The I.T. Girl (16 page)

‘Vivienne is taking part in a triathlon this month so we wish
her luck with that.’ George handed down a bottle of champagne. ‘How’s the training
going?’ George asked her. She nodded
with a thumbs
up.
‘
Viv
gets up at six in the morning to go swimming before
work,’ clapping came again as she held up the bottle on her way back, ‘Put the lot
of us to shame. Right, the best male runner of this season...’ He looked about,
waiting for attention, ‘Goes to... Fred Thompson. No surprise there. It’s your night
Fred,’ he said handing over the second bottle. ‘You doing any marathons this year
?...
Still recovering? That’s fair enough. Right, last one. This
is the exciting one. The one you all have a chance at. The most improved runner
of this season is...’ He held out the card, ‘Delia Harrow!’

Deelie
screamed as cheers erupted and
then moved into the space made for her towards the stage. ‘
Deelie
,
see you’re making it all the way to the big tree without dropping anything these
days. Well done,’ George said.

She took hold of the wrapped gift and her
thank you
was picked up over the microphone.

‘What did you get?’ Alex asked when she returned.

‘I don’t know,’ She tore at the wrapping, ‘What
is this?’

‘It’s an arm pocket.’ Alex took it out of the box, ‘You put things
in it when you’re running,’ she tried to hold it the right way up, ‘like your keys
I suppose. See, it straps to your arm,’ she held it against
Deelie’s
arm and then lifted out a clip and a water bottle, ‘then you attach this clip and
it will carry your water.’

‘Is it a joke?’
Deelie
asked.

‘It’s a really personal gift,
Deels
.
You always carry a water bottle, don’t you?’

‘As always, we’d like to thank everyone for making this club
great,’ George said, in a moment of seriousness. ‘Hope to see you all on the track
over the coming year. Events will be posted on the website and... ’ He raised his
voice as the music started. ‘The next social will be in autumn. Cheers everyone.’
He handed the microphone back to the D.J.

Alex and I watched as
Deelie
and George
met through the crowd. She showed him her gift. He seemed to explain it the same
way Alex did and fixed the pocket to her arm. He put an arm around her when she
leaned up to kiss his cheek.

‘Champagne,’ George commanded when they reached us. ‘I know where
there’s an extra bottle.’

We lined up more drinks for the end of the night and I threw
them back until suddenly I could see the docks, life-size and looming. I looked
at my watch. It was 1 a.m. The night was out of time and there were only seven hours
before
BelOpt
went live. ‘Excuse me,’ I slurred. Holding
a hand over my mouth, I pushed my way outside and met with a breeze circling the
boat that forced air into my lungs. ‘You’re breathing. See, you’re breathing,’ I
said to myself as I found my way to the same spot as before. I saw the path that
would lead me back to the city slowly creep towards us and leaned over the deck
to watch the waves replace each other.

My memory of getting home and into bed was disturbingly vague.
I tried to piece it together after a restless sleep while I resurrected myself for
work – pulling on the nearest clothes – the same trousers from the night before
and barely able apply makeup or brush my hair. I bought a cup of coffee before the
commute and fought to keep my eyes open on the tube in case I fell asleep. I realised
when I leaned into the florescent light of my screen with my head pounding that
I was still drunk.

‘Hey, you’re in. How are we?’ Boris’s voice drilled into my head.

‘Don’t ask,’ I said trying not to slur my words.

‘
BelOpt
pricing kicking
in shortly?’

‘8 a.m.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back in a few minutes.’

I sat staring at the empty terminal, waiting for the feed to
spring into life. I could actually be fired if things went wrong. I tried to imagine
how I would handle it – what could I say? It wouldn’t just be due to a lack of experience
or their bad management this time. It would be because I had seriously dropped the
ball.

Boris came back and we watched as the
BelOpt
prices started to spill down the terminal. He grabbed the mouse and clicked on a
strategy market to access its graphs.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘This all looks good. I’ll check back again
in a minute.’

He left me alone, unsure if I was swaying. I wondered if he could
smell the alcohol. My haze was disturbed by a beeping. I peered in to my screen
trying to deal with the piercing light and read the message. My one-to-one with
Jerome Ross was in five minutes.

I made it to the toilets before I threw up and then limply sat
back, crumpling like a leaf next to the white bowl. How had I got myself into this
mess? I held out a hand. It was shaking. ‘Shit,’ I whispered. Should I wash my face?
Get some more coffee? Was there any point?

I stepped back out to the relative calm of the floor. I wished
I could be like everyone else and hide in my cube all day.

‘Fuck!’ Boris shouted from his cube and the sound hit me like
a bullet, stopping me in my tracks. I watched Boris jump up and come down the aisle.
My stomach twisted in pain as if I was really sick, not just hung-over. He turned
into Cameron’s row. I reached my desk and typed in the keys for Cameron’s feed.

Warsaw Pricing Down

‘Fuck. It's fucking crashed.’ Boris was saying as I arrived behind
them.

‘Shit,’ I whispered.

‘You
muppet
,’ Boris said to Cameron.
‘Give me the keyboard.’ Boris started up the feed again. ‘There, okay, it's starting.
Checking the logs... looks like it was a
SegV
. It could
happen any time,’ he said desperately. ‘Cameron, do you have any idea what this
could be caused by?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Cameron said, hugging
himself
.

‘Didn’t Sam help you?’

‘Yes.’

 
‘Sam,’ Boris called, ‘
get
over here. I want you to fix this code
now
and I want the fix on production in the
next half hour.’

‘I can probably pull up the code,’ Cameron suggested.

‘You've done enough
mate
. Just step
away
from the computer. I'm going to spend
the rest of the afternoon now explaining another mess to the US.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’ Sam had arrived.

‘Pardon me, mate. What did you just say to me?’

‘I said go fuck yourself. This is your mess. Not Cameron’s or
mine.’

‘You are in big trouble, mate. I’ve had enough of your attitude.’

 
‘You've had enough of
my attitude? We're in this position because of your lack of balls. You should be
standing up to Stern, not trying to cover up this charade, you management gimp!’

‘Sam.’ I put a hand on his shoulder as keyboard tapping died
around us.

‘I'm going to kill him.’ Sam buried his face in his hands.

‘Is there a problem here?’ Felix broke into our circle with Jerome
Ross behind him, opening up his camera.

I snapped my hand away from Sam’s shoulder.

‘Someone tell me what is going on now.’ Felix looked at Boris.

‘Warsaw’s crashed. Looks like it’s overwriting some illegal piece
of memory,’ Boris said.

We all looked dumbly at Felix, waiting for his reaction. Jerome
Ross took a side step to get a better angle.

‘Well, what’s the problem?’ Felix demanded from Cameron.

‘
Em
... I don’t, well I don’t know,’
Cameron stuttered.

‘It is Cameron’s first feed as a programmer.’ Boris defended
him. ‘It could be something subtle, memory leaks are like that.’ He looked at Sam
as if he wanted back up. But Sam still had a hand over his face. ‘I mean, Sam did
the code review and obviously didn’t notice anything,’ Boris continued, ‘But I’ve
managed to restart the feed again so at least
‒
’

Sam launched at Boris punching the side of his face. I yelped
as Boris fell back against a chair and then stumbled to the ground.

‘You should be fucking fired,’ Sam spat after him.

‘Get security,’ Felix said over his shoulder and then lifted
Sam back by the collar.

‘Get the fuck off me,’ Sam sprung away from Felix and turned
to face him, ‘This department is a joke.’ He pointed at the floor. ‘And you’re responsible
for it.’

I cupped my mouth watching Felix puff out his chest, looking
down at Sam.

‘I have never come across such a bunch of incompetent clowns,’
Sam continued, ‘and you’re the biggest clown of all, mate.’

‘Do you want to be sued as well as fired?’ Felix barked.

Jerome Ross’s camera was tilted limply, away from his face and
it never swung around to see security reach the top of the stairs.

Chapter Eleven

Saturday afternoon was quiet.
But not the same
sort of quiet that lasted on the floor for the rest of Friday; a loud quiet, because
Sam had exploded with the same frustration we all felt and now he wasn’t coming
back.
Saturday was quiet too because I was the only one in the office. I
tried to pay attention to the updates about the Data Centre progress that flashed
by the screen but my mind kept going over the events that followed Sam’s dismissal.
When Jerome Ross found his voice again, he called us ‘
folks
’ and asked us to get back to work. Felix disappeared to his office
for the rest of the day and management and security came and went on the twentieth
floor like bees in a hive. All other business went on hold.
Including
my
5-Minute Snap
interview.

Finally the phone rang, justifying my weekend supervision. I
straightened up in my chair before answering.

One of the discs had gone down during the move. It wasn’t unexpected.
And I was happy to help out with a problem that wasn’t caused by me.

‘We’ll need you to transfer the feeds to a temporary server while
this is being fixed,’ Gary said, ‘Could be down for a while.’

I logged in and went about rebuilding our feeds in the affected
cluster. I handled my own feeds last. The compiler did its job, whisking through
each file, to build the executable.
BelOpt
finished and
I copied it over to the temporary server. METX took longer. Once complete, I ran
a command to list its contributing files, to make sure the executable was built
with the correct version of
Utils.cpp
– which contained my last-minute bug fix from the day of the METX delays. The version
was correct, but just to double-check I also retrieved a history of all
Utils.cpp
version numbers.

‘What the...’ My voice trailed, frowning at the list. The last
one was mine alright. But there was an earlier version that should not have been
there at all. It didn’t even have my name against it.

Boris Briggs version 6.05 2nd Feb

My mouth went dry as my mind raced ahead to calculate what this
could mean. I ran a comparison between my version of the file and Boris’ version.
The comparison tool only found one difference. I scrolled down to the blinking line
of code and thought back to my code review with Boris. We had talked about it over
email, before I flew home for a long weekend and when I got back he had updated
the METX site with his approval... I stared at the screen. My version of the code
used a binary search in the ISIN Generator. Boris’ version used standard find. Boris
had made the coding error that caused the delays on the morning of go-live. I jumped
when the phone rang again. Networks were ready for my freshly generated feeds and
happy for me to leave after that. I rolled out the feeds on to the temporary server
and after staying to make sure data was being processed correctly, I left the office.

When I returned home it was like going somewhere new. What I
had just found out seemed to change everything. I pulled on my running gear and
bolted out the door towards the park. Luckily the club run was long over. I was
in no mood to be sociable. I pushed myself for the first ten minutes, focussing
on getting my lungs pumping. Then I slowed down, trying to keep the pace steady.
I’d been totally shafted. That little shit, Boris. Did he do it on purpose? No,
the idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing. Besides, he didn’t cover his tracks. I came
out of the park and slowed to check for traffic. I’d been so angry with myself for
these last few months, I realised, feeling the weight of it beginning to lift. For
so long I’d been thinking everything was my fault. I sped up again on the path.
My plans had been totally derailed – I’d lost a good project – and the opportunity
to move into Quants. I’d even been thinking about leaving the industry. I was running
on anger through the second park into the final stretch back towards the gates.
My head was full of arguments with Boris.
His denial.
His surprise that I found out.
His ignorance of the whole thing
?...
I still couldn’t figure out how things went so badly wrong,
but I did know one thing; it all started with that bug.

I walked home holding a stitch in my side but I still wanted
to run.

My paintings and family photos were lying on the living floor
as usual. Why
aren’t they
up yet, I thought, annoyed. Where’s
my drill? I looked around as if it was the drill’s fault and spotted it, still in
its box, in the corner of the kitchen.

You never know what you might find behind a wall.
Twigs, rock, wood.
As I tunnelled through my anger, somewhere
in between crooked measurements,
Polyfilla
and wall dust,
a plan came to mind.