When Larry’s lunch is an eon too long

Amid another endless Friday afternoon, Joshua feared another customer complaint or upper-management request. He realized he had been staring for at least three minutes at the second hand of the black analog wall clock which spanned the wall across from his office. Four fifteen to four eighteen. Still not five o’clock. Still not quitting time when the mid-shift would serve until the overnight shift took their place to greet Joshua and his team the next morning. Around and around, tick, tock, tick, tock.

Joshua grunted and attempted to rebalance his stocky frame in his busted-caster desk chair. He turned from the wall clock and refocused his eyes on the file in his hands. He flipped open the manila cover and stared at another customer complaint. Sixteen complaints just today. Sixteen unhappy species or dangerous conditions on sixteen different planets in Joshua’s Section, 956.73. His face flushed as he noticed his hands tremble. One of these days, Joshua would get one too many complaints. One of these days, the powers that be would decide Joshua was not good at his job at Universal Security’s Information Technology Department.

Joshua had worked at Universal Security since he had graduated with a master’s in molecular programing from the Institute of Spacetime. His job always involved reviewing, correcting, rewriting, and tweaking programmers’ coding so a suspect program would run in accordance with management directives. Only six years into his career, the Director unceremoniously promoted Joshua to Supervisor of Section 956.73 Code Correction. The Director expressly recognized Joshua for not only his coding acumen but also for his management potential. Joshua, humbled, accepted without hesitation.

That was three years, fourteen days and three hours ago. Last month, Joshua’s team had held a three-year anniversary party for Joshua, complete with designer cupcakes and sparkling vitamin water. The cupcakes had code operator symbols carved into the icing. The gesture was thoughtful and Joshua reminisced about his first day when the Director escorted Joshua to this very cubicle, and this very rocky chair with the broken caster.

“I read your reviews. You are the best coder we have,” Director Rogan said, more as if he was ordering Joshua to be the best than complimenting Joshua for being the best. “This is all yours. Your baby, Joshua.”

“Yes, sir.” Joshua beamed up at the Director, who was almost seven-feet tall but thin as a rail. “I’ll make you proud, sir.”

The Director grunted. “See that you do. This section has been a problem for a long while.”

Before his promotion, Joshua had heard rumors that Section 956.73 was in disorder for decades–and that the Board had appointed Director Rogan to reorganize the corrections division. Rogan had been a code investigator–a coding cop who identified rogue coders. That some coders would brazenly infect programs with viruses and worse was unfathomable, but every industry had their bad eggs. The Board decorated and promoted Rogan for identifying several hackers who had somehow secured jobs at Universal Security. Then, the Board placed Rogan as the Corrections Director. Joshua admired Rogan and to become as renowned, a soldier in Rogan’s army, was Joshua’s goal. At least that was Joshua’s plan those three years, fourteen days and three hours ago.

Joshua reviewed all the program corrections coders submitted for his section. His job was officially LOCRev: “Line of code reviewer.” So, if the excessive winter precipitation on Luyten B was harming sparklings, a Passeridae species, a coder on Joshua’s team, would receive a code correction request. The requests, always on cheery light blue chits of paper, would shoot down through the delivery tube at the corner of the coder’s cubicle. The coder would remove the chit from the tube, review the request, design and insert the code correction into the precipitation program. Joshua would quality-control the result prior to installing the instruction to confirm, for example, that the little flappers mated without snow interrupting their nest building.

As 956.73 Supervisor, Joshua spent only some of his time happily coding or testing code correction in a source code simulator. To tweak a disruptive program into a ballet of instruction was akin to witnessing the birth of his son. Pure joy to program the eradication of a disease or the emergence of an evolved species on any of the habitable planets for which Joshua’s team was responsible. Nothing was more exciting and rewarding than receiving a directive from management, identifying the erroneous code, and installing the corrected line. With management satisfied, Joshua was energized. Sure, occasionally, his team would need to complete more benign projects–like tweaking a temperature-reading of a new star–or spending tedious hours correcting the trajectory of a rogue asteroid. (These flying planet-destroyers were typically from Section 83.17, which repeatedly miscalculated vectors and sent the rocks for which they were solely responsible into neighboring sections.)

The problem was, recently, Joshua spent little time ensuring birds on Luyten B could get it on and more time correcting errors in conflicting code. Management’s directives were often ambiguous. Management would habitually and blindly instruct two coding sections to create incompatible programs. Then the entire system would freeze, or glitch, and a complaint file would make its way down the chain of command and appear on Joshua’s desk. Complaints did not arrive on attractive blue chits of paper through the code correction tubes. Complaints arrived via the mailroom cart on typewritten grey stationery in stiff, ugly manila folders.

“Shit floats to the bottom,” Joshua mused as he scanned the sixteenth complaint of the day and noted an evolutionary tweak ordered by the mammal engineering team resulted in Kepler 442b bats have super-sonar and decimating the insect population. The falling dominos were easy to visualize: fewer insects, less food for the animals who ate insects or fewer pollinators. It was another shit show. And it was in Joshua’s lap.

He scanned the pile of complaints, each grey page tagged with an orange slip of paper routing the issue to Joshua’s attention. For a moment, he let himself recall his quarterly review.

“Things have got to improve down there, Josh. Too many complaints registered to your team.” Director Rogan peered over his retina enhancers. He added, “I can’t keep explaining away these conflicts.”

“Sir. With all respect. My team can only code-correct what we have in our cue. If management issues conflicting directives, and we don’t know what one hand is doing, we can’t make accurate adjustments. “

“Just see to your team, Joshua. We need to keep management happy. Learn to play the game. Keep management happy. And, I need not add, keep me happy. And I’m not happy.” Director Rogan’s eyes glowed yellow the way they did right before he would eliminate an employee. Joshua had seen it happen several times in his three years and was not keen on receiving 8000 volts of Rogan’s eye lasers into his own brain. Not pretty seeing gut splatters coat a cubicle. And a total mess for maintenance, never mind the lingering scent of charred body.

Joshua had mumbled, “Yes, Sir,” and returned to his desk and his pile of grey-paper complaints. He stared for a long while at the code scrolling across the ten screens that surrounded his cubicle. He avoided looking in any of the other complaint folders. He took several deep breaths and decided he would stop scanning the job boards for assignment in the Color Coding Division. Not only could he and his wife not handle the decrease in salary that returning to coding would mean, but also his career would not recover should he seek and accept such a lowly transfer. He assured himself he was competent. He could handle the complaints. He would save his job. And he would not be a target of the Director’s fury and turned into a steaming pile of crisped meat splattered over his unstable desk chair.

Awakened from his reverie, he found his secretary, Blanch Simwise, lurking at the corner of his desk with the folder containing complaint seventeen.

“Josh?” she asked in a shaky voice. She was holding out a folder to him. The folder vibrated in her trembling hand.

He groaned. “Another one?”

She frowned. “Delivered from Tipsy Wilkenson.”

“The Zone Auditor’s Secretary?” Josh sat back, away from her outstretched hand and the folder.

“Shhhhh,” Blanch warned. “She handed it right to me. In silence. With just a creepy stare from those bug-eyes of hers.” She shivered. “Josh, I think we keep this one under wraps. I- I looked at it. We have a problem.”

Joshua did not accept the folder from her hands. “What? What problem? Time slippage and ghost ships again on Trappist 1G?”

“Worse.”

“Worse?” Joshua repeated. He watched Blanch put the file on his desk. He stared at it. He wondered if the job board still listed the Color Coding position. He touched the tips of his fingers to the manila file cover. When he raised his head, Blanch was still there. He turned to the file and flipped open the cover. The orange routing chit was red this time. Crap. He scanned the report. He said, “You-you tell no one about this.”

“Obviously,” she said and then whispered, “I’ll walk with you.”

He nodded absentmindedly, struggled from his unstable chair, found his footing, smoothed his pants and straightened his tie. He said, “I would appreciate that, Blanch.” He met her gaze and watched her shake her head slowly.

They hurried towards Larry Dietrich’s desk via the circuitous route past the copy room, careful to avoid passing the rows of coder cubicles. No sense at alarming the entire team. Joshua never visited coder’s desks and they would find curious his visiting Larry’s desk. If he needed to speak with a member of his coder team, Joshua merely blasted off a quick digital message. He never made his way through the maze of cubicles for a face-to-face with any of his team.

Larry’s desk was the last in the row beyond the bathrooms. Larry was a highly recommended fresh recruit. When Joshua presented Larry as his choice for the recently created code position, the Director agreed to the appointment.

“And after that complete screw up from Section 83.17, we need someone enthusiastic and fresh on this new zone, Joshua. If you are confident in this recruit, I will trust your judgment. This is a management favorite. Lots of work went into this planet. We need to keep this one moving in the right direction.”

“Agreed, Sir. I’ll ensure to brief Larry,” Joshua had assured the Director and kept his word. Joshua personally trained and briefed Larry. Larry performed as expected and had been engaged and attentive and for the past nine months. Larry’s planet was thriving and Larry’s fine performance was the key bright spot during Joshua’s poor performance review. The Director had not boiled Joshua alive, and Joshua, therefore, loved Larry. Until today. Until this moment. Until complaint seventeen.

With Blanch silently at his heels, Joshua arrived at Larry’s empty cubicle. Joshua leaned over the cubicle divider and asked Larry’s neighbor, Winifred Tippins, an experienced coder who always wore flowery skirts, “Where’s Larry?”

She did not look away from her monitors and did not pause her fiery keying as she said, “Larry’s at lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“Yeah, J-man. We do get breaks,” she said as she kept keying. She taped the backspace several times and returned to tapping at light speed.

“When did he take his company-sanctioned break?” Joshua asked. When Winifred did not respond, he asked, “Well?”

Winifred sighed loudly. She lifted her gaze from the screens before her and pushed her retina correctors up the bridge of her nose. She glanced towards Joshua’s cubicle and squinted at the gigantic analog clock on the far wall. “Hm,” she grunted. “I think… well, he’s been gone a while.”

“A while?” Joshua asked. What was a while? Define a while, he thought.

Winifred said, “His wife’s pregnant– “

“What’s a while, Winifred? When did he leave?”

Sigh. “Around 11:30, I think. I was coding this beaver’s tail issue.”

“Are you telling me he’s been at lunch for almost six hours?” Joshua groaned his question as he noted the piles of code correction requests pooled on the floor of Larry’s cubicle. Light blue request slips jammed the feeder, which moaned as it tried to spit out each new notice.

Winifred blinked twice. “I’m not telling anything. I’m just doing my job.” She returned to her rapid keystrokes, but said, “What are you doing down here, anyway?”

Joshua dropped into the chair at Larry’s terminal and scanned his finger across the identification bar. As supervisor, Joshua had access to all the terminals in his section. As supervisor, he also would take heat for Larry’s oversights, mistakes, negligence, and outright screw ups. “Because shit splashes upwards, too,” Joshua mumbled.

“What?” Blanch asked.

“Nothing. Let me look at what’s what here,” Joshua said, scanning Larry’s monitors. Yes. There, in line 4,568. A blank space. “You said he left at 11:30?” Joshua called over the cubicle divider. Winifred did not respond.

“That’s what she said,” Blanch answered.

“Which is what? What is six hours in this planet’s time?” Joshua asked to no one in particular.

Blanch leaned closer. “What planet is it?” She nodded. “Yes, okay. Accounting for the distortion, approximately fourteen-thousand years.”

Joshua sat back roughly, noticing Larry’s chair wasn’t malfunctioning. Larry had all four of his casters. Larry who shirked his duties, had an operational chair. Joshua asked, again to no one in particular, “Are you telling me this moron has abandoned his post for that long?”

Winifred’s face appeared over the divider. “What project’s he on?”

Joshua did not respond, but rattled the contents of the management complaint report seventeen. “Weather disruption. Extinct species. Rampant cancer. Unsubsiding unrest, chronic illiteracy, and war. Gender dysmorphia. And something called a platypus.”

“What the hell’s a platypus?” Winifred asked.

“I’ll tell you what a platypus is. A platypus is a pink slip for Larry.” And for me, Joshua added mentally. He leaned forward and frantically began doing his best to correct the code.

“They’re coming,” Blanch whispered.

Joshua did not answer her. He just continued to insert correction after correction. He could fix this. No one corrected code better than he did. No one. He could fix this. He had his job because he was the best. He should have remained a coder.

“They’re near the copy room,” Blanch added.

Joshua kept coding, his fingers flying across the keyboard; his eyes scanning all seven monitors before him. On his eighty-sixth correction, the lasers from Director Rogan’s eyes caught Joshua in the side of his face, exploding Joshua and splattering the muscle, bone and fluids that had been the Supervisor of Section 956.73 across the grey divider walls of Larry’s cubicle.

The only thing remaining was the mess, the scent of burned flesh, and another office chair with a broken caster.