served on stainless steel – the sound of serrated knife on metal plate set my teeth on edge – another day that I got stronger, another day closer to freedom. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I was certain - as certain as any slave of the day of Jubilee - that Bill and I would inevitably be free. We would have our shot, our chance, our roll of the dice. We would take it and we would be free.
And so another day of interrogation began.
“You have just assembled your programming team,” Jim said, “and now what happened?”
I turned my head to see the Authoritarian Man wearing the same black suit, white dress shirt and black tie that he wore every day. Did he have an infinite number of these suits? Were Bill and I prisoners of the fucking Mormons?
The first days of a project are the headiest. All is fullness and promise. All is tall grass and steaks for Bill and booze for me. I don’t care what the Shinto philosophers say; the setting out is the best part of the journey. Every journey starts off with hope; and naiveté.
And so, we – Bill, Kate, Nick and my A-Team students – set off for a dark, distant horizon. It’s not that I can see it as if it was only yesterday - it was only yesterday – or just a few weeks before yesterday.
Those were the good days: there is nothing like waking up to the smell of a Midwestern Fall knowing you have a purpose and a project; Bill snoring away on my right and Katelynn wrapped in her dreams on my left.
All was perfect and then all was gone.
“Pill time, Bill!” Katelynn announced and our day began. Bill snuffled awake and stretched. Kate playfully hit me with a pillow and bounded out of bed – no need for modesty now – and I caught a tantalizing glimpse of Kate’s backside before she pulled on her jeans. Bill dragged himself off the bed and I – carefully trying to suck in my paunch and look studly while not being obvious about it – got up and put on some clothes. We were not prepared for what was waiting for us on the other side of the bedroom door.
Bill, tail wagging and happy jumping, got about two feet past the door before he pulled up short and let out a puzzled yelp. Shelby Taylor, my top graphics student, was asleep in the hallway. The three of us – Kate, Bill and I – gingerly walked around the snoring girl. As I looked into the living room I could see students crashed out on every piece of furniture. Laptops were open and glowing on the coffee table, the floor and every other horizontal surface. Zoë Eingraben, our lead game engine programmer and resident alpha geek, was slumped over the dining room table; her computer was running a screen-saver of her own design drawing 3D representations of trig functions. Peter Felix, my GUI guru, was sleeping in Bill’s favorite chair - he looked like a kid with his legs curled up underneath him - which, I guess, he was. They were all just kids. But that all changed by the end of the day.
Bill looked up and shot me a puzzled look when he saw Pete in his chair. Bill doesn’t like change. I just shrugged and Bill followed Kate into the kitchen to get his morning pill out of the refrigerator (along with that nasty Braunschweiger). His tail was wagging and a stream of drool leaked from his dewflaps and down to the worn kitchen linoleum in anticipation.
I was surprised (I shouldn’t have been) to see Nick Constantine still awake and working at the little two-person breakfast table under the window in the kitchen. He turned to me with bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
“Rough night, Nick?” I asked.
He mumbled something again which I couldn’t hear over Bill’s gulping down the Braunschweiger and antibiotic breakfast combo.
“What’s that, Nick?”
“Syphilitic idiots. I said that whoever devised this abortion of a data structure were syphilitic idiots.”
“Uh, huh,” I answered.
Bill walked over and put his head on Nick’s knee. Bill believes that most programming
And so another day of interrogation began.
“You have just assembled your programming team,” Jim said, “and now what happened?”
I turned my head to see the Authoritarian Man wearing the same black suit, white dress shirt and black tie that he wore every day. Did he have an infinite number of these suits? Were Bill and I prisoners of the fucking Mormons?
The first days of a project are the headiest. All is fullness and promise. All is tall grass and steaks for Bill and booze for me. I don’t care what the Shinto philosophers say; the setting out is the best part of the journey. Every journey starts off with hope; and naiveté.
And so, we – Bill, Kate, Nick and my A-Team students – set off for a dark, distant horizon. It’s not that I can see it as if it was only yesterday - it was only yesterday – or just a few weeks before yesterday.
Those were the good days: there is nothing like waking up to the smell of a Midwestern Fall knowing you have a purpose and a project; Bill snoring away on my right and Katelynn wrapped in her dreams on my left.
All was perfect and then all was gone.
“Pill time, Bill!” Katelynn announced and our day began. Bill snuffled awake and stretched. Kate playfully hit me with a pillow and bounded out of bed – no need for modesty now – and I caught a tantalizing glimpse of Kate’s backside before she pulled on her jeans. Bill dragged himself off the bed and I – carefully trying to suck in my paunch and look studly while not being obvious about it – got up and put on some clothes. We were not prepared for what was waiting for us on the other side of the bedroom door.
Bill, tail wagging and happy jumping, got about two feet past the door before he pulled up short and let out a puzzled yelp. Shelby Taylor, my top graphics student, was asleep in the hallway. The three of us – Kate, Bill and I – gingerly walked around the snoring girl. As I looked into the living room I could see students crashed out on every piece of furniture. Laptops were open and glowing on the coffee table, the floor and every other horizontal surface. Zoë Eingraben, our lead game engine programmer and resident alpha geek, was slumped over the dining room table; her computer was running a screen-saver of her own design drawing 3D representations of trig functions. Peter Felix, my GUI guru, was sleeping in Bill’s favorite chair - he looked like a kid with his legs curled up underneath him - which, I guess, he was. They were all just kids. But that all changed by the end of the day.
Bill looked up and shot me a puzzled look when he saw Pete in his chair. Bill doesn’t like change. I just shrugged and Bill followed Kate into the kitchen to get his morning pill out of the refrigerator (along with that nasty Braunschweiger). His tail was wagging and a stream of drool leaked from his dewflaps and down to the worn kitchen linoleum in anticipation.
I was surprised (I shouldn’t have been) to see Nick Constantine still awake and working at the little two-person breakfast table under the window in the kitchen. He turned to me with bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
“Rough night, Nick?” I asked.
He mumbled something again which I couldn’t hear over Bill’s gulping down the Braunschweiger and antibiotic breakfast combo.
“What’s that, Nick?”
“Syphilitic idiots. I said that whoever devised this abortion of a data structure were syphilitic idiots.”
“Uh, huh,” I answered.
Bill walked over and put his head on Nick’s knee. Bill believes that most programming
Similar Books
