by Melissa Good
She felt motion at her back and glanced around to find most of the operators out of their chairs and leaning over their workspaces to watch. “C’mon over here. Maybe if I let you all in on what happened it won’t happen again.”
The entire team came trotting over, making a solid circle at her back. “We knew they did something,” one of them said. “They said it was you, Ms. Roberts, but I’ve been working here for ten years and I know what your stuff looks like.” He shook his head. “Your changes are scary sometimes but they work.”
Dar suppressed a smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”
“So what did they do?” Bill asked. “We were going along like normal one day and then all of a sudden it all just gummed up.”
Dar brought up the configuration of their local router and the file on the screen that mirrored it. “This.” She touched one line with her index finger and drew it down the screen. “The idiot who did this didn’t have any understanding of situational routing.”
“What is that?” Bill asked. “Is that how all the traffic knows how to go?”
“Yes.” Dar indicated the file on her screen. “You see all this? That’s
the configuration that used to be in this router that would tell it how to know where to send things and would flexibly reroute if it saw congestion or an issue.”
“That’s custom scripting,” one of the other operators said.
“Yes,” Dar said. “I wrote it.”
“But...that’s actually calling the firmware,” the man said.
Dar nodded. “We worked in conjunction with the firmware vendor to make it work that way. It’s in the architecture workbook.”
“They took that offline,” Bill said. “Same time as the repository. They said it was for security.”
“So, all we have to do is put that all back in and it’ll start working again?” the first tech said. “It’s just typing? Holy crap, Ms. Roberts, we can type. Give each of us one of those and we’ll get this knocked out and go get a damn beer with a clean conscience. I’m buying your first one.”
Dar smiled just a little. “That’s all. I rewrote these last night.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “We tried to give them back to the stupid bastard who did this but they fired him before we could give them over.”
“Holy crap.”
“Holy crap!”
“Someone grab some thumb drives!” Bill turned around and yelled out. “Hurry!”
KERRY HAD SAT at many tables like this one, facing many faces like these and she understood the heavy sense of fear and dismay in the room. “I know it’s crazy.”
Charlese Harrington lifted one hand up. “Look, Kerry, I know you got dragged into this. But it is crazy. Someone somewhere else makes a huge screw up and we have to pay the price?”
Kerry sighed. “That does happen,” she said. “None of this was anyone here’s fault, but the fact is, it impacted some people who aren’t very forgiving. What was worse, they weren’t being given good information.”
“That’s not our fault,” Paul said. “We weren’t getting any information from exec ops. Just bullshit. All they kept doing was either blaming you, or telling us to suck it up.”
“And, like, don’t even mention Ms. Roberts’s name,” Charlese added. “They sent an email out that said they were fixing years of screw-ups and we’d just have to sit tight until they were done. Figure out something to tell the customers.”
“And what’s happening now? I know they let you all in here,” Paul said. “But that broke security regs, and we should be getting a call from the PTB any minute screaming.”
“You won’t,” Kerry said. “Jacques is under guard at The White House and they put Dar’s replacement into a holding cell.”
Silence. “Wh...what?” Paul stuttered. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m telling you they screwed around with the wrong customers,” Kerry said. “The president’s advisor is the one who sent us over here. Dar and I were there demonstrating a new project for them. We didn’t intend on any of this. I just...” She glanced around. “They wanted us to take over this contract.”
The reaction surprised her. Everyone sat up and their eyes brightened. “That means we’d work for you?” Paul asked. “Hot damn.”
“Guys,” Kerry said. “Thank you, that’s a big compliment, but the company Dar and I started can’t handle this. At least, not yet. We’re fifty...no...wait. Seventy people in Coconut Grove doing database design.”
“Who are at The White House demonstrating programs for the president?” Charlese eyed her. “I saw that picture of Ms. Roberts and Dubya.”
“But still, we’re small,” Kerry said. “ILS is a quarter of a million people. It’s not our scale for this. So when they started talking like that, like maybe they’d bring in a squad of Marines in here, I thought a better route would be to get them to hire you all and let you keep doing what you do.”
“Weren’t you the one fending them off from us the last time? The government, I mean?” Charlese asked. “I don’t mean to be rude.”
“Situations change,” Kerry said. “If you’d rather not accept the offer, that’s okay, too. My aim was to get a working solution in place for as many people as I could.”
“If Ms. Roberts fixes that stuff, can’t we just go back to being normal?” Paul asked, plaintively. “I mean, it’ll work again and everyone will stop yelling at us.”
“I don’t think they’ll let that happen,” Kerry said, then paused as the receptionist opened the door and stuck her head in. “But hell. You never know. I’ve seen stranger things.”
“Oh, good. Ms. Stuart, there’s a phone call for you. They say it’s urgent.”
Everyone looked at Kerry, who stood up and sighed. “I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t work here anymore. What the hell.” She went to the door and followed Stacy out, shaking her head as she heard voices rise in agitation behind her.
“OKAY, GO AHEAD.” Dar folded her arms and watched as the techs got to work, eyes flicking from the notepad files to their consoles as they confidently typed in commands.
It was insane, really. The level of change control they were violating would have dropped internal audit at two paces and there was no doubt that all the concurrent changes would be skewing already
faltering services across the wide network.
Couldn’t be helped. Dar flexed her hands, resisting the urge to take over one of the consoles to make the work go faster. It was right that the techs be the ones to do this and not her. She had no business touching a keyboard.
“Wow.” One of the supervisors was watching the big board that showed mostly reds and yellows flashing luridly overhead. “I don’t think that’s making things better.”
“It won’t until they’re finished,” Dar said. “Classic case of busting eggs to make pancakes.”
The man glanced at her. “Isn’t that omelets?”
“I like pancakes better.”
“I’d call ops but there’s no one there but this one guy who’s just answering the phone and taking messages,” the man said. “I heard they got some temp company to send some people in, but that won’t happen until tomorrow I think.”
Dar just folded her arms and leaned against one of the consoles.
“There goes my phone,” the supervisor said mournfully.
“Want me to answer it?” Dar asked with a wry smile. “That’ll confuse everyone.” She pushed off from the console and went to the desk. She settled behind it and picked up the receiver. “ILS Mid Atlantic ops. How can I help you?”
She listened for a moment. “Yes, matter of fact I do know. There’s a recovery operation going on to try and restore performance to the network. Your service will be down until that’s finished.”
She listened again. “I understand. But when it’s done you’ll have the same service level as you did several weeks ago before the problem started.” She glanced up to find everyone not typing, watching her in fascination. “About twe
nty minutes.”
“Can you tell them that?” the supervisor mouthed. “Holy cow, they’d fire me for saying that!”
“Who’d fire you?” Dar mouthed back. “Me? No I wouldn’t. There’s no one left to fire you and the government’s going to hire you anyway. Chill out.”
She went back to the phone. “Absolutely. I’m sure the service is going to get a lot better. I promise you that.” She paused. “Roberts. First name’s Paladar. Yep, with a P. Thanks. Goodbye.” She put the receiver down, then punched the button and picked it up again. “ILS Mid Atlantic ops, how can I help you?”
“Someone should record this,” the supervisor said. “No one’s gonna believe it.”
KERRY STOOD AT the receptionists’ counter, leaning against it with the phone pressed to her ear. “Alastair you’re not making any sense,” she repeated. “Listen, I realize that was probably a shock getting the phone call but...”
She paused to listen. “What were we supposed to do?” Her eyes lifted and met the receptionists. She shook her head. “Okay, put yourself in my place. You’re in The White House, you have the Senate Intelligence Committee breathing down your neck, Bridges hauling you into a room with Jacques and that jacktard, telling you to fix it. What do you do?”
She paused. “No, I’ll tell you what you would do, goddamn it, you’d have picked up the phone and called Dar. That’s exactly what you would have done. We just shortened the process. So now Dar’s in there doing what we all agreed was the last thing on Earth she should do because we ran out of goddamned options.”
She heard the sound of tires outside and looked through the door. “Oh, great. Here’s CNN.” She sighed. “Well, I can’t help it that those jerks you just tossed on their ass decided to go public.” She rubbed her temple. “So now we have the press here, rabid about some story that’s just bullshit.”
“Should I let them in, ma’am?” Stacy eyed the gathering crowd outside the door.
“Not yet,” Kerry said. “Alastair, what is it you would like me to tell the national press? You want me to refer them to you?” She listened. “That’s not my place to tell them. In fact, you can’t even tell me to tell them that because I don’t work for you anymore.”
“There’s another news truck out there, ma’am?”
“Jesus.” Kerry covered her eyes. “Alastair, you need to put out a press release. Is Hamilton there? He’s on his way. Okay, well I’m sure the PR people didn’t quit so you should have plenty of them there to write a press release explaining you’ve replaced the board.”
“Is that Alastair McLean?” Stacy whispered. “Is he back in charge of things?”
Kerry nodded. “Against his will,” she whispered back. “He’s not happy about it. I volunteered him.”
She listened again. “I can’t do that. I know things are moving too fast and I kno—what?” She paused. “Okay so they’ll file lawsuits, big news there but...” She paused again. “Oh hell, Alastair. It’s too late. We’re here. Dar’s changes are already going in.”
Kerry shot a quick glance at the door. “Alastair, we’re out of time. You need to deal with the press. I need to get Dar out of here before they make an honest-to-god Federal case out of this. Get off your ass and call CNN. I’ll try to get things normalized here.” She hung the phone up and circled the desk. “Holy crap.”
“Ma’am, you have brass ones,” Stacy said in an awed tone.
Kerry stopped at the door and turned. “They already fired me. What exactly do you think he’s going to do? Stall the press as long as you can.” She yanked the door open, resetting the bolt so it would shut after her and headed down the corridor.
“Yes, ma’am.” Stacy turned and put her hands on her desk as the door opened and a cavalcade of press and cameras and overcoated handsome men and women stumbled inside. “Hi,” she said. “Welcome to ILS Mid Atlantic. What can I do for you?”
KERRY GOT TO the door to the operations room and peered through it, seeing techs very busy at their desks and Dar seated at the supervisor’s raised platform on the phone. One of the supervisors was perched on the edge of the desk listening, the other was on the far side of the room, watching the monitor board.
She saw the board and it was looking ugly. Kerry knocked on the glass, attracting the attention of the supervisor near the desk. He hopped up to come open the door. Dar looked up as well, meeting her eyes.
Kerry smiled briefly as those blue orbs rolled expressively. The lock clicked from the other side and she pushed the door open and walked to the raised platform. “Hon?”
Dar held up one hand. “Yes, that’s right. Just give it another fifteen minutes. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and then ignored its insistent ringing as Kerry came up next to her. “Hey.”
“What are...never mind.” Kerry refused to let herself be distracted. “That was Alastair out there. He called here because we’re not answering our phones.”
Dar glanced at hers. “Not getting a signal in here. Not surprising with these metal walls and EMF. So what does he want?”
“What doesn’t he want?” Kerry lowered her voice. “They kicked the board members out and they went public.”
“Morons.” Dar didn’t look perturbed.
“Yes, who are intending on filing suit against him, against us, and against the Pope for deliberately disrupting operations.”
“Can’t prove any of that,” Dar said.
“No, except here we are,” Kerry said. “They told the press we did this just so we could disgrace them.”
Dar rested her hands on the desk and drummed her fingers against its surface. “Hm. You know, that’s the one single reason I might actually have done it. Unfortunately for them, we didn’t.”
“But we’re fixing it.”
“They’re fixing it.” Dar pointed at the consoles. “I just provided copies of the previous configuration to them.”
“You didn’t go in there?” Kerry’s voice sounded surprised.
“Nope. Haven’t touched a keyboard.
“There are about a hundred press people outside. They told them we were here and that we also deliberately did this so we could swing the contract away from ILS and make points with the government.”
“Except for the deliberately, that’s what we’re here doing,” Dar said. “You know, Ker, I don’t know what else they could have done to
preserve their reputations.”
“Tank ours?” Kerry said sharply.
Dar lifted both hands up and let them drop.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Kerry half whispered. “Dar, we could get into some serious political and financial crap here.”
Dar put her hand on Kerry’s knee. “We might,” she said. “But right now we’re in flight here. We can’t just turn off the engines.”
Kerry looked around at the absorbed faces of the techs and their quick shifting of attention from the scribbled on pages to their screens. “Yeah, well that’s what I told Alistair,” she said. “I told him to get off his ass and have someone in PR call the press.”
“Did you really tell him to get off his ass?”
“I did.”
“Good girl.” Dar took hold of Kerry’s hand and brought it closer, giving the knuckles a quick kiss. “That’s exactly what he needs to do. It’s not our place to solve this press problem.”
“But that doesn’t help the fact they’re all out there,” Kerry said. “Or what the bastards told them.”
Dar leaned back in her chair and lifted her shoulders in a mild shrug. “First thing;s first. Let’s get this fixed.” She glanced up at the monitor. “Type faster, folks.” She raised her voice. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel there, I see some greens.”
The supervisors turned and looked. “Holy crap, there are.”
Everyone looked up at the board and fell silent. The only sound in the room was the rattle of computer keyboards. It was odd and discordant, the heavy clicks echoing softly.
“Good old IBM keyboards,”
Dar commented after a long moment. “Noisiest input devices on the planet. I think the sound’s patented.”
Kerry kept watching the board, listening to the noise of the typing. As that slowly started to wind down and become less of a solid continuous sound, the map started to change. “Ah.”
“What’s going on?” The supervisor leaned toward her. “Is it...oh.”
Reds and yellows morphed into yellows and greens. The keyboards went quiet as they watched the yellow fade and a flow of blue sweep across the big status monitor and started a gentle pulse.
“Son of a bitch,” the supervisor standing at the desk said into all that quiet.
The techs all turned around and looked first at him, then at Dar, who stood up and put her hands on her hips.
It seemed anticlimactic. All those problems, all that trouble, and now...“Nice,” Dar said. “Very nice.”
“And that, people,” Kerry said, “is why they pay her the big bucks.”
“I haven’t seen the board look like that in weeks,” one of the techs said. “Did we really do that?”
“You did,” Dar said. She walked down from the desk and moved in front of the consoles. “What you did was put things back the way they were before they got cocked up.” She rested her hands on the steel edges of the old fashioned workspaces. “Good job, guys. Make sure you save the configs and put these someplace safe.”
“Ms. Roberts, is it true those guys who made the change deleted everything?” one of the techs asked. “For real?”
“For real,” Dar said. “To be fair to them, because I want to be fair, I do believe they did think the changes would make things—not necessarily better—but different and their own. “We architects are arrogant bastards and totally invested in our way of doing things.”
Kerry blew a raspberry at her.
“It’s true.” Dar smiled anyway at the sound. “I completely believe with all my heart that’s it’s my way or the highway. Anyone here think that’s not true?” She looked around at the techs, who smiled back. “Well, so did they.”
