Have a Boston Crème for me. Later. Thanks again, Ms. Roberts. Have a great day.
Well, she'd certainly do her best. Dar glanced up as an incoming mail binged softly. She was very surprised to see it was from the provider she'd just yelled at. She opened it.
Ms. Roberts --
We were about to contact you about this issue. We had a service interrupt out of the 140 West Street facility in Manhattan that resulted in a non scheduled recycle of the switch servicing your account.
Dar translated that without difficulty. "So. Someone rebooted the thing accidentally. Sucks to be you."
There was a configuration anomaly that was under review.
"Uh huh, and someone forgot to write the memory before you rebooted it too."
However, the issue seemed to self-correct, so no further action was taken.
Dar hit reply.
The issue didn't self correct. I went into our router and matched your timing change. I don't mind leaving it that way, but get your goddamned procedures straightened out and tell your operations people to get their heads out of their asses and follow the rules next time.
She reviewed the note and hit send with a satisfied little grunt. "Nitwads." She lifted her cooling cup of coffee and sipped from it, then set it back down. With a touch of curiousness, she clicked back to the network map and went into the graphical view of the node again, reviewing the traffic, then checking the other two nodes in the area.
Tons of data, even at this hour. What was it they always said? New York never slept? Watching this she could believe it. With a shake of her head, she closed the monitoring tool and went back to her mail, realizing there was one there from Kerry she'd somehow managed to miss. "Hey!"
She clicked on it.
Dar --
Ah, business. Dar knew a moment of disappointment, but immediately chastised herself and read on. Even using the corporate mail system, Kerry often sent short personal notes to her, and those were always addressed as something other than her name, so seeing one addressed with it made her aware it was probably either a problem or a solution to one.
Reviewing the growth chart, I found a hole here, in the mid Atlantic interchange.
Dar's eyes widened. "Oo!" she said out loud. "Checking up on me, Kerrison? You little scoundrel!"
With the new backhaul contract for the cellular consortium I think we're going to run out of space within six to twelve if the curve maintains. What do you think?
"What do I think?" Dar propped her chin on her fist and reviewed the graphs Kerry had inserted in her email. Her brow creased as she studied the bandwidth usage, then she quickly hunted something up on her hard drive and looked at it, switching between the document and Kerry's mail with rapid-fire flicks of her eyes.
After a long moment of silence, she snorted again. "Well, I'll be damned," she said. "What in the hell are those people doing? They're overshooting their per connection bandwidth by fifty percent." She flipped through the original proposal, wondering if she'd made a wrong calculation somewhere.
"Did they sign up a billion new users or something?" She puzzled over the numbers. "What the hell did I do wrong here?" She went to her browser and clicked on it, calling up one of the consortium web pages. After a moment's studying, her expression cleared. "Ah." She came close to slapping her own head. "Data. Pictures. No wonder."
She clicked over to Kerry's note, and hit reply.
Kerry --
Nice catch. I'll add bandwidth. Looks like they put in new services right after they signed the contract--maybe they figured they could get away with it.
Good work.
D
Then she added two small GIFS, one of a sheep, and one of a rock, and clicked send. Then she got up and stretched, leaving the laptop behind as she roamed over to the window and looked out.
Today, it was reasonably sunny outside, and the streets were full of walkers. Dar suddenly had the urge to be outside as well, and she put that plan immediately into motion, closing down her laptop and heading for the shower.
There was shopping to be had, and cute trinkets for Kerry to be bought, and she thought she saw a couple of street food vendors off in the distance.
Just the thing to start the day off right.
KERRY LAY FLAT on her back on her bed, her hands behind her head as the early morning sun poured into her window. After a moment's rest, she continued her crunches, counting under her breath as she worked through her last set, ending up grimacing on the last few but getting through them.
"Ugh." She spread her arms out and stretched them, waiting for the burn to fade in her midsection. Then she rolled over and got up, twisting her torso and making shadowboxing motions to shake her muscles out as she went to the dresser.
Her laptop was seated on it, whirring through its screen saver placidly until she touched the track pad and it presented her login screen. She rattled in her password and unlocked it, opening her mail program and watching the screen fill with dark lines.
"Aha!" She pounced on the one from Dar immediately, clicking it as the rest of the mail downloaded. She leaned on the counter and scanned the words, a relieved and happy grin appearing a moment later. "Yes!" She pumped her fist in the air. "Score!"
Finding Dar in a mistake was so rare that when it did happen, she spent hours and hours going over the data to make sure she was looking at it from the right point of view until she felt secure enough to mention it.
Dar never seemed to get pissed off about it. Kerry suspected if she approached her in public with the issue, her beloved partner wouldn't appreciate it but she never did, and Dar's reaction either was an explanation of why whatever it was happened to be that way, or else, like this time, a cheerful admission of guilt and an action plan to fix it.
Awesome. Kerry stepped away from the desk and went to the window, peering out through the teak wood slats at what was going to be a gorgeous day. Though just seven, it was already light outside and she could see a beautiful, almost cloudless sky through the tree branches.
Great day to go out on the lake. She sighed. "Oh well, next time." She turned and went back to the dresser, picking up her laptop and carrying it back to the bed with her. She sat down cross-legged, and studied her mail.
Relatively uneventful. She clicked over and opened her morning report from operations, scanning it lightly until she came across an entry for the northeast sector and saw the outage notation. One eyebrow lifted. "And I didn't get a page, why?" She clicked the report. "Oh, that's why."
Opportunistic of her night administrators. Kerry couldn't really argue with the logic of contacting her apparently available boss, but really, there was a process for that sort of thing. She blinked as a small box popped up next to her cursor.
Hey. Ah. Speaking of the devil. Hey cowboy. What's up? Cowboy? Kerry smiled. I saw the outage report from this morning.
Ah. Dar seemed to reflect on that. I sent a nasty gram to the vendor. I copied you. Looks like someone tripped over a power cable at their New York Corporate Office or something.
Where are you? Kerry asked.
Just about to leave the hotel for the client site. I just got back from walking around outside. It's gorgeous here today.
Kerry smiled again. Here too. I wish I could go out sailing instead of to mom's brunch. Oh well. Are you doing anything tonight?
The sun winked in the window and striped across the bed, warming Kerry's bare legs. She wiggled her toes in it, and wished very briefly and pointlessly that she was having this conversation in person.
Waiting for you.
So apparently the feeling was mutual. I'm not leaving until tomorrow morning, sweetie. I have to get through the day at moms then I talked Angie into going down to the shops near the lake so I can get goofy trinkets for everyone. She paused. Wish I were at the airport taking off right now though.