the other kids had lemonade stands, I bought up all the lemons at Polasky's Corner Store and sold them at 300% markup.

  Of course, my detractors would say that such an action amounted to a monopoly — as if a 6-year-old could possibly conceive of such a thing — but to me, it was always just business.

  [Your detractors then or now?]

  pp. 31-32

  Storm Computer Corporation really started one night in my parents' garage. That part of the legend is true. But, it's not like you think. We were not the industrious tinkerers with soldering irons and circuit boards that everyone makes me out to be. At least, Don Christian and I weren't. Rodney Sandoval was the resident computer nerd. Don had the money, and I had the plan.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself. The three of us — Don, Rodney and I — were shotgunning Lone Star in the garage one morning. Rodney, well, it went to his head, and he starts talking about computers, how all you have to do is buy the parts and people will pay you two, three, even four times what the pieces were worth for a complete system.

  I just about fell out of my chair — it was just like the lemons and lemonade, but this time it would be on a global scale.

  That night, I dragged a blitzed Don to the Radio Casa, and the company was born.

  [Maybe this needs a little less detail — frankly, the legend sounds better.]

  pp. 208-209

  With all of the success we enjoyed, I could not understand why Don would just skip town like that — but despite what the media said at the time, that is precisely what happened. I came home one night to find a message on my answering machine. I'll never forget it.

  “Elliot,” it said. “Carry on with the company. It's all too much for me.”

  Then he said, “Goodbye,” and to my knowledge that was his last word.

  [Does this fully address the questions, the investigation? You were considered a suspect in the possible murder of Donald Christian for quite some time. You should probably put those charges to rest once and for all.]

  pp. 462-464

  Of course, having been with the company since the beginning, Rodney didn't take it well when I replaced him as the head of Research and Development, but that's business. There are a lot of directions I wanted to take Storm Computer Corporation, and he simply lacked the vision to lead the way.

  Now, nobody was as surprised as I was with what he did. He must have been in a lot of pain — to throw himself off the Pennybacker Bridge like that. Such a tragedy.

  [Seems a little brief for coverage of a friend's suicide.]

  p. 1101

  The future of Storm Computer Corporation looks even brighter than our past. Our lead researcher has been instrumental in our moving forward toward the 21st century.

  The doctor is a brilliant man. He designed the handheld version of the Enigma code machine during World War II, I believe.

  [According to our researchers, there was no such thing as a handheld version of the Enigma code-breaking machine in use by either the Allies or the Axis powers in WWII.]

  * * *

  44454152415353484F4C4500

  * * *

  Letter to Elliot Storm from McGhee Publishing, Inc.

  Dear Mr. Storm,

  We are excited to be working with you on publishing your autobiography. Before we can move forward, however, there are some matters we would like to attend to.

  Upon review of your
latest draft, we have some misgivings about the content in your manuscript as it currently exists. Specifically, we feel that some of your references to euthanasia, human experimentation, and animal mutilation — while very tastefully approached, and without emotional bias — may cause unnecessary controversy that could adversely affect sales of the book.

  While your contract does give you complete editorial control, it is a standard practice in this business for the publisher's own editors to make certain reasonable changes to manuscripts, both for content and for length. Our experience has been that the mainstream public reading audience will lose focus after about 400-500 pages for an autobiography or other non-fiction work. At 1621 pages, we feel that your manuscript could be condensed somewhat, while still maintaining both factual accuracy and artistic integrity.

  If you have any questions or would like to discuss this matter further, do not hesitate to ask your literary agent to call my office.

  Sincerely,

  Butch Hedwig

  Vice President of Acquisitions

  McGhee Publishing, Inc.

  Chapter 6

  Concerning the Burglary on the Night of December 22, 1999

  CHRIS SKEANS WAS A SMALL-TIME crook who fell into a big time deal. It all started on a Thursday night in December, with Chris planted on his usual barstool at Tijuana Tara's.

  While Tara's was certainly an excellent Tex-Mex restaurant, by far the best thing offered there was the Mexican Martini. Essentially, it was a margarita on the rocks in a martini shaker. This powerful concoction has sent home many a man with many a fat girl.

  To the credit of the management at Tara's, there was always a strictly-enforced 2-martini limit. Once you had that second martini, you were cut off. The loophole was that you could drink whatever you wanted in between the two.