[Setting: The Cathedral of Programing, Nano-Tech Dragon Tower (lvl 4,142) in CentralCorp-District7, just before Dawn, on a lazy Sunday morning, in the not too distant
Dystopian Future. Music: Dark-Rock Ominous Orchestral, w digital cyber SFX]
3:33 am pst
Jake & Jaine were hungover, grumpy, exhausted, disgruntled, and disheveled...neither of them having been "home" for nearly 4 1/2 days. The day/night ratio being what it is this far above the surface of the planet, neither of them had gotten much sleep.
The two of them work together at Nano-DAV MV-Tech Entertainment, (commonly referred to as 'NanoTech'), the largest Digital AVMV entertainment corporation on the planet. HeadQuartered in CentralCorp District 7, high up in the 4,000-Block of The Dragon Tower. Standing at an imposing 14.4 miles, this 4,442 story Mega-Tower had been the tallest building in the world... up until just two weeks prior. Not that Jake & Jaine were concerned with such trivia. They had bigger issues to focus on.
The Top Brass at NanoTech command a global corporate empire- tiered levels of subsidiaries, spin-offs, joint-ventures, shell companies, ghost holdings, and offshore black sites. An empire that just so happens to be in deep, and hitherto undisclosed, financial, legal, PR, and HR problems. Multi-layered corporate crisis on the verge of total meltdown implosion.
Jake & Jaine had, proverbially, "screwed the pooch on this one", and they were both
fully aware of this fact. Each of their careers- on the line.
[insert image #033: the cathedral of programing]
The cavernous open-floor-plan work center was almost completely silent.
Despite being an international MEGA-Corp, a 24/7/365 provider of online/offline virtual holographically augmented media entertainment, there were in-fact very few staffers seated at their work-desk-pod-stations on this particular floor of the corporate headquarters mega-tower, on this particular Sunday morning. Technically, there should have been a basic support crew present, populating the main work-floor of the Programming Support Call Center. Jake & Jaine personally didn't have to be in today at all... but the basic weekend shift crew should have been busy working.
The entire multi-level modular workspace located on the double-tall level 4,142 was completely empty, but for Jake & Jaine.
Despite only having worked together for a little over a year, the two of them privately understood with the unspoken confidence of life-long lovers that they each intuitively knew the other well enough to know what the other was thinking, feeling, wanting, needing. Both of them would really rather be somewhere, anywhere, other than in this building right now. Both of them wanted to be sitting pretty on the rewards of the 'monumental success' for which they were both just celebrated by the corporate rewards infrastructure program. Both of them needed to be far-far-away, in each other's arms, in the mutual bliss of their recently discovered passion for each other.
Alas... complex series of events unfolding over the previous 3 evenings had led the pair of them to be here, hungover as fuck, and severely behind schedule, and desperate for a solution. Jaine knew she had to clear her pounding headache, focus, and really get cranking if she was going to pull a miracle out of the proverbial 'hat' and solve the ... solve the ... solve... the... er... the... /?
{Error;- memory irretrievable... Resubmit Queery}
A flurry of Prohibited Language, bursting up from Jake at the other end of the bullpen, broke the deep velvety silence of the empty Cathedral of Programing and distracted Jaine from her "memory-error-reverie-loop-error"
Jake's outburst quickly ran out of steam and he seemed to reset to what he had been doing immediately prior, which frankly was not an improvement, as far as Jaine was concerned.
She desperately wished that he would stop muttering to himself. He was now muttering loud enough that she had to listen to every word. Before the sudden flurry of Prohibited Language, he had at least been muttering quietly enough that she could mostly ignore it and think her thoughts with some sense of privacy. Now he seemed to be slowly escalating in overall agitation and volume, and it was irritating her. She wanted to yell at him to "SHUT THE FUCK UP!", but she did not have the heart to... she felt a wee bit guilty. It was her fault that the two of them ended up spending all night together, most decidedly NOT working on their assignments.
"Business meeting updates.... platform updates.... application updates.... updates on my fucking phone... Up-dates, Fuuucking Updates!!!! All-day long, every day ... It's some kind of update!!!"
Jake just kept rambling.
She had to say something.
From across the expansive space, she spoke up- "Jake... What are you muttering about?"
[Pause]
He's looking at his phone furiously.
"Updates..." he mutters.
"Updates?" she grunts back at him.
[Longer Pause]
She gives up.
Returning her attention to what she had been working on, Jaine felt annoyed at not being quite sure what she had been contemplating.
Jake just kept muttering to himself violently enough that it was making her headache worse.
"Have you updated your phone this morning?", he asks her, as if updating her phone was some kind of urgent life achievement that he was impatient for her to achieve.
She ignores him.
Ironic. Given just how much energy she devoted to trying to get his attention all last week.
"DO NOT UPDATE YOUR PHONE!"
Jake's voice resonating ominously in the empty Cathedral of Programming, giving her a nasty case of the heebie-jeebies almost instantaneously.
The next thing Jake uttered set off alarms of anxiety and dread.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS JILL??"
YOU ARE READING
Addicted to Dragonz
Ciencia FicciónGames. We all play them. We all enjoy the thrill of winning, the drama of a well-developed storyline, the satisfaction of completing everything. But not everyone is equipped to handle the addictive qualities of gaming. [WARNING: Mature Conte...
