Vaporware (17 page)

“I
hope so,” I said, and got up to meet her in the hallway. Her footsteps had
already announced she was coming upstairs, the peculiar thump-tap of her
footfalls instantly recognizable. “What brings you home for lunch?”

I
stepped into the hallway and she was there. Navy skirt, cream-colored blouse,
gold necklace—she looked beautiful. I had to look close to see the dark circles
under her eyes, and the places where the makeup just barely failed to hide
them.

The
look on her face told me she didn't think I was looking so wonderful myself.
Then her eyes softened, and we just fell into holding each other.

“Hey.”

“Hey,
you.” She looked up to kiss me with dry lips. “I'm sorry I yelled last night. I
was just getting worried.”

I
kissed her again, to stop her apologizing. “Shhh,” I said, when we broke the
kiss. “You have nothing to apologize for. I should have come straight home from
the bar, but I just wanted to check one thing and—”

This
time, she stopped me. We came up for air a minute later, both grinning like
idiots. “How much time do you have?” I asked her.

“Not
enough,” she replied primly, “but I hope you have a good reason to come home on
time tonight now.”

“Oh,
yes,” I said, and then there were a few more minutes without talking.

“So
why were you home?” she finally asked, when we reached a point where we had the
choice of stopping or making ourselves very late.

I
adjusted my jeans to make them a little more comfortable, and tried hard to
think about baseball. “Eric sent me home for a few hours after he found me
asleep at my desk. I'm not supposed to come in until after lunch.”

“What
a coincidence. I came home to check on you and to grab some lunch.” She looked
at me, and then past me at the door to my office. “Were you...working in
there?”

“No.”
I shook my head, the last few drops of water from my shower flying away as I
did so. “I was actually, you know. Writing. On the novel.”

Her
eyebrows went up fractionally. “You were? Really?”

I
nodded. “Really. I think I wrote about fifteen hundred words, give or take.” I
blinked, and a small but insistent throbbing took up residence behind my left
eye. “I think that's all I've got in me today, though.”

Sarah
looked disappointed. “So I couldn't talk you into calling in sick, and staying
home to work on it a little more?”

“Afraid
not. I think I'm all out for today. Besides—” My stomach rumbled, loudly,
saving me from trying to explain further. “Tell you what. Why don't I go
downstairs and make lunch, and if you want, you can read what I've got so far
and tell me that it’s brilliant. Does that sound good?”

“It
sounds great.” She gave me a peck on the lips, then slid past me into my
office. “Any naughty bits I shouldn't be reading?” she teased from inside.

“None
that I put there,” I answered, and headed downstairs to make sandwiches.

*  
*   *

Sarah
was six or seven bites into her sandwich before she said anything. I hadn't
asked, hadn't wanted to seem like I was angling for approval or leaning over
her shoulder as she was reading. Instead, I concentrated on my sandwich, and on
the low-fat low-sodium chips I'd put out on the plates with them.

“Where
did you come up with the idea for the story, Ryan?” she asked, and her voice
was low and surprisingly wary.

“Juf
sorra mayv unh,” I said, then chewed a few more times and swallowed. “I don't
know,” I clarified. “I just sort of made it up. Why?”

“Interesting,”
was all I got out of her, and then the sounds of thoughtful chewing.

“Did
you like it?” I asked, hating myself for the question.

She
stopped, swallowed, and looked thoughtful for a minute. “It's very well
written,” she finally said, and then took a two-handed death grip on the
remnants of her turkey and lettuce on seven-grain bread.

I
put my sandwich down and took a sip of soda. “So you didn't like it.”

She
chewed slowly and deliberately, her brow furrowed as her teeth bought time for
a response. “It's not that I don't like it,” she said finally. “It's that it
feels like I've heard it before, and I don't know where.”

“You're
not a big science fiction reader,” I pointed out, which was true. Our reading
tastes generally intersected at places like The Time Traveler's Wife, when
science fiction or fantasy topics got themselves remade into book-club friendly
versions. Her tastes ran more toward Jodi Picoult and Mitch Albom; mine went
from Neal Stephenson on out. “I don't know where you would have come across
something like this on your own.”

Slowly,
she nodded. “I know. And I don't think I've seen it in a movie. I mean, it's
like a science fiction spy novel, what with the main character jumping into
computers and whatnot. Like I said, the writing is good, but you're a little
sloppy in a couple of places. You got your pronouns mixed up—you kept switching
back and forth between ‘he’ and ‘she’ when you were—honey, what's wrong?”

I
could feel the blood draining from my face. “Did I really do that?” I
asked.  She nodded mute agreement. I thought about it for a second. “Were
most of the male pronouns up front, and the female ones toward the end of what
I'd written?”

She
sat back in her chair, the sandwich forgotten and her eyes wide. “Yeah. Why is
that important?”

“It
means I don't have the goddamned game out of my head yet.” I shoved back from
the table, about as interested in the rest of lunch as I was in performing
elective self-surgery. “Bloody hell.”

“It
really is good, Ryan,” Sarah offered consolingly. “Apart from the pronoun
stuff, I liked it.”

I
smiled at her, or tried to. It came out mostly a failure. “Honey, it's Blue
Lightning. I don't know what happened, but somehow, today I started writing the
novelization of Blue Lightning.” I stood up abruptly enough to send my chair
teetering backwards; reaching back to steady it just spun the thing into the
kitchen floor that much harder.

Sarah
stayed at the table, sitting very still. Her hands were down now, flat against
the tabletop, pressed there to keep them from trembling with tension. “I don't
see why that's so bad,” she said softly. “If you're not doing the game….”

“I
wanted this to be something different.” I kicked the chair, hard, and it
skittered over the floor to crash against the pantry. “If I'm going to write—if
I'm going to write at all—I want to write something that's mine. That's not a
game, or about a game, or ripped off from a game. That's not another version of
what I'm doing at the office. Otherwise, I might as well be doing it at the
office. I might as well be at the office. If it's not going to be anything
different, I might as well not even try.”

She
took a deep breath, held it for a minute, let it whistle out between her teeth.
“Even if it was a game, Blue Lightning was your idea,” she said, each word
getting bitten off precisely. “If they're not going to use it, you should. You
put so much into it.”

“And
now I just want to leave it alone.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Oh,
Sarah, I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't even realize what I was writing, or
how thoroughly that crap was knotted up in me, or, or anything.” I sat down on
the floor, heavily. “God, I'm a screwup.”

“You
work too hard. And you're too hard on yourself.” I looked up. She was still
sitting at the table, looking down at me. “And this is what happens. Promise me
you'll take some time off soon, Ryan.”

“I—”

“I
don't care if you go anywhere. I don't care if you spend it with me, or by
yourself, or hop in the car and drive and don't come back until you're feeling
better. But I don't want to watch you blow up every time you make a mistake,
and I don't want to watch you tear your own guts out every time you realize you
blew up for no reason.”

“Sarah,
I—”

“I
love you, Ryan, and I'll see you tonight. You should get to work.” Smoothly,
she stood and carried her dishes over to the sink. With perfect economy of
motion, she scraped half the sandwich into the garbage disposal, then ran it for
precisely five seconds. The dishes clattered in the sink as she set them down
and turned to go.

“The
roses are lovely, Ryan,” she said. “Thank you.” And with that, she was gone,
her footsteps in the hall and the sound of the door shutting behind her blending
into a cacophonous goodbye.

“Great,”
I said, and sat there for a moment. “Why don't I go to the office?”

Chapter 14

Shelly
was conveniently near the front doors when I walked through, and she fell into
step with me before I'd gotten a yard inside.

“You
look like shit,” she said cheerfully. “Not a good nap?”

“Not
now, Michelle,” I warned her. I fumbled for my office keys. They fell out of my
fingers and bounced once. “God dammit!” I dropped to my knees to look for them,
then looked up at Michelle. “Would you mind? You're blocking the light.”

“So
sorry.” She took a step back and to the left. The sickly glow from the hall
lamp fanned through her hair, giving me just enough light to spot my keys right
in front of me.

“Thank
you.” I grabbed them, dusted myself off, and stood. “And whatever it is, can it
wait five minutes?”

She
made a great show of looking at her watch, a Hello Kitty number I'd gotten her
about six watchbands ago. “Eight. Then you're due in the small meeting room.”

“Great.
What's this one about?” I jammed the key into the door, missing the lock twice
before finally nailing it, and shoved it open. It banged against the wall and
slammed into my shoulder, leaving me wincing even as I turned on the light.

“Terry,”
she said. “You might want to block off the rest of the afternoon.”

“Wonderful.”
I dropped my keys and my bag on my desk, in that order, and did a quick email
check. There was the meeting invite from Leon to discuss Terry, and it looked
like Terry was invited. That felt like bad news; we weren't going to have
enough time to figure out what we were going say before it was showtime. I
checked the time on my monitor just as a reminder window popped up—five
minutes. Maybe I could get down there and grab Leon for a couple of minutes
beforehand. Grabbing a pad and a thoroughly chewed-on pen, I hurried down the
hall.

*  
*   *

To
my surprise, Leon hadn't taken the chair at the end of the table in the meeting
room. Instead, he was seated along the side, his shoes off and a pen twirling
between his fingers. He looked up as I stalked in, and the pen stopped moving.
“Who pissed in your cornflakes, man?”

“I
did it myself. I like the taste.” I slammed the pad down onto the table and
dropped into a chair. “What have we got, Leon?”

He
shrugged. “Informational meeting, that's all. I just have to let Terry know
that we're concerned about his feature, and if he needs to talk about the
spec....” His voice trailed off as he made a grand gesture in my direction.

“You
could have just pulled systems design in here. Or given me some warning.”

“I
did. You didn't pick up.” He leaned forward. “And before he gets here, let's
just walk through it fast. I'll do the talking, you're here for backup in case
he wants to talk about the intention, or if he comes over the table and I need
you to restrain him. Got it, man?”

“I
don't think you have to worry about Terry coming over the table at you,” I
said. “Whatever. I'll be here.”

“Thanks.”
There was a knock. “Just don't jump in and jump down his throat, OK? I got this
one.”

“Right.”
I made a big show of biting my tongue for Leon. He flipped me off, then shouted
“Come in” at the door.

Terry
didn't walk in. He just sort of shuffled, like he was perpetually falling
forward and insisted on making the smallest movements possible of his feet to
avert catastrophe. “Hey,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth nervously
between us. “Where do you want me to sit?”

“Wherever,”
Leon said magnanimously. Terry nodded, and shuffled over to the Daddy Chair.
Leon looked mildly surprised. Inwardly, I groaned. We were five seconds in and
it already felt like things were going off the rails.

“So,
uh, what's up, guys?” Terry's voice was uneven. He tapped his fingers on the
tabletop like he was doing piano scales, and hunched over them like he didn't
want us to see. “Is something up?”

Leon
smiled. “I just wanted to make sure that everything was cool with the
implementation on your feature, and that you didn't have any trouble with the
concept. I know Ryan's kind of a pain to get hold of sometimes,” I opened my
mouth to say something, and Leon kicked me under the table. Even without shoes,
he kicked hard. “So if you had any questions, or there was something holding
you up, I figured we could just talk it out.” He threw a glance my way. “Right,
Ryan?”

I
nodded dumbly, watching Terry out of the corner of my eye. His head was
practically down to the table, his gaze focused on the spot just in front of
his hands. “It's fine,” he mumbled. “The docs are good.”

“That's
cool, man.” Leon scooted his chair over a little closer. I stayed where I was.
“But if it's all good, I have to ask, as your lead, if something else is wrong?
Cause I'm looking at the Engineering schedule and we’re not meeting it. That
means I've got to explain to Eric what's up, and I want to be able to tell him
not to worry. So....”

Terry
stared at him, eyes wide. “So?”

“So
what's up?” His face was maybe a foot from Terry's now, his arms crossed in
front of him. “Is it something I can help with?”

“No,
no, everything's fine.” Terry turned, hunched over, and stared at a wall. “I'll
catch up, don't worry. It's just something else has been taking my attention a
little bit lately, and I haven't been getting a lot of sleep, and I promise
I'll be back on schedule real soon now.” For some inexplicable reason, he shot
me a look that was one part desperation, two parts loathing. “Really. Nothing
to worry about.”

“Don't
turn your back on me, Terry,” Leon said in the deceptively soft voice that
meant that he was getting seriously pissed off. “In case you didn’t hear me,
I’m your lead, and I asked you a question. I invited you in here so we could
have a nice friendly chat before I had to get Eric involved. But if you're not
going to be straight with me, we might as well all go home.” There was a moment
of silence, broken only by Terry's shuddering breathing and the faint tick of
the clock on the wall. “Terry?”

“I'll
get the goddamned work done, okay? Just leave me the hell alone, or fire me, I
don't care which!” He spun around, eyes bulging, lips pulled back in what could
only be called a snarl. “You don't know shit about what I'm doing or how
important it is, and at the end of the day, I'll have everything done I need
to. In the meantime, you can take that schedule of yours and shove it up your
ass!”

“Wait
a minute, Terry.” Leon warned him. “You should maybe think about what you're
saying here.”

“Think?
You've got no goddamned idea how much thinking I've been doing. This Salvador
horseshit doesn't take any thinking at all. I've got other stuff to think
about.” He pulled himself up out of his chair and stomped past me. As he did, I
turned.

“Take
it easy, Terry,” I said. “Leon's just trying to help.”

He
stopped and looked daggers in my direction. “Yeah. He's trying to help. I don't
know what the hell she sees in you.” He hocked up a wad of spit and looked me
up and down before thinking better of it. Instead, he settled for lurching out
and slamming the door behind him.

“You
know,” I said idly, “That door gets slammed a lot.”

“Heh.
Funny.” Leon rubbed his forehead like it was causing him pain. “Wow. I don’t
know who that was, but it wasn’t Terry.”

I
was still looking at the door. “He's hiding something, that's for sure. Is the
feature he's working on really that much of a bear?”

Leon
shook his head. “It's cake. I gave it to him because he was really deep into
the guts of the matchmaking stuff on Blue Lightning, and I wanted him to have
something relatively easy to work on while he, you know, got over it.  Give him
an easy win and all that.”

“That
worked out well.” I turned to face Leon, who looked grim as death. “So what
now?”

He
made a sour face. “Now that I've officially had a meeting with him, HR says I
can go on to the next step and dig into his network access history. And since
we had this nice talk, he can't say shit about how I should have talked to him
first.”

“Very
clever. But what are you expecting to find?”

“If
he's been accessing something naughty from work, I'll find it, or Dennis will.
Maybe he's working on his own thing, maybe he's doing the BitTorrent thing with
movies, maybe he's just getting a shitload of porn. It doesn't matter.”

“What
if he's doing a black project?”

“Hmm.”
Leon drummed his fingernails on the tabletop, little tiny clacking sounds
accentuating his thought process. “You mean a blue project, don't you?”

“Same
thing.” I thought for a minute. “He had a little knot of guys he was huddling
with out in the smoker's quad a while back, and they all had that ‘we're doing
something we shouldn't’ look when I came over to talk.”

“Heh.
You're practically management. No wonder they look guilty.” He stood up. “Eric
warned Terry about doing anything else on Blue Lighting. Called him into his
office for a little ‘come to Jesus’ talk. If he's still digging into it, we'll
get the access records from the Blue Lightning database. I might even have to
ask Dennis to call in the tape backups from offsite, just to see what he was
touching.”

“Hopefully,
not himself.” Leon shot me a look, and I raised my hands to show I was sorry.
“My bad,” I said. “What happens if you catch him still working on Blue
Lightning?”

Leon
made a face. “I tell him to cut it out. And if he doesn't, then I take some steps.”
He strode toward the door. “You think I’m handling this right? I mean, that was
pretty batshit, what he did just now.”

“You’re
doing fine, man. And I’d try and get more info on what he’s doing before
talking to HR or Eric again. Otherwise they’ll just nibble you to death with
questions and it’ll take twice as long,” I said. “It could be that all you need
to do is tell him that you're not going to get him fired, and he'll calm down.
Seriously, he's wound tighter than a spring up a snail's butt.”

“Eww….
Tell you what. I've got a few ideas to try to figure out what's going on with
Terry, man. If things go a certain way, I may need your help with some of it.”

“Sure,”
I said, puzzled. “But what else is there to do besides looking at his records,
unless you're going to plant someone in his room to watch him?”

Leon
showed me a shark's grin. “Don't need people, man. I gots me some cameras.”

*  
*   *

“Do
you have any idea what the hell Leon means when he says he has cameras?”

Michelle
turned her attention from the vending machine to stare me down. “Just that
they’d better not be in his bedroom. Why do you ask?”

I
grimaced. “Because he mentioned them in connection with Terry, but after that
comment I think I need a few rounds on the brain lathe.”

She
smirked. “Oh really? I didn’t think you were such a prude.”

“I’m
not. But I really don’t need to think about Leon’s skinny ass flapping in the
breeze, at least not during work hours.” There was a general cloud of
snickering from the other folks getting their coffee or microwaving their
lunches. “OK, maybe I should rephrase that, but can we talk about this for a
minute?”

“Hang
on, let’s take this somewhere private.” She turned back to the machine and
studied the selection of crap junk food—candy bars that had half-melted in the
truck on the way over, salty snacks that were more sodium than anything else,
overcooked cookies—as if her selection really mattered. I watched her study
them. She was wearing some sort of lightweight black blouse, unbuttoned over a
sullen pink tank top held up by spaghetti straps. The ensemble made her look
like the manager of a particularly stylish roller derby team, and the thought
made me grin.

She
caught my reflection in the glass front of the machine. “What are you smiling
at?”

“Nothing,”
I said, and turned away. “I’ll meet you in my office, OK?”

In
return, I heard the beeping of buttons, and then the solid thwack of a candy
bar falling too far, too fast, and hitting the merciless steel of the bottom of
the machine. “Hang on,” Shelly said, and reached in to snag her Butterfinger.
The top half of it sagged at an odd angle; the fall had clearly broken it.

“You
want another one?” I reached into my pocket for change.

She
shook her head. “It tastes the same, and this way, there’s more crumbs for you
to clean up. You said your office?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked
out of the break room and down the hall.

I
hurried to keep up. “So about these cameras….”

Shelly
shrugged and took a bite of the candy bar. After a few seconds’ thoughtful crunching,
she said something that might have been “Why don’t you ask him?”

“I
tried. He just smirked at me.”

“Ah.”
We turned a corner, Shelly taking the inside. “If I had to make a guess, I’d
say he’s going to set up cameras. Was that helpful?”