I’m just a junior in college with a work-study job. Hey, when a scholarship comes along for a school with this reputation, most try to figure it out. I started out as part of the help desk team for the main student computer lab in the Waffle Phase Science building. Most shifts were chill. Password reset requests were always referred to the Owl, of course. The bathrooms were down the hall to the right. Don’t head to the left, unless you want to find the toilets in Dimensional Studies. I spent a lot of my time hunting online for song lyrics, but not always. Ever since my stellar grade in “Magical Tech Support” last semester, the Dean of Human Resources has awarded extra credit assignments.
This morning, though, started like any Moonday. I was leaning back in my chair in the Fishbowl, as we called it. From my desk flanked by open doorways, a ring of large windows gave a faceted view of rows of mainframe terminals for email, usenet, or information searches by cauldron or gopher. On the left, nine brand new power macs all were blessed with stable printer connections. I was giggling to myself while reading from the predominantly monochrome screen in front of me, thinking of Russian literature class. “It’s detachable,” I said, out loud to no one.
A high-pitched voice cleared its throat behind me as the hair on the back of my neck rose and the Fishbowl began to fill with diesel fumes. I turned around and rocked forward to sit up. The floating purple orb in the doorway said, “Priority ticket. The Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Longevity Studies requires your immediate assistance.”
I tried to smile. “Compensation?” I asked.
“The Student Body Fee is expected to be high,” said the orb. “You are authorized for this boost, to compensate.” I nearly jumped out of my seat as the orb blasted me with energy. I felt a surge of confidence and my brain filled with ideas.
My Alchemy mid-term is in two days, not next week. Mid-shift once a week, there is this foxgirl who checks her messages from the second terminal in the first row, and she always smiles at me when she leaves. If I ever get around to asking her out, there is a 94% probability that she will say yes. Xintilzebub says you can make pages on the web with color backgrounds now. That sounds fun. If I take Metaphysics and Abstract Algebra in the same semester, that leaves me time next year for the Rite of Thesis. Oh, crap. A priority ticket.
“You have two hours,” said the orb. It fizzled again in the direction of the printer next to me. A hard copy of the work order spit out. The orb whizzed away, sounding like a firecracker not quite going off. How did I miss the entrance a moment ago?
“Thanks, R.T.,” I said to the empty doorframe. “Always a pleasure.”
It took me a little while to find the right stairwell to the access tunnel, to the other stairs, to this bank of elevators, starting on the second floor for some reason. My roommate, always with a finger on the pulse of good current music, had just loaned me his copy of the new Tribe CD. I hit pause on my portable player and stashed headphones with everything else in my backpack. The disc was bound to skip in the journey ahead.
I focused on the call buttons, until I could ignore the up and down that just take you to student classrooms, and could access the fourth button. If I survive this, maybe I’ll tell you about the third button. No one presses that one on purpose.
The doors opened at odd angles and I was slowly enclosed in an empty, quiet place for personal reflection. The service elevator. I knew the ritual that would reveal the buttons for professorial offices. I pricked my finger above the keypad and entered the passcode for the Dean’s taskforce. I pressed what should be the top floor.
The ride was as jumpy and unexpected as I initially expected, and more. The doors opened on 12 and I was joined for a short while by the foxgirl, the one from before. “I…” I stammered, struck dumb by her beauty and my own social anxieties.
She turned to face me with a flick of her tail, and smiled. This did not help me regain speech. She said, “I know who you are. You are there when I manage 2:13pm on Thor’s Day.” I noticed the badge for Applied Temporal Dynamics pinned to her white coat, next to a dosimeter. She continued, “Go ahead, then.”
“Would you like to go out for wings some time?”
“Like, pigeon? Or, angel?”
“Chicken.”
Her laugh reminded me of the calm ocean waves back home, before the monsters emerged from the deep. She said, “Oh, right, the place on campus. Sure, how about lunch, maybe, tomorrow? When is tomorrow?”
I thought for a moment and said, “Tiwesday.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I can do noon on a Tiwesday. Oops, this is me.” She pressed the button designed to reopen the doors before they close completely. She smiled again as she stepped back out onto the 12th floor. “Your ticket is expiring.”
I looked down at the printout folded in my hand. It was beginning to smolder. The elevator was moving again before I could think of anything to say. The ride upwards, among other directions, lasted long enough for me to decide that had really happened, and I was able to refocus on my job.
The doors opened at the top floor, but the view above was a high gray ceiling covered by corrugated metal sheets and long steel girders. A bald man in a stained hoodie slithered out of a shadow, croaking, “Do you know computers?”
“Pardon, I think that I am a little late. It took a while to get here.”
“Is that a yes?” The man beckoned me forward, between stacks of papers. We approached a pile of dusty and yellowed office equipment, most of it blinking correctly.
“Er, right. Are you…” I tried to read the printout as it burst into flame. “Doctor Fran…”
He snatched the paper from my hands and stomped out the fire. “Of course, it’s me. I sent the request, didn’t I?”
“Okay, what is the problem?” I said, glancing from computer monitor to computer monitor. I noticed a video feed of a camera facing the Fishbowl. I briefly worried about how often I might have absentmindedly scratched during a shift.
He knocked over a few coffee cans and threw back a canvas tarp. “This stupid printer won’t connect. I think it’s the router.” He bent down to retrieve an empty can.
I counted six ports, each one with a shiny bright blue light. I began to bark out the call to Kerberos, that I might access this machine’s BIOS. The man leaned behind the printer, rummaging for another can. “I swear, it is all of these wires, good boy!” He said, “Someday, I will crack the secret.”
He stood up, waving a black wire. “We will go wireless!” He looked at the wire in his hand, and his cackling roused small birds in the metalwork overhead. “Um, hmm. That’s right. I unplugged the printer to run the space heater.”
“Sir?”
The man squinted. “Why are there six blue lights?”
“The router must recognize when a wire is plugged in correctly,” I lied. I was not sure at all about that. I slept through the router lecture last year.
“You may go, free of charge,” he said, turning his back to me. I hesitated long enough for the man to yell. “Go!” Something much larger than a bird flapped above.
I ran back towards the elevator light. The doors had not closed up here. I rode back down and there is no more of this story to tell, really. Xintilzebub will be impressed that I have a date tomorrow.
Wait. Now that I think about it, I might have a lunch date each week.
Answering “[WP] when you saw that your college had a new course for “Magical Tech support” you thought it was a joke; now 4 months later and getting paid to un-hex a possessed router and you realize how real it was😅” (complete with emoticon) was a fun time exploring what pours out, when you place a few years of memories of places and people into the fiction-making blender.