Karmic Retribution (News Flash Fiction)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8527944.stm

Monday, February 22, 2010

My name is Victoria Woodward, and I used to be an intern. To put it mildly, yesterday was one hell of a day.

I woke to the voice of Flo Rider, rapping about how his head was spinning. He was not alone – too many tequila sunrises had put me in the same boat. I sat up in bed, wanted to puke, managed to hold it back, and fumbled around in the dark for my Palm smartphone. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 5:30am.

I raised the phone to my ear and mumbled what should have been hello but sounded more like “Her – ugh?”

“WILSON!”

“Woo – wort” I corrected. Well, sort of corrected.

“Whatever. Get your ass to the office, there’s some shit going down. I want you here so you can learn something.”

Bullshit. The cunt wanted me there to serve coffee and run stupid errands. I still had no choice. In this economy, you need to jump when they say jump. A job’s a job.

“OK” I replied. “Comma.” I had meant coming.

“Hurry it up.” The line went silent.

Another body stirred in the bed, and I vaguely remembered I had not come home alone. Brown hair, blue eyes. Cute as hell, too.

“Hi” I said, my voice finally working.

My guest responded with a hand to the head, some moaning, and a weak smile. Eventually I got a “Good morning”.

“I’m sorry, you gotta go.”

“Shit” she said, stretching her arms, “You’re straight, aren’t you?”

“No. I just have to go to work.”

“On a Sunday?”

“No rest for the wicked – or the interns.”

I tossed her my phone.

“Put your number in, and I’ll call you after work. I had fun last night – I think.”

“Me too – I think. What was your name?”

“Vicki.”

“Piper.”

“Headache?” I offered a couple of Advil and a can of Mountain Dew.

“Sure, thanks”.

She handed me the Palm in exchange. I took some Advil myself and threw on some clean underthings, jeans, and a t-shirt while Piper pulled on her clothes. We stepped through a spritz of body spray together and found our shoes. With a kiss that we both felt was far too short, we parted ways.

I didn’t want to call a cab, but there wasn’t time to wait for the bus. I spent the ride to work fixing my hair and using makeup to hide, with mild success, my hangover. Upon arrival I paid the driver, tipped him moderately and headed inside.

Most people know what Google is. Well, that’s where I work. I would love, love, love my job if I didn’t hate my boss. True to form, she was the first to notice me.

“Watson!”

“Woodward.”

“Whatever. Listen, I’m just going to call you Intern. About time you fucking got here. Why are you violating dress code?”

“It’s Sunday” I replied. “Everybody is violating dress code.”

“Everybody is not an intern.”

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

“Coffee. Now.”

“I’m on it.”

I hate Courtney Schmidt. I can’t say that about too many people, but for her it’s easy. She’s nothing but a self righteous cunt. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“Hey Vicki, you looked wrecked.”

“Good morning Erik. Yea, I partied a little too hard. What’s going on here? DOS attack?”

“It’s a full-on breach. Someone’s hacked into the servers and caused all kinds of problems.”

“God damn, how’d they do that?”

“We’re still tracing it, but we think there’s a hole in IE.”

“Figures, every window begins as a hole in the wall.”

“Ha ha, yep.”

“Source?”

“China. No idea how they’re doing it though. Hard to concentrate when Courtney’s running around screaming at everybody. I hear Pratt might be coming in.”

Ronald Pratt was the head of security and Courtney’s boss.

“Hope somebody figures it out soon, I don’t want to be here all fucking day.”

“You said a mouthful there.”

“Intern! Where’s that coffee?”

“Uh, coming! Sorry Erik, gotta run.”

It was almost noon before I had enough of a break in Courtney’s errand list to talk again. When I found Erik he was seated at a workstation looking over some files with Stephanie Chu, one of our Mandarin speakers.

“Any luck?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you should Google it.”

The three of us laughed hysterically, and Erik went as far as to type “china google hacking code” into the company’s famous search engine and click the “I’m feeling lucky” button. I stopped laughing when Courtney, who was getting a heavy scolding from Pratt, took her anger out on me.

“Intern! What the hell are you doing?” I didn’t get a chance to speak before she went off again. “There’s enough crap going on without you slacking. I’ve had enough of you. You’re fired!“

Courtney was fuming, and I was on the verge of tears. Everyone was staring, everyone except Stephanie, whose eyes were scanning the lines of Mandarin text on the screen.

“She did it!” Stephanie shouted, “Vicki found us the code the hackers are using!”

Pratt elbowed his way up to the LCD.

“You’ve got it?”

Stephanie translated a few lines out loud, and Erik told Pratt with great certainty that the breach would be contained within a few minutes. He asked who Vicki was, and several fingers rose to point at me. He eyed Courtney with contempt.

“I’ve tolerated your incompetence for the last time, Schmidt.”

***

I asked Piper if she would like to join Erik, Stephanie, and I in celebrating our promotions that night. I was thrilled when she agreed.

You can imagine how surprised I was when we arrived at the bar to find a woman crying into her white zinfandel about how she’d been demoted to mailroom clerk.

“Oh my God” said Piper, “That’s Courtney!”

“You know her!?”

“She’s my ex-girlfriend! I dumped her because she ended up being a total bitch.”

“Come on,” I said, looping my arm through Piper’s. “Let’s go say hi.”