The Spike vol:\0.2_awareness

The Spike vol:\0.2_awareness
by L R Fletcher

Damn, Hector thinks, his neighbour Larry is so annoying.  Why can’t he be more considerate?

Hector can understand why Larry was wound up – if Katie or Harris ever stay out as late as Larry’s son Seb did last night, he’ll go apoplectic – but bawling him out in the middle of the street at 2AM doesn’t do anyone any good.  Jacqui promised to raise it at the next neighbourhood meeting, but Hector thinks that was just to shut up his moaning so she could get back to sleep.

Today’s an important day at work.  The last thing he needs is to be battling to stay awake.

He slurps the last of his cereal and milk, gets the usual tut from Jacqui and quickly earns another as he slides the bowl along the worktop; he was aiming for the sink but it clanks against the teapot.

Grinning wickedly, he wraps an arm around his wife’s waist and mushes his lips against her cheek.  She wriggles to get away but she’s giggling.  “Don’t be late tonight,” she warns.  “Remember I’ve got that thing, so you need to pick up the kids from mum and dad’s.”

“What thing?” he asks.

“If you couldn’t be bothered to listen the first time, I’m not telling you again,” she teases.

He honestly doesn’t remember.  For all he knows, she could be making the most of his terrible memory and lack of interest to pretend she told him when she didn’t.

“Come on, shoo, I need to get the kids up and ready for school, and I don’t need you in the way distracting them,” she says, nudging him out of the kitchen.

“Distracting?  Me?” he protests, but he lets her push him all the way out until he stops at the front door, pursing his lips for a kiss.  She sighs and raises her eyebrow as if to say, “Really?”, but relents when she realises it’s the quickest way to get rid of him.  “See ya later,” he grins as she shoves him out the door.

“Not too late!” she calls after him.

He spins his keys around his fingers as he strolls out to his pride and joy, his best ever purchase, his Porsche.  The bark of the flat-six roaring to life is enough to blow the cobwebs away, and he’s soon nipping out into traffic, overtaking a granny inexplicably trundling along 20MPH below the speed limit, feeling the wind in his swept back hair…  Life is good.

Until he reaches the Barvil Road roundabout.  There’s a queue here every day, but Hector knows what to do.  He sails down the relatively-clear right-hand lane, ignoring the “right turn only” signs, and spots Nick’s Fiesta among the long queue of people in the left lane waiting to go straight ahead.  Sucker!

He glances in the mirror and can see Nick glaring at him.  Ha ha!

Nick watches Hector cut across from the right-hand lane and go straight ahead, causing a lime green Hyundai to brake and swerve to avoid an accident.

Damn, Nick thinks, Hector is so annoying.  Why can’t he be more considerate?

Why does he think it’s ok to jump the queue, Nick wonders?  Why does he take pride and glee in screwing over all the people in the correct lane who are doing the right thing?  Nick would have a word with him when they get to the office if he thought it would make the slightest difference.

He’s sure Hector’s going to have an accident one day.  A big one.  It would serve him right, and he almost hopes it happens, so long as no-one else gets hurt.

When Nick eventually rolls into the car park, Hector’s Porsche is naturally already there.  He resists the temptation to get some small measure of revenge by parking too close, to block Hector’s driver’s door with his passenger door, and instead pulls up next to Toni’s Civic.

The office building looks like every other on the estate, with only a small printed sign outside identifying it as Eternity IT.  The name is apt for Nick: he knows he’ll probably be here forever, mostly because finding another job would be a nightmare.  If it hadn’t been for Hector’s unconventional interview technique – handing Nick a laptop and saying, “Impress me”, Nick hacked into his potential employer’s Amazon account and got him free Prime membership – he’d probably still be going to interview after interview after interview.

In hindsight, that should have been Nick’s first clue about his future boss.

“Finally geeza, where you been?!” Hector bellows as Nick sets foot inside.  Savannah rolls her eyes.  Toni shrugs his shoulders.  They all know what Hector’s like; banter is like breathing to him.

Nick doesn’t want to play.  “Morning.  Where are we up to with, um…?”

“Caster Robotics?” Toni offers.  “One of their teams worked late so they’ve had to rerun the backups.”  He shakes his head, never happy when people can’t organise themselves to his standard.

“Get the uploads running, yeah?  And give me a yell when they’re done,” Hector tells Nick.  “Sav will have the users set up by end of play, won’t you?”

Savannah doesn’t seem to appreciate Hector doubting her.  “Probably,” she bites sarcastically, but it’s lost on Hector.

“Ok,” Nick says, slumping into his seat at his glass desk and switching on his PC.

Hector resumes his hushed conversation with Toni, and Nick zones out.

The morning drags by, with only a few support calls to relieve the tedium of watching progress bars move slower than a sloth playing musical statues without music.  It’s times like these, when he can feel his sanity seeping away, that he wishes the office wasn’t so characterless, so white-and-shiny sterile, so dull.

By the time the clock crawls around to midday, he’s gagging to get away from his desk.

“I’m going to lunch,” Nick announces, and he strides out of the office.

Damn, Toni thinks, Nick is so annoying.  Why can’t he be more considerate?

Every day Nick marches to the supermarket down the road, and not once has he ever asked if anyone else would like anything.  There’s only four of them, it’s not like he’d be inundated with requests.  Toni asks everyone on the odd occasion he goes, and once Nick asked him to get something he forgot to get when he was out, but he’s never returned the favour.  Rude.

It’s particularly annoying today because Toni will have to skip his lunch break.  He’s having unusual difficulty in getting Caster’s login script to run properly; and when it does run, it takes an age.  He thought the problem might be Windows updates, or drivers, but it happens on a fully-updated machine.  It’s as if there’s something else running in the background, but he can’t think or find what.

A virus scan is running at the moment and he sincerely hopes it comes up empty.  He’s never understood why arseholes write viruses, to break rather than create.  Thank goodness he and Savannah persuaded Hector to switch all their storage to faster solid state drives last year because this scan has taken too long already.

For something to do while he’s waiting, he resumes his trawl of the forums for any issues similar to theirs.  He may as well be searching for an M&M in a swimming pool of Skittles.

Sooner than Toni had expected, Nick returns, pausing in the kitchen to put something in the microwave.  Gradually, the smell of a pasta bake wafts out into the office, and the irritating low hum of the microwave is joined in concert by a bassy rumbling from Toni’s stomach.

Nick carries his steaming plate to his desk and tucks in.  Toni catches Savannah glaring at Nick too, and they share a roll of the eyes and an empathetic grin.

SCAN COMPLETE – NO INFECTIONS FOUND

Hmm, Toni thinks, that’s a puzzle.  What the Hell is he going to do now?

First things first – apologise to Savannah for not being able to go to lunch today.

“I’m going to have to work through, sorry.  Is that ok?” Toni says.

Savannah shrugs.  “So am I, it’s fine.”

“Oh no, really?  I can pop out and get you something if you like?”

“You just said you’re working through?” Savannah frowns.

“Yeah, but if you want something…”

“I’m fine,” she snaps.

Damn, Savannah thinks, Toni is so annoying.  Why can’t he be more considerate?

Or maybe less considerate.  He’s always trying so hard to please her, to be a bigger part of her life than she can let him be.  She feels bad for snapping at him, but he knows she’s with Bill and he’s putting her in a really difficult position.  Hurting Toni is the last thing she wants to do, he’s a lovely guy, too lovely if anything, and if things were different then she could see them getting together.  But thinking that way sometimes makes her feel unfaithful, even though she hasn’t done anything that could be construed as cheating.  She reminds herself that everyone will meet other people they like as they go through life.  There’s nothing wrong with having friends outside a relationship, as long as friends is all it is.

Toni needs to stop pushing and be happy with what they have.  If Bill were to find out…

Let’s just say, Bill has a lot of qualities but forgiveness isn’t one of them.

“Have you two seen this?” Nick asks.

“Seen what?” Savannah asks.

“Donald Trump’s announced he’s running for president.”

“Oh.  So?” Toni grunts.

“He’s an idiot,” Nick says.  “He says he’s going to build a wall along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it!”

“He’s not an idiot,” Savannah interjects.  “You don’t become that rich if you’re stupid.”

“You can if you inherit it,” Nick argues.  “Mexico won’t pay for a wall, y’know.  That’s just ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but he wouldn’t say so if he didn’t have a plan.  He’s a straight talker.”

Nick chuckles.  “You talk like you know him.”

“I don’t know him, but I did meet him once,” Savannah says.

“You met Donald Trump?” Toni asks.  “When?”

“At some function, with Bill,” she says.  “I didn’t talk to him long, but he seemed charming and genuine.”

“You think someone with hair like that can be genuine?” Nick asks.

“You haven’t met him, have you?” Toni says.  “When you do, then you can question Savannah’s judgement.”

“Well, he won’t get the nomination so it won’t matter.”

“We’ll see,” Toni says.

There’s Toni again, taking up the argument for her and defending her.  She wonders for the umpteenth time if she’s encouraging him, stringing him along.  Guilt is something she’s not used to, but this situation makes her worry about what she’s doing to both Toni and Bill.

The Caster Robotics user data stares back at her from her monitor.  She really can’t be bothered with it.

“Are you going to see Jurassic World?” she asks, hoping to spark an interesting conversation.

“Another bloody reboot,” Nick grumbles.

“I’m not sure it’s a reboot, exactly…”

Damn, Hector thinks, his employees are so annoying.  Why can’t they be more considerate?

Watching from his office, Hector simmers quietly as his staff chat and gossip, wasting his time and his money.  They know he has to leave early today to get the kids, but they’re sat back, having a laugh at his expense.

He could leave the final sign-off to Toni (he knows what he’s doing and is the most trustworthy of the team) but it’s Hector’s company and the buck stops with him.  If he delegated and there turned out to be something wrong, it would reflect badly on him as the figurehead and therefore harm the whole company.

A burst of laughter from the chinwaggers has him out of his seat in a flash.

“Awight geezas, where we up to?” he asks.

The chatter and chuckles stop abruptly, and each give Hector their bad news.

“So none of you are going to be finished on time?”

“I’ll stay late and make sure everything’s done,” Toni volunteers.

“I know you will,” Hector says, “You all will.  Get it done.”

He strides back into his office and slumps into his chair.  He can hear them grumbling about him; no-one ever seems to realise how far their voice carries.

Picking up his phone, he dials the mother-in-law, then decides it would be easier to ask them to look after the kids until a little later by text message.  They won’t say no, they love spending time with Harris and Katie too much, but Jacqui’s dad never misses an opportunity to remind him how he isn’t good enough for his daughter.  Hector hardly needs to provide him with more ammo so cheaply.

He cracks on with his work.  Fortunately, the guys finish their jobs with a stagger (Nick first, then Toni, and finally Savannah) so he can knock out one task at a time, but it’s still after 7PM by the time he strolls out the door, and nearly 7:30PM when he arrives at the in-laws’ – and sees Jacqui’s Merc already parked outside.  Shit.

He blips the accelerator and the engine barks notice of his arrival; hopefully Jacqui and the kids will come out without him having to go inside and face the music, and revving the engine sounds so much cooler than hooting the horn.

“That bloody boy-racer husband of yours, always showing off that Porsche of his,” Jacqui’s dad complains.  “There are young children trying to sleep and hard-working people trying to relax of an evening.”

“Yeah, and you’ve never done the same with your Ferrari,” Jacqui says.

Her dad splutters a protest, but damn, Jacqui has to agree, Hector is so annoying.  She loves him, but he’s never going to learn to be more considerate.