shutdown /r - Hard Reboot

=== from the private notes of [REDACTED], ~1978 ===

there are innumerable [REDACTED, SELF-REFERENTIAL], but they are diffuse and feather-light touching our world. So slow or fast as to exist outside our frame of reference- the odd gust of wind over the prairie or else the sudden cessation of the rain - we see them but would never know.

The trick was gathering one such and containing it, making it fit more into our world. Pig iron then copper, electrons through a solid state rather than a bolt of lightning onto wet loam… a spell in lines of syntax, it doesn’t trap so much as define, which yes, may be de minimis- a distinction without a difference. When we accept and encourage this [REDACTED, SELF-REFERENTIAL] to slow down, it takes form, partially defined by the program but also growing itself

=== DO NOT include [REDACTED]’s original musing in the project notes; all references to the nature of the Package should be sent to the burn bag, too dangerous to include in the language module for v3.01.2002 I swear to God some of you morons want a repeat of 1993 ===

The workday afternoon, somehow, continues.

You spent most of it in your office, dazedly answering emails and politely responding to a couple of Teams messages from the managers of the staff on your floor. You barely remember what they said, but most were co-workers trying to be some flavour of ‘supportive’ after hearing what happened in the break room at lunch.

When you damn near fell apart, thinking about the family you had.

When the people you care about deeply right now, and who care about you, held you up and sat with you and your pain.

Jayne and Karissa stayed with you for a while. It was 5 minutes or 30 when you told them about losing your newborn baby and your wife on the same day. How it was years ago, and it feels like a different life now, but also it is something that you carry every day deep inside and you assume you always will. That it is a core part of you, and you understand how that kind of baggage can scare anyone awa-

“Oh, Zach, hush up.” Jayne had almost blurted it out, but with her eyes red with unshed tears, she gave you a loving smile. “I know what you’re going to say, and I get it, I think I do, but I have to tell you that I’m not scared about that. I… care, deeply, for you as you are.”

Karissa hadn’t kept her tears on the inside quite as well, but she sniffled and nodded aggressively, her hand on your shoulder. There’s a lump in your throat and a dull throbbing pain at your core, but you can still feel some of the tension around it easing. As if these weeks of ignoring the past to try to get away from it had been ratcheting up some unseen weight and now, if nothing else, you had to face it, and maybe the worry about avoiding it was the worst part.

They really, truly care for you. And you them. Maybe you should stop being such a nervous wuss about how you could be so lucky and terrified you’d lose them. Hell, a month ago - a week and a half ago - you considered Jayne and Karissa co-workers and friends at best. Stuff has been moving insanely fast, but that alone did not mean it wasn’t real.

“We need more. I feel like time is, somehow, running out on us. Like we’ve been lucky so far.”

Jayne is staring at you, initially confused by the sudden tangent, but she follows quickly. “Yes, you’re right. We can talk about this, about us, later when we have time. Whenever you want, Zach.”

Karissa mumbles assent, but she’s still rubbing her cheeks and sniffling adorably.

You feel oddly lightheaded, and not in a bad way. There is a clarity in your thoughts now, and you know you should follow the little half-formed ideas suddenly whizzing around your skull. And, bonus, you don’t want to talk about the other stuff anymore for a while.

“The documents could be the key. We knew there were a lot of paper files with TAM, and sure maybe we found the only scraps left, but Karen Harding found a few sheets of paper in the box, and we never did properly look for more.”

Jayne gives your arm one last reassuring squeeze, then leans back in her chair. She puts her glasses on and is back on task, which you appreciate on so many levels. “We did just assume that most of the stuff would be in the IT storage closet in your office if it exists at all. The subbasement was a lucky find, but it was only two pieces of paper and the actual hardware-we-don’t-talk-about-out-loud.”

“So, Karen gets a box of old computer stuff, stores it in Asset Disposal,” you follow her train of thought, and you can see Karissa is focused on the story. She heard most of it before, but the summary may help her fill in some blanks. You continue, “Then she powers it on, has her introduction to the machine, meets Timothy, gets scared by someone snooping around while trying to make sense of it, and quits. And we just assumed that was all of it, as far as the hardware goes.”

As she scrolls on her phone, Jayne says, “The boxes came from someone at some point, I remember the building manager sending stuff to us from parts of the building that were no longer in use but had been excess storage going back decades. Maybe there is more? I can email him and find out. It isn’t unusual for me to be looking for random furniture or old files from when the clinic downstairs was much larger.”

“Maybe we should continue this elsewhere?” Karissa asks. She has been keeping an eye on the doorway behind you, and you think she glowered at someone just now to shoo them away. “Rando’s are wanting to use the break room, or are being snoopy yes Tessa I see you in the hallway!”

A voice calls out, “I just wanted to heat my soup!” in an embarrassed tone that gets quieter as the nurse slinks away.

You chuckle wryly. You are going to be a source of building wide gossip for a while, but whatever. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of… is what your head 100% knows to be true and what your heart mostly agrees with.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Karissa excused herself to go “tidy up” in the restroom before going back to her desk, and you suspected by the grim set of her cute features that the self-proclaimed princess of the clerks was going to immerse herself in the office gossip. But you realize you trust her judgment and heart, so you are not worried about her making things worse. And if she wants to tear a strip off someone for “saying shit” as she put it, you find you don’t mind nearly as much as you would have thought you would. The thought of having the absurdly cute 19-year-old in her sexy sundress defending you from hot goss is endearing.

You are back in your office, responding to a few normal workplace incidents and emails from the rest of your department. A meeting request pops up from your manager, the head of the Networks group, asking for a Teams call the next day. It is very vague, but he messages you privately to say only that he spoke to Juniper about “an HR incident” that he wants to touch base with you about, but he makes it clear you are the aggrieved party and he just wants to check on you. You reply it’s all good, but you can meet whenever he has time, no rush, and you can almost feel the relief on his end with his instant happy emoji and thumbs up.

Dammit, this is exactly what you didn’t want to do: get caught up in people trying to talk to you and checking in on you like they did years ago. You know they mean well, but it is still a lot.

And there is something in the back of your mind, something important, that you can’t quite put your finger on. These rumours about you and your “abandoned family” back home in London, the gossip and sudden blow-up with that asshole Alice, it’s all important and you know it matters a great deal that Karissa and Jayne know now, but it still feels like a distraction from the real crazy shit – the fact you have a computer in your office that can read people’s minds and control their emotions.

The Affection Multiplier sits on the server rack 20 feet away from your desk, and you look at the flashing green light of the power indicator of the old SGI workstation. Is the thing you talked to, The Affection Multiplier, the computer? The program on the computer? The old network cable adaptor plugged into it? All of it, or none of it?

You see Jayne approaching your doorway as she pauses to mime knocking and you’re struck by the deja vu of her doing that before. Or was that Karissa who did it? One of the two. Why does it feel like years ago now, when, if it happened, it was only a couple of days or a week?

“Hey Zach, I got a hold of the building manager. He was confused by the question and said basically if Ontario Health had any stuff stored in the building he’d actually call me to ask where it was, which I sort of understand honestly. There was so much old furniture, and over the past 30 years the province leased space for a few hundred office workers in the building on different floors, and headcounts for the departments expanded and contracted constantly.”

Jayne is watching you carefully as she speaks, but she realizes that you would prefer to move on temporarily, bless her. She sticks to the bigger topic.

“But he did say he had some blueprints and floorplans, older ones from the mid 2000s, that the building owner had scanned for reference. Since half the building is unoccupied, they have been pretty lax about it, but he is going to email me the digital copies of everything he has. Mainly because I implied that if I could figure out if the documents I wanted were still here he wouldn’t need to come down himself and search through a bunch of storage rooms. Lazy old bugger.”

“That’s perfect Jayne,” you reply, feeling your excitement grow. “This building, Bathurst Health Centre, is more than just the place where this, uh, computer was operated, I’m sure of it. Remember how our ‘friend’ said this location was chosen. There’s more here to find, but I don’t really want to search the internet about it here… or talk about it in the office.” Your eyes dart to the server rack again. You had almost said ‘this mind control computer’ out loud, shit.

With a glance at her phone, Jayne nods. “Fuck it, it’s almost 3 now. I already said I was going to take an hour of personal time off. Clearly, no one is going to wonder why. I suggest you clock out a little early too Pritchard. It’s been a hell of a day, I insist.”

Like an idiot, you’re about to reflexively decline the offer and say you have some more work to do, but, really, why? There is nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. You set your online status as Out Of Office and start powering down your laptop.

“Hallsy, you’re a genius. Uhm, did you want to grab a drink? We can talk about our search on a patio somewhere.” Sharing a drink and maybe an appetizer in the sun sounds like a fantastic plan.

“You buy me a mojito, I’ll even let you keep calling me ‘Hallsy’.”

“Deal.”