He's at it Again

(note: this is a continuation of a story that starts here)

It was going to be another miserable day for Mike. He could tell, already.

The president of his division had called him at five in the morning, waking his newborn baby.

He was grumpy and everyone was already stressed before this little incident.

He knew he was taking out his frustrations on Fred but he didn't care. Fred was an arrogant, self-righteous prick who deserved to be taken down a peg or six.

Yet, when Mike realized how unusually-long Fred's commute seemed to be, a little knot tied itself in his gut. When he couldn't reach his subordinate on the phone, that knot tightened and seemed to tug on the bottoms of his lungs.

The idea that Fred was in some kind of trouble because Mike told him to rush in the storm manifest into an annoying voice in the back Mike's head. Stoic man that he was, Mike ignored the voice, which grew increasingly insistent over time.

The coffee machine finished filling his cup and he poured in a few creams. As he stirred the mixture to a smooth, brownish-gray, he decided to focus on the work.

Samantha walked into the break room.

"Sam?" he asked without looking up from his cup.

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry," said Mike.

There was no reply.

Mike tore his gaze from the vanishing, gray-brown whirlpool in his cup and looked at his employee.

Her whole body seemed tense. Her eyebrows were contorted in what appeared to be shock, horror, or some mixture of the two. Her head was cocked back a little and she was raised up on the balls of her feet with one foot slightly backward.

To Mike, she looked like a fawn who had been distracted until she suddenly found herself face to face with a human for the first time in her life.

"What?"

Samantha shook off whatever was bothering her and said "Nothing. What'd'ya need, boss?"

"I need you to look into the slowdown thing. Fred's late."

"Already am."

"And?"

"Kramer."

Mike sighed. He was tired of hearing this excuse. His people didn't get it and explaining it to them never seemed to make a difference.

Kramer probably wasn't a hotshot dev like Sam or Freddie...but, seriously, who was? Sam and Freddie probably weren't as good as they thought they were.

Kramer was inexpensive in the extreme. He never asked for a raise. He showed up and left at the same time every day. You could set your watch by him, actually.

Mike was fascinated by that. He spent an entire week, staring out the window at ten thirty and again at five.

Every day that week, Kramer arrived at 10:27, parked in the same spot at 10:28, briskly walked across the parking lot, emerged from the stairs near his desk at 10:29, and sat down exactly as the clock struck 10:30 AM. In inclement weather, he arrived at 10:26 and was at his desk at ten thirty.

Likewise, at five o'clock on the button, Kramer could be seen making his way across the parking lot, back toward his car. Every day.

Clockwork. The precision was impressive.

Of course, there was a margin of error, but Mike couldn't measure it with the tools and inclination he possessed.

Kramer did less but he also cost less and the rest of the team seemed to want to blame everything on him just because he was the slowest among them.

That put a little bile Mike's throat whenever he thought about it.

"How do you know it was him?" asked Mike. Before she could answer, he added: "Isn't it all your shared code?"

"Yeah. We all own the work, together," said Samantha. "That's why I'm fixing his mistake. Nothing can change the fact that he's the one who broke the system. Maybe our backs."

"How did you figure it out?"

"Easy. There was a change slipped in just under the wire from Kramer. It was titled 'Memory fix.' Nobody reviewed it. I backed it out, ran a special build, put it on a phone and boom: problem gone. Still have to figure out what it is, though. The phone I had with his broken build on in it ended up needing a factory reset."

Mike's eyebrows darted upwards.

"That's not good," he said.

Samantha shook her head. "No. It's not. But what do you expect? Kramer." Then she walked out of the room.

Mike looked back down at his cooling cup of joe.

Under his breath, he murmured "Kramer."

(continued here)