Try Harder

7:15pm

Up in the accounting office, Harry was pounding his fists against his keyboard. He was right in the middle of his illegal money transfer when the network suddenly went down. He couldn't access the files he needed, and whenever he tried, the computer would chirp and freeze on an error message that read "ACCESSING NETWORK..." No matter what he did, no matter what keys he pressed, the tiny hourglass on the computer screen kept spinning, mocking his impotence.

Harry had only been able to secure a fraction of the fortune he intended to steal. He screamed, equal parts frustration and exasperation, and threw a tantrum worthy of a cranky toddler. With no one there to see him, he felt no need to inhibit his rage. Embittered and defeated, he stood up and kicked the hell out of his chair.

This scheme of his was a limited time offer. He was relying on the banks being closed today to cover his tracks. He couldn't just come back later and try again. If he didn't get back online and reinstate the transfer right away, his transgression would be discovered first thing in the morning.

He began pacing around the room, huffing loudly. He knew absolutely nothing about computers or how to fix them. Worse, he couldn't call the 24-hour tech support guys from the firm's IT department, because he'd have to explain what he was doing there.

The only solution he could come up with was to call down to the security guard at the front desk. Hopefully he'd know more about computers than Harry did. He'd give the guard a fake name, and pretend he was from the accounting department. With a little smooth talking, he could probably convince him to come up and look at his machine without asking too many questions. Once there, he could reconnect, or reboot, or restart, or whatever it was the nerds did to make the computers work.

Harry picked up the phone and held the receiver to his ear. There was no dial tone. He pounded the hook switch and pressed every button there was, but still nothing. He grumbled and slammed the phone back down in its cradle.

Now he'd have to go downstairs and talk to the guard in person.

Dammit, he thought, this couldn't be going worse.

He pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up. He grabbed his phone from under a stack of paper and shoved it into his pocket without looking at it. Thinking he'd be right back, he left his jacket and briefcase where they were.

He kicked the chair on his way out, venting a minor fraction of his stress.

Harry wandered down the hall to the passenger elevators, angrily muttering to himself. He occasionally kicked a filing cabinet along the way.

He pushed the elevator's call button. Normally, it lit up, but when Harry pressed it, nothing happened.

Even on the firm's busiest days, there was never a wait for a passenger elevator. They were state-of-the-art Otis Gen2 elevators, which used polyurethane belts instead of woven steel cables. It was a costly but energy-efficient system the firm had installed four years ago to take advantage of "eco-friendly" tax credits. Since then, it had been working perfectly every day, more reliably than any employee, until today.

Harry smacked the elevator door with his palm as hard as he could. Why now, of all times, would this thing choose to break down? It had been working just an hour earlier. He'd used it to get up here in the first place.

He really didn't want to walk down six floors of stairs, but it looked like he didn't have much of a choice. He thought his day couldn't get any worse. Cursing his foul luck, he turned to the stairwell door and tried pushing it open.

It didn't budge. He jiggled the door handle back and forth violently, and it still wouldn't move. He slammed into it with his shoulder, leaning all his weight against the door. Still nothing.