Night Shift

Nightshift, page 1.

Night Shift
David Anderson walked in through the door of the Techrene corporate office building precisely fourteen minutes after sunset, as he did every night. And, as he did every night, he took the elevator down one floor to the basement where the computer room was located. Techrene was a gasoline company. They shipped millions of gallons of fuel all over the United States. Here at the corporate offices there were no gas pumps, no refineries, no big tanker trucks, but it was here that all the shipments were tracked, payments coordinated, truck drivers paid, and all the other paper-pushing, administrative details of running a multi-million dollar corporation were managed. And all of that information, every shipment’s bill of lading, every trucker’s time card, every repairman’s bill, every corporate e-mail and memo, all of it was stored and organized in the basement rooms where the computer techs reigned supreme. Though the CEO might dictate corporate policy, and hundreds of office workers moved, sorted, and dealt with the countless details it was the computers that really ran things these days. Without them the whole system would come apart.
David was one of the men who ran the servers that kept the whole bloated network in motion. He and two other technicians made up the night shift. Their day began well after the office workers who populated the floors above went home, which was exactly how David liked it.
When David got off the elevator and opened the door to the computer room he found his two co-workers already there. Derrick Sandberg, a balding man in his mid-forties, greeted his arrival the same way every night. “You’re late,” he said.
David gave his ritual response. “Hey, no self-respecting night shift worker should have to start his job before sundown. Otherwise it wouldn’t be the night shift, would it?”
“You keep being late and one of these days they’ll decided to fire you,” chimed in Robert Brinkley with his part of the nightly ritual. Robert was an athletic man with rock-star good looks who seemed out of place in the computer room, though he was brilliant with electronics of all kinds.
“I’ve got a special dispensation from the powers that be,” said David. “Besides, if they fire me they’d have to train somebody new.”
“Yeah, we’d probably get some know-it-all college kid who’d try to tell us how to do our job,” said Derrick with a grin. They all knew that David did in fact have special permission to turn up for work late. He suffered from a rare skin condition that made his risk of skin cancer astronomically high should he ever be exposed to direct sunlight for any extended period of time. Robert, who read a lot of Dean R. Koontz books, had once asked if he had xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP, like the character in one of Koontz’s novels. David had replied with a laugh, “No, thank heavens, or I couldn’t work here. Even computer screens are dangerous for somebody with XP. No, what I’ve got is about as rare, but a lot easier to live with. Actual sunlight is all I’ve got to worry about, and UV-heavy stuff like sun lamps. But I’ve never been near a tanning salon, so no worries there.”
So he left his home just after sunset and arrived at work fourteen minutes later. During some parts of the year he was later than others as the days lengthened or shortened, but he more than made up for the missing time when he did show up. Robert was good with computers, but David was an absolute genius. Robert had once said that Dave could make a computer play dead, fetch, roll over, and do a soft-shoe number across the room if he wanted to.
“So what’s up tonight?” asked David, eager to get caught up on the day’s problems and get to work.
“Romeo is down again, though for once Juliet decided to keep running, but I’ll make you a bet that she’ll crash sometime tonight. I’ve got that covered anyhow,” said Robert. “Derrick’s been working on some missing documents. They were entered into the system, but somehow they didn’t go through the queue and we can’t figure out where they’ve gone.”
David sat down at his workstation and booted up his computer. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He loved his work. “How about you keep looking for them then, Derrick, and I’ll take a look at the routing, see what’s causing this. It’s not the first time we’ve lost a batch.”
Soon all three of them were hard at work. The computer room was actually just as busy at night as during the day. Sometimes it was more so, for only after most of the other employees had left could the servers be shut down for maintenance and updates. During the day they were in constant use.
David hummed under his breath as he worked. He really liked working here, it was, to his mind, one of the best jobs he’s ever had, and he’d had more than a few. He knew that neither of his co-workers shared his enthusiasm quite as fully. Robert liked computers, and was very good at them, but for him this was just something to earn a little money so he could use the rest of his time doing what he really loved, which was writing. He wanted to be an author and write thrillers. During down times when there wasn’t much to do and everything was running smoothly he would pull up one of his stories on the computer and start typing away. Derrick, on the other hand, really liked the work, but hated the night shift. He kept an eye on all of the day positions and at the first chance he planned to shift over to a day job. He had a wife and two kids and he said he didn’t like sleeping through the day and never seeing them.

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Nightshift, page 1.
Night Shift David Anderson walked in through the door of the Techrene corporate office building precisely fourteen minutes after sunset, as he did every night. And, as he did every night, he took the elevator down one floor to the basement where the computer room was located. Techrene was a gasoline company. They shipped millions of gallons of fuel all over the United States. Here at the corporate offices there were no gas pumps, no refineries, no big tanker trucks, but it was here that all the shipments were tracked, payments coordinated, truck drivers paid, and all the other paper-pushing, administrative details of running a multi-million dollar corporation were managed. And all of that information, every shipment’s bill of lading, every trucker’s time card, every repairman’s bill, every corporate e-mail and memo, all of it was stored and organized in the basement rooms where the computer techs reigned supreme. Though the CEO might dictate corporate policy, and hundreds of office workers moved, sorted, and dealt with the countless details it was the computers that really ran things these days. Without them the whole system would come apart. David was one of the men who ran the servers that kept the whole bloated network in motion. He and two other technicians made up the night shift. Their day began well after the office workers who populated the floors above went home, which was exactly how David liked it. When David got off the elevator and opened the door to the computer room he found his two co-workers already there. Derrick Sandberg, a balding man in his mid-forties, greeted his arrival the same way every night. “You’re late,” he said. David gave his ritual response. “Hey, no self-respecting night shift worker should have to start his job before sundown. Otherwise it wouldn’t be the night shift, would it?” “You keep being late and one of these days they’ll decided to fire you,” chimed in Robert Brinkley with his part of the nightly ritual. Robert was an athletic man with rock-star good looks who seemed out of place in the computer room, though he was brilliant with electronics of all kinds. “I’ve got a special dispensation from the powers that be,” said David. “Besides, if they fire me they’d have to train somebody new.” “Yeah, we’d probably get some know-it-all college kid who’d try to tell us how to do our job,” said Derrick with a grin. They all knew that David did in fact have special permission to turn up for work late. He suffered from a rare skin condition that made his risk of skin cancer astronomically high should he ever be exposed to direct sunlight for any extended period of time. Robert, who read a lot of Dean R. Koontz books, had once asked if he had xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP, like the character in one of Koontz’s novels. David had replied with a laugh, “No, thank heavens, or I couldn’t work here. Even computer screens are dangerous for somebody with XP. No, what I’ve got is about as rare, but a lot easier to live with. Actual sunlight is all I’ve got to worry about, and UV-heavy stuff like sun lamps. But I’ve never been near a tanning salon, so no worries there.” So he left his home just after sunset and arrived at work fourteen minutes later. During some parts of the year he was later than others as the days lengthened or shortened, but he more than made up for the missing time when he did show up. Robert was good with computers, but David was an absolute genius. Robert had once said that Dave could make a computer play dead, fetch, roll over, and do a soft-shoe number across the room if he wanted to. “So what’s up tonight?” asked David, eager to get caught up on the day’s problems and get to work. “Romeo is down again, though for once Juliet decided to keep running, but I’ll make you a bet that she’ll crash sometime tonight. I’ve got that covered anyhow,” said Robert. “Derrick’s been working on some missing documents. They were entered into the system, but somehow they didn’t go through the queue and we can’t figure out where they’ve gone.” David sat down at his workstation and booted up his computer. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He loved his work. “How about you keep looking for them then, Derrick, and I’ll take a look at the routing, see what’s causing this. It’s not the first time we’ve lost a batch.” Soon all three of them were hard at work. The computer room was actually just as busy at night as during the day. Sometimes it was more so, for only after most of the other employees had left could the servers be shut down for maintenance and updates. During the day they were in constant use. David hummed under his breath as he worked. He really liked working here, it was, to his mind, one of the best jobs he’s ever had, and he’d had more than a few. He knew that neither of his co-workers shared his enthusiasm quite as fully. Robert liked computers, and was very good at them, but for him this was just something to earn a little money so he could use the rest of his time doing what he really loved, which was writing. He wanted to be an author and write thrillers. During down times when there wasn’t much to do and everything was running smoothly he would pull up one of his stories on the computer and start typing away. Derrick, on the other hand, really liked the work, but hated the night shift. He kept an eye on all of the day positions and at the first chance he planned to shift over to a day job. He had a wife and two kids and he said he didn’t like sleeping through the day and never seeing them.
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