2 Executive Retention

by Maria E. Schneider

  She waved hello.

  I waved back and meandered to my station.

  Once there, I calmed down. The day wasn't looking too critical, and I was proud of myself for getting things moving in the right direction. That good feeling lasted about forty seconds, right up until Art shouted at me.

  "Hey, babe!" He charged across the lab, straight down the aisle leading to my station. Since he was looking straight at me, I could only hope he somehow died before he reached me.

  I scrunched down in my chair and prayed for gunmen, a lightning storm or a miracle.

  No help arrived. He strolled over with his thumbs tucked into his jeans and his rhinestone studded boots, yes, rhinestones, clacking on the concrete floor. His pants were tucked inside the boots. His belt buckle was now seasonal; not only did it have shiny crystals around the border, the text screamed, "Happy Holidays!" before scrolling to, "Art. The man!"

  "Your computer still working okay?" he asked.

  "Don't ever call me babe. Not in the grocery store, not in private, not at work, not anywhere."

  "Huh?"

  He couldn't hold a thought long enough to remember shouting out the phrase only seconds ago. I glared at him.

  "Wowza!" He leaned over my terminal. "That's some impressive performance numbers you're getting there." He mashed his hand on my computer monitor and left smarmy fingerprints. "You're going to fit in here nicely, aren't you? Maybe we'll have a chance to work more closely together. I should put in a good word for you with Jacques."

  I had no earthly idea what he was babbling about. "I need to go help Vi," I said.

  "Is this the baby putting out those numbers?" He was dangerously close to my setup.

  "Uh…"

  "It really rocks, doesn't it?"

  Bill happened around the corner of the racks and spotted Art. Like a wary wildebeest, Bill stopped on a dime. He spun around, but not quite before Art caught the movement from the corner of his eye. "Bill! How are you? I was wondering, man, did you have a chance to put that stuff out on the website for me?"

  Wasn't it Art's job to make sure the website was up and running? "I thought you maintained the website."

  "Oh well." Art hung his head in an attempt to look bashful. "Bill offered to help me, and I couldn't turn him down. You wouldn't believe the upkeep on the thing."

  Bill looked like he could believe it and knew the pain rather more intimately than Art. While Art was facing me, Bill seized the moment of distraction and ran. Without a sound he was gone behind the racks of equipment.

  Art turned back and leaned over my server in order to try and see where Bill had gone.

  "Art," I yelled, "watch--"

  Too late. His hand smashed down against the surge protector power button. The whole system spiraled down to...silence. In dismay, I watched the screen blip to black. I stared at it, willing the run of weekend results to come back. It took hours to run those tests, and now I was going to have to start over. In slow motion, I turned to face the enemy.

  Murder.

  Apparently there were some vestiges of survival instinct left in the Neanderthal brain because Art backed away, stuttering. "There...there was a power failure. Or surge. Could feel it," he babbled. I followed him with my eyes and clenched and unclenched my fists. As I took a step toward him, he turned and fled full speed out of the lab.

  I slammed my hand on the table instead of following him. With a groan, I plopped down into my chair. The screen remained miserably blank.

  A few seconds of silence reigned before Bill dared poke his furry head tentatively around the side of his rack. "Is he gone?"

  "Not far enough!"

  Bill came out of hiding. "I offered to update the website? Griefer. If he comes in again looking for me, tell him I left for the day." He shook his fist at the lab door before retreating behind the machines.

  I doubted Art was actually smart enough to intentionally cause trouble, but like griefers--gamers that went after other gamers' characters even when it wouldn't help their own score--Art was severely annoying. With no other option, I reached over to turn the power back on. If only I had copied the results to a file before Elvis-the-idiot had shown up. I needed to automate that part and soon.

  The tests weren't that hard to restart, but I hadn't finished doing so before Jacques called. The Kronology guy had emailed and asked for a phone conference to get the "real" information they needed. Jacques was less than pleased with this development. He squawked into the phone, demanding my presence in his office.

  I hurried upstairs.

  "I told him how to duplicate the problem," I defended myself. "Although from the customer report, it's pretty darn obvious. My report or the customer report should have worked for them."

  Jacques sat behind his desk, looking stern. "He mentioned that you gave him some information, but that you were unable to really help him. Our job is to help the parties arrive at a solution. This may mean finding the root of the problem by going the extra mile."

  I tried to be patient, but I was embarrassed and frustrated at the way the Kronology guy had made me look incompetent. "If the server is shutting down this easily, all they have to do is duplicate the problem and check the parameters themselves. I would define his response as a smoke screen."

  Jacques tapped his desk with a pencil. "No, no! I am certain they are merely confused. The phone conference is in ten minutes. If you can have a complete picture by then, it would really help."

  Help? Why not give me the code, and I could fix it myself? I slammed back into the lab. The Kronology guy should be able to obtain the information he needed in his sleep. Jacques had to be in on something illegal. There was no other reason to ignore the obvious unless he was a bigger idiot than I could imagine.

  I pulled one power cord. The server shut down. I rebooted the server and noted the stupid parameters again. Not that any of the data mattered in this case because a server crash was a server crash.

  I made it to the conference room fifteen minutes late. Jacques had already started the conference call. His forehead was beaded with sweat and the table in front of him was full of pen marks. He was also backpedaling fast enough to take out the wall behind him. "No, no, we're not saying you have a bug. No, we duplicate the customer problem. We don't tell the customer what you did wrong." Dazed, he beckoned me into the room. "Sedona! Here she is now, she can explain the test."

  I took a seat and started talking. I explained the sorry details carefully. Whoever was on the other end of the line either didn't understand English or didn't want to.

  "This is Craig. Why did you pull the power cord?"

  This was not supposed to be a chicken crossing the road joke. "That is what the customer did."

  "Was there something wrong with the machine? You shouldn't go yanking power cords out of the back of things."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and gave a slightly nasal reply. "The customer was testing your claim that the system could run with one cord plugged in and the other for a backup. My guess is that when one side gets unplugged, you record the system as not having power and this causes the server to crash."

  "Impossible." This was a new voice. "We just monitor the system."

  Doggedly, I kept trying. "A program somewhere has decided the system is in critical condition unless both cords are plugged in."

  Jacques tried to placate them. He droned on about his belief in their company and products. He reiterated that we had not told the company with the complaint that we had duplicated the problem.

  "That would be libel," an unidentified voice snapped. "We certainly hope you aren't publishing false reports."

  I butted back in. "Let's concentrate on getting the customer an answer that solves his problem. I spoke with Craig about duplicating the test. Have you done so?"

  There was a lot of whispering on the other side of the phone. Finally Craig spoke up. "Tell me again what you did to crash the server."

  Okay, there went my patience. "I did not crash the server
. I didn't write any of this inept code. All I did was pull a power cord. The server shut off. There are two power cords. The server should have continued running."

  "After you pulled the plug, then you started the server?"

  "No, the server was powered on and working fine. I pulled the cord. Then the server crashed."

  "You shouldn't go around pulling things."

  "So you're saying that pulling one of two power cords is not supported." Their much-advertised feature was a lie. "Maybe the machine won't even start unless both cords are plugged in."

  Craig's voice got happy. "Oh, we've run that test. We're sure if you start with one power cord, all will operate normally."

  Someone in the background muttered, "I could bench press twice her weight with half my brain tied behind my back."

  No one said anything for a few seconds, and my slow burn ignited into an inferno. "Did you take into account that I am six two, weigh two hundred thirty pounds and am a black belt in karate? I'm not all that keen on the idea of being bench pressed, and doing so will not help solve the customer problem." I had to stretch to reach five seven. With my lax attendance at karate, I was lucky I had made it to green belt in three years.

  Jacques tapped his pen so hard against the table, the laminate chipped. He sputtered. I took a deep breath and cut him off. "Listen guys, if you can't duplicated the problem there, why don't you visit our lab? Perhaps if you see it happen, you'll be more comfortable troubleshooting the problem."

  There was a lot of paper rustling on the other end, several below the mike mutterings and finally the unidentified voice agreed. "You guys could use some training on our stuff anyway. How about we visit your lab and show you how the system is supposed to operate? Then you can file your report."

  "That would be great." I failed to keep the irritation out of my voice. "I'll show you the test I ran. You can tell me if you're able to fix it."

  More silence and then Jacques finally spouted polite goodbyes and dates for the visit and other political nonsense. By the time he hung up the phone, I was as annoyed with him as I was with the Kronology people

  Without a word, I got up to go to lunch. He called out after me, "Sedona, we need to talk about this!"

  It was probably best that I not kill Jacques, at least not yet. If I got myself arrested, I would be protected from Beefy and Buns, but I wouldn't be doing Huntington any good.

  Lunch normally gave me time to reflect and calm down, but this time all it really did was quell the growling in my stomach. I hadn't even had time to make peace with having to quit Strandfrost before the rest of the morning had taken on the beauty and serenity of a tornado.

  The day didn't settle as fast as a tornado either. When I returned from lunch an email from Jacques requested my presence in his office. Great. Maybe I could get fired a third time this month. That trip to Hawaii was looking awfully good.

  Jacques was calmer in his own territory. He wasn't sweating anymore. Ensconced safely behind his neat little desk, he waved me to a chair. He steepled his stubby little fingers, and then changed his mind about sitting still. He tapped a pencil on his desk. I thought about grabbing it and snapping it in half.

  "The call didn't go very well," he said.

  "Maybe in person they won't be able to deny the problem."

  He tapped harder. "We can't alienate these vendors. We need their help to solve the customer problems. Without them, we have no service to provide."

  "Okay," I agreed. "I can write the report for the customer and explain that both cords must be plugged in. But they aren't going to be very happy about it since they paid for backup protection and they got a giant boat anchor."

  "Uh…but…" He couldn't counter my very logical idea, so he changed the subject. "Why did you have to mention that you know karate? That isn't a good way to start vendor relationships. This is a very, very important computer company."

  No one had been attacking his skills and threatening to use him as a barbell. Men didn't make asinine comments like that to other men. "I wasn't the one on the phone call who changed the subject to sports."

  Jacques' only response was his little owl blink.

  "Look at the bright side. We were able to move on from sports after I clarified my talents."

  "But, you lied! Why did you tell him you weighed two hundred pounds?"

  Einstein was missing the point. "Because I only weigh one hundred twenty-five on my fat days, and didn't want him thinking he could actually bench press me!" No way was I admitting that if I totally pigged out, the needle on the scale edged a lot closer to one-thirty. I gave Jacques an evil eye and stood up. "I'm not good with being threatened."

  As I walked out he called after me, "You're not six two! Whatever will you tell him when he comes here?"

  My arms flapped with frustration. "I'll tell him that I've been dieting. Women are always dieting. I'm more successful at it than most."

  His pencil tapped.

  I left.

  His actions were definitely suspicious. There was no logical reason for him to defend Kronology or to continue to bend over backwards to keep them happy. He was up to something, all the way to his beady little eyes.

  Radar caught me in my office as I was contemplating throwing in the towel for the day, even though it was early.

  He came in, shut the door and sat down. "Your buddy keeping an eye on you in here?"

  I shrugged. I hadn't looked to see if there were cameras in my office. Since I wasn't that interesting, I couldn't imagine why Mark would bother, but who knew?

  "You should work late," Radar suggested, looking me in the eye.

  "Oh?" I asked in dismay.

  "Yeah. In the lab."

  I tried to think of an excuse. Of course, Radar was probably more help than anyone else would be, but my day was not going well. I didn't need to add any more disasters. "Why?"

  "Heh, heh, heh," he laughed.

  I always worried when engineers were happy. It usually meant they had figured out how to fix something, how to destroy something or a strange combination of the two. "What will we be working on?"

  "Answers. I'd rather do it with a witness present just in case."

  "In case?"

  He stood up and put his hand on the doorknob. "This way if we find anything and something happens to one of us later, your buddy will have it on camera, right?"

  I didn't like the sound of that. Radar being enthusiastic about the idea of cameras wasn't good news.

  Chapter 20

  Unfortunately, I had more than enough work to stay convincingly late mainly because my weekend test had to be redone.

  I started the test and then typed up an outline for the report, leaving space for the final results. Vi was still working nearby when I finished with the outline. Since I didn't want her to see me knock on the server room door, I double-checked the companies that Arnold had sent around against Huntington's master list, but found nothing out of place.

  When Vi finally did get up to go, she asked if I wanted to walk out with her.

  "No, I want to finish this stuff." I pouted, and that wasn't even faked.

  "I heard you arguing with Jacques. Are you going to switch out of his group?" she asked.

  Uh-oh. I wasn't supposed to be making waves. "Probably not. It was just a Kronology case thing."

  "Arnold's great. If you're thinking of switching, let me know. I'll put in a good word for you. I think he's the best, even though Jacques' spends a lot more time, you know, talking up projects and stuff. Arnold's usually pretty quiet."

  "I know a guy like that." His name was Turbo.

  "I heard they were talking about making Arnold the manager of the whole Denton office. I kinda hope they don't. Then again, maybe he'd be better than Jacques."

  I wasn't sure either of the managers could run the Denton office without causing a revolt from the other one. For half a second, I forgot I was undercover and envied her because at least she wasn't working for a boss that was using his employees for p
ossible personal gain.

  After she left, I managed to wait thirty seconds, but only by counting out the seconds slowly.

  The server room was eerily dark when Radar let me in. The only light came from the computer monitors, painting everything a weird blue hue. Radar had set up an extra monitor that hadn't been there before.

  "I didn't think you'd be showing up," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "You took forever. Pull up a chair."

  "What are we looking for?" I asked.

  He peered through his long hair. "Aren't you supposed to be telling me?" He turned back to the keyboard. "I looked through the service contracts, but didn't find much. Of course if someone wants evidence gone permanently, our best bet is to get backup tapes and hope there is a discrepancy. But honestly, the customer contract records don't look like anything has ever been deleted out of them."

  "I was afraid of that. And if the guy is really good, he's going to make sure any evidence is completely gone, isn't he?"

  Radar nodded. "But I thought of another way to get started. We know someone is accessing the system even if we don't know what the guy is up to. With that in mind, I ran a search to find files that were being accessed at strange times--like after midnight. Odd timestamps were how I first noticed someone using the administrator privileges. The admin is usually me, and since I hadn't been logged in during some of those nights, I got suspicious. Of course, if the guy is any good, he will have created a false identity with the correct privileges."

  "A "Joe I-belong-in-customer-contracts" account?"

  "Exactly. But my method should catch anyone mousing around where they don't belong because the worm is still probably doing his lurking at odd hours. Once we find the activity, we'll track the login ID."

  "What if he is using someone else's ID?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "My program will still catch the activity. If the ID comes back as someone unlikely--say yourself, you can tell me if you really have been accessing the files that late at night."