two and a half hours, Phillip,” Marci pointed out, “it will be tomorrow.”
“Fuck, Marci,” Phillip whined, “this is the first hot mealI’ve had in, in …” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hot meal. He inserted a figure anyway. “… Two weeks.”
“Show me where it says you are allowed hot meals,” Marci said.
Phillip failed to dignify this quip with a laugh or an answer.
“More to the point,” Marci continued, “does your hotass phone have a debugger and a compiler?”
Phillip dropped the fork, downed the second half of his Sangiovese, and waved the empty glass at the wait-staff. “No,” Phillip told the phone, “but it did steer me to an empty table in a North Beach Italian restaurant on a Thursday night.”
“That’s a good app,” Marci pointed out. “Too bad you didn’t write it.”
Not for nothing, Phillip cursed to himself, did somebody make this chick Vice President of Compliance. “True,” he managed to retort despite a mouthful of pasta. “I use it every time I’m allowed to eat off-site.”
His phone groaned. “What’s that?”
“I just sent you a pdf of a monograph on software architectures for real-time caching—nonconflicting real-time caching. It’s a little theoretical and there’s some math, but you can probably apply its wisdom to a patch for your code in time for a demo on Sunday morning.”
“Sunday morning?” Phillip nearly screamed. The waiter appeared with the bottle and poured Phillip’s glass half full. Phillip gestured. The waiter frowned. Phillip gestured again. Without missing a beat, the waiter retrieved a second glass from a setup on the adjacent table, filled that one half full, inclined his head slightly, and went away. Phillip downed half the first half-glass. “Sunday morning …” he repeated, a little more calmly.
“It took all the persuasion this girl could muster to getthem to bump it from Saturday night. I bought you twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours,” Phillip repeated numbly.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“I’m …” Phillip toasted the air in front of him. “Pulverized with gratitude.”
“Mere gratitude will get you nowhere,” Marci pounced. “What I need is results. What I need is code that doesn’t crash. What I need is the Phillip I went to college with, the Phillip who was too shy to sleep with me, the Phillip who wrote the code that caused our class robot to chain-saw MIT’s robot in half and, when the contest committee disassembled our code, the first thing they discovered was seventeen bytes in the credit header that spelled out
I
Marci Kessler
, including the extravagant three spaces, and the second thing they found out was that there wasn’t an unoriginal thought in the whole twenty-five thousand instructions.”
“But Marci,” Phillip protested, “that was a robot. This is a fucking secondary app for a lonely hearts site designed to filter out date-rape potential.”
“
So?
”
Phillip downed the second half of the first half-glass, set the empty down on the table next to him, and picked up the second half-glass. “So robots are not people,” he pointed out.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Marci screamed. If they’d been video-conferencing, Marci could have seen Phillip shrug as he switched the phone to his other ear and downed the first half of the second half-glass of wine. “What it’s got to do with, Marci,” he said as he lowered the glass, “is cache. People algorithms need bigger caches than robot algorithms.” He burped. “It’s—excuse me—that simple.”
He could hear Marci taking a deep breath. “Phillip,” she finally said. “How much is Corazonics paying you?”
“You know damn well how much you’re paying me,” Phillip told the phone. “To the penny.”
“That’s right, Phillip. To the penny. But I want to hear it from you.”
“A hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour,” Phillip said wearily. And it used to be worth it,
“Fuck, Marci,” Phillip whined, “this is the first hot mealI’ve had in, in …” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hot meal. He inserted a figure anyway. “… Two weeks.”
“Show me where it says you are allowed hot meals,” Marci said.
Phillip failed to dignify this quip with a laugh or an answer.
“More to the point,” Marci continued, “does your hotass phone have a debugger and a compiler?”
Phillip dropped the fork, downed the second half of his Sangiovese, and waved the empty glass at the wait-staff. “No,” Phillip told the phone, “but it did steer me to an empty table in a North Beach Italian restaurant on a Thursday night.”
“That’s a good app,” Marci pointed out. “Too bad you didn’t write it.”
Not for nothing, Phillip cursed to himself, did somebody make this chick Vice President of Compliance. “True,” he managed to retort despite a mouthful of pasta. “I use it every time I’m allowed to eat off-site.”
His phone groaned. “What’s that?”
“I just sent you a pdf of a monograph on software architectures for real-time caching—nonconflicting real-time caching. It’s a little theoretical and there’s some math, but you can probably apply its wisdom to a patch for your code in time for a demo on Sunday morning.”
“Sunday morning?” Phillip nearly screamed. The waiter appeared with the bottle and poured Phillip’s glass half full. Phillip gestured. The waiter frowned. Phillip gestured again. Without missing a beat, the waiter retrieved a second glass from a setup on the adjacent table, filled that one half full, inclined his head slightly, and went away. Phillip downed half the first half-glass. “Sunday morning …” he repeated, a little more calmly.
“It took all the persuasion this girl could muster to getthem to bump it from Saturday night. I bought you twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours,” Phillip repeated numbly.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“I’m …” Phillip toasted the air in front of him. “Pulverized with gratitude.”
“Mere gratitude will get you nowhere,” Marci pounced. “What I need is results. What I need is code that doesn’t crash. What I need is the Phillip I went to college with, the Phillip who was too shy to sleep with me, the Phillip who wrote the code that caused our class robot to chain-saw MIT’s robot in half and, when the contest committee disassembled our code, the first thing they discovered was seventeen bytes in the credit header that spelled out
I
Marci Kessler
, including the extravagant three spaces, and the second thing they found out was that there wasn’t an unoriginal thought in the whole twenty-five thousand instructions.”
“But Marci,” Phillip protested, “that was a robot. This is a fucking secondary app for a lonely hearts site designed to filter out date-rape potential.”
“
So?
”
Phillip downed the second half of the first half-glass, set the empty down on the table next to him, and picked up the second half-glass. “So robots are not people,” he pointed out.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Marci screamed. If they’d been video-conferencing, Marci could have seen Phillip shrug as he switched the phone to his other ear and downed the first half of the second half-glass of wine. “What it’s got to do with, Marci,” he said as he lowered the glass, “is cache. People algorithms need bigger caches than robot algorithms.” He burped. “It’s—excuse me—that simple.”
He could hear Marci taking a deep breath. “Phillip,” she finally said. “How much is Corazonics paying you?”
“You know damn well how much you’re paying me,” Phillip told the phone. “To the penny.”
“That’s right, Phillip. To the penny. But I want to hear it from you.”
“A hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour,” Phillip said wearily. And it used to be worth it,
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