Hard Byte

by Misha Bell

  We make small talk as we wait for the rest of the administrative staff to arrive. Once they’re all in, Dr. Piper gives me a fatherly smile and says, “It’s a good thing you reached out. We were talking about your project at the morning scrum.”

  I smile nervously. “Good things, I hope.”

  “Absolutely,” he says. “We’ve been talking to the children who are part of the beta test, as well as their parents. The feedback has all been positive. We should discuss the next steps.”

  Wow. Maybe I won’t even need to convince them?

  “That sounds great,” I say with feeling. “I’d love to talk next steps.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Dr. Piper says. “We’ve started our due diligence and have involved an external consultant to assist us with the aspects of this technology we’re not familiar with.” He chuckles. “Which is most of it.”

  Reasonable. They can’t just rely exclusively on my say-so all the time.

  “Talking with this consultant, we got an idea for the next step, one that the parents and the children also liked,” he continues.

  Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like what he’s about to say?

  “What idea?” I ask.

  “First, I just want to say that a VR pet is a very effective use for this technology, the best even.”

  My heartbeat speeds up. “Why does it sound like there’s a but coming?”

  “No buts. Only the truth. You only have the one app, the pet. It’s limiting. Kids like video games. The consultant suggested we expand the list of apps.”

  I gape at him. What he’s talking about is a classic in project management. It’s called scope creep—except this isn’t even a creep, it’s a bloody elephant stampede.

  I clear my throat. “Pet therapy is a real therapy. Games aren’t.”

  “The consultant sent us an article about this very topic. VR games have been shown to reduce pain.”

  Who is this evil consultant? I fight the urge to swear and point out that I already knew about those studies—they were the starting point for my work. In fact, said studies were how I convinced these very people to give my project a chance.

  Taking in a calming breath, I speak evenly as I lay out the truth of the matter. “I’m working with limited resources. The pet app is the result of many months of work. Adding more apps is—”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have a solution to this problem already,” he says.

  “You do?” I fan myself with my shirt, but carefully, so as not to have another nip-slip.

  “There’s a company that makes games for the tablets the kids currently play with. This company has recently branched out into VR as well. We can introduce you to them, and you can work out a way to put their games onto your platform. Much less work, right?”

  Except we needed to be all squared away today, and this is the opposite of that.

  “It all depends,” I say cautiously. “What’s the name of the company?”

  “1000 Devils,” he says. “Ever hear of them?”

  I lose my ability to speak and just sit there, holding in a scream.

  When I researched the Chortsky name, what little I learned about the two brothers was from the websites of the companies they own.

  One of which was a game studio called 1000 Devils.

  A game studio owned by none other than Alexander (Alex) Chortsky, the Devil himself.

  Chapter Twelve

  How have I gotten so screwed so fast? What were the chances they’d want me to work with that company out of so many others?

  Well, 1000 Devils is famous for their kid-focused content, and it’s local to NYC, so it’s not completely out of the blue.

  Unless…

  No. Can’t be.

  But what if? Could the Devil be the Evil Consultant? I mean he’s the Evil One, so this—

  “Are you okay, dear?” Dr. Piper looks at me with a worried expression.

  How long have I just been sitting here, mind imploding?

  “I’m fine,” I lie. “This is something I need to process.” For a year.

  “Fair enough,” Dr. Piper says. “How about we adjourn the meeting for now? Offline, I’ll introduce you to Robert Jellyheim—my contact at 1000 Devils.”

  Robert Jellyheim. If I had any hope that there’s a different game studio called 1000 Devils, that hope is now caput. Robert is my contact at Morpheus Group—a company I can’t mention here at all, because porn.

  The Devil must be using the staff from his gaming company to help his sister.

  I’m so, so screwed.

  Everyone leaves the meeting room except Dr. Piper.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” he asks.

  “Fine.” I leap to my feet.

  “It’s just that”—he readjusts his bowtie—“if you are sick, I don’t think you should visit Jacob and the others.”

  “I’m not sick, I promise,” I say.

  Also, he’s a genius. Visiting Jacob might help brighten this otherwise rubbish day.

  We say our goodbyes, and I navigate to the pediatric long-term care wing.

  Bugger. Bobze the clown is here, entertaining Jacob and the others. Even though I don’t have proper coulrophobia, and even though Bobze doesn’t look like he’s escaped from Stephen King’s basement, I prefer to stay away. Bobze is the epitome of messiness: every color of the rainbow in his wild wig, disproportionate shoes, and, adding insult to injury, he always carries not one, or two, or three, or five, but exactly four balloons.

  Realizing I’m famished, I sneak out to the cafeteria and get my hospital usual: seven apples and a pack of twenty-three almonds.

  I gobble down the fruit and the nuts, then check on Jacob.

  Whew.

  No more clown.

  Preparing to channel my inner Mary Poppins, I walk up to Jacob. His nose is in a tablet, so I cough to steal his attention.

  Looking up, he rewards me with a heartwarming boyish grin. “Hi, Aunt Holly.”

  Jacob and I are not really blood relations—he’s the grandchild of one of my parents’ friends. He landed in this hospital after an accident where he broke a number of his bones. With his legs in casts, boredom and pain (in that order) are big issues for him, making him a perfect candidate for my VR pet therapy.

  “Hi, kiddo.” I muss his hair. “How’s Master Chief?”

  Master Chief is what he calls his version of Euclid. It also happens to be the name of a character in Halo, a video game that Jacob once coerced me to play. Sadly, I could only tolerate the uber-violence for seventeen seconds before I had to bail—and he called me lame, perhaps rightfully so.

  Jacob’s grin widens. “He grew a few inches and learned a few new words.”

  No doubt curse words, but I’ll leave that for Jacob’s parents to worry about.

  He tells me about the games he and his VR friend have played, and I gently probe how he’d feel about VR games outside pet therapy. Not surprisingly, he’s brimming with enthusiasm for such a scenario, especially if they’re to be games of the shooting variety.

  Bollocks. I hate to admit it, but adding more games might be a good idea. Too bad it will ruin everything by giving Dr. Piper’s team time to learn about the porn connection.

  Then again, how much time would it take to port existing games onto a new platform?

  “Aunt Holly, are you okay?” Jacob asks.

  “Sorry.” I smile at him, banishing all errant thoughts from my head—the kid deserves my full attention.

  When Jacob and I run out of things to talk about, I combine his clean socks into three pairs, fold the blanket next to his bed into a neat triangle, and chat with a few of the other kids nearby while tidying up their areas as well.

  As I exit the hospital, there’s a grin on my face. I think I could’ve been a teacher in another life. Whenever I talk to my pint-sized beta team, I end up feeling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

  In the cab heading home, I check my phone. No texts or calls from th
e Devil. Sigh. On some level, I was wondering if he’d set up a meeting to sack me… or text me a dick pic.

  I guess the ball is in my court on that—the meeting, I mean, not the nudie pic.

  Once home, I follow my routine, but in the background, my mind tries to figure out a way to extract myself from the current kerfuffle.

  Just as I’m all set to go to bed, an insane idea congeals out of a horde of equally bad ones.

  It’s a classic, really. Faust went through it. Brendan Fraser did it in Bedazzled. Keanu Reeves also, in Constantine, and something like it in The Devil’s Advocate. Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon did it in The Witches of Eastwick. Ghost Rider and Spawn did it in the movie and the comics. Katy Perry and Oprah might’ve done it in real life.

  What if I make a deal with the Devil?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Needless to say, sleeping on that idea becomes an impossibility. By morning, I’m beyond knackered and require three cups of strongly brewed tea to stay semi-coherent.

  On the way to work, I text the Devil what might be famous last words: Do you have time for a chat?

  The reply is instant: 7:30 p.m.?

  Great, I text. Where?

  This time, he takes a few seconds to get back to me: How about my office? You remember—it’s the place you decimated.

  See you there, is what I say back, even though my fingers are itching to type out something a lot ruder.

  Plan for the meeting: figure out a way not to get fired. Also on the to-do list: no making moony eyes at the Devil, no drooling, and no fantasies of grooming him. Must resist his masculine wiles at all costs.

  I’m the first in the office, but I’m brimming with too much nervous energy to actually do anything useful. One thing leads to another, and I catch myself moving a few desks that look out of alignment, as well as adding/removing pens and other minutia on people’s workspaces so that they have nice, prime totals.

  The elevator door opens, halting my endeavors.

  It’s Alison, the manager of the quality assurance team.

  “Hiya.” I smile at the older woman. “How are you?”

  “Hi, Holly,” she says. “Did you get my email about a bug my team found with Euclid?”

  Skipping the pleasantries—I like that about Alison. “Sorry, no. Haven’t had a chance to check my email yet.”

  “Everything crashes if you feed him four toasts and toss the fetch stick six times right after that. I had a few people replicate this issue on multiple devices.”

  Four and six. Nasty, non-prime numbers. Of course they crash the bloody app. “I’ll look into it, thanks.”

  She scurries to her desk as I unlock my workstation and jump into Euclid’s code.

  By the afternoon, I’ve fixed Alison’s discovery and let her know about it.

  “I’ll have someone retest,” she says. Lowering her voice, she adds, “I heard a new rumor, by the way.”

  I lean in. She’s as good at uncovering juicy gossip as she is at detecting software bugs.

  “The Chorstkys are moving in,” she says. “Maybe even tomorrow.”

  Yep. That sounds about right—but I don’t tell her that. Nor do I mention the very real possibility that I won’t be here tomorrow to witness the Devil’s invasion. It all hinges on our upcoming conversation.

  “Let me know if you hear anything else about the Chortskys,” I whisper. “And if you find any other ways to crash poor Euclid.”

  She promises that she will, and I retrace my steps to my desk—where, unfortunately, Buckley is waiting to speak to me.

  I’m not Buckley’s biggest fan. He likes to clear his throat a lot—and usually an even number of times.

  “Hi, boss,” he says and clears his throat twice. “Got a minute?”

  This man is an enigma. I got promoted to CTO over him, so I figured he’d hate my guts afterward. Imagine my surprise when he asked me out instead. Of course, I had to refuse, mostly because I don’t think office romances are proper, but there was a shallow reason too: I find his asymmetrical body and face aesthetically displeasing.

  “I can talk,” I say. “What’s up?”

  He clears his throat twice more. “I was just wondering if you’ve heard from the new management.”

  I shrug noncommittally. “Why?”

  He scratches his perpetual stubble—a grooming choice that didn’t help his chances when he asked me out. “I was wondering if the merger means there will be opportunities for us to move within the bigger organization. Not that I don’t like working for you, but—”

  “Say no more.” I smile at him. “I’ll write to my equivalent on the other side and see what they have for you.”

  “Thanks, Holly,” he says and clears his throat just once—a miracle. “I really appreciate this.”

  As soon as he leaves, I write an email to Robert Jellyheim in which I wax ecstatic about Buckley. If he gets the move he wants, I might just never hear his throat-clearing again.

  Since I’m on an email kick, I take a stab at the million messages awaiting my attention. By the time my inbox is empty, it’s already past normal working hours.

  Just like yesterday, people aren’t leaving, no doubt waiting me out again.

  Fine. I can use the same leaving trick again. I should eat before the big meeting anyway. And for the record, my going to Miso Hungry has nothing to do with the hope of seeing the Devil there, like the last time.

  Nothing at all.

  Nope.

  I even out a few more desks and move some pens around to get prime totals on my way out too, both because I want to and to get attention. Then I rush to the restaurant.

  “To go?” the hostess asks as soon as she spots me.

  “Takeout,” I say and glance around.

  No Devil, no Bella.

  Ugh. What’s with the wave of disappointment crashing into me? They must not be as much creatures of routine as I am.

  Oh, well. Not everybody’s perfect.

  Food in hand, I return to the empty office and eat my miso soup with forty-seven cubes of tofu and seventeen pieces of scallion. Then I consume the twenty-three avocado roll pieces. Sadly, in my current state, I could just as easily chew on the paper bag the sushi came in as far as tasting any of it goes.

  At a quarter past seven, the elevator doors open and the Chortsky siblings step out.

  Bella looks even more like she’s just come off a runway, and the Devil is somehow even scruffier than usual—so much for those grooming fantasies I was hoping to avoid. Or keeping my heart rate even and my libido in check.

  “Hi.” Bella waves her delicate hand at me in a suspiciously beauty-pageant-like way for someone who’s allegedly never participated in one.

  I wave back. “Lovely to see you again.”

  “Privet,” the Devil says.

  “That means hi,” Bella translates.

  “Ahoy,” I say back to the Devil.

  Wait, ahoy? Last I checked, today isn’t International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Bloody adrenaline is really messing with my head.

  Acting as though ahoy is a normal reply to a Russian hello, the siblings go into their offices.

  The next eleven minutes drag on for a year.

  Finally, it’s time.

  Getting up, I head to the Wicked One’s office.

  Pirates are still on my mind, it seems, because I can’t help feeling like I’m about to walk the plank. His door creaks—like the plank—and once I open it, I half expect to see the mess I created yesterday.

  Nope. Someone’s cleaned it up.

  Good. I won’t be having my nose rubbed in my sins, like a puppy. Then again, he hasn’t replaced the broken keyboard and monitor—and is instead working on a laptop, which must be a lot less comfortable.

  Here goes nothing.

  I step into the Devil’s lair.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Prince of Darkness closes his laptop. “Please, sit.”

  Since the couch is the only place availabl
e, I plop there—and do my best not to think about the things a virtual version of him was doing to me last night on this very surface.

  The Tempter’s cerulean eyes scan me carefully, as though he plans to create a 3D model of me for VR.

  Did my eyelashes just bat at him prettily?

  Afraid so.

  Does that count as moony eyes?

  Close enough.

  Bugger. Nothing is going as planned.

  At least I’m not drooling. Or am I? Would it look weird if I checked?

  “Since you might get a reminder about a more important meeting at any second, I’ll get to the point,” he says. “You’re not fired.”

  “Pardon?”

  Wait. What am I doing?

  He said I’m not fired.

  I heard him just fine—I just didn’t expect it.

  Also, is it hot in here?

  I feel equal parts dizzy and euphoric.

  “I said you get to keep your job,” he enunciates. “Under certain conditions, of course.”

  Ah. Here we go. Knowing there’s a catch makes me feel better. Otherwise, things would be too good to be true.

  “What are the conditions?” I ask.

  Is he about to make an indecent proposal?

  More importantly, is that something I’m hoping for?

  “There are two.” He drums his long, masculine fingers on the desk. Is it wrong that I can picture them stroking me? “You’re going to help with the integration project,” he says, wrenching my mind away from delicious massages. “The issues you mentioned, where the headset and gloves don’t work as they should with the suit, will become your top priority.”

  “Fair enough,” I say and mean it. “What’s the second thing?”

  “Right.” He frowns. “This should go without saying, but I will spell it out for you. There will be no more monkey wrenches into my sister’s work. If you so much as introduce a bug into the integration code, you’re done. If cameras malfunction at any of our offices, that will be it. If a virus infects any of our computers, or critical employees for that matter, you’re a goner. If there’s—”

  “I get the picture,” I say. “We have an accord.”