Episode 13
“Right, well, it wasn’t a fire. It was Ketchup’s burrito. He burned it in the microwave. It was supposed to be for 45 seconds and he cooked it for four minutes and fifty seconds,” Isabelle blathered nervously.
“That would do it. Why didn't anybody notice sooner? No, never mind that. What does this have to do with the network?”
Isabelle seemed nervous for a moment and looked back at somebody else in the room. She nodded her head and her hair began to bounce in place. Sharp had noticed that Isabelle moved her head in a dramatic manner when she talked, and her hair would bounce, marking each sentence as if with an exclamation. Sharp tried not to stare, but when she turned her head quickly to face him again, her hair undulated for a moment.
Another lab technician came over from a workstation near the observation window and joined them. He had the worst acne Sharp had ever seen, like white bolts screwed onto his face in clumps, surrounding swollen, chapped lips on pasty white skin. His hair seemed clean, his clothes tidy, but his face was a mess.
Dang… Some people dodge acne when growing up, and others get pulverized by it.
“Hi, I’m Kyle. It’s a pleasure to meet you” he said as he put himself between Sharp and Isabelle while extending his hand. His grip was firm and friendly, but the look he gave Sharp was piercing.
“Well, I don’t mean to be rude, or maybe I do, but I was told this was an emergency situation. I assume I wasn’t sent here to re-nuke somebody’s burrito.” Sharp lifted his stylus to his tablet and looked at them with an eyebrow raised. His AI assistant was already queued and ready to record what they said.
“It’s okay, Kyle. Let’s just tell him.” Kyle stepped back and Isabelle let out a slow breath. Gone was the flustered look from a second before. Sharp watched her nervousness around him fade away as she resolved herself to share whatever secret the two of them had been keeping. With clear-eyed calm, she described in detail the network issues they had been struggling to solve. She described unreachable stations, the inability to connect to the internet, and worst, a breakdown in communication with their wormbox.
That's a new word. It's obviously connected to the wormhole. I might get to play with it after all.
“How long has this been going on?” Sharp felt as if he were still missing a piece of the puzzle.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Two weeks,” said Isabelle.
“Wait. How are you getting any work done around here then?”
“I put together a network using routers and gear that everybody brought in,” said Kyle with a bit of misplaced pride. Sharp suddenly understood the mishmash of machinery all around the room. Still, it seemed odd for a high tech, top secret, research lab.
“You’re doing all this on Wi-Fi? Where’s the patch panel? Where’s the server? Do you even have a routing table?”
“Rou…ting table?“ Isabelle asked slowly, emphasizing each syllable as if it were a foreign language. Kyle looked like he just discovered he had taken the bus into the wrong section of town. Sharp felt tension building behind his eyes.
This job is going to take me hours to finish. I’m going to be the walking dead just like them before I’m done. I haven't even had dinner yet.
“We were supposed to have a dedicated IT tech assigned to the lab,” Isabelle offered quickly.
“Yeah, but budget cuts removed that position even before we turned our first computer on,” added Kyle.
“When was that?”
“Two weeks ago,” they both said together. They were joined in unison by some of the other technicians who had risen from the dead and inched closer to their conversation.
“Our outfit is originally from Provo, but our CEO sold the company and us to Bloop. We just set up shop this month.” From the shaking, disappointed heads around the room, Sharp realized he was sitting in the middle of a hostile acquisition that none of the staff were happy about. He couldn’t recall either Novell or Darity mentioning it before, but then again, he had been avoiding their weekend barbecues.
”Alright, I see. But we have an entire IT department. How come nobody from there was assigned to do it? Many of us have clearance.“ Sharp was having a hard time following the logic.
“Mr. Wudgepuck was insistent that we not involve IT.” Sharp involuntarily winced.
Wudgepuck…
Kyle gave him a meaningful glance, letting Sharp know Wudgepuck’s feud with him was well-known. Who didn't know? Wudgepuck took every moment after the fall of Bloop to tell the press what a horrible CEO Sharp was. He especially became animated when lamenting how Sharp cruelly destroyed his company, leaving out the part how people weren't buying his rigs anymore because they were slow, hot, and inefficient. Instead, he painted Sharp like some corporate goblin who danced around the industry causing havoc.
”Your team has clearance,“ explained Isabelle, ”but you could only be called if we had an emergency."
Sharp could hear her, but the ledger in his mind didn't add up. If Wudgepuck didn't want Sharp in here, there were plenty of other people in his department with the skill and seniority to handle network issues.
Why on earth was Wudgepuck keeping all IT techs out of the lab while forcing the lab to operate in the dark ages? What does any of this have to do with that turd anyway? Isn't IT Darity's domain?
Sharp didn't have any answers to these questions, but he knew Darity needed to be made aware of it. He eyeballed some keywords across the virtual keyboard and his AI became busy drafting a report to his friend.
"…which is why certain criteria had to be met before we could reach out to the IT department. This is an eyes-only lab under tight security, after all,” Isabelle finished saying while looking at him with hope.
Sharp turned to face the pizza box still propped in the eyes-only doorway, then gave the two of them a baleful look.
“Welcome to our emergency!” Kyle laughed.