Mayte leaned a little closer. "Wow."
Gopher Dar waved at her. Then he did another little dance.
"He really cheers me up most of the time. "Kerry smiled. "And it's an amazing program. It's different every time. She puts different clothes on him; he does different things...her talent as a programmer is amazing."
"He is blushing." Mayte noted, with a grin. "So cute."
"So, anyway, as I was saying, Dar's the expert on what makes this place tick. But I think she'd agree that you should take a basic class on networking fundamentals to start with, and get the terminology down."
Kerry flipped over to a different screen, and called up a browser window. "We've got classes internally...here. Look at this set first." She pointed.
"Ooooo..." Gopher Dar warbled approvingly. "Gooooooddd."
They both started laughing. "Kerry, that is so adorable," Mayte said. "And it is nothing serious--it is just for fun, yes?"
"Sure." But Kerry suddenly wasn't so sure about that. Gopher Dar had started making more and more frequent appearances lately, and she wondered if working with the little guy wasn't Dar's way of exercising her programming chops to ease her growing restlessness. "Is that not clever, or what?"
"Absolutely," Mayte agreed. "I wish I had one! It is like a little friend. I think my cousin found a little cat program something like this, but it was not nearly so smart. It went to sleep, and it made a purr, and that kind of thing."
"I've seen that." Kerry said. "They have a puppy, too. But nothing like Gopher Dar."
Gopher Dar had lain down on his side, and was simply gazing out at her. Kerry resisted the urge to reach out and scratch his nose. "So. Does that answer your question about classes?"
"Si, yes it does." Mayte eased out from behind Kerry's chair and came to stand in front of the desk again. "I will look at that website and sign up for one today. Is it all right if I make it at the end of the day, and go after we are done here?"
"Sure," Kerry agreed. "But think about it--sometimes people do class better in the morning." She paused, and a wry grin appeared. "Not that I was one of those people, but you know what I mean."
"Yes, I know." Mayte agreed mournfully. "Mama has to pull me out of my bed in the morning. So I think the afternoon is better." She turned to go. "Thank you, Kerry, and also for showing me your very cute friend. It is a very good program."
"I think so." Kerry gazed affectionately at the little creature. "I work on him a little sometimes and every once in a while I send him back over to bother Dar. She gets a kick out of it." She looked up. "But I'm not in her league when it comes to that."
"She is very talented." Mayte smiled. "You are very lucky, I think."
"I'm very lucky, I know." Kerry gave her a little wave, as she left. "I do know that for sure." She returned her attention reluctantly to her mail, almost hoping that Gopher Dar would come up with something else to distract her.
Which sucked, actually, since she had to get her damn mail done. Kerry frowned, focusing on the next page of complaints.
Hey, Ker?
Ah. An even more welcome distraction. Yes, Gopher Mom?
You tied to that desk?
Kerry drummed her fingertips on her keyboard. You got a network connection for my laptop down there? Say yes and I'll go keep you company in your pile of cable.
Gopher Dar got up and started scooting around the corner of her screen, beckoning her to follow. Kerry clicked on him, waiting for the message to come back.
C'mon. I've got a nice dusty piece of concrete with your name on it right next to me.
Ah, it just didn't get any more romantic than that. Kerry closed her mail and stood up. Be right there. She typed into the screen, before she closed down the desktop and grabbed her brief case. "But you know," she remarked to the empty office. "Only love struck nitwits with zero sense would trade a nice comfortable leather chair for a piece of dusty concrete."
She shouldered her laptop. "One nitwit, en route." Kerry headed for the door, giving her new boxing dummy a wink as she scooted out of the room.
THE SOFT SOUNDS of new age echoed against the concrete walls interrupted erratically by the patter of keystrokes on two keyboards.
Dar was seated on the ground between two tall racks, her long legs extended under them as she leaned back against a third. Kerry had taken a position right next to her, sitting cross-legged on the hard concrete with her laptop balanced on her knees.
Neither of them was talking. Both of them were concentrating on what they were doing, and yet the atmosphere in the small room was one of total absorbed contentment.
Kerry clicked send on her mail, and reviewed her inbox. The stack of messages she'd needed to take care of had decreased by over half in a surprisingly short amount of time, and she was beginning to see the light at the end of her email tunnel. "Know something? We should work down here more often."
Dar finished typing a line, and grunted. "Uh huh." She compiled the program she'd just finished, and opened a run window, starting the program and watching the results as it executed. "Ahhhh?"
Kerry rested her cheek against Dar's shoulder and peered at the screen. "Working now?"
"Uh huh. Hang on to your socks. I'm gonna run it against the backup router." She clicked over to a different screen and pulled it to one side, adjusting a monitoring parameter until she was satisfied with it. "Okay."
It was fun and interesting watching Dar work. Kerry waited for her to start the program again, and then switched her attention to the monitor. The gauges jumped and fluttered, indicating something was going on, but it was hard to tell what effect the program was having.
So, she remained quiet and waited for Dar to comment on it. She'd been acceptably competent at the programming she'd done in school, but it had never been a passion of hers, and this was not only complex, it was cryptic in a way that only Dar could be.
"Eh." Dar folded her arms and regarded the screen.
"Is it doing what you want it to?" Kerry hazarded.
"No." Her partner replied. "But it's doing something useful, which I hadn't anticipated."
"Hmm. Is that good or bad?"
Dar rested her head against Kerry's. "I don't know yet. Give it a few minutes." She studied the screen. "See here?" She pointed with one long finger. "I wanted it to analyze the headers and determine multiple instances of same sender, but what it's actually doing is logging out of sequence packets."
Kerry looked at the screen, then at her partner. "That's useful?"
Dar nodded. "Yeah, because that's a symptom, sometimes, of a dictionary attack--something just throwing guesses at the router and masking its own IP."
"Ah hah." Kerry murmured approvingly. "So that's progress."
"Mm. At least it's not crapping out every six seconds now," Dar agreed. "How's your mail coming?"
Kerry snuggled a little closer. "Fine," she said. "I knocked out a lot of it. It's really nice and peaceful down here. I can see why you decided to do the test this way."
"Mmm hmm." Dar nuzzled her hair a little. "And it's perfect now."
Aww. Kerry figured if she had a tail, it'd be wiggling big time. Ridiculous really, since they were sitting on a dirty concrete floor surrounded by humming network gear in a room that stunk of damp stone and electrons.
But who cared. "So, what's next?"
Dar left her program running while she called up her coding screen and made a few corrections. "Take another baby step, that's what." She cleared her throat a little, and continued pecking away.
"Mm." Kerry shifted and set her laptop aside. "I'm going to get a soda. Interested?" She waited for Dar to nod, and then she got up and stretched, reaching down to ruffle her partner's dark hair. "Be right back." She stepped carefully over the cables on the floor and pulled the door open, escaping from the small room into the hallway that led to the lobby.