I thought I had finally seen the last of this room…
Sharp looked around Darity’s office while he was waiting for her to arrive. He had received a notification on his way down the stairs to meet with her immediately, but he couldn’t understand why. Her office was neat as usual, though the monstera in the corner behind her desk looked a bit brown on the edges, and a box of documents peeked out from the behind the byoubu.
“You were late again,” Darity announced as she entered her office.
“Darity, don’t bust my chops. The entire time clock doohickey had been removed from the elevator wall.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m serious. There was an empty hole where the elevator buttons used to be. I had to take the stairs.”
“…”
Darity peered up at Sharp through furrowed brows. She looked as if she had just been lectured and was anxious to pass along the pleasure.
“Check with the girl at the front desk. She told me how two guys in black suits and balaclavas came in and dismantled the panel and took it away in under a minute!”
“Two well-trained criminals came in and stole our time clock sensor?”
Sharp had to admit to himself that the story sounded farfetched, but after bumping into Wudgepuck yesterday he had begun documenting everything he did and encountered. He pulled out his phone and showed her a photo of the missing panel.
“Sharp, this is bizarre even for you. Nobody else has these problems.”
“Yeah, but how many people do you know who are personally blamed for the latest crypto winter? There’s a lot of animosity out there directed at me. Starting with Wudgepuck. You know he hates me. He doesn’t hide it.”
Darity stooped over and grabbed an ornate watering can from the floor behind her desk and tried to water her monstera, but the can was as dry as the desert surrounding Silicon Flats.
“Get going with your assignments.” Darity sighed and placed her watering can back behind the desk. “Nobody else was late today, but since you make it a game to clock in every day exactly at six minutes past the hour, you set yourself up for this.”
Sharp went to protest, but Darity cut him off. “No. I know it’s a game. If you can be on time in the sixth and final minute of the grace period for nine workdays in a row, you can be exactly on time. I know you don’t think much of your job, but we’ve got people dying to get it. And as you say…you’ve got Wudgepuck gunning for you. He wants you fired. You’ve got to get your priorities straight.”
Sharp let out a slow breath to keep his anger in check, while Darity’s look softened as she looked up at him again.
“Send me the photo. I’ll look into this.”
With that, Sharp turned around and went to work.
Sharp burned through his list of jobs all day as if he was a raging brush fire. People stayed out of his way even so far as avoiding his eye contact for fear he would immolate them on the spot. Broken printers, network conflicts, and dead mice didn’t stand a chance. He didn’t make any new friends during his silent wildfire across the Bloop campus, but he didn’t encounter any new enemies either. All the while, he couldn’t get the morning conversation with Darity out of his head.
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Get my priorities straight. As if. I hate this place.
What his friends did by hiring him, paying him well, and believing in him was a lifeline that he needed right when his life was at its bleakest. He could never repay them. He had liquidated his mansion, assets, and everything he owned but his car to settle accounts into the black. Despite all that went wrong, he managed to stay on top and out of court. But nothing was left of BitStorm to salvage except his AR contacts prototype and a few diagnostic tools. It was his secret project. His next big thing.
Crypto was a dead end game Sudden Death Leapfrog. Just as he did to Wudgepuck, somebody would come along eventually and obsolete Zero Carbs. You strike when your hot, then bail before you’re not. He knew this, but he hadn’t planned on the betrayals. He hadn’t planned on his investments being locked away by “justice” minded individuals and militant crypto foundations. Having friends watch out for him here was a blessing, but working with people who hated him was getting on his nerves. All the highly touted corporate rules for professionalism were flushed down the toilet when people saw him coming. He was stalked, he was filmed, he was targeted, and not even management would intervene when employee ire exploded around him.
Priorities…I just want to be home working on my own projects, no interruptions, change the world, and make some money to boot.
It seemed to him the simplist of goals, but rent, bills, and food necessitated he work for a living now instead of working for a payoff further down the road. Never mind the legal fees he needed to raise to get access to his crypto wallets again. He could only put one tired foot in front of the other as he worked closer and closer to the end of his shift.
“Your photo saved you from getting fired today. I don’t know what is going on, but the elevator panel is back in place, and Kaylinne is no longer there. There’s just some employee in a suit there now. Very strange.” Darity paused to sip some water, then continued. “I passed it along to Novell since Wudgepuck was involved. Novell’s canceled your firing since the matter is so suspicious, and he strongly encourages you to make a game of being on time from now on. Think of it as ticking Wudgepuck off.”
Sharp smirked grimly. He couldn’t deny that he had fun clocking in at the last minute. He had hoped it would tick off his old business rival, but Sharp had underestimated Wudgepuck’s petty brinksmanship. Maybe being on time would be a form of revenge. Darity’s next comment came in hot and interrupted his reverie.
“What on earth did you do in accounting yesterday? Did you really password protect their printers so that nobody could use them?”
“No! Of course not. Wudgepuck wanted the printer I fixed to be 'safe and secure', so I updated all of them while I was at it and left a sticky note with the password on each printer.”
“Would this happen to be the password you chose?”
Darity shook a yellow, square paper at him. In the middle of the note, neatly printed in black ink, was written, “0n1y !nv357 wh47 y0u (4n 4ff0rd 70 L053!”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a little old school, but it’ll be sure to prevent unauthorized access, as I was instructed to do,” Sharp said with a pretentious tone with just a hint of mockery.
“Oh no no no! This wasn’t what he meant, and you know it. It’s forty characters long, Sharp. My friend, Mandi, in accounting was furious. She said you did this deliberately.”
“Only as deliberate as that critical vanilla shake leakage. I sent you photos, right? That almost connected with my head.”
“Sharp, stop getting even with these people. Report them. Let upper management deal with it. You’re just making things worse for yourself.”
Darity took a moment to compose herself, then began speaking again. “That stunt’s going to cost you. You get to take the last call of the day over in the Data Center.” “
“What, now? I’m off in thirty minutes!”
“Not tonight.”
“It’s the holiday weekend! I’ve got…”
“You’ve got what?” Darity interrupted him. “A private project? Is that where your priorities are? You’re on the lowest rung of the ladder around here. And you just avoided getting fired for being late this morning. Shut up. Take the assignment. And get out of here.” Darity swiped her hand over her tablet and a notification popped up in his virtua display.
As Sharp walked briskly out of the office, Darity called out, “Dinner is at 6pm tomorrow. Be there!” Sharp didn’t stop to look back.