To celebrate my first quarter of work, I brought in a pot of blooming violets for my station. Their vibrance added a nice splash of color amidst the greyscale screens and the stark white desks the sixteen of us called our own. It was an hour until our shift started, but nobody else was here yet--not my boss, who brought donuts on my first day, and least of all Streyer, whose fast food wrapper, empty coffee cup, stray pen cap littered desk always threatened to spill over into mine. I flicked on the lights, scanned my DNA signature into the terminal, and got to work.
I wasn’t behind, per se, it's just that there was a lot of ground to cover. The old code was rife with redundant functions, suboptimal procedures, and don't even get me started on the incomprehensible variable names. Everything I submit will be the best work I’m capable of, that’s the promise I made to myself when I started down this career path. Even if this wasn't strictly mine, I wanted to leave this work better than I found it, if I could. A bit of diligence handling the code of the universe could prevent sinkholes in the earth or lightning in the air. A lot of that meant documentation, making sure the purpose of the different parts made sense, even to someone completely unfamiliar with the code. I always got praised during training for my thoroughness and easy to read descriptions. I always felt it was the expected behavior, but it was nice having it recognized too.
It's a different feeling though, not starting from scratch, and ascribing design to something you didn't write. It definitely takes me a lot longer to get a feel for how the original programmer wanted to solve a problem, versus looking at my own, and sometimes it gives me a damn tight migraine. And seeing all those blocks of code without the slightest explanation was... a little demoralizing, to put it lightly. But, there's no use moping about when I could sip some coffee and direct that mental energy towards cracking the intentions behind the next line.
Streyer came in late, and they immediately headed to our boss's office to talk, a dark little room sectioned off from the rest of the workstations, with perpetually half drawn blinds over the windows. I've been in there twice, once for the interview and once for orientation, and it's mostly devoid of personal artifacts. She keeps bulk purchased pens in a cheap plastic cup from the organization's welcome package. The notepads, also from the org, are pristine, without even the slightest indentation from notes previously written. There is a small wooden frame of presumably her wife and kids on her desk, but more often than not it’s face down.
Streyer left the boss’s office, stone faced as usual, and stopped next to my desk.
"Hey Kierke."
I glanced over. "Hey! Sorry, I'm almost done with this-"
They dropped a pile of papers onto my desk, presumably because there's no space on theirs.
"Yeah about that report, we're deprecating it."
I jerked up from the terminal. "What?"
"Higher ups came to the boss with new feature requests. We need to build a whole framework from scratch to support it, the current one is stitched together from barely compatible packages anyway. She says that we can keep this version for now, but Revon’s team is already working on the new API, it's expected to go to production in one to two months and we need to be ready to launch when they are.”
"...Oh."
They slumped into the seat next to mine and shoved some of the paper burger wrappers into styrofoam cups.
“Look, it’s good that you’re trying to be thorough, but we have to prioritize having something to show for our time. This can be a good opportunity for you, the boss knows you work hard, she suggested you shadow me while we work with the other team, it’s a good chance to make connections and build domain knowledge. If you can get in a bit of cleaning up, that’s good, but focus on the task at hand, okay?”
“...Yeah, sounds good.”
The next few months blurred together. Hours of staring at the soft grey terminal, hacking away at the keys, cemented together with restless meetings in another building. I learned quickly that management was not for me. Streyer noticed, and assigned to me more of the nitty gritty work.
I was paired with a senior programmer from Revon’s team, shining reviews, all his co-workers loved him, and he was plenty friendly. When I broached the idea of version controlling his code for this project, I expected an easy agreement, in fact, I was surprised he didn’t already have it done, so I assumed he was going to but was caught up in the heat of problem solving that he forgot. What started as light resistance fanned into terse refusal and the mood of the team hasn’t recovered since. Streyer then moved me to review duty, purportedly because I was the most fastidious and thus best suited, but it didn’t escape me that it was also a solo task.
I spent much of my time reworking Revon’s team’s code. My guiding light was that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t sure who the programmer was, but some of the adapted code was downright stellar, efficient and neat, with thorough commentary. For the rest, I added basic explanations where I saw fit, easy optimizations when I could, but I won’t deny that my trademark consistency had slipped a notch.
It was during one of these times when, hopped up on plenty of caffeine, I discovered some sensitive information was kept in plaintext. It was too much to correct on my own, so I drew up a report and brought it to Revon’s office.
I found myself before a room structured identically to our boss's, though the blinds were considerably dustier, and the interior was a different type of spartan. A clear whiteboard on wheels stood in the corner of the room, scrawled with some black text that blocked his schedule into five minute increments. Streyer was there too, their eyebrows knit tight and deep in conversation with Revon. I shivered, this boss was nothing like ours, he had been nothing but unyielding during meetings. I steeled myself for the conversation.
Streyer’s eyes widened briefly when they saw me knock. Revon, a tall, muscular man barely contained by his suit, nodded curtly and I let myself in.
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“Excuse me.” I said reflexively.
“Ah, the troublemaker makes his appearance.”
Streyer glanced at the calendar, clearly antsy. They looked even more fragile and thin with their arms drawn in tight next to Revon. “If this isn’t urgent, we can talk at 10:25.”
“This is for Revon. I found security issues in API code.”
“Why did you bring this to me instead of my team?”
“They said to bring it to you.”
“Really.” Streyer winced as Revon narrowed his eyes. “Leave it here. I’ll look over it.”
I hesitated. “The new API is in testing right now, identifying information travels unencrypted between the reality module and the base code. It could put people in serious danger. We should fix it as soon as possible.”
“Your report will be passed to risk analysis.”
“Sir-”
“If you have time to debate the merits of your concerns, I suggest you make better use of your time.”
I was shown the door, and sat back at my workstation in a daze. The violets hung their heads low, some had dried out entirely. I must’ve forgotten to water them.
It was three days out from launch, two now, actually, it just passed midnight. I blinked slowly, eyelids feeling like parchment. Who knows when I last slept? My fingers twitched, tapping along slowly. I can hardly read what’s on the screen, one hell of a migraine has its fingers around my temples, I know if I nap now I’ll be out til morning. That's what happened last time, and I’m not about to make the same mistake so close to the finish line.
I heard a noise so sharply for a moment it sounded alien. Maybe that’s just the echo between my ears distorting a perfectly normal corporate ringtone. I let myself into the boss's office and answered.
"Team 64, what can I do for you?"
"Kierke?" It's Streyer. "What are you doing up so late?"
"Working." I said, what else would I be doing? "What are you calling for, maybe I can help."
They sighed. "It's not worth losing sleep over. You don't need to work yourself into the ground like this."
"I'm fine."
"No, you're really not. I should've stopped you from working overtime."
I groaned. "Did you call to lecture me or was there a real reason?"
"I wanted some tests run, but it can wait until morning." They sighed again. "Kierke, I know you like feeling a sense of ownership and pride when it comes to your code, and that you want to check everything and make sure we put out the best module we can. You're still young, I'm sure you could push yourself like this for a week and sleep it off over the weekend, but it's not sustainable. It's not worth it just to fix every glitch."
In that moment, something in me snapped, a tide of boiling acid pouring over the earth and burning away every consideration I once had.
"My dad was killed in a thunderstorm.” I spat. “It was some overlooked bug that cost him his life. I won't let my laziness cost lives." I slammed the phone down and got to work.
In 3996, we confirmed that our reality was part of a simulation run by an external force. A century later, through a series of structural language injections, we hijacked control of the code running our universe. Clearly, nobody was going to do the job but me, no use trying to argue it when I could just sit down and do the fucking thing myself.
I didn't sleep the entire night. I could faintly hear the birds and see blue light from the corner of my eyes, but it's hard to see anything over the pile of cheap coffee cups on my desk.
Streyer came in at their usual time, looking conflicted.
"Kierke."
"What."
They fiddled with their thin, bony hands. "I'm sorry about what happened to your father, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories. I was just trying to... help."
"I get it." I said, curt.
"I looked up that programmer you were looking for, on Revon's team. Her name is Calmara, she should be at the meeting tomorrow."
"I'll keep an eye out for her."
They hesitated again. "This is the last time I'll give unsolicited advice about this, I promise. It's just, if you have surviving loved ones, it might be better to spend your time with them, rather than burning away your life doing this."
The meeting was hell. I could barely stay awake, one of my co-workers even offered to put makeup over my eye bags. I watched Revon smile and shake the hands of the organization chairs. I don’t understand why he got the spotlight for this, while Streyer and our boss stood behind him and clapped. He can’t have done much more managing than either of them.
Blinking slowly and looking over the name tags, I see one Calmara. A brunette, hair done up in a neat bun, striking blue eyes and subtle jewelry to match. How tasteful. I memorized her appearance as best as I can, it's my best shot of finding her, who knows if our teams will ever work together again.
The meeting ended, and I followed her with my eyes and feet. It's not even a conscious action, more like the automated motions of a barely functional being.
"Hey, excuse me, are you Calmara?" I asked.
She turned. "That's me. And you are?"
"Kierke. Hi, yes, I was hoping to speak with you."
She checked her watch. "I need to catch another meeting, but if you'd like to chat you're free to walk with me."
I do as she said.
"I um, reviewed code for this project, and just wanted to say that your sections were very well done."
"Oh, of course, thank you." She didn’t say anything for a while. "I'm surprised anyone noticed. I kept it up as best I could, but towards the end, I gave it up."
"What? Why?"
"To be honest, because nobody else was willing to do it. Even if I refine my code, provide documentation, the whole package of what we learned in training, it's not really value added work, you know, the user never sees it. It's only useful internally, most people who work with your code will just come to you for questions anyway, and once the section is deprecated, well..."
I was already numbed from the lack of sleep, but the meaning behind her trailing sentence still stung.
"I'm glad they were useful to you, but um, I guess, learn from me and don't repeat my mistakes. It's better to put that effort into implementing new features really." She stopped in front of a door. "I have some slide decks to look over one last time, it was nice speaking to you, Kierke."
The office was empty by the time I got there, and I remembered that the boss gave us the afternoon off. The entire building was quiet, the blinds were drawn, and it was pleasantly dark inside.
I felt... deflated, but it's temporary. Even if she gave it up, I won't. I'm just feeling crummy because I haven't slept well in a while. It's the end of the week, I had the whole weekend to recover.
I sat at my desk, tapped the keys, and watched the cursor blink for a long time.
What am I even doing with my life?
I sighed and cleared all the junk off my desk. I took one of the disposable coffee cups, rinsed it out, and watered my violets, and then I headed home.