Oh, hey there! It’s been a few months since I last posted. Here’s my most recent story. It’s a long one. I’ve broken it up into a few parts that I will share over the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy! As always, thanks for reading!
Good Morning
When Alfred arrived at the lab, the sudden worry that he’d forgotten something struck him. He patted his khaki pockets, registering their contents. “Keys, wallet, pen, pocket-style notepad, and phone,” he said feeling for the objects. He tried to shrug off the feeling as he walked toward the lab.
“Well if it was important, I’m sure I’ll remember it shortly!”
As Alfred approached the building, his eyes leveled onto the bold letters boasting the lab’s core competency, “Sentience Lab: Simulation Division.” His smile faded as the feeling he’d forgotten something dawned on him again. Maybe he’d forgotten to fill the dog’s food and water this morning.
He pulled out his phone to call his wife. She answered the house phone on the third ring.
“Hey, it’s me. Did I forget to refill the dog’s food and water containers this morning again?” Alfred asked somewhat sheepishly.
He’d been getting nervous about his memory lately. He experienced moments of confusion most days. He had to go over everything several times to retain it. He was secretly worried his wife was beginning to resent his panicked morning phone calls.
“You remembered. Why do you suddenly think you’re forgetting everything?”
“You sure? I just have a terrible feeling; I’ve forgotten something important. I’m sorry to bother you for nothing. Oh! Wait! Did I leave the oven on last night?!”
That must be it. Even though he’d come home early, he’d been tired from work yesterday. Making the stuffed peppers and chicken in the oven had completely drained him.
“No, again, dear. You got up to check it last night while I was in bed reading!”
“Okay,” he replied, a bit shaken, “I’m not sure what it is. Maybe I should schedule an appointment with the Neurologist again.”
The last appointment had been fruitless. He had been poked, prodded, and analyzed in forty different manners; all the tests indicated he was functioning as a normal human for his age.
“Would you like me to handle that? I’ve got nothing to do until my first patient at 10.”
How did he manage to find someone so wonderful?
“Yes, please and thank you. Well, I promise this is the last time I lose my mind before lunchtime, okay?”
His wife’s laughter in his ear made his heart swell with joy. He had forgotten his worry after all.
“Thanks. I’m heading into the lab now. I’ll see you this evening. Love you!” he called into the receiver.
He ended the call, grabbed the door handle, pulling hard against the change in air pressure, before entering the lab.
While waiting for the elevator, Alfred remembered he promised a video call with his supervisor at 8 AM sharp. It was already 8:03 AM. He turned to the stairwell door, considering jogging down the three flights of stairs. He decided against it. He’d determined earlier in his career being presentable for their call was more important than being one minute earlier. As the doors for the elevator opened, he considered that this meeting may have been the thing he’d forgotten about. “Mystery solved,” he said to himself as he entered the elevator.
He relished the feeling of calm that washed over him in the elevator. He was late for a meeting, still anxious about that. He thought to himself, I’m a scientist and an engineer, being late to meetings is to be expected if real science is to be done!
Joane was late all the time, and recently, often, she failed to even attend the morning meetings they’d scheduled the day before. Her excuse was always the same, “Oh, we had a meeting? Sorry, I must have forgotten to put it on my calendar. Oh? You sent the invite to me? Well, that’s interesting, it’s in my trash already. I’ll have the IT guys check into this when they have a chance. These damned computers are seemingly against us now-a-days.” She always chuckled to herself at the joke.
Alfred entered his office, gently closed the door behind him, greeted his office plants with a cheerful, “Good morning,” then sat behind his computer. He typed in his password and pressed enter. An error message appeared, indicating he entered the wrong password. He tried again. And again. On the fourth attempt, the computer locked him out of his account.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” he cried out.
The anxiety of his morning crept back. He picked up his phone, dialing the only office number he knew by heart.
“Hey Ted, do you have a minute? Yeah, I’m locked out again. I swear, it’s this new keyboard you all got me. I love the ergonomics, but it’s killing my ability to type correctly. Yeah, if you can just change it back to the normal one, that’d be excellent. Wait, I changed it yesterday? I certainly don’t remember doing that. Yeah, I was tired yesterday afternoon. Must have been one of those automatic update things, I just went on autopilot. Okay, great. Thanks again, Ted!”
He returned the phone to its dock. He smiled to himself for a moment, remembering yesterday he was suddenly filled with a swell of intense interest, but couldn’t quite understand why. He felt like the memory was on the tip of his tongue.
“Today’s just gonna be a weird one I guess,” he said to his plants. They didn’t respond. “At least not that weird,” he chuckled to himself as he re-typed his usual password into his computer.
His computer chimed with jubilant recognition, allowing him access. It was 8:10 AM. He hurriedly opened his video conferencing software, hoping she had only been there for a minute or so. As the software loaded on his desktop, he donned the active noise-canceling headphones his wife had given him.
He joined his private virtual conference room. He was alone. He released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Sighing the breath out, he shuddered at the haunting feeling that he was forgetting something. He thought to himself, maybe Joane had canceled this call? Why is it still on my calendar then? Had I forgotten to remove it? Did I lock myself out of my computer yesterday and just give up? Why was yesterday afternoon so difficult to remember?
One of his colleagues pounded on his office window. The banging startled Alfred, jarring him out of his concentrated efforts to recall the events of the previous day. His movement nearly caused an avalanche of the precariously placed objects that adorned his desk. After stabilizing the delicate ecosystem of his desk, Alfred stood, making eye contact with his colleague, Samantha. He pointed to his door. She nodded once before turning the corner to come around.
She opened the door without knocking. Alfred returned to his chair. He attempted to mask his mild irritation as he regarded her intrusion. Samantha was, quite possibly, the smartest person he’d ever had the pleasure of working with. She also had terrible manners when it came to personal space. For instance, the knocking on the window; directly below the sign requesting, “Please don’t knock on the window. It scares the plants, and Alfred. Thank you, Occupants of Office 202!”
Alfred brushed off the frustration as he removed his headset. His morning had been tough enough already. If he fought Sam now, who knew where they’d be by lunch. “Good morning, Sam,” he said, smiling at the brilliant young mind using his office curtains as an eyeglass cleaner.
Samantha dropped the curtain, realizing she wasn’t in her own office for the first time since closing the door behind her. “Oh! Alfred! I’m so glad I ran into you! It looks like the artificial sun programming was off by a few percent again. Burned the planet to a crisp once the sim hit the industrial age.”
Alfred struggled to contain the radiant disappointment he felt. They had failed again. He had failed again.
“How is that possible?” he asked, “I reduced the simulator’s sun value to 88% yesterday. How could it have gone up?!”
Alfred walked over to the windows. From his vantage point, he could see “The Core,” as the team had come to call it. The central node for the massive array of computers had been designed by a famous artist fifteen years prior. The obsidian cube that held the management functionality and primary simulator interface had been placed on a magnetic platform that allowed the entire system to slowly rotate in any direction.
He blinked away his disappointment after watching the cube complete a full rotation.
“Did you pull the logs to see why the sun jumped this time?”
“I did. The sun didn’t change at all. It’s still set to 88% power output. I checked the greenhouse gases, the orbital decay, and the moon’s distance again. Nothing seems to account for the sudden burst of energy in the simulator.”
Alfred heard a voice. It was tiny, quiet, and angry. It was Joane. He leapt over to his computer, unplugging the headphones and lifting the post-it note he left on his webcam when not in use.
“Hi Joane! Sorry! I was just talking to Samantha about the simulator!”
Joane appeared on the screen, she was still in bed, disheveled and grumpy. Her voice boomed from the speakers.
“Why do you make meetings at 5 AM my time and then don’t even bother to show up? Hmm? This is the last time, Alfred. One more and…” she ran her finger across her throat before smiling. “Okay, so what’s so important that you couldn’t let an old hag like me sleep?”
Alfred’s blood ran cold as he leaned back in his chair. He racked his brain. He thought Joane had requested this meeting. What could have been his agenda?
“Sorry? Joane, didn’t you request this meeting?”
“Alfred, do you really think I would ask you to wake me up at the crack of dawn?” Joane’s voice rarely carried concern, she was far too “West Coast” to get down on life, but this time she sounded worried for him.
“Sorry, Joane, I… I think I’ve been working a bit too much. Do you remember why I asked for this meeting? I’m having a difficult time remembering yesterday afternoon. Apparently, I screwed up the simulation run as well. Maybe that was it?”
Alfred looked apologetically into the camera. Sam took the opportunity to wrap around his desk, coming into camera view. She stood too close to Alfred.
“Hi Joane! I’m here too just in case you wanted to yell at Alfred!”
Alfred shook his head, shimmying to the side in his chair to allow Samantha and himself a more reasonable amount of personal space.
“Good morning, Sam, how are you today?” Joane asked with a knowing smile.
“I’m great! Although, the simulator data is super weird again today. I was just letting Alfred know that it failed again. Same as the last gaaaaaa-bazillion attempts,” Samantha began. “Oh! Also, I got a cat. Just something to pass the time, ya know!”
Joane yawned, ungraciously not covering her mouth. Alfred counted the fillings. Samantha did too.
“Five,” Alfred whispered.
“I count six,” Sam replied just as quietly.
“Were you saying something else, Samantha? Sorry, these early mornings are tough for me.”
“Oh, no, sorry, just talking to myself!” Sam beamed at the camera.
Alfred felt like the morning was quickly slipping from his grasp. He shimmied into Sam’s hip with his shoulder, nudging her gently out of the camera’s view.
“Sorry, Joane. I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I’ll head down to The Core in a minute for our daily stand-up. If I can figure out what went wrong this time, I’ll email you the details.”
He didn’t wait for her response before closing the meeting window. He and Joane had worked together for decades, they had agreed a long time ago not to waste time on hellos and goodbyes. He appreciated that more than Joane could know. Small talk made his skin crawl. He shivered again, bringing himself back into the present moment.
Sam had moved around to the front of his desk. She was waiting for him, he guessed. She was rocking up and down on the balls of her feet. She reminded him of his little sister whenever she did that. Such a child-like, carefree kind of motion.
“Ready to go down to The Core?” he asked. “I bet the others are just as interested in seeing what I messed up this time.”
“Oh, totally. I’ve already told them to prepare their most esteemed ridicule,” Samantha smiled like a mean older brother.
“Great. Let’s not keep them waiting.” Alfred responded as he stood, collecting his lab coat from the back of his chair.
Thanks for reading the first part of “While(True):” I will be releasing the next part during the next week.
Here’s Part 2!
Ryan, I really enjoy your writing man! And I can't wait to see what happens next, damn you for making me wait!