Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  But these guys have to be at least eighteen, and they’re probably at least twenty-two. They look fifteen. I go to the one closest to the display that shows my controller.

  “Is this your work?”

  He narrows his eyes. “The display?”

  “No, the controller. Did you put this wart on the side.”

  He points a shaky finger at another kid. He’s a few paces away, and he’s not looking up. Janice is waiting in the doorway.

  “Did you do that?”

  I wait while he glances at me, sees that I’m asking him a question, and sighs as he removes his earbuds.

  “Did you do that?” I ask again, pointing towards the controller.

  “The mods? Yeah. Why?”

  His face is tiny. His head is tiny. His body looks full-size, but maybe that’s just the chair. For his sake, I hope that he’s entirely tiny, and not just parts of him.

  “Based on what data? Why did you tack on those extra circuits.”

  He flattens his mouth and looks back to his screens. With some keyboard commands, he brings up a document that is mostly charts and graphs. I see what they are. Everything is transposed the wrong way around, but I see. There must be a faulty conclusion in there. Maybe they didn’t control for… Can these be the right results? Sure, we saw a bump there, but never a trough.

  “Where did you get the unit you tested?” I ask.

  “They’re all like this. This data is the average over thirty randomly-pulled units. With a confidence interval of ninety-five percent, we can…”

  “Save it,” I say. “Let me see the design of your circuit.”

  I pull up a chair and tear the paper sign off the seat. It says something like, “Do not sit unless your name is Russell, and not even then unless…” I don’t bother to read the rest.

  As I glance over the circuit, I take a second to give the kid a better look. He must be smarter than he appears. The circuit is very clever. Of course, I’ll have to see the firmware before I know exactly how clever. He is one step ahead of me. He has the code up in another window already.

  “We have a couple of cases we haven’t accounted for yet,” he says. “For instance, there’s no way to monitor the delta between…”

  “Right,” I say, cutting him off. He wouldn’t know it, but that’s one of the problems I faced in the middle of one long, dark night. I fixed the issue with an interesting technique that nobody uses anymore. I’m sure this kid has never even heard of it.

  “You have a prototype here?” I ask.

  He points.

  Their bench is good. It’s one of those multi-level setups where all the instruments are above and there’s still plenty of light on the working surface. Whoever put together this lab knew what they were doing.

  “Let me see the input processing function,” I say. “I can show you…”

  It’s his turn to interrupt me. “There,” he says. They’ve already set up a station with the source code up on the screen. When I sit down, the screen dims and a box pops up, asking me to blink twice. Once I do, the keyboard and mouse glow green. Fancy. I’ve read about this kind of system. The station is now keyed to me. It will probably just go black if anyone else sits down.

  I start working.

  ---- * ----

  As I test and check-in my completed code, the system marks my submission with an amber dot. I’m presented with someone else’s code and I read through. It’s good work. The logic is easy to understand from the flow. I see one thing that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and my finger goes to the screen. As I’m pointing at the line, a face appears over my shoulder.

  “I like to test for errors as I go, instead of waiting for them to bubble up in the execution,” the guy says. I’m guessing his name is Bryce. That’s the name that was in the header.

  “Yeah, I’m not worried about that. It looks like you’re testing against an uninitialized variable here.”

  For clarity—programmers always make stupid mistakes. There’s no way to stop them. In their heads, they’re thinking, “this function shouldn’t execute if the value coming from the sensor is above fifty,” or whatever. But in their code, they make up a new variable and test that. It’s like if you had a question that only your mom could answer, so you go ask a homeless guy. You might get a response, but it’s not going to be useful. In this case, Bryce was asking the question of someone who looked a lot like his mom. I’ll give him credit for that. But it’s still not going to give him the right answer.

  “Oh!” Bryce says. He taps the screen and flags the line.

  I haven’t used these tools before, but I recognize the process. They check each other’s work before they allow it to go into production. When it’s taken seriously, it’s a smart system. They have a good task flow, too. As soon as I’m done with one thing, another description pops up on the screen. The explanation is bare-bones, but I get the hang of it. The worst part when jumping into someone else’s project is figuring out where all the gears grind. There might be a hundred files in the project, and I have to search and get a mental map before I can start. It’s clean code though, and the organization makes sense pretty quick.

  Good coding lies at the magical intersection of creativity and busy-work. Imagine an artist shading the gentle curve of the neck on a portrait. My fingers work fast and the code flows. I stop to ponder between bursts of activity. I gaze at the beauty of my creation and then add another stanza. We’re all collaborating on a masterpiece here, and when I check-in my work, I’m guided into proofing the submission of another one of my peers.

  This person’s name is Samuel. He tags his comments with “SMP.” I’m working through his changes when a notification pops up on my screen. It says, “Crunchy is evaluating your module.” Crunchy? Is that supposed to be a person?

  “Crunchy has a question,” the next box says. A map appears and an arrow shows me where to find the person.

  He’s another stunted-growth shut in. I find him reviewing the first code I submitted.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Oh, hey,” he says. His second glance acknowledges that he doesn’t know me, but he doesn’t bother to introduce himself. I’m wondering if these guys even socialize with each other outside the code reviews.

  “This new function stuffs its output in the same structure as the input. You have to separate your ins and outs.”

  “I don’t need the input anymore. It’s more efficient to reuse the structure,” I say. I’m all about efficiency. Kids these days don’t remember a time before memory was boundless.

  “Yeah, we don’t do that. It’s a bad assumption.”

  “Whatever,” I say, shrugging.

  I do what Bryce did earlier on my workstation—I lean over, tap the line, and mark it so I can fix it back at my desk. It’s a decent system. Crunchy has no more questions. I start to walk back to my rolling station.

  How did I drop into this so quickly?

  How many hours have I been here, cramming my brain with all these new problems?

  Is this even possible?

  With a loud voice, I ask the next question that pops into my head: “Is this a dream?”

  A few of the programming pod-people look up from their monitors. A couple say, “No.” One points at a whiteboard that I hadn’t noticed before.

  I walk over to it slowly, not believing what I’m reading.

  “This is not a dream,” it reads. “You want proof? Memorize this sequence of numbers. Turn away, and then look back. Are the numbers the same? 6C 1B 7F 80 0D 5F F6 CB.”

  The numbers are in hexadecimal, that’s why there are letters.

  For clarity—people count in base ten. That means we have ten different symbols and we combine them to represent any number we can think of. When we get up to nine, we put a one and a zero together and we start counting again. It’s a decent system. Shown four marbles, most people would be able to recognize that there were four without having to count them. This is called subitizing. There’s a
number of things that a person can just glance at and they know the quantity without counting. If I showed the same people seven things, most of them would have to count, or at least see three and four make seven.

  So, ten numbers in our system is a bit too much for people to inherently understand, but it’s not confounding. It’s trivial to count nine objects. Base sixteen, or hexadecimal, is a little more challenging. That’s why we use numbers for the extra six symbols. It’s a lot easier to remember that A represents ten than it would be if I made up some brand new symbol.

  When I turn back, the numbers are the same. This is supposed to prove that I’m not dreaming? I guess there’s a more important question—why do people who work in this office always have to prove that they’re awake?

  It’s a strange place, but the work is fascinating.

  ---- * ----

  I take a break when the screen tells me to. Later, it tells me to go eat something.

  Honestly, without the prompt, I probably wouldn’t have gotten up. I would have kept coding until my consciousness slipped away. I was on a roll.

  I follow the guys into the break room and they all take a right turn into what turns out to be a cafeteria. This is just like high school. People divide up into cliques and talk amongst themselves. Everyone lines up in front of a little window and they start handing back trays. I can’t remember the last time I ate in a cafeteria. It’s a strange way to get a meal.

  We’re served plates after we point at items through the glass. The woman with the hairnet expects no payment. I suppose it’s like the soda machine—food is gratis.

  Bryce goes to one table. Crunchy migrates to the corner with some guys. I sit down with the kid who has a small head and a small face. His body is proportional, so he doesn’t look that strange once I get used to his size.

  The table could accommodate four, but nobody else sits with us.

  He takes a few bites and studies me before he says anything.

  “You’re old,” he says.

  “You’re pretty small,” I rebut.

  “I’m still growing,” he says.

  “And we’re all getting older.”

  He shrugs.

  “What did you do?” he asks eventually.

  “Come again?”

  He repeats the same, only slower. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  He keeps talking slowly, probably convinced that I’m not too bright. Given my current circumstance, he might be right.

  “How did you end up here? Gambling debt? Parole? Fugitive?”

  I take another look around at my peers.

  “Is that why these people are here? Are they all criminals of some sort?”

  He shakes his head. “Mostly student loans. That one’s an orphan. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m being chased by bears.” I’m thinking that this response will shut the kid up. I’m wrong.

  “Janice’s ex?” he asks.

  My mouth opens and I began to say, “No,” but I stop. She might have said something similar. “I don’t know,” I say.

  The kid nods as he takes another bite of something that looks like potatoes.

  “That bear will fuck up anyone he thinks is banging Janice,” he says. He looks down at his plate and shakes his head. “Jealous fucking animals.”

  “What about you?” I ask. “Student loans?”

  “Something like that,” he says.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Six years,” he says. He doesn’t look up from shoveling food into his mouth.

  “You like it?”

  “Do I have a choice?” he asks.

  “Don’t you? You could walk out of here. There are other ways of paying off student loans, right?”

  “It’s not the money,” he says after he swallows. “That’s not what I mean. I want to work on something challenging, where the code comes first. There aren’t a whole lot of choices out there. You get a lot of places letting marketing dictate the features, or where the bottom line is prioritized over the integrity. I want what I want, so I don’t have a choice.”

  “You can’t possibly have worked that many places. There are tons of opportunities. How do you know this is the only one that fits what you want?”

  He shrugs.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of balancing work and life? Do you think you can keep going this way forever?”

  He raises his eyebrows. There’s an unspoken question in his expression—this, coming from you? He has a point. I’m the last person who should be lecturing anyone on balance. I don’t have a significant other, and I barely spend any time at my apartment. Before I was fired, my job was my life.

  Janice comes through the door with a sheet of paper in her hands.

  “A couple of announcements. I know that you were messaged these, but most of you dismissed without reading. First, the sun room will be closed tomorrow for four hours. Check your calendar before you try to use it. Second, the trip to the park is mandatory. Be at the garage stairs ten minutes before eleven. I know you’ve all heard me.”

  A mutinous mumble moves through the room.

  “Third, I’ll remind you again that hiding things in your bedsheets doesn’t accomplish anything. The washing machine was clogged again this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t they check them?” the kid with the little head and little face asks?

  “Excuse me?” Janice asks him.

  “I’m just saying—why don’t they check the sheets before they put them in the machine? Wouldn’t that be easier than having to call the repair guy every month, when one of us leaves something accidentally in our sheets?”

  “Let’s just all try to respect each other, okay?” Janice asks.

  This is crazy. I push back from the table. What was I thinking? These people are crazy. This is some kind of prison camp.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I ask a neighboring table. They point, but they’re giving me a look that suggests that this isn’t the time for a bathroom break.

  “Number three,” Janice says as I get to my feet.

  I give her a little wave and mouth, “Bathroom.”

  “We’re officially thirty-nine hours ahead of schedule, but I would like everyone to push forward as fast as possible. Until we get past the integration tests, we don’t know how much slack we’ll need. Better to have it and not need it. And I’ll remind you, any bonus time can be used for personal projects.”

  I hear a muffled cheer as the door swings shut behind me. I’m in the hall. The bathroom door is marked clearly, but I go right by it. I’m looking for an exit sign. Those doors aren’t labeled, but I find a fire exit map near the water fountain. After orienting myself, I rush for the stairwell.

  At one point, I believed that Janice would let me walk out of there. Somehow, seeing all those kids being treated like indentured servants, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to sneak out if I can, and fight if I have to. Sure enough, I hear a beep when I push open the door for the stairs. I have no doubt that someone has just been alerted to my escape.

  It turns out that we’re on the fifth floor. I bust out to the street and try to get some sense of…

  That’s odd.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  * Space *

  EVERYTHING LOOKS BACK TO normal. I figured that people would find their way back to their normal lives, but I never imagined it would happen so quickly. The broken glass is gone. The wide-eyed people milling around are gone. It’s just business as usual in the city. I blend into the crowd marching up the sidewalk and and try to stay upright as a sharp pain cuts through my guts. Some of that cafeteria food must not have agreed with me.

  I pause with the others at the corner and steal a glance. I’m looking up the street at the entrance to my apartment, trying to see if there’s someone waiting for me. It would be nice to go inside, find some spare cash, and change my clothes. I could get a jump on the process of
running to a new city.

  No. It’s too dangerous. I keep getting dragged back into drama. It’s time to leave it behind.

  Instead of heading towards my old place, I go the opposite direction. There’s a bus station at the bottom of the hill. I have enough money that I can get out of town. Then, I suppose I can find a branch of my bank and make a decent withdrawal.

  It’s easy to lose myself amongst the commuters. The people moving down the sidewalk all have different destinations, but we have a common purpose. We achieve a reasonable speed between the intersections. Jostling and passing are reduced to a minimum. It gives me time to think. What would a normal person do? They would have friends or family—someone they could count on—and they would run to that cover.

  My friends are situational. The ones from high school are back there, stuck in that time. I wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them. The friends I had at various jobs stopped being friends when we no longer worked together. Maybe I’m not a friendly person. I suppose Adam is the closest I have to a real friend, but he doesn’t count. He doesn’t exist outside of a heating vent in my TV room. He’s about as imaginary as a real friend could be. I have no way to reach him without praying to the vent, and I can’t go back there. Even if I could, I’m not sure I would. That’s not the nature of our relationship. Our friendship works because neither of us really demands anything of the other. I would feel awkward if I asked him for help.

  No, I know what I’ll do. I’ll get a bus ticket for somewhere south and then ditch the trip when I’m a few towns away. Then I’ll secure some cash and head west. I think it’s best if I don’t run in a straight line. Maybe some random course changes will give me some peace.

  I turn with the group that’s going to cross the street. I can see the bus stop.

  I move away from the street when a mounted police officer walks his horse along the curb. Janice’s people cleaned me up, but I have no doubt that I look suspicious. I feel suspicious. I’ve been touched by the experiences of the past week, and I’m certain that it shows on me. The last thing I need is police scrutiny.