It's like Esperanto met ADHD and they adopted a greyhound

Shadow climbed into the bed. He wondered about watching an adult movie, but the pay-per-view device by the phone needed a credit card, and it was too risky. Then again, he was not convinced that it would make him feel any better to watch other people have sex that he wasn't having. He turned on the TV for company, pressed the sleep button on the remote three times, which would make the TV set turn itself off automatically in forty-five minutes. It was a quarter to midnight.

The picture was motel-fuzzy, and the colours swam across the screen. He flipped from late show to late show in the televisual wasteland, unable to focus. Someone was demonstrating something that did something in the kitchen, and replaced a dozen other kitchen utensils, none of which Shadow possessed. Flip. A man in a suit explained that these were the end times and that Jesus - a four or five syllable word the way the man pronounced it - would make Shadow's business prosper and thrive if Shadow sent him money. Flip. An episode of M*A*S*H ended and a Dick Van Dyke Show began.

Shadow hadn't seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show for years, but there was something comforting about the 1965 black-and-white world it painted, and he put the channel changer down beside the bed, and turned off the bedside light. He watched the show, eyes slowly closing, aware that something was odd. He had not seen many episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, so he was no surprised that it was an episode he could not remember seeing before. What he found strange was the tone.

All the regulars were concerned about Rob's drinking. He was missing days at work. They went to his home: he had locked himself in the bedroom, and had to be persuaded to come out. He was staggering drunk, but still pretty funny. His friends, played by Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, left after getting some good gags in. Then, when Rob's wife went to remonstrate with him, he hit her, hard, in the face. She sat down on the floor and began to cry, not in that famous Mary Tyler Moore wail, but in small, helpless sobs, hugging herself and whispering, "Don't hit me, please, I'll do anything, just don't hit me anymore."

"What the fuck is this?" said Shadow, aloud.

-----

The music hasn't been working in reception since last Thursday. Crazy Cougar Receptionist has been going out her mind over it. She's sent emails and phoned all sorts of people in a desperate bid to get it fixed, and quoting Palooka as saying "it stopped working at 0330".

Of course, whever any correspondance concerns security or my company, I get to see a copy of it. So, seeing that, I asked Palooka about it. He said that that's when he first noticed it (I happen to know it happened before his shift), but he didn't write it down. Therefore, it didn't happen, and I told the appropriate people that security has no opinion in the matter.

That sounds pedantic, and it is, but in a war over priorities and inter-departmental budgets, we're just going to sit this one out. Plus, screw CCR.

Anyway, she's been emailing really high-level people, totally inappropriate for the case, and saying she'll call formerly employed high-level managers (bought out early last summer in the big layoff) to find out the information they need to fix this. Let her trail her rope and hang herself with it, we're not getting involved.

And yesterday morning, apparently it was weighing on her, because when she came in to reception as Palooka was going off-shift, he said good morning to her. And instead of the usual light I'm-happy-to-see-you good morning she apparently usually gives him, she tensed up, slowly turned her head and glared at him, and through clenched teeth said "Good morning."

To hear him tell it, you'd have thought she was channeling Satan. He was freaked right out, and wasn't looking forward to seeing her the next morning. So we'll see how that went tonight.

I wonder if word trickled back down to her that her claim of security having said it wasn't working isn't supported, and that she should talk to the security chief. Of course, at this site, that's me. I might not get support from my own company, but the site gives it to me.

I wonder if the princess was tense, since she treats me poorly and knows that I won't give her anything? And that no opinion except mine matters to the client?

Ah, power. Got to get me more of that!

Speaking of which, I've been putting you to sleep with this blog for a year now. Feel free to discard this factoid.

-----

The picture dissolved into phosphor-dot fuzz. When it came back, The Dick Van Dyke Show had, inexplicably, become I Love Lucy. Lucy was trying to persuade Ricky to let her replace their old icebox with a new refridgerator. When he left, however, she walked over to the couch and sat down, crossing her ankles, resting her hands in her lap, and staring out patiently in black and white across the years.

"Shadow?" she said. "We need to talk."

Shadow said nothing. She opened her purse and took out a cigarette, lit it with an expensive silver lighter, put the lighter away. "I'm talking to you," she said. "Well?"

"This is crazy," said Shadow.

"Like the rest of your life is sane? Give me a fucking break."

"Whatever. Lucille Ball talking to me from the TV is weirder by several orders of magnitude than anything that's happened to me so far," said Shadow.

"It's not Lucille Ball. It's Lucy Ricardo. And you know something - I'm not even her. It's just an easy way to look, given the context. That's all." She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

"Who are you?" asked Shadow.

"Okay," she said. "Good question. I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore."

"You're the television? Or someone in the television?"

"The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to."

"What do they sacrifice?" asked Shadow.

"Their time, mostly," said Lucy. "Sometimes each other." She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

"You're a god?" said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. "You could say that," she said.

Shadow looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past twelve. "Doesn't matter," he said. "So, Lucy-on-the-TV. What do we need to talk about? Too many people have needed to talk recently. Normally it ends with someone hitting me."

The camera moved in for a close-up: Lucy looked concerned, her lips pursed. "I hate that. I hate that people were hurting you, Shadow. I'd never do that, honey. No, I want to offer you a job."

"Doing what?"

"Working for me. I heard about the trouble you had with the Spookshow, and I was impressed with how you dealt with it. Efficient, no-nonsense, effective. Who'd've thought you had it in you? They are really pissed."

"Really?"

"They underestimated you, sweetheart. Not a mistake I'm going to make. I want you in my camp." She stood up, walked toward the camera. "Look at it like this, Shadow: we are the coming thing. We're shopping malls - your friends are crappy roadside attractions. Hell, we're on-line malls, while your friends are sitting by the side of the highway selling homegrown produce from a cart. No - they aren't even fruit sellers. Buggy-whip vendors. Whalebone-corset repairers. We are now and tomorrow. Your friends aren't even yesterday anymore."

"And if I don't want to work for you, I-Love-Lucy?"

There was a knock on the door of Lucy's apartment, and Ricky's voice could be heard offstage, asking Loo-cy what was keepin' her so long, they was due down at the club in the next scene; a flash of irritation touched Lucy's cartoonish face. "Hell," she said. "Look, whatever the old guys are paying you, I can pay you double. Treble. A hundred times. Whatever they're giving you, I can give you so much more." She smiled, a perfect, roguish, Lucy Ricardo smile. "You name it, honey. What do you need?" She began to undo the buttons of her blouse. "Hey," she said. "You ever wanted to see Lucy's tits?"

The screen went black. The sleep function had kicked in and the set turned itself off. Shadow looked at his watch: it was half past midnight. "Not really," said Shadow.

Real band name: Buster Hymen and the Penetrators

"Let's go," she interrupted. "If we're going."

In the end, though, there wasn't time to do that. Alarms chimed. The shadow operators flew about. The White Cat went up to full readiness. Her battle clocks, reset to zero, began to count off in femtoseconds, the last stop before the unknowable realtime of the universe. Meanwhile, she diverted fusion product into engines and ordnance and began, as a precautionary spoiling measure, to flicker in and out of the dynaflow at random. From this behavior, Seria Mau judged they were in an emergency.

"What?" she demanded of the mathematics.

"Look," it recommended, and began increasing the connections between her and the White Cat until, in important ways, Seria Mau became the ship. She was on ship-time. She had ship consciousness. Processing rates ramped up by several orders of magnitude from the paltry human forty bits a second. Her sensorium, analogued to represent fourteen dimensions, echoed with replicas of itself like a cathedral build in 'brane-space. Seria Mau was now alive in a way, in a place - and at a speed - which would burn her out if it lasted for more than a minute and half. As a precautionary measure the mathematics was already sluicing the tank proteome with endorphins, adrenalin inhibitors and warm-down hormones which, operating at biological speeds, would take effect only after any encounter was finished.

"I was wrong," it said. "Do you see? There!"

"I see," said Seria Mau. "I see the fuckers!"

It was EMC. There was no need for signature diagrams or fakebooks. She knew them. She knew their shapes. She even knew their names. A pod of K-ships - come shrieking with fake traffic, decoys flaring off in several dimensions - flipped themselves down the Redline gravitational alley along a trajectory designed for maximum unpredictability. Second-guessed from instant to instant, this appeared in the White Cat's sensorium as neon, scripted recursively against the halo night. The Krishna Moire pod, on long-distance ops out of New Venusport, comprised: the Norma Shirike, the Kris Rhamion, the Sharmon Kier, and the Marino Shrike, and was led by the Krishna Moire itself. In they came, their crosslinked mathematics causing them to constantly exchange positions in a kind of randomised braid or plait. It was a classic K-ship ploy. But the centre thread of the plait (though "centre" was a meaningless tern in this circumstances) presented as an object Seria Mau recognised: an object with a weird linked signature, half-Nastic, half-human.

As they roared down upon her, the White Cat flickered and fluttered, miming uncertainty and perhaps a broken wing. She vanished from her orbit. The pod took note. You could hear their sarcastic laughter. They assigned a fraction of their intelligence to finding her; bored on in. Seria Mau - her signature dissembled to mimic that of an abandoned satellite at the Redline L2 - needed no further evidence. Her intuition was operating in fourteen dimensions too.

"I know where they're going."

"Who cares?" said the mathematics. "We're out of here in twenty-eight nanoseconds."

"No. It's not us. It's not us they want!"

There was a prickle of white light in the upper atmosphere of Redline as mid-range ordnance, dispatched into the dynaflow before the raid began, popped out to engage Billy Anker's nominal complement of minefields and satellites. Down on the surface in the streaming rain, the Karaoke Sword began to wake up to the situation, coms reluctant, engines slow to warm, countermeasures half-blind to the day: a rocket with a ten-year hangover, entering Seria Mau's sensorium as a pained, lazy worm of light.

Too slow! she thought. Too old.

She opened a line, "Too slow, Billy Anker!" she called. No answer. The entradista, tapping in a panic at the arms of his acceleration couch, had dislocated his left index finger. "I'm coming down!"

"Is this wise?" the mathematics wanted to know.

"Disconnect me," said Seria Mau.

The mathematics thought.

"No," it said.

"Disconnect me. We're a side-issue here. This isn't a battle, it's a police raid. They've come for Billy Anker, and he doesn't have a clue how to help himself."

The White Cat reappeared 200 kilometers above Redline. Ordnance burst around her. Someone had predicted she would come out there and then. "Oh yes," said Seria Mau, "very clever. Fuck you too." Tit for tat, she cooked off a high-end mine she had slipped into the path of the incoming pod. "Here's one I prepared earlier," she said. The pod broke up, temporarily blinded, and toppled away in several directions. "They won't forgive us for that," she told her mathematics. "They're arrogant bastards, that team." The mathematics, which was using the respite to normalise her relationship with the White Cat, had no comment to make. The ship's sensorium collapsed around her. Everything slowed down. "In and out now," she ordered. "Quick as we can." The White Cat pitched over into entry attitude. Retrofire pulsed and flared. Outside, the colours of space gave way to weird smeary reds and greens. Seria Mau airbraked relentlessly in the thickening atmosphere, letting speed scrub off as heat and noise until her ship was a roaring yellow fireball across the night sky. It was a rough ride. The shadow operators streamed about, their lacy wings rippling out behind them, their long hands covering their faces. Mona the clone, who had looked out of a porthole as the ship stood on its nose, was throwing up energetically in the human quarters.

They breached the cloudbase at fifteen hundred feet, to find the Karaoke Sword immediately below them. "I don't believe this," said Seria Mau. The old ship had lifted itself a foot or two out of the mud and was turning hesitantly this way and that, shaking like a cheap compass needle. A fusion torch fired up at the rear, setting nearby vegetation alight and generating gouts of radioactive steam. After twenty seconds, its bows dropped suddenly and the whole thing slumped back to earth with a groan, breaking in two about a hundred yards forward of the engines. "Jesus Chris," Seria Mau whispered. "Put us down."

The mathematics said it was unwilling to commit.

"Put us down. I'm not leaving him here."

"You aren't leaving him here, are you?" Mona the clone called up anxiously from the human quarters.

"Are you deaf?" said Seria Mau.

"I wouldn't put it past you, that's all."

"Shut up."

The Krishna Moire pod, realising what had happened, swept in, fanned out into the parking orbit with a kind of idle bravado, the way shadow boys in one-shot cultivars occupy a doorway so they can spit, gamble and clean their nails with replicas of priceless antique flick-knoves. They could afford to wait. Meanwhile, to move things along, Krishna Moire himself opened a line to the White Cat. He had signed on younger than Seria Mau, and his fetch, though it was six feet tall and presented itself in full Earth Military Contracts chic, including black boots, high-waist riding breeches, and a dove-grey double-breasted tuxedo with epaulettes, had the demanding mouth of a boy.

"We want Billy Anker," he said.

"Go through me," Seria Mau invited.

Moire looked less certain. "This is a wrong thing you are doing, resisting us," he informed her. "To add to all those other wrongdoings you done. But, hey, we didn't come for you, not this time."

"I done?" said Seria Mau. "Wrongdoings I done?"

Outside, explosions marched steadily across the mud, flinging up rocks and vegetation. Elements of the pod, becoming impatient with the half-minute wait, had entered the atmosphere and began to shell the surface at random. Seria Mau sighed.

"Fuck off, Moire, and take speaking lessons," she said.

"You're only alive because EMC don't care about you one way or another," he warned her as he faded to brown smoke. "They could change their minds. This operation is double red." His fetch flickered, vanished, reformed suddenly in a kind of postscript. "Hey, Seria, I got my own pod now!" it said.

"I knew that. So?"

"So next time I see you," the fetch promised, "I'll let the machine speak."

"Jerk," said Seria Mau.

By this time she had the cargo bay open. Billy Anker, dressed in a vintage EV suit, was shuffling head down towards it with all the grim patience of the physically unfit. He fell. He picked himself up. He fell again. He wiped his faceplate. Up in the stratosphere, the Krishna Moire pod shifted and turned in hungry disarray; while high above it in the parking lot, the hybrid ship awaited what would happen, its ambivalent signature flickering like a description of the events unfolding below. Who was up there, Seria Mau wondered, along with the commander of Touching the Void? Who was presiding over this fumbled op? Down in the cargo bay, Mona the clone called Billy's name. She leaned out, caught his hand, pulled him inside. The cargo ramp slammed shut. As if this was a signal, long vapour trails emerged from the cloudbase at steep angles. Billy Anker's ship burst open. Its engines went up in a sigh of gamma and visible light.

"Go," Seria Mau told the mathematics. The White Cat torched out in a low fast arc over the South Pole, transmitting ghost signatures, firing off decoys and particle-dogs.

"Look!" cried Billy Anker. "Look down!"

The South Polar Artifact flashed beneath them. Seria Mau caught a fleeting glimpse of it - a featureless gunmetal ziggurat a million years old and five miles on a side at the base - before it vanished astern. "It's opening!" cried Billy Anker. Then, in an awed whisper: "I can see. I can see inside-" The sky lit up white behind them, and his voice turned to a despairing wail. The pod, growing frustrated, had hit the ziggurat with something from the bottom shelf of its arsenal, something big. Something EMC.

"What did you see? Seria Mau asked three minutes later, as they skulked at Redline L2 while the White Cat's mathematics tried to guess them a way out under the noses of their pursuers.

-----

After getting paid at one minute after midnight, Friday morning, I saw that my payrate was unchanged. So when I got to work Friday afternoon, I called up Cookie Monster. I identified myself, asked if he'd got the incident report he'd asked me for, and if it was sufficient for him.

He said it was, and I broached the subject I was more interested in: has he decided what he's going to do with the site, and me?

He said that he had, but then last night something new landed on our ("our" meaning his and his immediate superior's) desk and now they're just deciding what to do. It seems it's down to me and one other person from another site, and that they might do some shuffling of people.

Meaning, I might be taken off my site.

Well, I tipped off the client and they were none too pleased. I'm not to turn over any access to anybody the client hasn't approved, and if I am removed, I'm to turn over my access directly to the client. My company can go to the client if they want to deal with it.

See how everything always turns into a big deal? :P

For my two cents worth, if after all this they're going to replace me, I'm certainly not going to train anybody. If they want that, they can get one of the other three guys who make more than me to do that. After all, if I knew anything, I wouldn't be the least-paid or removed one, would I?

I got Serious Sam 2 on Saturday morning, but didn't install it until late at night. Due to a flaw on disc two, it wasn't playable. But I replaced it this (Sunday) morning, and it installed like a charm. And it's fun, if you happen to like that kind of thing. Which I do.

Check out the UNICEF Smurf Village Bombing video. Be warned, there are popups unless you've got them blocked.

Also, try this re-imagining of The Shining. I bet you never looked at it this way before.

-----

The sound of alarms. Under its shifting blue and grey internal light, the White Cat felt empty and haunted at the same time. Shadow operators hung beneath the ceilings of the human quarters, pointing at Seria Mau and whispering among themselves like bereaved sisters. "For God's sake what's the matter now? she asked them. They covered one another's bruised-looking mouths with their fingers. The Moire pod had chased down most of the RF proxies and were running about after the rest like a lot of dogs on the Carmody waterfront at night. "We have a buffer a few nanoseconds thick," her mathematics warned her. "We should either fight or leave." It thought for a moment. "If we fight, they'll probably win."

"Well then, go."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Just lose them."

"We might lose the K-pod, but not the Nastic ship. Their navigational systems aren't as good as me, but their pilot is better than you."

"Don't keep saying that!" shrieked Seria Mau. Then she laughed. "What does it matter, after all? They won't hurt us - not until they find out where we're going, anyway. And maybe not even then."

"Where are we going?"

"Wouldn't you like to know!"

"We can't go there unless I do," the mathematics reminded her.

"Ramp me up," said Seria Mau. Instantly, the fourteen dimensions of the White Cat's sensorium folded out around her, and she was on ship-time. One nanosecond, she could smell vacuum. Two, she could feel the minute caress of dark matter against the hull. Three, she could tune into the hideous fusion life of the local sun, with its sounds no one has ever described. Four nanoseconds, and she had the shifting constantly redesigned command languages of the Moire pod drifting up to her through something like layers of clear liquid, which was the encryption they were suspended in. In five nanoseconds she knew everything about them: propulsion status, rate of burn, ordnance on call. What damage they were carrying from the day's encounter - the hulls thinned at crucial points from particle ablation, the arsenals depleted. She could feel the nanomachines working overtime to shore up their internal architecture. They were too young and stupid to realise how damaged they were. She thought she could beat them, whatever the mathematics said. She hung there a further nanosecond, warming herself in the fourteen-dimensional night. Blinks and fibres of illumination came and went. Distant things like noises. She heard Krishna Moire say, "Got it!" but knew he hadn't.

This was the place for her.

It was the place for people who didn't know what they were any more. Who had never known. Uncle Zip had called her "a sad story". Her mother was long dead. She had not seen her brother or father for fifteen years. Mona the clone had felt only contempt for her, and Billy Anker had pitied her even as she killed him: in addition his hard death still hung before her like the menu for her own. Then she conned herself that all the complex stuff of being human was transparent at this level of things, and she could see straight through it to the other side - right to the simple code beneath. She could stay or go: in this place as in life. She was the ship.

"Arm me," she commanded.

"Is this what you want?"

"Arm me."

At that exact juncture, the K-pod found the last of her proxies and began unspooling the thread that led to her. But she was connected, and they were still thinking in milliseconds. Each time they found her, she was somewhere else. Then, in the instant it took them to realise what had happened, she had got into their personal space.

The engagement had to take place within one and a half minutes or Seria Mau would burn out. During that time she would flicker unpredictably in and out of normal space fifty or sixty thousand times. She would remember little of it afterwards, an image here, an image there. In ship-space, a high-end gamma burst, generating 50,000K for an endless fourteen nanoseconds, looked like a flower. Targets turned under the gaze of her acquisition systems like diagrams, to be flipped this or that number of degrees in seven dimensions until they bloomed like flowers too. To the targets themselves, the White Cat seemed to come out of nowhere on three or four different arcs which though sequential appeared simultaneous, in a mist of decoys, false signals, and invented battle languages, a froth of code and violence which could have only the one conclusion. "The fact is, boys," she commiserated, "I'm not sure which of these is me." The Norma Shirike, struggling to connect, broke up into a cloud of pixels, like jigsaw pieces blown off a table in a high wind. The Kris Rhamion and the Sharmon Kier, trying not to run into one another in their haste to get away, ran into a small asteroid instead. Suddenly, it was all unmatched bits and pieces, floating in nowhere. They had ragged edges. None of them looked human, at any scale she chose. Local space was cooling down, but it was still like a cooker, resonating with light and heat, glittering with exotic particles and phase states. It was beautiful.

"I love it in here," she said.

"You have three milliseconds left," the mathematics warned her. "And we didn't get them all. I think one of them left the system. But Moire himself is loose and I'm still looking for him."

"Leave me in here."

"I can't do that."

"Leave me in, or we're stuffed anyway. He used his team as decoys, went on ship-time late. The bet was he would have a millisecond or two left to bounce me as I slowed down." It was a textbook tactic and she had falled for it. "Moire, you fucker, I know what you're up to!" Too late. She was back on normal time. The tank proteome, flushed with nutrients and hormonal tranquillisers, was beginning to try and repair her. She could barely stay awake. "Fuck," she told the mathematics. "Fuck, fuck fuck." There was laughter on the RF frequencies. Krishna Moire flickered briefly into existance in front of her, dressed in his powder-blue stormtroop uniform.

"Hey Seria," he said. "What's this, you ask? Well it's goodnight from me. And a fucking goodnight to you."

"He's on us," said the mathematics.

Moire's ship flickered towards her through the wreckage. It looked like a ghost. It looked like a shark. Nothing she could do would be fast enough. The White Cat turned and turned in panic like one of her own victims, looking for a way out. Then everything lit up like a Christmas tree, and the Krishna Moire was batted away in the blast, a black needle toppling end over end against the dying flare of the explosion. In the same instant, Seria Mau became aware that something huge had materialised beside the White Cat. It was the Nastic cruiser, its vast, mouldy-looking hull, like a rotting windfall in some old orchard, still crawling with autorepair media.

"Jesus," she said. "They bumped him. Uncle Zip bumped his own guy."

"I don't think it was Uncle Zip," the mathematics said. "The command came from somewhere else in the ship." A dry laugh. "It's like the bicameral mind in there."

Seria Mau felt weepy when she heard this.

"It was the commander," she said. "He always liked me. And I always liked him."

"You don't like anyone," the mathematics pointed out.

"Usually I don't," said Seria Mau. "But I'm very up and down today. I can't work out what's the matter with me." Then she said: "Where's that bastard Moire?"

"He's down in the outer layers of the gas giant. He got out by surfing the expansion wave of the bump. He's taken damage, but his engines still work. Do you want to go in after him?"

"No. Cook it up."

"Pardon?"

"Cook the fucker up."

"?"

"If you want something done," sighed Seria Mau, "do it yourself. There." Ordnance disengaged from one of the complex outer structures of the White Cat, hung for the blink of an eye while its engine fired, then streaked down into the gas giant's atmosphere. Gravity tried to crush it out of existence, but between here and there it had turned itself into the voice of God. Something like lightning flared across the face of the gas giant, as it began to torch itself up. Uncle Zip opened a line to the White Cat. He was puffing out his cheeks angrily. "Hey," he said, "all that was unnecessary. You know? I paid good money for those guys. In the end I wouldn't of let them hurt you."

Seria Mau ignored him.

"Better light out," she advised her mathematics. She yawned. "This is where we're going," she said. And finally: "I really didn't want to be bothered with that fucker again. I was just too tired."

As they left the system, a new star had begun to burn behind them.

My uniform allows me to echo-locate... just like Jesus!

The account manager called me back yesterday morning. He asked me to repeat the incident for him, and thanked me for how I handled it. The pounder won't be back at my site.

Sweet!

And if I ever need anything or have any concerns, here's his direct line and email address.

Thanks dude.

Then he asks about my security background, and general experience other than security. I give him a basic sketch of myself.

And guess what? I apparently have a job waiting for me if I ever decide to switch companies!

Not that I'd want to work for them, but it's always nice to have options. ;)



When I went to work later that day, the client's right-hand-man said that he saw The Sleeper on the weekend when he was in. He said that The Sleeper made a point of being seen, and it was obvious. He also stood near him for about thirty minutes, obviously wanting to say something, but nothing came out. Poor Sleeper.

Also, the right-hand man said that except for when he was first there, and when he left hours later, he didn't see The Sleeper at all. Where the hell was security?!

Jokingly, the right-hand-man told The Sleeper "Okay Lieutenant Sleeper, we're off the site. Secure the exits!"

That explains why, when I came in on my shift, I found The Sleeper's report had two odd entries on it: "Right-hand-man of [site name] on site" and "All exits secured".

I duly cracked up laughing.

I also decided it was time for a random patrol audit. So I had right-hand-man (hmmm, if I can't figure out a better name for him than that, I'm going to start capitalizing it) pull the swipecard logs for security for Monday. Three of us worked that day, so I thought it wouldn't be a bad choice.

My record and written report match up perfectly. That's no surprise, as I write down exactly what I do with accurate times. It's the job.

Palooka did pretty good too, although he did apparently write in one tiny patrol that he didn't actually do.

The Sleeper. My God, all he does is go outside and smoke (I assume).

So I pulled the logs for the entire weekend, which is 2/3 The Sleeper, and 1/3 another guy.

Except for when the right-hand-man was first on site, and leaving the site (where there was a burst of activity for The Sleeper in his attempt to be seen), that old bugger was as immobile as a raddish.

I'm going to pull the records of all of us from whenever I took over after they got rid of Barney. I'm going to collate the stats, and blast them off to Cookie Monster. No fucking way am I going to cover for this asshole.

Then my phone rang. It was the pounder's account manager. He asked if I'd send him off an email recounting what had happened, and he told me that I could probably guess what he was going to do.

The pounder no longer has any site with that company, and it was strongly implied that the account manager was going to try to get his license pulled.

Without that license, you can't do private security in B.C. - and this guy has apparently been in the industry for twelve years.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the guy probably had other strikes against him, as this is a bit of an overreaction to him complaining about me not opening the door for him.

Since this would be a permanent record I'd be providing, I told the account manager I'd have to consult with my own company, and I did.

I was advised that I am to have no further correspondence with the other company, that all further communication should go through my manager (Cookie Monster), and that I was to write up an incident report detailing what had transpired.

And I had to do it now Now NOW because a mobile driver was being dispatched to take it directly to my manager.

Why is this thing escalating so high? I wouldn't have even called the guy's company if he didn't call mine to lodge a complaint. Bah.

On a totally unrelated note, I got stuffed. I took sushi to work, and the site had had their kickoff for the following year, so there was snack food and drink everywhere. Then the cleaners showed up laden with baked goods they'd got from eBay across the street. They're always bringing me stuff from there, because it's too much for them. But they always want me to eat with them. I was already full. :P

Then one of the women upstairs that works late ran out to get herself some dinner, and brought me back a turkey sub, fries, and a drink. Can't...eat...any...more...

But you've got to be polite. I was staggering. :P

Just before I left the site, I notice that a new guy for the bike patrol company had showed up. I guess the account manager wasn't just yanking my chain.

How sad is it that I get quicker results from their managers than I do from my own?

Melchett: "Now there's another dirty word, `job'!"

So I got to talk to The Sleeper yesterday for the first time since Labour Day. It followed standard channels.

Rimmy: "Hi [The Sleeper]."

The Sleeper: "Hi."

Rimmy: "How are you?"

The familiar look and stiffening of his posture indicates his reflexive dislike for all normal questions directed at him.

The Sleeper: "I'm fine."

Then, at an unpredictable interval and with no prompting, he starts telling me about how some of the office furniture has been moved around in various suites.

Rimmy: "I know, I left that information for you on the note that's right in front of you, so you wouldn't be surprised when they came in unexpectedly."

He didn't like that I said "I know" - but I'm not actually sure what this guy does like.

Then, and now I'm wishing I hadn't, I decided to obliquely bring up what he'd said to Cookie Monster about me.

Rimmy: "So how are you, any problems or concerns?"

The look on his face was distaste and one step away from rage. I'm not kidding.

The Sleeper: "What do you mean?"

Rimmy: "Well, I was speaking to Cookie Monster last week, and he was asking me what the problem between you and I was. I wasn't aware we had a problem (cough choke ahem) so I was just inquiring whether the site, or me, was a concern for you."

Ah, there's the rage! Houston, we have liftoff!

The Sleeper: "What did he say?"

Rimmy: "Just what I told you, that he understood there to be a problem between us."

The Sleeper: "Well, you're going to have to take it up with Cookie Monster if you've heard this. It's not my problem."

Rimmy: "No no, I heard it from Cookie Monster. I'm just asking if there's a problem you want to tell me about between you and I, or about the site itself."

The Sleeper: [angrily] "I don't have a problem with the site."

Rimmy: "Okay. And with me?"

The Sleeper: "I don't have a problem with you, unless you keep interrogating me like this."

Rimmy: "Okay, that's good. I'm glad we've got this cleared up."

There's a pause as he's scribbling on his report, then unexpectedly he whirls and...

The Sleeper: "Let me tell you something - if I have a problem with someone I can tell them to their face. Anything I say to Cookie Monster is my business and nobody else's. End of conversation."

Rimmy: "I see."

The Sleeper: "What did Cookie Monster tell you?!"

Sigh.

Rimmy: "Just what I told you, that he understood there to be a problem between us." (Yes, I repeated myself verbatim)

There were a few more explosive statements from him, then

The Sleeper: "Okay Rimmy, have a good shift."

And out he goes. He's mindful that he is supposed to be nice, but he thinks that if he uses a rote phrase in every conversation, he can point back at it when he's called on the carpet about his behavior. At least, that's how it's been in the past.

The Sleeper: "No, there's no problem. I was polite and pleasant and wished him a good shift."

Random Imaginary Authority Figure: "Well, nobody who's the way you describe would wish you a nice shift, Mr. Rimmy. You need to find a way to get along with The Sleeper and not overreact."

:P

That was at the start of my shift. At the end of it, I got to bookmark the whole thing with another problem.

I had let Palooka into the building and was briefing him while I finished writing my report and changed out of my uniform. I heard someone knocking on the exterior doors. So I looked up.

There was a guy in the [bike patrol company]'s uniform waving to be let in.

Just so it's clear, there's a big lobby with glass doors (where the guard was), then our own enclosed reception area behind more locked glass doors. And we're behind the counter in there.

Pretty quickly I realized that this was the temporary guy they had last week, and that Palooka said he hated because the guy is a viciously sarcastic racist. And, being temporary, Evil Property Manager and his company don't have the three weeks or so it takes of constant nagging to issue an access card. Hence the knocking.

So I ignore it.

He's been here before, and we didn't let him in then. Certainly he didn't come expecting some other security company to grant him access, and he's got an in-line phone right outside the doors with a direct line to his own security company, which can radio his partner for the night (Buffalo Kisser) to come let him in. For that matter, Buffalo Kisser knew he was coming, why wasn't he there waiting for him?

So the knocking got louder. Pounding, actually. So I leaned into the light where he could see me (I'm possibly fifteen meters away, so the light was important) and mimed him using a phone, and then pointed beside him where it was. Sure enough, I saw him on the phone.

I went back to briefing Palooka and eventually Buffalo Kisser shows up and lets in the pounder. As he walked across the lobby, he glared at me and gave me a thumbs up. Whatever.

My ride was waiting for me (had been for fifteen minutes, and I hadn't even noticed until they phoned) so I finished up and headed out with Palooka as he usually walks me out, because then he can have a smoke before he starts his patrol. Although this time I think he wanted to see what the pounder would say to me as I passed him.

"Thanks!" he said irritably as we headed out. So I stopped and said "Hey dude, we're different companies and we do the interior area. Your company is the one that's charged by the property manager to do exteriors and entry to the building, and it would be overstepping our authority to be doing that."

"Thanks!" he said again. "No need to be like that," I said, "you had the direct line to security right there and a partner on site to let you in. We're not getting in trouble for you."

"Thanks!"

"Okay, be that way," I said and Palooka and I went out. Just before I left, I repeated the all-too-frequently mentioned mantra to him: "If you have any problems from them, just blame it on me".

And so home I went. My ride got me there so much earlier than I usually do, I didn't know what to do with myself. So I jumped on the computer and started surfing the news. Until I got a phone call.

Palooka: "Rimmy, it's Palooka."

Rimmy: "Hi, what's up?"

Palooka: "I went out of reception to do my next patrol, and I got outside to the lobby, and then I realized I'd left my keys and access behind in reception and I can't get in. I'm really sorry."

Rimmy: "Okay, sit tight and I'll get it sorted and call you right back."

Palooka: "Thanks Rimmy. I'm really sorry!"

Rimmy: "No worries, it happens to everybody."

So I hang up and call Operations. I identify myself and outline the problem and ask if any of the mobile units currently active has an access card to the building.

The on-duty supervisor runs it through the computer, and says he has no indication of mobile having such access. So I say that if he can have a mobile unit run by my place, I can give them mine to give to Palooka, he can get in, get his keys and access, and he can just leave my card where I usually have him lock the keys, and I'll get it the next day.

The guy confirms my address, and says he'll divert a mobile unit when he can. Then he says... "What time did you get off shift?"

"Zero hundred" I reply.

Operations: "Did you have an altercation with a [bike patrol company] guard?"

Jesus, Homer, and Jethro Christ.

Rimmy: "After a fashion. I take it he called."

Operations: "I have a complaint about you, yes."

Rimmy: "It went like this: he wanted into the building, but exterior access isn't our bailiwick - it's theirs. He had a partner on site, there was an exterior in-line phone that connected to his own company, and we're not responsible for their guards. And, to top it off, when I met with Cookie Monster last week, he mentioned them and said "We want them to fail." I didn't argue with him, I didn't get into it with him, I just said that it wasn't our responsibility. That's it."

Operations: "Well, that corroborates with what he said. As the supervisor on duty, I can tell you that you acted within the scope of your mandate and duty, and I see no reason to escalate this. I have to email a copy of my report for this to Cookie Monster as he's your manager, but as the "We want them to fail" sounds exactly like something he'd said, I have no problems believing that you were even following specific orders. But we're all clear as far as I'm concerned, and I see no problem here. If Cookie Monster wants to talk to you about it, he will."

Rimmy: "Ah good, I'm glad to hear I didn't do something wrong."

Operations: "Anytime Rimmy."

Rimmy: "And thanks for taking care of getting my guy back into his area."

Operations: "Hey, it's what I'm here for."

I call Palooka back and tell him that mobile will bring him my card, and that he'll just have to cool his heels until then. I also ask him if he got a lot of static from the two bike patrol guys.

He said that he did, that they both said I was a big asshole but that Buffalo Kisser told the pounder that Palooka was the good guy. When the pounder started to go off, Palooka apparently told him that we've got a policy and that I was the supervisor and what I said goes.

They both told him that he listens to me too much, and that he should have ignored me and let the pounder in. "I ignore my supervisor all the time, and look at me!" says Buffalo Kisser.

Yeah, I haven't filled a blog with Buffalo Kisser's exploits for the past year.

Palooka tells me he said, and I quote, "[the pounder]'s here for what, a week? And Buffalo Kisser, who knows how long you're going to be here? I have to work with Rimmy for the next year, or six months, or however long I'm here. It's really not a hard decision to figure out who I want to get along with more. Plus, I happen to think what he did was right."

What a guy. :) If it's true of course. :P

Apparently they were less interested in talking to him after that.

Eventually the mobile unit came by and picked up my card, and I phoned up Palooka to tell him it was on its way and just to note the time that he received the card in his report, so that the customer won't wonder why he hadn't patroled for an hour and a half.

Then I phoned up Operations and told them that mobile had picked up the card.

Then I called up the bike patrol guys' company and lodged my own complaint.

Interestingly enough, both the pounder and the woman in their Operations center that answered my call used to work for my company.

I outlined what had happened, including that he had complained to my company, and she said that he'd already called her twice tonight complaining about various things. I asked her if I was one of those things, and she said yes.

She also said that from the sounds of both of our stories, I was in the right and the other guy was way out of line. She wrote up her report, and then suggested that I call back in the morning to talk to the account manager for that site to let him know what was going on, as "we don't need that kind of unprofessionalism".

So I did. He didn't answer, but I left a voicemail. I'll be surprised if he calls me back, but I thumbnailed the story for him anyway.

This was just stupid. I hope the rest of the week isn't as lame as this.

A comedy of loyalty, betrayal, sex, madness, and music swapping

Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.

Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.

Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thins hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe for the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted - not happiness, not money, and most certainly not love.

Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain...

-----

That's what it says on the back of the book I'm going to take to work today, Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow. How could I resist?

In other news, Serious Sam 2 is about to be in my hot little hands, and if it's as much ridiculous fun as the first two games were (Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter), many hours of co-op blasting fun will be had.

Hot on the heels of that is Age of Exploration, and sometime after that (can't remember and too lazy to look it up) comes Quake 4. Whee!

And speaking of game, the WoD I'm in is winding down into its final chapter, and a new one (new world and concept) will be hot on its heels.

While looking for some inspiration for my character, I stumbled across a song that nailed it for me. Nailed the character, nailed the game, nailed the atmosphere.

And it got stuck in my head. For weeks now.

The funny thing is, interpersonal relations with people haven't been this good in quite a while, and I suspect that the relatively benign tune that's constantly echoing through my mental corridors might be influencing my mood enough to be making the difference.

The song? Prepare to laugh.

Twilight Time, by The Platters.

Yeah yeah, all funny. But I'm as calm and patient as a Zen spider sitting on its web. So there!

The Sleeper has to go. He's managed to get himself scheduled for the extra stat shift (on Thanksgiving, i.e. today) and is also taking next weekend off.

No problem about the stat, although I'd have preferred to know about it, but the time off is kind of a pain.

See, company policy is three months advance notice to take time off. It can be shaved down sometime, but you can't just decide spur of the moment to piss off unless you have someone agree to cover you.

So why is it that I learn he's taking off eight days in advance, and only that because I received the new payroll schedule?

It means that, since we have no extra people who are trained for the site, that either I have to take extra time to train somebody (which is lame anyway because you can't do the site properly with only a couple of days practice, plus guards who know they're only temporary tend to be insane slackers, worse than regular guards), or else do the shifts myself. Which are two sixteen hour shifts in addition to what I already do.

The client had advised me that they're happy to see him go, but since he's not as bad as Barney was they're not raising a stink.

But the moment I get my authority made official, I'm going to make that request that he be replaced with two other people.

I get to see him today too. I'm debating whether I should mention that I know he's been trying to undermine me to our superiors or not. Of course, such debating turns into various mental scenarios (all underscored by Twilight Time of course), and then you get such gems coming from me as "You may be bred in India, but you're just a crumb on this site." and the like.

Yeesh.

In other news, has anybody found a site where you can view the Unicef commercial where the Smurf village is bombed? I'm dying to see it, no pun intended. Also, a nine year old girl has plead guilty to stabbing her eleven year old friend to death. Funny, all I can remember doing with a knife at that age was shaving curls of wood off of sticks, wondering why old men seemed to enjoy it so much.

Ah, the Ig Nobel prize. Read the article here, but I'll list the winners below anyway.

Medicine - Gregg Miller from the US for his invention of Neuticles - rubber replacement testicles for neutered dogs that are available in varying sizes and degrees of firmness. "Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this is a great honour," said Mr. Miller.

Peace - A UK team for pioneering research into the activity of locusts' brain cells while the insects watched clips from the Star Wars films.

Physics - John Mainstone from Australia for his part in an experiment that began in 1927 in which a glob of black tar drips through a funnel every nine years. Mr. Mainstone shared the prize with a late colleague who died sometime after the second drop.

Biology - The University of Adelaide for "painstakingly smelling and cataloguing the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed."

Chemistry - A University of Minnesota team who set out to prove whether people can swim faster in water or sugar syrup.

Economics - A Massachusettes inventor who designed an alarm clock that runs away and hides when it goes off.

(note: I included a link to an article about this very clock months ago, and I thought it was a hilariously great idea. I tell you this now just in case it sounds familiar and you wonder if in my senility I've begun repeating myself.)

Nutrition - A Japanese researcher who photographed and analysed every meal he had consumed during a period of 34 years.

Literature - The many Nigerians who introduced millions of e-mail users to a "cast of rich characters... each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled."

Agricultural History - A study entitled The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers: Reflections on an Aspect of Technological Change in New Zealand Dairy-Farming between the World Wars.

Fluid Dynamics - Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh - Calculations on Avian Defecation.

Teacher mistakes boy's insulin pump for phone, and rips it out. Need I say more? Apparently the teacher is quoted as saying that his is an unfortunate situation. I'll bet.

An' I'm back y'all! An' I'm back y'all! An' I'm backety back and I'm BACK y'all!

Donald Rumsfeld is briefing President Bush one morning, and gives what he thinks is a better than usual casualty report: "Mr President, we lost three Brasillian soldiers in Iraq yesterday."

Dubya's jaw drops and his face grows ashen. Rummy is shocked, and asked the President what's wrong. Confused, Bush looks around at his advisors and replies:

"Well damn, Rummy, I may not be able to count that high, but I know even one brazillion is a lot of men."

What's it been, two weeks? I'll try to make this somewhat shorter than epic length. If you take longer to read this than it would take you to read Beowulf, I've failed in my endeavor.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see The Brothers Grimm with my mom. Afterwards we went out for coffee, and she informed me that she was once engaged to a guy named Ron McDonald.

You'll be pleased to know that not a single happy meal joke crossed my lips. Self control, baby!

Buffalo Kisser continues to think that I reported him as sleeping to his company, which I did not.
DiceGimp blames me for anybody finding out he was sleeping in the lobby of a busy building at 0700, despite me not being there and someone snapping a picture of him. Also, he's been washing money, and will probably get in some serious trouble after depositing and moving $37000 from overseas. Even he puzzled out that this might be illegal after that.

Crazy Cougar Receptionist has trained a couple of temps to cover her breaks and the ninth hour of reception, and she is unfailingly polite to me when they're around. Otherwise, she's a bitch.

My manager, Cookie Monster, has been an absolute ass on the phone to me. Telling me I'm not the supervisor, that I'm not to talk to anybody about anything, not to tell him about the site, because, and I quote:

Cookie Monster: "Don't think you know more about what's going on at that site than I do."

Rimmy: "I'm not, I just want to tell you about what happened the other day when ..."

Cookie Monster: "Because that would be a bad way to play it, mister."

Rimmy: "..."

That was the general tone of things, and it didn't get any better. He finally said that he was coming by on Monday (yesterday) and he'd set me straight on things.

He said this early last week, and it was sounding so bad on the phone (between this call and the last one) that I actually started making contingency plans in case I was abruptly removed from the site.

Not plans for me, but for the site. Nobody else is trained to do anything (I haven't been allowed to do that), I'm the only one who knows the locations and codes for various alarms and systems, and none of the other guys even know how the place works security-wise. This isn't good.

Even the employees at the site don't know it all, because the ones with the knowledge were the ones that were terminated in the last two "downsizings". So I was rushing to identify keys and codes and systems for the client.

Then the client's eyes and ears guy told me that the client wanted to talk to me, on the morning before I met with Cookie Monster.

Sigh.

I've never talked to her, and for her to request it is... unusual.

So I called, and what do you know? She's bright, polite, and a very good businesswoman.

She also didn't want to talk to me. She'd told the guy that if I wanted to call her, I could. Bah!

So I showed up at work and got in a full round before my boss showed up. And what do you know? He was a bit weird at the start, but as he didn't know me before, as we talked he relaxed somewhat. And his highly-compartmentalized "you don't need to know" attitude about things (quite proper in security, silly as it sounds) cracked and with minor details in his larger stories I confirmed/learned stuff that he probably shouldn't have been telling me.

He also attempted some smokescreens, but these were textbook examples and I identified them easily. Here's a little hint, dude: don't try to confuse me by throwing columns of numbers at me. I'll chew that shit up and spit out three colour graphs!

Okay, that sounded nerdy. My apologies.

Although he made a point of denying it, I knew he was surprised when the client called up and had Barney removed from the site and me installed in his place. Incidentally, that's been the only time the two of them have ever spoken, despite Cookie Monster saying he needs to have a meeting with for the past four months. Way to deal with the client, dingleberry.

Then a chunk of his semi-hostile behavior became clear. He looked at me and said "So what's your problem with The Sleeper?" Oh HO!

We had a problem between us back in the day, do you remember? I was forbidden to ask him how he was or what was going on at the site. Eventually I just kept my lips zipped when we had adjacent shifts, as it just wasn't worth having him freak out.

After a while, possibly because I wasn't giving him any opportunity to be a cantankerous bastard, he complained to Barney that I was ignoring him, and Barney got the two of us together in his presence to talk about it. I blogged about it at the time, but it's probably not worth combing back through the archives to find.

Anyway, after that we did fine - he wasn't a total ass (because he pretended not to be) and I pretended not to notice.

After I moved into Barney's position, The Sleeper apparently felt that since he'd been with the company longer he should be the guy in charge and making the big big money.

So he went to Cookie Monster, months after it was resolved (and he initiated the problem in the first place!) to say what a bad guy I was and that I did blah blah blah.

So when Cookie Monster asked me about it, I explained it in detail. I mentioned that The Sleeper pulls that on everybody, including the bike patrol guys and even my two latest guards have noticed it.

He nods, and appears to understand.

He also was astonished to find that I've never had an evaluation done. I also appeared to come across as not a total fucktard. So later this week I'll get notice on how much of a raise, and what specifically my supervisory roll will be at the site.

And then he'll talk to the client, and have to revise it as they want more than he'll probably offer. More authority, and more pay. For me! :D

Oh, and I got a call this morning from the client. It appears that during the night (Palooka's shift) someone ripped the door of the mailroom mostly out of the wall.

I called up Palooka, and he told me when he was last there (which I will confirm with the magnetic key records), but I personally think he tugged the door to check if it was locked and pulled too hard.

The door is brutally strong, but it's set into a false wall that isn't. Anybody could rip that door out with a little effort, and Palooka is a strong guy.

Speaking of the key records, I found that The Sleeper isn't doing his patrols. Poor bugger, he's just not going to last with us I'm afraid. ;)

Strange links:

No sex for you!

You know, I could swear there's some lip service paid to separation of church and state...

Man, I love what animals do.

Did he do it there, or bring it with him?

Leaving Brooklyn? Oy Vey!

Religion screws up society, so knock that shit off!

Go on, share that debit card with everybody!