John, Thank God you are here!

Tina answered him succinctly, "It is a normal work day. You have meetings, and programming, the usual Tuesday."

Lately his life had become so predictable; his job was good, but not thrilling. His girlfriend was almost perfect yet somehow did not meet all his needs. He wondered if there was something more to this world, to his life that he was missing.

John got to his job in 12 minutes by taking the personal moving roads that took people everywhere in the city. It was always called the city, never Mainframe City, its actual name. Population of the city was a few over 30 million at last count. The last count was yesterday, there was a complete census done every day by the Department, and any discrepancies were quickly accounted for. There was not much crime, sometimes people would try a robbery, or **** someone in a jealous rage, but then the Department would just restore the backup of the person so no one really every died.

John was one of the highest technical people at the Department and he got all of the tough jobs, creating new individual programs, IP's for short. IP's were the technical specifications that made a person function in the mainframe. New people were created to replace people who opted to be concluded, and several hundred a year did, or because the Department saw the need for another personality in the mix of social interaction in the city, making major revisions to personalities of people who did not perform as predicted. People who broke the law, or did something they were not supposed to do; something the Department found contrary to a peaceful life in the mainframe.

He walked in the front door of The Department, and was greeted by Stan, "Hey Mr. Doe how you doing today?"

John answered, "Today is going great. How did your bowling game go last night?"

"I got a 240 on the last game, 660 for series. Not too bad for an old guy like me."

Stan liked to keep his age at about 50, which made him one of the older people in the mainframe. Most of the population was about 25 to 30. There were even two women who like to keep their ages at about 65 to 70, they liked the whole grandmother thing John guessed.

He thought about these things as the elevator took him up to the 275th floor of the tall building the Department occupied. Most of his work could have been done from home, or anywhere for that matter, but he liked the contact with his coworkers, at least most of the time. As the elevator doors opened he heard the shrill voice of Marcie Lambert, "John thank god you here! The census is off by a lot today, almost one thousand people are missing. Mr. Jones does not know what to do. We need your help."

Mr. Jones was the CEO of the Department and nominally John's boss. The reality was Mr. Jones did not have a clue what and how John did his job, and preferred not to, as long as everything went well. Today though everything was not going well. Marcie was walking in front of him as they headed for the executive conference room. Marcie was a good looking woman with a shapely ass, nice legs and a big set of tits. As long as she kept her mouth shut she might be a good fuck. John decided it might be worth a try some day.

"Mr. Jones and the other top executives of the Department were gathered around the table. As John entered the room all heads swiveled towards him and he hears Mr. Jones say, "Well there has been a real fuck up this time. I want to know what happened as soon as possible. If someone in your area or you did this there will be hell to pay."

John counted to ten before answering, Mr. Jones could be a real prick sometimes and he did not feel like getting into it today. "Well good morning to all of you to. I will get to work on it, I'm sure it is just a small glitch. Just give me a couple of hours."

With that he headed for his work space. He had seven large screens that he worked on at one time, and he was able to simultaneously, with Tina's help, control several different projects at once. There were several blinking lights that indicated problems that needed his attention, but he cleared the screens and filed everything away for later. "Tina bring up the names of the missing people and cross reference them for me looking for any patterns, work, play, sexual deviation, recreation, anything that you can sift from the data."