THE SYSADMIN By Jonathan Rothwell ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part One THE SALESMAN CALLS Jason Richter cursed as the shower engulfed him in steam, scalding his right shoulder painfully. He stepped out and fumbled for the shower's pull switch, and yanked it hard. The steam cleared from the room, and Jason glanced at the clock. It read, in large, blue numbers, 6:53 AM. "Oh, GOD," he muttered under his breath, to no-one in particular. His train left at ten past seven, so he'd have to go out with wet hair, and there'd be no time to make any coffee... he'd have to get something from Starbucks at the station, if there was time. He doubted there would be any time as he quickly dried himself, threw on a shirt, tie and some trousers, grabbed his phone, keys and wallet, and picked up his jacket and his MacBook Pro from the desk. Jason turned off the light as he left his bedroom and jumped down the stairs, three at a time, hurled the door open and bounded down the road towards the station. It was always bad news when an e-mail came in at 8:26am. Normally it'd be declaring that there'd been a power failure and that all the systems had gone down. Of course, Mr. Upson wouldn't invest in a backup generator. They were, apparently, 'too pricey' for something that would 'hardly ever get used'. It was an e-mail from Mr. Upson that caused Jason's phone to chime loudly at 8:26. It had the ominous subject line "MEETING AT 11:25AM TODAY". That was one of the most irritating things about Mr. Upson. He always insisted on capitalising the subject line, for no readily apparent reason. He was also the sort of person who'd e-mail you at two in the morning with a message about a fake computer virus. Or that picture of a peanut in the shape of the Virgin Mary again. For Jason, as an IT professional, such people were what made his job a pain in the arse. The message became even more depressing when he opened it. FROM MR S UPSON, DIRECTOR ROOM 2, FLOOR 26 DEAR ALL: i've arranged a meeting later today with steve grobmanoff from microsoft sales about the new client softwear they@re offering. could mr richter come to the boardroom on floor 29 at 1125pm? THANK YOU. YOURS FAITHFULLY S UPSON The way the e-mail was set out as a print letter was depressing. The Microsoft salesman wouldn't have much work to do: he'd be selling to a fruitcake. This was going to be difficult. The stuffy boardroom was one of the favourite hate targets of the staff of F&U Corporation. It was ugly with old leather sofas and a dead potted plant on the long, stained table. If you wanted to be able to breathe with any level of efficiency, you practically had to stick your head out of the window and inhale the air, twenty-nine storeys above the rest of Amberton Business Park. Jason was already there, with around five other staff members, all of whom were looking very depressed. Mr. Upson would appear in a moment, turning the air cold with a linguistic avalanche of management bollocks. As Jason considered this, Upson appeared at the door, with a broad grin on his face, and wearing a blue striped tie. His very presence made Jason's mindset sink from boredom into chronic depression. Speak of the Devil, he thought to himself. "Hi! Good morning!" cried Mr. Upson, with his characteristic grin not flattering his yellowing teeth and ridiculous moustache. He bounded into the boardroom, vaulted over the table and jumped onto the chair at one end of the table. Behind him, a man stood in a business suit and carrying a briefcase. He gazed at Mr. Upson in utter shock, wide-eyed and with a disgusted expression on his face. Mr. Upson turned around on the chair and held his hand out to the man in the suit. "People, this is Steve Grobmanoff, from Microsoft Sales. He's here to talk about our new IT solution." New IT solution? This was news to Jason. Most of the other members of the Board looked confused as well. It was obviously news to them too. Steve Grobmanoff was tall, slim and a typical Microsoft smoothie. He wore a fitted suit and a smile that seemed somewhat forced. He placed his briefcase on the table, opened it, and took out a notebook computer in a protective skin. "Right... good morning everyone. Is there a port where I can plug my laptop into a projector?" "I'm afraid we don't have a projector," Jason said, "our budget doesn't appear to stretch that far." He said this glaring at Mr. Upson. "Right..." Grobmanoff said. He opened the computer, clicked an icon on the desktop, and turned it around to face the Board, sat around the table. One of them was playing with an elastic band. Another had almost fallen asleep. This was even more depressing than most other board meetings. The presentation was very much same-old, same-old. Windows Vista is pretty. Windows XP is insecure. Windows Vista has Gadgets, ReadyBoost, Flip 3D, increased productivity. SharePoint Server, collaboration, Aero graphics, increased productivity. Et cetera. Same old, same old. Jason had resorted to tapping his feet in interesting patterns by the time Grobmanoff had finished, around forty-five minutes after he'd started. Only Mr. Upson was paying full attention throughout, applauding when he saw windows sinking into the taskbar and glassy toolbars. "...so, that's just some of the great new software we think you will love. Does anyone have any questions?" One member of the Board, who had such a silly name Jason couldn't remember it, snorted and woke up. Grobmanoff saw that this wasn't a good sign. "Yes, Mr. Grobmanoff, I have a question," Jason said, sitting up straight. "A lot of the hardware we have here is from the 1990s. Some of it struggles to run even Windows 2000, and Windows XP blue-screens frequently. Can you GUARANTEE that it will cost less than £10,000 to upgrade all our nodes to be Vista-capable, and that it is sufficiently reliable that it will NEVER blue-screen?" "Well..." said Grobmanoff, shifting on his feet, "I can tell you that this laptop is four years old. It ran Windows Vista without ANY upgrades at all, and you have my word that it NEVER crashes." Jason glanced at the laptop's screen. It suddenly went blank, before reverting to the familiar sight of a Blue Screen of Death. "You need to check your facts, Mr. Grobmanoff," he said, nodding towards the screen. "Wha...? What? Oh... shit." Grobmanoff pressed the reset switch on the side of the machine. "Sorry about that... it's never EVER done that before... but trust me, Windows Vista has some of the best hardware support for years, and has come along leaps and bounds in reliability since Windows XP." "Well, you'll forgive me if I have my doubts about that," Jason said, in his 'tepid' voice, "because I generally have my reservations about trusting companies that can't even keep a deadline properly." Grobmanoff laughed. The laugh seemed forced. "Well, anyway, thank you for your opinion, Mr. Richter. Does anyone else have any questions?" The room remained completely silent. Jason took Mr. Upson aside for a 'quiet word' once the salesman had departed. "Now, Mr. Upson... may I ask why exactly you feel it is necessary to replace our computing system, which is working perfectly well?" "Well... this man from Microsoft phoned me up, and said that they had released a new version of Windows. They also said that if I didn't upgrade, my computers would be susceptible to computer bacteria, or summat like that..." Jason sighed deeply. Upson really was the most hopelessly thick person he'd ever met. He was tempted to send in a Darwin Award nomination in advance, but then realised that Upson would almost certainly kill several other innocent people in the process of his demise. "It's a computer VIRUS," Jason said, now having switched to his 'exasperated' voice. "The thing is, as long as we keep the anti-virus software up to date, everything should be just fine. And also, has it occured to you how much this is going to cost? It'll cost AT LEAST £7,000 for the software alone, let alone the computers we'll have to upgrade or replace to be able to run the new software." "Hang on, buddy, stop RIGHT there..." Upson said, holding his hand out. "You lost me when you said 'anti-virus software'... what the hell is anti-virus? Start from the beginning, and say it in non-techie speak." Jason sighed again, heavily. "That's not relevant now. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't need to upgrade our present system, and if we did want to replace it, there are far cheaper options. Free options, in fact." "Free?" "Yes, free." "Bullshit. There's no such thing in life as a free lunch." "I think you'll find there is." "Really? Prove it then. Come back in three weeks with a better system, and we'll take that instead if we think it cuts it." Upson's voice was audibly louder and more croaky. The words were angry, but the voice was only slightly raised. This was another of the things that Jason found infuriating about Upson: he never expressed anger openly, and only inferred it by saying things in a way that made you uncomfortable. "OK, then," Jason said, quietly, but speaking it as a strong response to the direct challenge. "Three weeks, back in the boardroom. And buy a projector so I can show it up on the wall." "I will. See you then." As Upson walked away, Jason suddenly realised what he'd just got himself in to. He'd accepted a challenge to build a brand new computer system, out of nothing, and present it to the Board in three weeks. His head sank into his hands as he visualised the three weeks of flat-out work ahead of him. "For your information, Mr. Grobmanoff, I am currently naked in bed and trying to get some sleep. Now is not the time to discuss Microsoft Groove case studies, thank you very much." Jason slammed the receiver onto its base, and exhaled deeply. Quarter to midnight was NOT the time for multinational salesmen to phone up and just remind him how great the latest version of Office is. He gazed across the bed, and into the mirror on the door of the wardrobe directly in front of him. The man he saw had drooping, tired eyes with dark marks underneath, and grey stubble around his chin. He didn't recognise himself. "And I'm only thirty bloody six," he muttered out loud. Jason looked down again at the laptop screen. There were around fourteen Safari windows open, along with two virtual machines and four PDF files. This was too much to work with this late at night. It was quarter past ruddy twelve. Sod it, Jason thought to himself, as he slammed the machine shut, turned off the sidelight and slid underneath the sheets. (c) 2008 Jonathan Rothwell. Some rights reserved - released under cc-by-nc unported 3.0.