Chapter Three
THREE
I’ll be right down might be an exaggeration, but not much of one.
IT is located on the fourth floor, and I’d estimate it takes less than five minutes for Fisher to burst out of the stairwell—probably more like three.
Still, by the time he arrives I’m leaning against the threshold, blocking open the door to the workroom with my body, tapping my toe.
I can’t bear to watch the monitors anymore.
His wavy dark hair, always a bit disheveled, is almost standing on end. It’s probably the result of taking off the telephone headset he wears at work, but I amuse myself by imagining that seeing me twice in one day is making him pull his hair out.
“So.” He stops in front of me and tilts his head to one side.
“‘Glitching out,’ you say?” He splays his hand over the door to push it open wide enough for both of us to enter.
It takes some effort to counter both the weight of the steel door as well as the resistance created by the automatic closing mechanism, and since his arm is stretched out right in front of me, I can’t help but take note of how the corded muscles of his forearm have leaped into prominence.
Clearly, I’ve been spending too much of my spare time reading romance novels if I’m now ogling Fisher Davis’s forearms. And God knows, I don’t have time to spare.
With a roll of my eyes, I brush past him through the doorway. The first thing he does is stride over to the workstation, pick up my stained sweatshirt from the chair, and fix me with a cocked eyebrow. “Is this … wine?”
“No, blood,” I lie, snatching the hoodie from his hand.
He knows it’s not the truth, and I fully expect him to scold me.
He does glance pointedly toward one of his stupid signs.
But instead of saying more about it, he sits down and studies the monitors intently, one at a time, occasionally typing some sort of command, which as far as I can tell, the computer ignores.
“You said you were uploading files when … this happened?” he asks, gesturing to the screen now filled with mostly gibberish.
“Yes. Professor Pedersen wanted me to add the novels of Jane Austen to the database. That mess is supposed to be Pride and Prejudice.”
“Pride and Prejudice,” he repeats. “Never read it.”
To keep myself from smacking my palm to my forehead, I remind myself it could be worse. He could have said never heard of it.
“Anyway,” I continue, when I’m reasonably certain the words won’t come out as a strangled scream, “I downloaded the file from the web, converted it to the proper format, and started the upload process. That’s when I noticed something had gone wonky.”
“Wonky,” he echoes wryly, like he’s storing away another technical term. Then he turns to face me. “And was this before or after you spilled the wine?”
“Oh,” I grumble. “I knew you weren’t going to let that go. Textbook Fisher, to be pissed off by a simple mistake.”
“I’m not angry,” he says, and his voice is so calm, so self-righteous, it makes me more agitated yet. “I’m disappointed.” He leans back in the chair, which creaks loudly enough that I almost don’t hear him add, “and not about the wine.”
“What?” I demand.
“Obviously you weren’t drinking alone.” He scoots my empty cup across the desktop’s plastic veneer and stacks it with Geoff’s before tossing both of them in the trash. “Were you in here with that Winkworth guy?”
Part of me would like to believe he’s jealous. But I absolutely know better.
“Why do you ask?” I demand. I hope it’s clear I mean, What business is it of yours?
It’s not a denial, however, and he leaps on it.
“I suspected as much. You know this workroom isn’t a public space, Elle.
Access requires special authorization. And you should be careful who you trust around your database.
” Suddenly, he’s all business. “Last week, the guy I saw you with this afternoon brought his laptop into IT—I wasn’t working the desk, so I didn’t catch his name.
But I remember his face. Anyway, all his files were corrupted because his hard drive was infected with some wicked virus.
” He crosses his arms over the smiling cat on his chest. “Probably picked it up visiting porn sites.”
I’m torn between leaping to Geoff’s defense and forcing myself to acknowledge that Fisher may be an ass, but I’ve never known him to lie. Masking an inward grimace of disgust, I scoff. “Are you kink-shaming him?”
The very tips of Fisher’s ears pink as he leans toward me.
“No. I’m complete lack of internet safety protocols and virus protection shaming him,” he snaps.
Then he reaches up beneath his glasses to rub the little indentations on either side of his nose.
“Listen, I know this database means a lot to you. I wouldn’t want to see it messed up,” he says, and I get the distinct feeling he’s not only talking about the database. “Just be careful, OK?”
I blink, genuinely touched by his concern.
But the glimpse of kinder, gentler Fisher, a guy who maybe doesn’t want to see me messed up, pops like a bubble when he finishes, “Because I have better things to do with my time than come down here and clean up after your messes.”
Fury whooshes upward through my core like a Roman candle, but a few sparks of fear linger in its wake. Yes, I could cheerfully strangle Fisher for his arrogance, but at the same time, I can’t help but ask, “Do you—do you really think a virus did this?” If so, the results could be devastating.
“The college has pretty rigorous defenses in place.” He squints at something on the screen and shakes his head. “No, I think this is most likely the result of the geomagnetic storm.”
“The … what?”
“Geomagnetic storm,” he repeats, turning toward me again. His careful enunciation is enough to grate my already fraying nerves. “It’s the scientific term for solar flares.”
“Oh.” Those I’ve heard of. “I, uh, I thought those were pretty common—no big deal?”
“Most of the time they’re not. They cause minor atmospheric anomalies.
People who don’t live in the north get to see the Northern Lights, that kind of thing.
Other times, though, it’s more of an annoyance—temporary power outages, disrupted satellite communication, the internet goes down.
” He jerks a thumb toward the computer behind him.
“I suspect that’s what caused your database to glitch out. ”
Is that—did I just see a twinkle in Fisher’s eye?
Yeah, no. I think the stress of this malfunction or whatever it is, is messing with my mind.
“Tonight was supposed to be the peak,” he says, “so of course it’s gotten a lot of coverage in the news. You know, since it’s Friday the thirteenth.”
I don’t know which bothers me more, the suggestion that I might be vulnerable to superstition or the implication that I haven’t been paying attention.
Either way, I apparently should’ve known better than to try to upload anything tonight.
“Oh. I hadn’t heard about it,” I confess and nod toward the computer system and by extension the contents of the database.
“Too buried in the nineteenth century, I guess.”
“You know,” he says, “some scientists believe it’s only a matter of time until one of these flares sends us all back to the nineteenth century.”
I blink. “As in, time travel?”
His lips twitch as he tries—and fails—to suppress an incredulous smile. “No. As in, extinction level event for anything involving electricity. One big burst and bam!” He snaps his fingers.
As if on cue, the overhead lights flicker rapidly three times.
It’s not enough of a power interruption to affect anything else; the monitors and mainframe continue to hum and glow. I could almost convince myself I just blinked too fast.
But it’s still an unsettling reminder of the vulnerabilities of AUSTEN-C.
“So what do we do about … that?” I ask, tipping my head toward the monitor behind him.
He doesn’t follow my glance—doesn’t take his eyes off me, in fact. “My best advice is to disconnect the server.”
“You mean … turn it off and on again?”
Do IT guys understand self-parody?
His shoulders rise and fall, as if he’s shrugging away a minor annoyance. “Yeah, yeah—I know. But it really does solve a lot of problems. Clears the cache memory, allows the system to return to the last safe point.”
“OK,” I say. “You’re the expert. So, where’s the power switch?” I scan the sides and bottom of the enormous black box.
“Hold on,” he cautions, sliding the chair between me and it. “Rebooting a mainframe is a little more complicated than powering down your personal computer.”
“Oh, I never power down my laptop.”
That really gets his attention. “You never—what? Why not?”
“Well, look at it,” I say, directing his eyes to the device, which still sits tucked beneath the monitors. “If that old thing shuts all the way off, it may never turn on again.”
“Computers don’t really work like … you know what, let’s stick to one issue at a time. I’ll initialize the shutdown sequence now,” he says, turning away and starting to type, “and on Monday, I’ll come in first thing and start it up again. Then you can reload those new files.”
“Monday?” I repeat, certain I must have misheard. “If AUSTEN-C is down all weekend, Pedersen will have my head.”
“That may be, but given the problems you’ve already had, it’s safer to keep it shut down until the storm is over.”
He works in silence for a moment, until I venture another question. “That thing you said before, about going back to the dark ages—that’s just a theory, right?”
I’m sure some people imagine a blackout would be romantic, all candlelight and a return to simplicity. But given how much we rely on our electronics and the internet, I’d say the rom-com vibe would last all of three and a half seconds before it devolves into something more like The Purge.
“Sure,” he readily concedes, glancing back at me. “But most of science is theories. And we’re talking about the sun, Elle. It has the power to rewrite our universe.”